Yeah, people definitely exist all up and down the natural lurker to natural non-lurker spectrum. I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle ... I lurk a LOT, but I also typically de-lurk pretty quickly in new fandoms if there's an easy way of interacting, especially if I'm familiar with the commenting platform already.

I'm not even sure if I realized that you *could* interact with authors when I first started reading fanfic online. It was mostly on private websites and I was way too shy to email someone out of the blue like that. Though when I was cleaning out my inbox awhile back, I found a reply to an email I sent back in circa 1999 about someone's Stargate fic, so apparently I did do it sometimes!