iniquiticity | (no subject) (Reply)

howdoyouwritenonnnstop asked:
I'm reading Greenhouses! Holy god it hurts! I have been following the #greenhouse themes posts here all along but I Was Not Prepared. So I find myself curious, I think I have a decent appreciation of the workings of the society, but Alex being Alex why/how did he feel he did not have or even in reality did not have absolutely any choice but to accept the marriage back when he was with the Schuylers?

i’m very curious of the experience what it might be like to read all the greenhouses posts on the site, but having not read the story. like, what sort of impressions did you form on the things you read here? do you feel the story at all matches how you felt with greenhouse theme tags? this is a real question. do you feel like the stuff here ~matches the story?

(i often engage in fandom content and then get involved in the original canon and i’m like… this is NOTHING like the fandom. so I wonder?)

Anyway, I feel like the reason Alex agrees, nominally, to get married to Washington are the following:

- despite Alex’s assery I think he has a huge fear of being destitute again. (I’m lucky to have been privileged and, while not rich, pretty comfortable - I’d welcome insight from anyone who wanted to share it with me on your experience.) And Phillip Schuyler has basically proved to him that him being a recluse-ass that he presently is doesn’t put him in any danger of losing his clothes or food, but I imagine that Alex’s fury at being married grew so much that Phillip probably threatened to take some pretty serious steps if he didn’t go through with it. I don’t think Alex is under any illusions of how little power he holds in the circumstances. if phillip (or washington) wanted to make him destitute, they could, and it wouldn’t be difficult, although i don’t know how much they would ACTUALLY do to him? especially washington, who has had enough of ruining people’s lives for the next thousand years. i think it’s possible, although i’m not actually sure it would happen (see below) to imagine Phillip disowning Alex and saying “Ok, hamilton. you wanted to figure your own life out? Here’s three days of food and your name back, and a plain wool jacket.”

what i actually see happening is against this threat, alex basically rationalized being married to washington as being transferred from one master to another. and he was able to deal with phillip (and angelica!) just fine, so dealing with washington will just be fine too.

i don’t actually know if phillip would cast alex out becuase… it would obviously look pretty bad for him to have adopted this kid and then kicked him out 5-6 years later. phillip is pretty damn interested in his status, maybe not as much as washington but a lot. and it doesn’t look good to decide a dude doesn’t fit your standards and then kick him out. it would look bad for the schuyler ladies, too, and of course phillip will do anything not to upset his daughters.

also alex wouldn’t want to make eliza (mostly) look bad. i think he’s mad enough at angelica about the whole thing by now, but him and eliza are great friends despite she doesn’t think it’s a big deal he’s being told to marry washington, and he woudln’t want to have this on her record that they had shit adopted kid they evicted. so at least part of him has that part in it.

so in summary:

- alex knows phillip could make him a nothing again if he denies, even if he’s not sure he actually would. it’s not a bluff he’s going to risk calling.

- instead of becoming a nothing again, he’s just passed ownership from one person to another, so fuck it, who fucking cares. fucking fuck.

- also it would make eliza look bad and she’s gr8.