HAMILTON IN GLOWFIC
Oh, Hamilton: The Musical. It can be listened to in its entirety in two and a half hours, it's really catchy, and it has neat, well-developed characters. Quotes from its songs grace glowfic titles and narration pieces. So why is there no glowfic about it specifically?
I intend to correct this travesty by ... playing all of the characters and historical figures from the cast of Hamilton. Note that I'm sticking to Hamilton: the Musical -- I'm not going to be playing actual real historical characters. My Hamilton-verse is going to be an alternate universe so I can include some of the peculiarities of the musical that are different from the actual historical record. Although I will fill in details from actual history, I'm not going to rely on them or aim for complete and total historical accuracy.
What's different?
All of the Americans are gonna be black or otherwise people of color, at least to modern, meta-textual Doylian eyes. I'm going to explain this and other elements unique to the musical through several points of divergence:
- In this alternate American history, there were no policies against intermarrying with black people/native people. Male English settlers, instead of migrating with their families to create settlements, came over alone, intermarrying with native populations. This led to more obvious creolization among American rich people, and a more fluid idea of race in general. I'm importing the contemporary Spanish notion of being able to "become white" if you were rich, powerful or connected enough -- especially if one was networked to people from Britain.
- The British people and Loyalists are more obviously white -- they emigrated to the States later, from Britain. Because of this, colonists are more easily visually distinguished from white British people. This creates more patriot/loyalist polarization than in real life.
- As in real life, slaves are distinguished based on the status of their mother -- the difference being that they're not distinguished based on their race or origin. This led to branding becoming common practice.
- Everyone has an urge to utter verse and song. Major events merit minutes of singing. (Not hours or weeks though -- looking at you, elves.) Everyone is excellent at improvisational verse, owing to more cultural prominence and the inexplicable prevalence of extreme talent.
Places to insert your characters:
If coming from a different universe, your characters could be dropped:
- In the middle of Yorktown, the crossing of the Delaware, the 1777-78 winter in Valley Forge.
- On Hamilton's ship as he is headed to the US in 1772
- Somewhere in New York after the end of the war and before the first constitutional convention
- On top of Philip Hamilton's duel
- Near Laurens' skirmish with the British down South, where he dies (sorry, uh, spoilers)
Your characters could also be fused into the universe! Your call on how they would be likely to instantiate.
Setting Modulations
I have been toying with the idea of integrating various magic systems. Particularly:
- Including the (heavily closeted) Daeva magic
- Including twilight vampires
- Including new-world Alexandra Quick magic
- Re-imagining the story in Alicorn's Eclipse-verse BDSM AU
Anyhow -- send me a forum message or message me on the IRC network in #tricky if you're interested in planning something!