#marley on mash

[marley-manson]

There are about 5 million little throwaway lines and details that keep the oppressive miserable setting at the forefront of the show, but this is one of my favourites.

[marley-manson]

I agree with the sentiment of this post - none of the Mash characters were intended to be read as gay/bi/trans/etc - but I don't think it's an incorrect use of the term coding to say that, eg, Hawkeye or Klinger are queer coded.

"Coding" doesn't just refer to intentional subtext ime, it refers to using culturally recognized traits/stereotypes in a character to make the intended audience respond to them a certain way. Like how some Disney villains are queer coded - Scar wasn't intended to be understood as gay, but he's effeminate and campy to make him appear less normative than masc hetero Mufasa and Simba and therefore more clearly read as a villain to audiences in a homophobic society.

imo you can say Hawkeye is queer coded in a similar way, with how pointedly he's depicted as unmasculine and flamboyant to an extent with the jokes etc, but in the show's context it's not to make him a villain, or to say he's lowkey actually bisexual, but to make him more overtly counter to normative traditional American society, which is something Mash started out making fun of as a satirical show largely informed by the American counterculture.

lmao i know this is so low stakes but i do not know how to explain to people that the man from midcentury television you are obsessed with is almost definitely not in fact queer coded, you are reading a character through a queer lens

[marley-manson]

The more I think about it the more I adore Hawkeye laughing when Radar walks in on the flu shot in Carry on Hawkeye.

It's just such a delightful reaction. A lesser show might frame it as an embarrassing moment, maybe as comeuppance for his flirting, or just for humour. Hawkeye can make role reversal sex jokes but he wouldn't want anyone actually thinking it's something he does, that would actually be humiliating.

But no when Radar walks in and thinks he's interrupting some kind of sexual moment it's played like his dream punchline, the best possible thing that could've happened in that moment. Zero shame, zero embarrassment, nothing but appreciation for the comic timing. It's so much fun lol, god I love this episode.

[nimuetheseawitch]

bj (sorry I'm not familiar enough with your more current fandoms to ask about them lol): 5, 6, 24

No apologies necessary! I love talking about MASH even when I'm not actively in it. Even before my deep obsession came on, my brother joked that every family event, I was guaranteed to turn the conversation to MASH (to be fair, it's something all of us watched, and there's a lot to talk about). And I like talking about MASH with you!

So, BJ.

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

Out of nowhere, the first song that popped into my head was Evil Woman by ELO, but that's not actually a song I associate with BJ. I do, on the other hand, always think of Tegan & Sara's Don't Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie). I end up with a lot of MASH feelings when I listen to that album (Hey, I'm Just Like You).

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

I, too, talk about my partner a ridiculous amount to people who've never met him. I think it comes from having been long distance for so long - a lot of my friends didn't meet him for years, but he's an important part of my life, so I talk about him a lot. But it can probably get annoying.

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

So, I was amused when I got into the Top Gun fandom (oh my god it's been a year of that obsession...) and realized how many ridiculous men with mustaches and Hawaiian shirts I was looking at. And now I'm kinda curious what level of influence MASH might've had on the choice to make Goose like that in the original Top Gun in 1986. Because he has a mustache, the Hawaiian shirt, is kind of a sidekick to the dark haired lady-killer main character, tells a lot of ridiculous jokes, and adores his blonde wife and child. But I see the anger and frustration in Bradley (who has the mustache and shirt as Goose's son in Top Gun: Maverick).

[marley-manson]

Not sure if you're looking for random people's opinions since comments are restricted but bc this was in the general Mash tag and reblogs are on I figure I'll throw some suggestions out there anyway, since I have a lot of citations for this side of BJ in my back pocket from writing meta lol. Not necessarily his absolute worst moments but a lot of the negative and potentially illustrative ones I can think of, that haven't been mentioned in the comments yet:

- in Depressing News he makes fun of Hawkeye's monument and doesn't interact with his plotline otherwise - in Backpay he calls Hawkeye crazy for his attempt to get paid by the army - in The Grim Reaper he tells casually tells Hawkeye Bloodworth has an open and shut case against him and gets more upset about Winchester taking his jacket than Hawkeye's impending court martial, to Hawkeye's irritation - imo Bottoms Up is particularly bad because BJ's prank on Hawkeye alienates him from others and makes him a temporary pariah in camp - in Rally Round the Flagg he spends the episode calling Hawkeye over emotional and irrational - even when Hawkeye gets reasonably upset about Charles making an extremely racist remark about the North Korean he saved - in Preventative Medicine he values an appendix over a hundred lives (obviously the writers intended for him to have a point but I find the messaging very bad) - in GFA he accidentally but pretty predictably triggers Hawkeye and then leaves without saying goodbye while trying to get Hawkeye to say it despite Hawkeye not knowing he's planning to leave for good - In Mail Call Three he needs to feel like Peg still needs him materially, not emotionally, by telling her which mechanic to go to - Not terrible but potentially revealing for BJ's character: in Smilin Jack, his method of reassuring the kid who's wondering why he doesn't just desert but keeps going into battle and getting hurt is to tell him that he's a good order-taker, as a positive attribute - Straight up telling Aggie that the reason he can't have an affair with her is because he's in a war zone and he needs an idyllic image of his family in the future to help him cope - In Stars and Stripes he lords the paper he and Charles are writing over Hawkeye in a way that, like his behaviour in Heroes imo, suggests and underlying jealousy of Hawkeye - In Un The Night and the Music he can't bring himself to tell a patient that he's probably going to lose his leg and keeps falsely reassuring him that it'll be fine, because he started projecting on the patient when he mentioned his family - In Operation Friendship he steadfastly refuses to admit his arm is injured until it requires immediate surgery, even though he's a surgeon so he should both know better and it's his livelihood

Hope the fic writing goes well!

i need a watch list for BJ's Lowest Moments as review for a fic i'm having writers block for!!

i can think of a lot of random little scenes on top of beejcentric plot lines, but i'm putting out the call so that i may leave no stone unturned. plus i'm awful at remembering exactly which episode everything is in because i haven't done enough rewatches for most of the show yet... my memory is swiss cheese :'(

i want to really explore the worst side of him for this fic, and to that end, i want to have enough source material on-hand that i could theoretically put a little parenthetical citation after every jerk thing i have him say or do like i'm writing a fucking paper... because i'm NOT just walloping him for the sake if it, i'm trying to form a reasonable argument and keep it grounded in plausibility. the last thing i want is for this to read as an ooc crackfic!!

sooooo please comment or reply with an episode that you think has one of bj's lowest, evillest, douchiest moments 😈

[gleesongtournament]

[thelatecaptainpierce]

catch 22 by joseph heller // mash (o.r.)

[majorbaby]

💌 late to the game but why not? 💖

ahhh marley 💖 i'm going to embarrass you a little but you asked for it!!

that big huge brain of yours <3 but also how well you can articulate everything that's going on up there. reading your meta made me go 'i want to write like that'... almost two years ago now. not in terms of your style, but your standards: well-researched, well-argued... i think you're still leagues ahead of me in terms of articulating things clearly (as i may be demonstrating right now lmao) but tbh you're leagues ahead of most. and i think that's not just about 'sounding smart' it's also about writing in plain language that most people can understand.

like if i wasn't sooo delighted every time you asked my opinion on something, i spat out some word salad filled with "kind ofs" and "maybes" and "idk but" just for you to process it and rephrase it in a much clearer (and MUCH more brief) way, always to confirm, never condescend... then i might have developed an inferiority complex lmao.

also i think it's great that you ask people for their opinions on things whenever they express interest in your opinions. so much talk about 'fandom community' and it can just be like... talking to people, explaining what you liked and what you didn't like in your own words without relying too much on inside jokes and buzzwords... sharing meta and encouraging people to share their own.

that had a really big impact on me early on in my mash fandom days. while it's possible i would've started this blog anyway and eventually started making gifs and memes etc, it started out with meta and i associate my earliest meta posts with our very first conversations about MASH.

one other thing: i feel like having you as an editor for my fics is the one brag i am confident and comfortable making re: anything related to fandom. i value your friendship first and foremost, but having a beta who is thorough, technically competent and willing to challenge me, has unlocked potential in my work that i don't think i could have ever achieved on my own. i have the best editor in the not-a-business, fight me :3

mutuals send me a 💌 and ill tell u something i love about you

[marley-manson]

I haven't tallied all the pregnancy jokes on Mash but I actually have tallied all Hawkeye's pregnancy jokes about himself or other men lol.

Hawkeye has 9 about himself, an additional 8 about other guys (patients, Klinger, Frank), and 1 borderline one where he refers to himself and Trapper as "Me and the Missus" while wrapping his arms around Trapper's stomach in classic pregnant wife pose. In gorilla suits.

Also there's Potter's "File a paternity suit!" in Hepatitis to make Hawkeye laugh as a bonus.

Oh wait ETA Hawkeye has 10 referring to himself because I forgot the bit in Life With Father where they discuss the horse like a pregnancy.

rewatching “Kim” last night and I didn’t finish bc I got too tired but within the first half of the episode, they’ve got the exchange above, plus a joke about Radar being pregnant, plus the following:

has someone actually tallied all of the pregnancy jokes made throughout the show - and more specifically, how many times Hawkeye makes those jokes (and even more specifically, how many times does he make them about himself) bc I feel like it needs to be done.

[caddyxjellyby]

Unpopular Mash opinion

🔥

I don't buy Hawkeye being insecure about his appearance. I mean, look at Alan Alda. He's six feet tall, he has gorgeous blue eyes, the only thing about him that is unconventionally handsome is his nose which just gives his face character. Sure, he makes some self-deprecating jokes, but jokes are meant to be funny, and I don't think Hawkeye ever comments on his nose (nor does anyone else).

[transgayhawkeyepierce]

Hawkeye is kind of a tough fuck. Like, not in the traditional sense, he's a self identified "coward", he's pretty much always subverting masculinity in some way, he's a jokester, he's emotionally open. But Hawkeye is tough. He's preserving, to an insane degree. The reason why the war hurts him so badly is because of how determined he is to keep his head on straight, not getting worn down to cynicism or detachment or acceptance of the atrocities being committed there. Even when the war breaks him, we see him regain his mind and start to heal, because that's just who Hawkeye is. He's always pushing through. And let's not forget what lengths Hawkeye will go through to help, of what happened to Lacey when he threatened the lives of all those men, of Hawkeye's schemes to get money for the orphanage, or smuggle out prisoners of war. Hawkeye is tough because he loves others and wants to live long enough to make connections with them, because he values his personhood, he's tough because he's kind and will do All he can for a mere stranger. Hawkeye is tough because he is good and that makes his toughness almost untouchable.

[marley-manson]

one fun thing about George is that they actually show how Hawkeye's style of joking functions as a beacon for gay people. Like, George laughing at his gay slang tourist joke is a hint that he's gay before the reveal, and Hawkeye signals himself as relatable and safe by making an interior decorator joke and referencing his own inability to throw a football during their conversation

like is that not all the precedent you need to take eg "Someone's gonna have to get me pregnant first" in Welcome to Korea as Hawkeye sussing out whether BJ's down to fuck? or yk, Hawkeye's vibe in general as announcing to anyone whose radar can understand it that he's looking for guys to hook up with? you don't even need to understand how gay guys found each other in similar ways in the real world to make this connection, it's all technically there in the show itself

[marley-manson]

I did a tiny bit of research on this for a throwaway line in a fic lol and I think it's just a nod to historical accuracy - they were essentially porn mags before obscenity laws loosened up, with just a thin veneer of being lifestyle magazines (particularly in the 50s when most of them were pretty much catering to horny dudes), so I think the intended vibe is that Hawkeye has a collection of the closest stuff you could get to porn through subscription.

And as a fun fact they were also popular with gay men, particularly soldiers with little privacy who needed plausible deniability, because there was equal opportunity nudity in them (though women tended to be posed more erotically).

Are Hawkeye's nudist magazines supposed to be like porn porn and it's just 70s network television depicting the 50s or was there an actual market for just pictures of naked people in various poses.

[bornforastorm]

mash 3

oh, but of course, my dear!! I know you're not into Hawkeye Loves His Hometown so here is some of the HawkTrap part:

When one bottle of wine is done, Hawkeye opens a second and sits at the kitchen table to drink it. All this drinking leads to wandering to his dad’s office in the back of the house and scrounging around to find the taped letter he’d sent. It takes him half an hour to find the reel-to-reel so he can play it, then he sits on the floor for an hour listening to the tape on repeat. 

Say hello, Trapper. Hello, Trapper– Five parts gin and one moment’s silence for the vermouth– no trouble– hello dad, your son’s no good.

Hearing that voice is a pang, a pinch, that sends him to refill his glass. 

Pang aside (and the pang does subside after the third play through), it’s a nice tape and he’s glad to have it. Hearing Frank makes him smile; it’s almost nice to remember him now, from a distance. On the flip side, it hurts more than he’d expected to hear Henry. He’d thought his heart was almost healed from that loss.  But Trapper… Trapper, who’s featured more than anyone else, who was such a natural part of his life that he comes in and out of his letter to his dad almost without fuss. Did he really think about it at all when he’d made the tape? He didn’t. Back then, he’d thought they would spend the whole war together, and then some. It was obvious that Trapper would be on the tape in the same way it was obvious Trapper was mentioned in written letters, and there was no need to get more than a few words here or there to send to his dad. There would be other chances, of course. For everyone. 

What a laugh. 

That tape recorder stuck around, but they ran out of tape for it almost immediately and couldn’t get more until much, much later. Until Charles arrived with his own tape recorder, in fact. Too late to get more Frank, more Trapper, more Henry.

He listens to the tape over and over, speeding through his own long winded descriptions to hear those few, beloved, crackling phrases and the playful strums from Trapper’s guitar at the end, the few words from Henry and Frank. All with an ear reaching for more. It’s not enough. Why didn’t he record more? Why didn’t he send his dad entire interviews? What he wouldn’t give for five uninterrupted minutes of Trapper John’s voice. For five minutes of Henry Blake’s voice.

Well, he can’t have five minutes more of Henry, no matter how much he wishes he could. What he can have is five more minutes of Trapper John. 

So he cracks. He cracks on the first night of being home alone, one month and four days after getting home from Korea.

He leaves the reel-to-reel still spinning and rushes to his room, finds the last letter Trapper sent– that sad little thing– and dashes down the stairs to the phone. Where he stops dead. He’s been drinking and upstairs he was dreamy and drunk. Now, looking at Trapper’s return address and the phone in front of him, he feels stone sober. The envelope in his hands feels fragile and heavy at once.

He manages to pick up the phone, and having done that first step, the rest is easier. It’s not hard to ask the operator to connect him to Boston, where the Boston operator does some searching to find the number he needs. It’s a long pause, long enough to make him anxious, before the operator tells him she can connect him, and is he ready? 

“Yes, yes,” he says, too fast. “Thank you.”

As the phone rings, he wonders if the Crabapple Cove library has a Boston phonebook. Too late now. He’ll look into it tomorrow, maybe, and as the ring goes on and on he imagines prank calling Charles.

Finally, abruptly, a girl picks up and Hawkeye’s stomach plummets to somewhere near his knees.

“Hello, McIntyre’s,” she snaps.

“Uh, hi.”

Her voice is a little young sounding to be the wife, he thinks. Maybe it’s a sister. Did Trapper have a sister? Did his wife have a sister? There’s so much he was sure he’d never forget about Trap, but now he's faced with something he’s sure he’s forgotten. He should know this. Christ, there’s no way it’s one of the daughters, is there? He remembers their names clearly: Becky and Cathy. He doesn’t exactly remember their ages, but neither of them could be older than ten, surely. Could they?

“Hi. What can I do for ya?” The girl asks him. It sounds like she’s chewing gum.

He has to swallow, hard, to clear the lump in his throat before he can speak. “I’d like to speak to John McIntyre, please.” “Can I tell him who’s calling?” 

There’s the rub, huh? What if Trapper doesn’t want to talk to him? What if he hears his name and shrugs off the phone call, pretends not to be home? What if everything he ever said wasn’t true, and now that he’s stateside and the war is over, he doesn’t want to see Hawkeye, doesn’t want to keep going what they had, even their friendship, and just wants to forget it all ever happened? 

“Uh,” Hawkeye settles on saying. “Benjamin Pierce.” 

“One sec,” the girl says, and then he hears her press the handset to her chest. The rustle of a blouse, the faint beat of her heart. His own heart mirrors hers, but much closer, right up in his throat. This was stupid. He shouldn’t have called.

There’s some noise, some muffled words, a clatter from a distance and then the sound over the phone comes in loud and sharp— that voice, that amazing drawl that Hawkeye had missed more than he’d realized, saying, in a hushed, breathless, somewhat reverent whisper: “Hawk?” 

“Hiya Trap.” He’s trying to sound casual and it sounds so forced it’s ghoulish. “I, uh, I’m sorry to call you at home but—“

He doesn’t have an excuse. There’s no emergency. He just got a little drunk and wanted to hear Trapper’s voice and realized he could.

“Geez, Hawk, I…” He sounds a little shattered, and for a moment the line is silent while they peacefully listen to each other breathe. “When did you get back?” 

[rpfofficial]

tagged by @roadwhores thank you marley 🥰 make a poll with five of your all time favourite characters and then tag five people to do the same. see which character is everyone's favourite

@jorkeryuri @monkeesrainbowroom @pikslasrce @doublydaring @majortomwaits and @levon 😊👍❤️

[nimuetheseawitch]

Create a poll of your top 5 blorbos and then tag 5 more people.

Thanks for the tag @nixie-deangel!

no pressure tagging: @neekerbreeker, @marley-manson, @halestrom, @aberwolf, and anyone else who wants to do this