#mash s5

[mashbrainrot]

[peter-pantomime]

Hawk’s Nightmare involving him looking for other kids to play with and then the next episode opening with him and BJ playing with the blown-up glove and bickering like school children over the rules always makes me 😭💕

[marley-manson]

[mashbrainrot]

Summary of American comedy-drama series M*A*S*H (1972-1983)

[beejstache]

i was watching 5x11 'hawkeye get your gun' and noticed something scratched into this cabinet...

it's a doodle of radar and written under it is "burghoff was here" 😭 it's hard to make out in this screenshot but if anyone has a more HD version you can see it... omg..... <33

^ found these on reddit when i looked it up, you can see it a little better here

[youngpettyqueen]

the end of Germ Warfare is very endearing and also very interesting to me

first of all, Frank playing checkers (maybe chess? I didnt see clearly) with the POW (apologies I didnt catch his name and he's only credited as POW) is a very interesting choice. I absolutely cannot see this happening by Frank's later seasons, because by then his racism was off the charts, but here in the first season I think it really fits. Frank is still racist, thats established and even if it was in doubt we know he's been trying to get this man out of the camp all episode, but its not at that cartoonish level it is later on. this tracks as far as Frank's characterization through the seasons goes- there's a lot more nuance to Frank in his earlier seasons than there is later on. he'll play checkers with a POW. he'll ask for Hawkeye for help in surgery. he'll tell Hawkeye to go get some rest. he'll go spend time with Hawkeye and Trapper just to spend time with them. these nuances are all but gone by s4, which is unfortunate

its also very sweet that Hawkeye and Trapper bring him flowers. lets be real, they were nasty with him this episode. they literally stole his blood while he was sleeping. they dont actually say theyre sorry, but they might as well say it. flowers, "no hard feelings", messing with him a bit. its pretty adorable that they start ribbing him and he responds by chucking the flowers at them. reminds me a lot of the end of 5 O'Clock Charlie where theyre teasing him and he goes to get a drink with them. very sweet

[bornforastorm]

finished watching MASH one year ago today… finished watching IRONSIDE today… what will 2024 hold for me in the 70s tv show department…

[coffee-rack]

I think we as a society deserved a full season of frank as CO before the potter introduction

[icomefromthemountains]

*Kate McKinnon as Hilary Clinton voice* UH OH SOMETHINGS WROOOOOOONG

[becauseplot]

Because my dad got me into Doctor Who and I am being so completely normal about it(<-lying) I can’t stop imagining an au with q!Wilbur as the eleventh Doctor and Tallulah as Amelia Pond, the girl who waited.

[mashbrainrot]

one of my favourite things about beejhawk is that we canonically have a character looking at them together and announcing that they are making her feel sick. i just think that's beautiful.

[marley-manson]

i watch the nurses, i am once again filled with longing for a version of mash where the nurses are properly recurring characters who get scenes together regularly

it’s not like the show doesn’t have consistent tertiary characters, just add a couple more women and write them a couple subplots per season, it wouldn’t have been that hard surely

[remyfire]

I cannot believe that pulling this specific lever is what's going to get me to return to STAE.

Was momentarily startled that my I Love Leo Bardonaro setting got activated out of nowhere while extremely high, but in hindsight, I think that���s exactly how he would want it to happen

[r-a-i-n-y-d-a-z-e]

I want @mishacollins as a supe & to get one cool/weird kill before he gets merked by Soldier Boy, Homelander, or Butcher .😂😝 Can't wait for S5.

I have no clue who/what he could be so enjoy this past characters mash-up supe.

[pomegranate]

Hi I'd like to ask about the mash timeloop theory is it so that they repeat every day as a timeloop or is it a loop that lasts 11 years? I know that there are some jokes that could be taken as them timelooping but is there like a primer of sorts with the rules of it? Does every character loop or only one of them?

Hi anon! Oh this is a fun question and thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about MASH and time loops. First off, I will say I don't think there's any one interpretation of the time loop idea that has any merit above others - some people see the time loop as being the act of re-watching MASH over and over, putting Hawkeye back in Korea after finishing GFA. The time loop is also inspired by the series' lack of continuity, which can be easily explained by MASH airing at a time when continuity was not considered for a long-running television series. The Korean War was a 3 year war and MASH aired over an 11 year period. Other people don't necessarily subscribe to the time "loop" theory but rather just that time itself is wonky in the MASH universe, which is why I like my dear friend @mashbrainrot 's "time trauma" tag that covers any sort of questionable references to time throughout MASH.

Because the thing is - the show starts off with a time abnormality. The second shot in the pilot has the text "KOREA, 1950 / a hundred years ago" - meaning the pilot is addressed to viewers in 2050, which is an interesting idea to consider. But does the text fit with the time loop theory? It doesn't necessarily feel like it's part of a "loop" but it's still noteworthy, considering this is how the series starts.

Throughout the show, we have one-liners about the length of time that the MASH surgeons have spent operating. Frequently they liken their time in the O.R. to an eternity or a lifetime, and if we want to take a Doylist approach to these references, it's just the MASH writers using hyperbole to stress how these surgery sessions are all the same, one after another, dragging on and on. But the time inconsistency comes up in other ways, like the episode "A War For All Seasons" - a season 9 episode which inexplicably takes place between New Years 1951 and New Years 1952. It doesn't make sense timeline-wise if you look at the other dates given throughout the series before this point, but the writers weren't thinking about previous seasons when they wrote it because that is not how episodic television worked at the time. And then you have stuff like Henry & Potter having kids/grandkids of different ages, depending on the episode. Potter has his first grandchild in s4 but in s5 "Dear Sigmund", he says he's got a granddaughter about the same age as a patient who is approximately 7. There is absolutely zero point in trying to figure out a "realistic" timeline for MASH, in the end. It was a television show made during an era where episodes couldn't be rewatched endlessly and continuity wasn't really a big deal. It was enough that characters like Henry, Trapper, Frank and Radar get referenced long after they'd left the show, but there was no "show bible" and no long-standing plan for how the series would turn out.

WHICH IS WHY it's fun to play with the idea that a time loop is at play; maybe the loop resets every time a significant character leaves the 4077th (this was someone else's idea but I can't remember who at the moment I THINK maybe Kit (@nedlittle)?) or maybe it resets when you as a viewer restart the show. Or maybe it resets in other little moments; maybe it's not one continuous loop but a series of loops throughout the series. I don't think there's one agreed-upon theory when it comes to the MASH time loop but I do encourage everyone to check out Helen's time trauma tag to see some really great posts about the concept AND share any ideas of your own about time wonkiness within the MASH universe! (ALSO there are two great videos on the timeloop concept that i will reblog following this post)

[kaurwreck]

My actual presumption re: Akutagawa's knightliness and amnesia is that Bram and Akutagawa are sharing a skinsuit, consequently weaving their consciousnesses into the most gothic twink the modern mind is capable of conceiving. (You might assume adding Poe or Percy Shelley would make for a more gothic twink, but the addition of either would destabilize the whole twink, and it would either become immediately beset with late stage rabies or it would drown itself within moments of its wretched birth).

Akutagawa is not entirely Akutagawa. The armor looks decidedly more draconic in the teaser we received at the end of S5, wherein Akutagawa seems to have wholly returned to Atsushi's side— fulfilling Shibusawa's climactic fight comment in Dead Apple that the dragon and tiger deserve each other— in time for the overarching climax.

(That's why I think Fyodor set Shibusawa on Atsushi— he mistook Shibusawa for the dragon that would engage with the tiger, creating a singularity that is the "book" insofar as the book exists. Really, it's a white hole that connects realities, either metaphorically or literally. Or, so I think.)

So, Akutagawa has not yet actualized into the dragon that his rivalry with Atsushi has allowed him to cultivate into over the course of the story, but he's very close. He's also too much of a knight right now, which is Bram's role— Akutagawa was always a rook. Even where Akutagawa is protective, he is not chivalrous or knightly, and his protectiveness does not arise from ordainment or ritual oaths of public service but from the individual promises he's made to others and his city. He also doesn't remember Atsushi. Bram, meanwhile, is nobility with vassals to protect, empowered by the princess to whom he swore fealty with the weight of his ordained station. He also has never met Atsushi.

However, this knightly Akutagawa is not all Bram either. His precise, clipped, and cutting speaking pattern slips between Bram's romantic, archaic denouncements. Akutagawa recalls his own words from his first appearance. He appeared where he was needed most, and he's remaining true to his promises. Rashomon responds to him. Akutagawa is very much there, but insofar as he's backseat driving, Bram has the firmer grip on the wheel.

Notably, knight!Akutagawa seemingly quotes the Kolbrin Bible, after which the chapter is named, which is something of a conspiracy theorist's secular bible that mashes together Celtic and Druid mysticism, Judaism and Egyptology. Allegedly, it's a manuscript written 3,600 years ago that was translated between WW1 and WW2. There is no evidence that any of this is true— it was most likely produced in the 90s, based on its very anachronistic language.

I fucking hate contemporary occultism, I tried to dismiss the Kolbrin Bible as the relevant reference, but I haven't yet found anything more likely (although the day is young). There's some foundation for referencing an esoteric occult publication: the somewhat notorious founder of theosophy, Helena Pavlovna Blavatsky, published a theosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky months after his death; spiritualism absolutely influenced fiction and sci-fi; WB Yeats and George William Russell (luminaries of modern Irish literature) were involved with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and their works were shaped by their interests in mysticism and the occult. More saliently, Bram Stoker corresponded with prominent occultists and harbored a tempered "writer's interest" in the occult. I am not getting into Houdini's former friend's interest in spiritualism because I hate him, and thinking about him makes me spit bile, but he's another prominent example.

So, there's cause for the reference, and, maybe this sort of text feels right for bsd, which is also an anachronistic alternative history that's mashing together a whole lot of eastern and western influences with little regard for propriety. I'm still not pleased with it, and I hope my shallow look into the imagery from this most recent chapter led me into the enshittified part of the surface web. But, there are some apparent threads worth exploring.

Prior to Akutagawa name dropping the Harbor of Sorrow, Fyodor seemingly also references the Kolbrin Bible (which is, to mirror Fyodor's language below, an imitation religious text):

"The Harbour of Sorrow we leave behind and with four ships sail towards the sunsetting."

At first, I thought the setting sun imagery in Fyodor's exposition was an uncharacteristically blunt reference to Dazai Osamu's novel, but the setting sun in the Kolbrin Bible seems more likely, since in the latter there is an intentional journey towards the setting sun, while the setting sun in Dazai Osamu's novel reflects an aristocratic family's necrotizing decline.

The Harbour of Sorrow in the Kolbrin Bible is described thusly:

They came to the Harbour of Sorrow, which lies by the Hazy Sea, away from the Land of Mists. There great trees grew and smaller trees upon them, and moss hung from them like door curtains. It lay near the great shallow waters South of the Isle of Hawhige and North of the Sea Pass. Green pearls are found there. Many died in the Harbour of Sorrow, for it was a place with a curse upon it, which caused an evil sickness. The Sons of Fire came with Hoskiah and saved them, and they came to this place and built a city.

(I can't help but acknowledge that the character for "Asagiri" in Kafka Asagiri refers to morning mist.)

In modern Western mysticism, "sons of fire" could mean a few different things, but in this context, I'm inclined towards the epithet for Western spiritualists' bastardization of sage kings— "divine" teachers. It may also reference Aaron's sons in the Bible, who were killed by Moses after they committed a profane act before God. As a reminder, shortly before stabilizing Yokohama in collaboration with Mori, Taneda, and Natsume, Fukuzawa either participated in or permitted acts that appear to have been assassinations to facilitate Japan's withdrawal from the Great War, which engendered in him self loathing and shame and shattered his relationship with four others.

(As an aside, I don't actually think Fukuzawa assassinated anyone, or was an assassin by trade— the five swords of Japan are a specific reference to five swords and their mythologies, and I think he must have been the ceremonial purification sword that was never meant to be sharp. It was meant to cut only evil. I think he allowed something to happen that violated oaths he made, so he exiled himself like a ronin who killed his master. The only reason we think he killed anyone, despite Ranpo acknowledging Fukuzawa wasn't an assassin in Untold Origins, is because the Decay of Angel fed "evidence" to the government officials who Nikolai later killed to incite them into pursuing the Agency— there is nothing suggesting that evidence has any merit, and much suggesting it's falsified. This is why I always say not to rely on the bsd wiki— it tends to take these things at face value and doesn't qualify unreliable information.)

Anyway! There are other threads to connect the text above to bsd, including the foreigners present in Yokohama and the Kolbrin Bible's British Isles settings and US + UK modern mysticism. But, to move on to other passages connected to the Harbor of Sorrow.

“When some of us came from the Harbour of Sorrow, we were full of praise at our deliverance from death, but amid the forests of fruitfulness, much of our gratitude and will was lost. Why must men always be better men in the face of disaster and in the midst of privation, than in the green fields of peace and plenty? Does this not answer the questions of many who ask why there is sorrow and suffering on Earth? Why is it the lot of men to struggle and suffer, if not to make better men?

...

"Many who are with us in the light will join us, and then we shall be stronger in arms and strengthened in belief. (Annotation: How few came!) Yet our destiny lies among the barbarians. They are fine, upright men endowed with courage, do not belittle their ways, but bring them into the light.

"Our city was not founded as a marketplace, a place for exchanging only the things of Earth. Neither did we come here as conquerors, but as men seeking refuge.

“My trusted ones, remember that the road of life is not smooth, neither is the way of survival a path of grass. The most needful thing for any people who wish to survive is self-discipline. Think less of gold and more of the iron which protects the gold. Remember, too, these words from the Book of Mithram, The keenest sword is useless unless it be held in the hand of a resolute man. Also, the man who has gold keeps it in peace if he tends his bowstring."

I have not read the Kolbrin Bible, I have immense distaste for modern occultism/spiritualism/mysticism outside of limited and carefully curated, contextualized slices of the same. I also don't make a habit of overly familiarizing myself with the British Isles. I don't have much frame of reference for interpreting the above.

But on a surface reading, the passages in the Kolbrin Bible that refer to the Harbor of Sorrow touch on similar-to-bsd themes of intentional community and finding purpose in protecting and cultivating the light in both the wake and the eve of immense darkness, and finding companionship in those who share your purpose and resolve no matter how differently they may approach the same.

Further, they both embrace that it's not about being golden, but protecting what is gold, which is Kyouka's core arc in Dead Apple as she transitions from trying to protect Atsushi as someone she considers untouched by the darkness within her, to realizing that Atsushi, too, has killed, and that her desire to use Demon Snow to protect those she loves isn't shameful or a betrayal of her mother's memory. This is something that I think the fandom often misunderstands about bsd— the light and dark do not exist in opposition, but in duality. The characters immersed in the dark do not need to be saved; the characters in the twilight have their reasons for finding purpose elsewhere, but that doesn't strip the love they had while in the dark. If anything, it makes it easier for them to realize that love was and still is there.

That interplay of light and dark (which is also the title of a Natsume Soseki novel) is where Akutagawa and Bram begin to melt most into one another. They have both been dehumanized, hated, and killed; rejected and stripped of dignity, robbed of those they loved by petty violence. Neither seeks to save anyone other than those to whom they've sworn to try, and they've both been reckless with who they've killed. Nevertheless, they love fiercely, and where their fear is defensive, their anger is avenging (Akutagawa's furious pursuit of the reckless murderers in 55 Minutes, the implication that Bram was fighting to protect his vassals when he was subdued as a calamity previously).

But they aren't evil. Evilness isn't a person, it's cowardice and weakness and fear. They've both grappled with the desire to succumb to their grief and their anger and their terror. But they struggle against those urges in themselves with fierce resolve.

It's the sort of resolve that Fyodor lacks. Fyodor, codependent on his dehumanization, claims that there's death in salvation only because he can't bear to keep living under the weight of humanity's rejection but is too weak and afraid of being alone to die without taking everyone else with him. Fyodor's disgusted by Atsushi's humanity and love because he sees in it what he's convinced himself he can never be afforded. But Bram and Akutagawa both have always had the certainty of love in their families, and then in Aya and in Higuchi.

There is no salvation in death or goodness; there is no sure path towards resolution or closure. There isn't any inherent meaning to our pain, and even those of us who live in relative peace are walking on a knife's edge over uncertainty and chaos. But, we can choose to accept love, and we can choose to love others. Isn't that a little bit wonderful?