#I knew I wanted to write a fic about Rattray

[tachvintlogic]

It's a weird feeling being first

It's weird making a fic for a piece of media with the knowledge that it's going to be the first fic for that media (on AO3 at least).

You put the title of the book, play, movie, show, whatever it is in the fandom tag. It doesn't show up in the autocomplete, but it's not that surprising as it's a little obscure. Same thing with all the character names.

You save the draft. You click on the tags for the fandom and the characters. Out of curiosity. See if there are other works, or if there are characters in other pieces of media with the same name.

They're all blank. There are no fics that use them. Any of them.

And you realize...

You're the first. You're the only one so far who's written a fic for this piece of art. Definitely on AO3, maybe even on the internet in general. It feels preposterous. You know other people have read it. Surely you're not the only one. Surely not the first.

But you are.

And not only that, but for all those who come after you, if anyone does, you set the standard. You have to chose the name for the fandom tag. You have to chose the names for the characters. These will be the names the fandom and the characters are known by on AO3.

What is the best name to give this character? Their full name? Or what they are most often referred to as? Nickname? Is their full name even given? Will you have to scour the original work to find it? Should you specify the media they come from in parentheses to avoid future confusion? What are you even supposed to do if they have 2 first names one formal and one informal?

Should his name be fucking Jack or John??????????????

Better hope you don't misspell anything. That could be a disaster.

It feels like too big a responsibility for it to be your fic, especially this particular fic. It should be something else, something maybe more representative of the actual work.

But unless someone else comes along to fill that responsibility, or you write something else, it's going to have to be you and this fic.

Maybe that's fine. Once the groundwork is laid down, other people will start writing fics to populate the tags.

Or maybe that fic will stand alone, with no friends to accompany it. It may go for years without so much as a partner, or for decades, or centuries, or be lonely until the very end of AO3 and perhaps digital storage as a whole.