#charmarg

[cuddleswinchester]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Charles and Margaret navigate an arranged marriage, never mind the fact they’re reluctantly becoming friends…

[hawkeyeslaughter]

What’s your opinion on the following MASH ships?

Piercintyre

HunniHawk

CharHawk

HouliHawk

Hawnk

CharMax

CharMarg

Hawkcahy

TrapMarg

Any other one not listed.

— piercentyre is definitely my favorite ship !! i think hawk definitely had some objective chemistry with everyone , but trapper and hawk just had undeniable love for each other since the beginning . i miss them so bad you guys !! so bad

— i don’t not ship hunnihawk i’m just more or less in the middle of the road on it . i can take it or leave it , but i also think that it was a bit more heavily seen on hawkeye’s side . i do think it’s cute tho !! i support you hunnihawk truthers

— ohh i love the idea of charhawk , two opposites who have this undeniable soft spot for one another , who love each other . i would go as far as to say that there is this unspoken understanding that this is true , but unfortunately i don’t think anything would ever come of it . they’re both so stubborn and in a way , so shy . but man i love this ship . i love it

— i definitely see how people ship houlihawk because there’s the enemies to lovers tension going . i see them more as besties who give each other a hard time out of love , but it’s a cute ship !

— i’m ngl i thought hawnk was a joke . i like it for its comedic value but not as an actual ship 😭😭

— i really love charles and klinger’s relationship . i definitely feel like klinger feels more understood by charles than the rest of the outfit — while the 4077 supports and overall likes klinger , not a lot of them really talk to klinger like charles does . so yes , i do like this ship !!

— charmarg is really special to me because i just love that charles treats her differently than every other man on the show . he sees her for margaret , even if it is partially because he was around only for her character after her development . this isn’t to say they never have disagreements , but i love the mutual respect between them and that they’re both very soft for specifically one another . whether platonic or romantic ( which i can definitely see ) charles and margaret are SO important to me

— hawkahy is so cute and i love it when hawk flirts with him , but all i see it is is rather harmless flirtations lol

— i honestly think the subtext between trapper and margaret was so random 😭😭 i just don’t think it really fits either of their characters . i do , however , wish they’d done more with a friendship with them because i think they flirted with that idea when they had their sweet moments . because i would’ve eaten up a good margaret / trapper duo

— i also like henry/klinger and mulcahy/klinger ( platonically or romantically ) and trapper/oliver

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

charles+hawkeye, charles+margaret

I combined your first request with some others, but thank you for the additional one!! We love biodiversity <3 Ok so. CharMarg huh.

To get it clearly out of the way: Canon CharMarg Bad. Both because it was just atrociously quarter-assedly attempted in one of the most pathetic pseudo-storylines ever scraped together, an embarrassment to put into such an otherwise quality show, and more importantly because any attempt to make these two get together in canon would always be bad no matter what, because Ms. Swit and Mr. Stiers did not want to do that and if anyone tried to make either of them do something they didn't want I would kill that person and then myself.

But there is one thing worse than canon CharMarg. And that is fanon CharMarg. Because obviously basically nobody actually ships these two, but there are many people, particularly of the mainstream h*wkbeej variety (#notallh*wkbeejers and certainly none who would be in the general vicinity of my blog at this point, I don't think), who like the idea of Charles and Margaret in a lavender marriage.

I love the recent interest in lavender marriages in fandom recently. Now everyone can do the same Pair The Spares maneuver fandom has always done with characters it doesn't care much about, but now they can do it even when the idea of the spares being in love is completely laughable. And it sounds so much cooler, too!

Man I'm sorry I don't know why this irks me so, but alas! It does. The thing is, a lavender marriage would do nothing for either of them anyways, in terms of "playing at doing what society and family want them to do", which is after all the entire purpose of such marriages. Margaret already basically had a test run of marrying into a family like Charles' when she tried it with Penobscott and she HATED it and they basically rejected her for not being the perfect Aryan race anyways. And that's beside the fact that what Charles' family want from him more than anything is children, and Margaret is at the very LEAST extremely on the fence about having kids. So she'd be as miserable as ever, obviously. And with all this, it's fair to say that the Winchesters would be hardly any more satisfied with CharMarg than they would be with Charles just staying a bachelor, so what the hell would he be in it for either???

So it's a no for me on that. So why did I put down that it's "better in fanfic"? Well now we must discuss not canon CharMarg, not fanon CharMarg, but a secret third thing. Hypothetical CharMarg. Essence of CharMarg if you will. The CharMarg that exists only in slight little glimpses in scenes where I'm like you know what? If they hadn't forced it, if they hadn't tried so hard and so badly, if they'd done nothing at all, if they'd just given us all these quiet little moments of friendship and kindness and smiles and affection and never implied anything else and then I’d seen that last scene with the book.......... I’d have been like yeah. I see that. 

And then the fandom could have done Pair The Spares normally, without pretense. And the thing is, I actually always loved fandom pairing the spares, putting every set of characters in groups of two (or three or four, if we really wanted to have some fun and get silly with it) and never leaving anybody behind, making sure nobody was alone. Even if they didn’t care about the spares much, really. It was always hell on fans of those less popular characters, of course (been there!), but it seemed to come from a place of awkward, fumbling love. Nobody gets left behind.

(Aromanticism?? Characters not needing a relationship to be fulfilled?? What’s that lol this is 2014 era Tumblr. Romance shipping LOCKDOWN.)

But of course they did force it and they did ruin it and now it’s hard to even write CharMarg as friends, sometimes, trying to parse out what their friendship is really like when they’re allowed to be people instead of two barbie dolls smashed together. 

They’re still great together though. It is great whenever they’re on screen hanging out together and being narrative mirrors and trying to figure out how to have a friend for the first time in their lives. God I wish they’d gotten to talk about their fathers together, about expectations and never being good enough and having to keep themselves apart from everyone else and repressed anger and repressed love and repressed loneliness. I wish everyone would stop smashing them together like two barbie dolls and just let them be great together. 

In conclusion society would be fixed if Loretta Swit and David Ogden Stiers got everything they wanted forever

[cuddleswinchester]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Consciously, she stalled and reminded herself what a competent nurse she was, how she would never raise her voice like this to a patient. Why couldn’t she be a tender lover? God, it almost made her sick. Before she could send her mind out of her naked body there in the bedroom and into her uniform in the hospital tent, she shuddered, and pulled Charles in close against her chest, as if he could clutch her heart in place and keep her senses from wandering.