(no subject)

[iniquiticity]

Anonymous asked
writing meme thing: "He blinked, and looked away from Hamilton and to the flowers. That was not the familiar torrent he had expected.“You are not being grateful!” Hamilton said, and it was a strange kind of relief to be yelled at. He was very accustomed to it, and it did not require any effort, and of course, Hamilton was right. It seemed like Hamilton was very good at being right, and he was very good at being wrong. “You have helped John, so I have managed your orchids for you!”'

this is a good one.

so one of the hardest things in writing greenhouses is not necessarily writing washington - becuase the narrative is so close to him, he flows very naturally with the story. however, there’s a super fun and difficult conflict in writing hamilton, because of the same reason. While I, the author, of course, know everything about hamilton, washington is completely baffled by him. so the narrative of the story goes “bwah ham WHAT ARE YOU DOING??” where yr obdnt author is going “Hamilton is doing this, because of this, because of this.”

This runs counter from a lot of fic. Something that I read a lot is that the characters don’t have a lot of agency - they’re victims to the trope or plot you want to write. (Not that this is necessarily bad, but it certainly exists.) I’ve tried really hard to avoid this, and giving Hamilton agency to act out against the plot of the story is one of the reasons greenhouses is so long.

So anyway, Washington has never met anyone like hamilton before, and he doesn’t understand anything about why hamilton does what he does. hamilton is just so different from him, in terms of character and status and personality and background - it’s just REALLY HARD for him to figure out how hamilton works, on a normal day. he likes Hamilton. He wants Hamilton to like him. But he doesn’t understand why Hamilton takes the stimulus he gets and spits out the response. So yr obdnt author has to go “this is why hamilton has done this” whereas the narrative goes “WHY HAS HE DONE THIS?”

and that’s BEFORE Washington is in the depths of his own mood. he does all this work to figure out how hamilton operates - he’s failed so badly at it, and he’s trying to succeed, and it’s … a little better? like, he’s trying? But then Hamilton completely throws him off by being nice. Hamilton’s never really been nice to him. He doesn’t know how to handle it on a good day, and now when he’s so low he just gets completely baffled by Hamilton being nice, and he’s just like “I don’t have the spoons to try to figure you out. please just yell at me because that’s what you always do. I will just … do whatever you want. I’m so tired, I feel so down, I’m so low. Tell me what you want, so I can do it, and you will just leave be alone. I just want to be alone.”


And then there’s the Hamilton side of things. Greenhouses Hamilton is based very thoroughly in reciprocity, because that’s the way he operated in the Schuyler household which maximized stuff that he got (which was complicated and not affectionate but sometimes they all compromised to do things. Alex’s relationship with Phillip Schuyler is complicated.) Part of Washington and Alex hating each other in the first part of the story is this kind of thing: Alex basically feels like he’s trying to be bought into good graces after he’s basically been sold off in this arranged marriage. You can’t buy me with things, and Martha saying you took a boy from his home, etc.

So for Hamilton to be reciprocal - to say “you did this thing for me, and now i’m doing a thing for you” is a big step for hamilton in his quest to be friends/ok with Washington. and that washington DOESN’T reciprocate, ISN’T grateful, SEEMS SO … DOWN - doesn’t process in Alex’s brain. He did this great thing for you! You were down! He solved this problem! NOW YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY! and Alex doesn’t know how to respond to this! and his default response to confusion is anger. especially with washington.

ooooh, that was long.