I know others have said this before me and better than I possibly could, and I know most of you don’t need to hear this. But I’m going to say it anyway.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is the kindest, most generous, most amazingly good-hearted and amazing in general human being and the best we could ever ask for in a creator. Lin-Manuel Miranda spent six years writing and composing an amazing, groundbreaking musical and now he stars in it and goes on shows like Jeopardy and The Tonight Show promoting it while writing music for a Disney movie and fucking Star Wars and being a husband and father to a one-year-old. And despite being ridiculously busy at all times, he still makes the time to:
- interact with fans on social media
- personally appear at #ham4ham lotteries (he has done so much to make tickets as available as possible honestly a lot of composers wouldn’t care)
- arrange and run two #ham4ham shows a week, sometimes being a key performer in them himself, between performances of the show
- showed an interest in and read Hamilton fanfic and was genuinely respectful of the work writers put into it (unlike douchey creators who make fun of it)
- loves looking at fanart and frequently uses it as profile and cover pictures of my god can you imagine how amazing that feels to be that artist?? and he often directly compliments art too
Lin-Manuel Miranda doesn’t have to do any of this. He does it because he wants to. Because that’s how sweet he is. Interacting with the fandom should be a positive experience. We owe him that.
We need to be appreciative and grateful that we have such an amazing creator. I’ve honestly never seen a creator interact with fandom as positively as he does. We should constantly be aware of what an amazing gift this is. To almost all of the fandom, all this entails is thinking about just how unbelievably great this all is and reminding ourselves to appreciate it, which most of us do automatically anyway.
But sometimes we’re frustrated by things. And in those cases, a few of us need to remember that there are a lot of issues Lin can’t do anything about and that it does no good to get mad at him over them. No one should be receiving that kind of vicious anger, let alone someone who literally cannot do anything to fix the problem.
Also, just a reminder to please not post RPF of the actors in the Hamilton-Miranda tag on AO3. It’s happened once that I know of and it made me uncomfortable, I can’t imagine how Lin or one of the others would feel if they saw it.
Be aware of your role as a fandom. Take a step back and remind yourself how unprecedented everything about this show is, from a hip-hop musical about Founding Fathers starring people of color, to the ham4ham shows, to the level of interaction we’re able to have with the creator. Lin-Manuel Miranda has shown us an incredible amount of love and respect. Please show him the same.