#I literally used to think this was a military comedy 😂

[thebreakfastgenie]

@rescue-ram okay I need to revise my cloudy answer because I forgot something kind of major. I think I was in this mindset of trying not to reveal too much, but the time loop being set during Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen is going to be in the summary, it's not a secret.

I said before that I wanted to do something with the time loop and I had this idea of a time loop as a manifestation of trauma. I owe a lot of inspiration to Kurt Vonnegut; Slaughterhouse-Five is not a time loop, but it does use time travel as an allegory for PTSD. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine also has a scene where Sisko explains the concept of linear time to alien being who exist in every moment at once, and they discuss the way his trauma and grief keep him living in the moment of his wife's death.

I love the idea of using sci-fi and fantasy elements to depict an emotional experience. You don't relive the same day over and over like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, but if you have PTSD it might feel like you do. When a character is aware of a time loop (most post-Groundhog Day time loops have one who is) the events change slightly as a result of their different actions, but it still ends the same way. You might relive an experience again and again, wondering what you could have done differently, but you can't change the outcome after the fact. The narrative device of the time loop makes what you're feeling into what is physically happening.

That's the appeal of a MASH time loop to me, not the continuity being funky

I think in its own way MASH uses narrative devices to tell emotional truths that aren't quite literal. As a comedy that dabbled in satire, it often presented exaggerations. But MASH was popular with servicepeople despite--or perhaps because of--it's criticism of the military and it was popular because it was resonant. Is Radar literally psychic? In one-off gags, yes. Are psychic powers real? No. Have a lot of people worked with a clerk or administrative assistant who was so good at their job and attuned to their boss that they felt like a mind-reader? Yes. And Hawkeye as a character is prone to telling weird little anecdotes that may or may not be entirely true at face value but convey a kind of truth.

So that's why I'm writing a time loop WIP 😂

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😭

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☁️ Cloudy - What inspired you to start writing your WIP? (or in general)

Time loop WIP (most active as of yesterday!): Groundhog Day, Before I Fall (I think there's a movie now, but I've only read the book), and the Mystery Spot episode of Supernatural. The way my time loop functions drew inspiration primarily from these, as well as other Groundhog Day derivatives. There are a lot of posts in the MASH fandom about time loops. Most of them more or less just throw the words "time loop" around. As a lover of time tropes, I became interested in applying the idea of a time loop seriously.

Ghost AU: The ghost episode! Follies of the Living--Concerns of the Dead got me thinking about it, especially because the ghost in that episode, Weston, is described as always making everyone laugh, making me think he was kind of the Hawkeye of his unit. The thing Hawkeye needs most is an audience (just look at the episode Hawkeye) so depriving him of that and forcing the rest of the 4077th to get along without him is too delicious a concept.

Honestly sometimes I have really good inspiration stories (like the West Wing fic that came from walking across an icy driveway, or the original short-short story that came from seeing toast crumbs in the tub of butter) but none of my current WIPs have one. In general, I'm inspired to write because I didn't want to stop playing with dolls when I grew up and I'm inspired to write fic by wanting more of a work and not being able to get it out of my head.

😭 angst or sad WIP snippet

This took forever to answer because I went on a whole spiral about what counts an angst but I think this is pretty sad. This isn't from one of my primary WIPs because those angst moments are under lock and key for now.

“The only difference between youth and arrogance is whether or not you grow out of it. We were all kids when we got over there, Hawkeye. We thought we knew what we were getting into. The truth is, we didn’t have a clue.”  “None of us were kids when we left,” Hawkeye says softly. He’s given up arguing. Sidney’s right—he usually is.  “Well, that’s the business of war, making men out of boys. Or so the generals say.”  “The business of war is making corpses.”  Sidney raises his glass somberly.  “I’ll drink to that.” 

🐧 a funny quote (silly! laughs! jokes! puns!)

“Did he look a little green around the gills to you?” BJ asks, his voice touched with genuine concern. It makes him a little sick, sometimes, the way BJ can be considerate.  Through the netting, Hawkeye can see Charles stalking discretely in the direction of the latrine. “Maybe he has yellow fever,” Hawkeye suggests, scratching at his mosquito bite.  “I heard it doesn’t mix well with blue blood,” BJ says in that voice he thinks is a deadpan. Hawkeye waits, and after a moment the stupid grin appears, right on schedule. 

I'm proud of this one because it feels like the caliber of pun they have on the show. Slightly sophisticated, but not actually good. Also it led me to look up whether yellow fever is endemic in Korea and the answer is no it's not.