Growing up in the shadow of West Virginia’s Eden Mountain, Aziraphale Wright always expected to work for the family coal mining company. Anthony Crowley, the son of a down-and-out miner, was going to become a pilot and leave town forever. Now, thirty years later, neither of their lives have gone as planned, and an unexpected inheritance brings them back into one another’s orbit. Aziraphale hopes that they can move beyond their shared past, and a high school arrangement that ended in disaster, but he has secrets of his own that threaten their fragile reconnection…
The Hawkeye/Margaret pegging with gender feelings fic no one asked for.
Or: Hawk wants to be BJ’s girl, but he can’t have him because BJ is married. Margaret is just a confused Butch who is very much feeling herself after getting rid of Frank. Platonic fucking happens. It’s not that deep.
Sometimes I think about how different B.J. and Hawkeye's lives were before they met and probably after they parted.
Hawkeye comes from this small town, his father is a poor country doctor who would take kittens for payment. He worked in tourist hotels and other jobs to afford school. When he lived in Boston not only was he enthusiastic about his residency, but he also worried about money and cited it as a reason why he didn't propose to Carlye.
(Hawkeye's background can be inconsistent at times. A practice gets mentioned once or twice, but the most consistent background seems to be worked in a hospital in a city before being drafted.)
Then you have BJ who came from three generations of doctors (and probably not small town doctors), went to Standford and came first in his class. Belonged to a country club, lived in the suburbs, bought beach front property. He even had a connection that offered to get him out of the draft, but he believed in the system and refused. He gets upset when Peg has to work at a cafe where their friends often go.
Rambles under the cut...
B.J. being such a nonconformist with his mustache, suspenders, pink shirt, and motorcycle makes me wonder if the seed of it was planted long before he got drafted, and how he'll settle back into this structured suburban upper/middle class life. I think he mentions planning to open his own practice early on, but considering all his research and creativity in the O.R. I wouldn't be surprised if he wants a fast paced hospital position, or to get a second certification.
B.J.: we could see each other at conferences.
And Hawkeye immediately shooting this down saying neither of them are the type to attend. B.J. agrees, but I think B.J. IS actually the type to attend. B.J. from the very beginning has been shown to be ambitious and competitive. He's the one always reading journals and bringing it into the O.R. Even in the middle of Korea he wants to stay at the top of his game. Hawkeye has blown off confences because he believes what is being taught will not be actively useful to the type of surgery he's doing in a MASH unit until he's proven wrong. He keeps up with his reading, but he isn't looking at these experimental techniques and seeing ways to apply them like B.J. is, or when he does it's because B.J. has spoken about the technique he read about and Hawkeye will have B.J. preform it as he has the most understanding of it.
I think for B.J. being a doctor was an expectation and a career goal. He wanted to be the best at it because there's legacy behind him and he's a naturally competitive person. The war put his life off it's trajectory, but it might have set him up for a more fulfilling career in the future where he'll be able to pursue what he's interested in rather than what's expected as the optimum career option, and with his drive and ambition he'll probably succeed. He'll always resent the war for what it took from him though.
Hawkeye has an ego about his own skills, but it comes from often being the smartest, quickest guy in the room. He's not ambitious and he's not as competitive about being a doctor as B.J. and Charles accuse him of being (both of whom are often putting themselves in competiton with with Hawkeye). He doesn't chase fame, but he resents those he views as less talented getting accolades (or in Charles case early on, caring more about ego/accolades than about patient care). Being a doctor is a vocation. He'd do it rich or poor. He hates being in the army doing surgery in such bad conditions, but he'll work with an injured finger, he'll force himself to go in a cave, he'll turn down a general offering him a position in Tokyo because he wants to be in the place he'll do the most good. Radar accuses him of being a hypocrite when he gets angry that Radar wants to stay thinking the 4077 can't survive without him. He says if their positions were reversed Hawkeye would stay too.
This isn't to say Hawkeye is particularly brave or noble (he has his moments as every character in the show does), he's simply unable to ignore the part of him that is a doctor. A part so intrinsic to him his girlfriend left him because she didn't want to be second to it.
In the end Hawkeye, who is the hot shot chest cutter at the beginning of the war will probably settle in his little hometown with no desire for a big career which he may have pictured when he first went to the city. He wants to know his patients and form bonds and connections with them because it's impossible for him to be impartial and removed after his experience and traumas as an army surgeon.
Is the only place they could have been together war torn Korea? It's not that I think they'd ever lose affection for each other, but if they did try to build lives together or closer to one another what would they each be willing to change or give up?
Taking a little break from my MASH madness to explain that I was really sparse on Tumblr for the past two years. When I came back here a few weeks ago after starting a new and improved work schedule (which hopefully will make time for creativity) and falling headfirst into a new fandom, I realized I had a lot of extremely kind asks from literal years ago, mostly about my good omens fic.
If I have left your ask in purgatory, I am so sorry. All I can say in my defense is that I have raging ADHD and its been an extremely busy two years, but every ask I have received has been extremely loved and cherished.
I really can't get over The Interview (MASH season 4 episode 25)--It's a beautiful episode with outstanding acting and it made me feel all sorts of feelings. Clearly, it's fundamentally about the horrors of war, but it also feels very relevant to the process of medical training more generally and the balance between preserving empathy vs slipping into the "mental anesthesia" necessary to go on functioning when your job is dealing with horrible things.
About a third of the way through the episode, Hawkeye says he lost all his morale about six months ago. The interviewer asks him what he does to survive and this is what he says:
Season 4 starts out with BJ getting an extremely rough introduction to Korea, with him literally vomiting in a field because of how shocking it is. The early season episodes show him discovering new horrors in nearly every episode as he deals with orphaned children, goes to a aid station near the front, misses his wife and child, and experiences the OR overrun by wounded, in austere conditions with a leaking roof in a rainstorm.
By the last episode of the season - the interview - BJ is not nearly as disillusioned as Hawkeye, but he is no longer the same person he was at the start of the season. His gaze is harder, his jokes are a little meaner, and his early astonishment has transitioned to a hot anger (in contrast to Hawkeye's cool ennui). He is visibly angry in the interview in a way that Hawkeye is not. However, he also has this to say:
This moment is so heartbreaking in juxtaposition to Hawkeye's speech about trying to spark a sense of astonishment in himself through astonishment in others. BJ is becoming more and more Hawkeye's mirror rather than his conscience. And he has to be that way in order to survive--Hawkeye surely knows this is happening and just as surely doesn't blame him. But who, then, is going to be there for Hawkeye?
getting queerbaited by m*a*s*h is like losing chess to a dog, but the dog has a mustache, and he's super evil and pink, and okay, maybe the dog is gay. yeah, the dog is definitely gay. but you're still losing. and so is he, actually. also he bites you.
Correlation doesn't equal causation but at some point you have to look at the socially deviant army doctor who makes the world's biggest heart eyes at his male bunkies and gets accused of being gay by the CIA guy and makes so many queer flagging jokes that the one canonically gay guy comes to him for help and accept that they put a fruity bisexual who wants to get knocked up by his married bunkmates on prime time television in 1972
In a modern day OR, Hawkeye is the surgeon who is either blasting the dirtiest early 90s rap/hip hop you could imaging or playing some indie folk band you’ve never heard of. Often on the same playlist.
Frank Burns’ OR playlist heavily features Taylor Swift. He says it’s for the scrub nurses, but he also has been seen in the parking garage psyching himself up for a day of surgery with Reputation (Taylor’s Version) playing at full volume through the speakers of the Porsche 911 he bought as a chief resident and can’t actually afford.
And BJ—BJ is the guy who puts on “Rock Me Like a Wagon Wheel” on repeat just to see which member of his staff snaps first.
