"Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?"
I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED.
Let me explain.
I have been a fan of Dorothy L. Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey novels and short stories since I was a little tiny protodyke. I have never written any Sayers fanfic (I do have a WIP, but I got the idea about four years ago and my writing time has been somewhat occupied since.)
All of the Wimsey novels written by Sayers take place before WWII, but we know that Lord Peter Wimsey was still alive and doing well into the 1950s, because the action of The Late Scholar, a semi-canonical novel by Jill Paton Walsh, takes place in 1953. Wimsey was born in 1890, so in 1953 he is a spry, active, 63-year-old.
Canonically, Wimsey was part of the British Secret Service since WWI. Not James Bond: he did semi-diplomatic jobs where his talents of observation, intelligence, and capacity for making friends of all sorts, was put to the use of his country's government. Only a very few people in MI6 are aware Wimsey holds any kind official position with them: because he is (canonically) very, very rich, there is no pay trail. He is essentially doing everything on a word and a nod.
The idea I came up with was: Suppose that the British government has a Question about the activities of someone in the British Army in Korea. It's some kind of tricky, subtle issue where they do not want to summon the man they suspect home to answer questions until they are absolutely confident they have the answers. They might even decide not to summon him home at all, but leave him loose with a keen observing eye on him.
I would of course need to think out exactly what this kind of thing was, but the fact of it was: what I wanted was for Wimsey to go to Korea as Major Wimsey, apparently as a silly kind of aristocrat who's been given a nominal job to do but is making no secret of the fact that he just fancied seeing Korea and couldn't actually get into the country without a military job to do. He last saw active service in WWI. He's very good at coming across as a bally fool.
Well, Wimsey gets the information he's been sent to get, and realises in the course of doing so that the man whom he was sent to get the data on, is much more than a mere greedy rogue: he is ruthless and has almost certainly arranged the deaths of a couple of men already whom this officer just suspected of knowing more about his undercover activities than he wanted them to know.
While Wimsey has been playing the babbling silly aristocrat for all he's worth, his target kindly arranges his return home in such a way that Major Wimsey could easily be accidentally killed en route, and Wimsey decides he'd rather not risk it, and he'd like to get out of this British unit as fast as possible. His original plan for escape was a French unit a few miles off - he naturally speaks French perfectly - but just as he is thinking this, he sees an officer from and American unit stowing supplies in the back of his jeep, and he decides that spontaneous is better than anything, and climbs into the other side of the jeep and tells the medical officer he'd really like a lift.
A whole bunch of decisions have to be made.
First of all, am I telling this story from the POV of Wimsey or Hawkeye? (Obviously it's Hawkeye in the jeep, collecting an arterial vein graft from an amputated British soldier.)
If Hawkeye, then the story begins when a British officer with a better posh accent than Trapper's climbs into the jeep, asks for a lift, explains to Potter (or Henry Blake) that he needs a chopper ride to Tokyo from the 4077th, and departs: a few weeks later hampers from Fortnum and Mason appear at the 4077th, with the grateful thanks of Lord Peter Wimsey. In terms of MASH episodes, Wimsey would barely be a C-plot - the A-plot would be the casualty who needed the arterial vein graft, the B-plot would be something to do with one or more of the ensemble characters, and like a fey blond thread, there would also be the weird 60-ish British officer who cannot properly explain himself or why he wants to get out of there.
If Wimsey, then the story begins when Wimsey realises that if he stays any longer within the grasp of the British army, he could end up dead: he must get back to commercial air travel via some other country's units. He observes the weirdnesses of life at the 4077th, charms everyone without even trying, and is extremely relieved to get out of there and go home.
Both versions have their charms, and the advantage of telling it from Hawkeye's POV is that I would not have to try to emulate Dorothy L. Sayers.
The amount of effort I would have to put into what could only be a very slight story and the amount of time it would take to research and write, and the fact that this would be a story with backstory longer than the narrative... all in all, I would probably never write it.
Also, what season does it happen in? Henry Blake is most likely just to let a total stranger hitch a ride on a chopper to Tokyo. Colonel Potter and Major Wimsey both served in WWI and could bond over that - also they both love horses and Wimsey rides very well. Trapper does a posh English accent delightfully. Charles would be actively falling over himself to make nice with Lord Peter Wimsey. If I never write it I never have to decide.
After hours on the set…making another episode of M*A*S*H*. M*A*S*H (an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is an American war comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from 1972 to 1983. It was developed by Larry Gelbart as the first original spin-off series adapted from the 1970 feature film M*A*S*H, which, in turn, was based on Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. The series, which was produced with 20th Century Fox Television for CBS, follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War (1950–53). #afterthegig #ontheset #mashtv #bluegrasslife #htcovs @cbstvstudios #suicideispainless (at Chicago, Illinois) https://www.instagram.com/p/CU2iXzprUr-/?utm_medium=tumblr
Again the beauty of Dragoncon is that you can find a cosplay of something you wouldn’t think would be there, such as this MASH cosplay. Great work on this. He even looks like the actor Jamie Farr! #cosplay #cosplayer #cosplayers #oldtvshows #mashtv #mashtvshow #maxwellklinger #jamiefarr #jamiefarrmash https://www.instagram.com/p/B2zbr9BD48l/?igshid=1eaqt08dw597r
These millennium kids will never know #mashtvshow #mashtv #mashtvseries #childhoodmemories #childhood #growingup #backintheday #olddays https://www.instagram.com/p/BvlbUDUFRhL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=mxkmk2tvav33
