Rat Man 🐀

I think like 80% of the fics if not more were college AU fics, and 15% were just different AUs but I don't think I've actually read a fic that wasn't a random one-shot taking place in canon timeline (I do believe it was because all of the hamilton ff writers just like me were 16 back then, and just simply did not know how to write historical fiction)

Most of the fics were LAMS (which is Alexander Hamilton x John Laurens) and it was practically canon in fandom eyes, and before anyone says anything, I've seen the letters, of course I've seen them but guyz, I think we were just a little bit delulu with how firmly we believed this (and I'm including myself in this!)

Still on shipping, the second most popular one was Jamilton (Thomas Jefferson x Alexander Hamilton) and I'm gonna be honest, this was my shit, I enjoyed this dynamic a lot more (I always found friends to lovers a bit boring), but man, were the ship wars brutal, I remember when amino mods tried to actually do some sort of a debate lams vs jamilton in which there were actual teams that wrote whole essays about which ship is more valid, but they ended up insulting each other after maybe two rounds

The last ship with its own point is Hamburr (Alexander Hamilton x Aaron Burr), I've always perceived this one as a cool kids ship, I think people who shipped this were the most chill about it

Background ships included Mulette (Muligan x Lafayette), which was one of those ships that were always in the background some sort of "if you don't ship this as your side ship i don't trust you" kind of ship, the same goes to Jeffmads (Jefferson x Madison) in lams fics, and in a lesser degree, and i don't remember its name, Eliza Schuler x Maria Lewis Reynolds (if you don't remember her from her name, is the woman Hamilton cheats on Eliza with), which is always fun, we love seeing some wlw

And now, the random facts that were just headcanons that people very often included, Jefferson and Lafayette were almost always in some sort related (especially in Jamilton fics) and that's because of the double cast, but I don't really think the same was true for any other character it was just them

Hamilton was always a caffeine addict with a bad sleep schedule who was way too engaged in whatever topic the fic made him and I remember one fic (it was a college au, of course) where the whole point was that it was actively ruining his relationships around him (it was a hamburr fic)

John Laurens loved turtles bc of some historical letters in which he mentioned he liked turtles and fandom did its thing and you couldn't read a lams fic where turtles weren't mentioned at least once

Charles Lee and Samuel Seabury were always minor villains/mean college students and the latter was sometimes in a weird unhealthy relationship with (king) George

There was no Eliza slander! I know it's a weird point, but now seeing how fandoms like spn or 911 reacted to female love interest I’m actually suprised there wasn't any, she was always just a good friend (or, in one Soulmate AU I think it was Jamilton, Eliza had Hamilton's name on her wrist but he didn't have hers and that was just brutal)

There was this fic that I won't mention by its whole name (it's off the internet anyway, I don't think the author wants to be reminded of it nor associated with it), that was a hanahaki AU Jamilton that nearing the end of its run had 300k+ words; it was about Alex having a mean spirited rivalry with Jefferson at their corpo lawyer job but hearing he has hanahaki so deciding he wants to be nice to him now, but little does he know that the hanahaki in question is *for* him and later he himself develops hanahaki for Jefferson and they even live together at one point so they have this situation where both of them are willing to die in order to keep the other one happy and cure them by being their rebounds but they actively making each other worse, it's probably not as good as I remember it to be but godDAMN was it a cult classic it really was one of the kind, ALSO a girl on a plane asked me what fic I was reading bc she was peeking over my shoulder because it looked good and it's just one of the interactions I will *never* forget

This fandom was also my first impression of A/B/O dynamic and it wasn't a good one, one of the fics with it that I remember was Jamilton, in which Hamilton was some sort of Omega activist (there was a scene where he was annoyed that romantic comedies in universe pushed the agenda of omega leaving their omegaxomega relationship for an alpha when oxo can be fully normally sufficient) and Jefferson was an alpha and there was a scene at a diner where Jefferson was spreading his pheromones so the other alphas would stop looking at Hamilton? yeah thanks, no thanks

Washington was 95% of the time Hamilton's father in one way or another but what did you expect, in one fic he was even Hamilton's mother soulmate but she died before he met her which I didn't know was possible in soulmates aus

I read one Jamilton fic on wattpad (even then I rarely used wattpad) that I think was (a college au) about how madison and jefferson were in abusive relationship and hamilton "rescued" jefferson out of it? (it feaured a truly iconic quote in a scene that i still remember where jefferson was having a panic attack in the dorm's bathroom and madison didn't want hamilton to think he was an abuser so he said something along the lines of "Don't listen to this whore" and Hamilton responded "I won't listen to a whore" and Jefferson was like no he also hates me no one loves me and then Hamilton added "But Thomas isn't a whore." and I kid you not, I think about this scene every time I see that stupid "do you think im pretty?" "no." ":(" "you're beautiful" meme) and my art was featured in one of the chapters! it wasn't a good art, but it was one of my biggest achievements back then (I drew the most art during my hamilton phase, I wish I kept that passion for drawing in the years to come)

And... I think that's all that I can think of off top of my head

Despite many peoples' opinion now, I don't think the fandom was wrong in how they perceived the source material, any who was in the fandom at that time can tell you that sometimes it felt like it's own entity, those were our characters and what they did in the musical and the historical context didn't really matter in the long run, besides some limited posts about lams or just funfacts about the real lives of the characters (i have so many funfacts about inaccuracies in hamilton stored in my head), just what the dynamic between them was

But, as have many, I grew out of hamilton fanfiction, it shaped how I moved around fanfiction and fandom spaces for years and no matter how much "cringe" that fandom was (and it was cringe in every way possible) I probably won't forget the fun parts (for example how I joined judges guild on amino that was supposed to host contests regularly and then we did one contest and 90% of the members stopped responding so I pretty much single-handedly picked the winners when we had like I think about 20-30 entries? contests were a big deal on amino) and I won't regret it, I think it was one of the if not best then funniest places to be on the Internet in 2018

I have recently rewatched Hamilton now that it is available on streaming and one) I found out that I didn't really know all the lyrics and certainly not what some parts mean (english as you probably already have noticed is not my first language) and two) I actually found myself thinking, man, i would like to read some good fanfiction about this, but not a single one Hamilton fanfiction on ao3 can be separated from how the fandom perceived the characters and that's okay, it's just the way it is

If you truly want to know the grasp of what was normal or not in this fandom, let me tell you this: I saw Jefferson Miku Binder before it was a meme, and it really wasn't that weird, I was seeing art and headcanons like these on the regular, that just how the fandom looked like