#good houlihawk writing is really rare but it's like the girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead

[leonardcohenofficial]

Do you ship Hawkeye and Margaret?

not in any real sense of an endgame, but i do find potentiality in that relationship compelling. i think that the friendship we got to see on screen is ultimately more interesting than if the show had gone for any real romance between them, but i get why people ship them/enjoy the very few and far between actually good fics that explore what could have been. (a bit of a sidebar but had wayne rogers stuck around on the show, i think there would have been more of an established trapper and margaret arc—which we get hints at in season three—and it would have been cool to see what a houlintyre take on something like "comrades in arms" could have been.) in the early years most of the hawkeye and margaret dynamic is based on antagonism and harassment, with one of the first episodes that allows them both to have personal growth being "carry on, hawkeye" (and even then there is still plenty of both in the episode). over the years, as margaret's character gets to develop (with both positive and negative overall results imho—this is a bit of an unpopular opinion but i do actually think that a lot of the softening of her character makes her less interesting, i think she's at her most interesting when she's more complicated emotionally and morally), her relationship with hawkeye becomes less combative but is marked by a deep level of emotional connection in which they still quibble and fight, but they're not trying to tear each other down anymore.

one of the biggest missed opportunities for continuity in terms of exploring hawkeye and margaret's sexual and emotional intimacy comes in season six between "comrades in arms" and "what's up, doc?"; margaret and hawkeye are implied to have had (presumably unprotected) sex in "comrades in arms," and six episodes later, margaret has her pregnancy scare (also really interesting to me is that margaret says that she was "with donald about six weeks ago in tokyo," and "what's up, doc?" aired six weeks after "comrades in arms"). it would have been bold for 1977-1978 network television for the show to explore a main character getting another married main character pregnant—fun fact in that there was a CBS-rejected a script very early on in which hawkeye would have had to deal with the consequences of potentially getting two different nurses pregnant—but would have been interesting to see follow-up to that plotline. we get a hint of that with the "i'm glad it turned out the way you wanted it to." "so am i." "i'm also sorry." "so am i." exchange, but that would have taken on a very different weight had there been actual potential that hawkeye got her pregnant (which is something i'm interested in exploring in a fic sometime; watch this space lol).

all this to say also margaret and hawkeye are both hot and i think that shipping them is fun and if people want to write thousands of words of smut inspired by the "if i didn't hate violence, i'd kick you." "would you? with high heels?" exchange who would i be to complain?