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variousqueerthings · 2 years

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where to start, where to start

(starts with “dreams” because I’m still screaming about it and will until time immemorial)

also was thinking about how one of the big things about this show that I haven’t seen before outside of... deep space nine perhaps... (and not done as well)

is that the way it does continuation is so fascinating, as I’m sure is one of the main things that people go crazy about -- which is the fact that it’s syndication which gives you these long lines of episodes that standalone, but then it keeps referencing back to characters and events

and these self-references for the most part are either subtextual or single lines, but then every once in awhile you’ll be seeing something in a character (ex. BJ and Peggy are irrevocably changed, Margaret is constantly fighting herself in who she is and what she wants and who she’s expected to be, Hawkeye is falling to pieces, etcetc) that’s been growing for awhile and could have just stayed in the background and that would have been fine

but then certain episodes are like “hey, you know those things you’ve been seeing? we’re going to make them Text so that you can stare at a wall for a million years and think about the slowburn of it all”

which you also don’t get from modern TV, because the seasons are so short and the arcs are either so focused on plot, or the character-stuff has to be resolved within a season, so this really really long-form exploration of character psyche is... you know??????????????????????????

and so “dreams”.... and also “war-correspondent” for BJ specifics as an episode that follows on right after dreams and yeahyeah syndication but it fits!

dreams first (out of order, I cannot remember the orders of the dreamers):

dreams really just took whatever it is the “dear [x]” episodes do and intensified the character exploration beam by a million percent, so that you’re left feeling like you’ve just stared straight into the sun and the afterimage is hurting your retinas and can never be fully explained (does that make sense???)

1. Margaret in the wedding dress with the guy in the bed being taken away from soldiers, then for dying, bleeding soldiers to pile up in her bed, and then for her wedding dress to be covered in blood but!!!! ok how much on purpose was it that the blood could also be read as the aftermath of a miscarriage? it was the first thing that I thought of because of the placement of it (usually when the characters have blood on them it’s spraying across their chest and it’s not in one big patch like that) -- obviously we’ve had a few episodes of Margaret making decisions about who she is and what she wants, but to see it haunting her like this, and (if one does read miscarriage) the death of her dreams of family, of being able to balance all these sides of herself, of the ways the violence of war has also stripped her of the ability to “just be” a woman in the traditionally expected and demanded sense.

How do you fit into a box like that after what you’ve seen, what you’ve done, what you’ve become???

2. Father Mulcahy is a character who always exists juuust a little more on the periphery for me. He’s not got quite as much POV episodes as the others, and a lot of his inner life episodes are around this idea of what his “use” is (the wondering if he has any use). And so his was so brilliantly done to, yeah, play with that, but there’s more there to to pick apart. I remember the interview, when he talked about how cutting into a body releases warmth, and it felt like it was hearkening back to that as well.

I need to think more about it, but I’m sure the Mulcahy aficionados have broken it down expertly (AND I wonder if it will be in some way given even more in hindsight, since there’s still 3 seasons left), and will check on what’s been said further about it there -- I don’t know if it’s the religious upbringing in me, but this one also felt like it was the most visceral (ahead of Margaret’s even) in its surrealism. The soldier hanging on Jesus’ cross dripping blood onto his bible???? hello????????? Mulcahy has some feelings about this war, that’s for sure.

3. Potter’s is one that I’ll also talk a bit about in my longer post on him, because he’s really grown on me -- not that I didn’t like him from early-on, but simply that I kept him at arms-length for a few reasons (also to be gone into in that post), but the ongoing arc of age, of nostalgia, of a life well-lived, but with a longing to have been closer to family, of family and friends dying becoming commonplace, of the ways he balances out mourning the death of others’ innocence with his wisdom... and just remembering that he was a little boy once, who loved riding horses (and he still loves to do that)

4. Klinger and Potter gave us the first shots of America? right? like, sure, dreams, but... Potter was in a field in his home, and Klinger was in Toledo. That was... that was something for sure.... somehow terrifying. Something about how you can never go home, even if you return to the same place (which is also a future I predict for Hawkeye -- oh also the lake he’s on... Crabapple Cove?)

it’s a more straightforward dream than the others (maybe because he’s quite a straightforward guy?). Klinger misses home desperately and is afraid he’ll die in Korea and never see it again. But interesting to see the streets empty like that.

5. Charles!!! Charles!!!! oh I need to write a post about Charles too, because speaking of “things that were hinted at and even shown, but never as in-your-face,” the pressure to be Charles Who Is A Wondrous Surgeon! the performance of it! the eyes on him! (also Klinger as his sort-of-assistant wearing the earrings??? I will make it homoerotic).

I mean, it’s obvious what the dream is saying, but he doesn’t allow himself to show those emotions (and we’ve seen him fail -- in major ego, with the piano player, in a small way by judging the acupuncture techniques -- and his failures often seem based in the assumption that He Knows What’s Best (also outside of medicine, see Honoria’s marriage), but!!! As we’ve been seeing throughout, it’s not that he simply “wants to know best,” it’s that he’s clinging to what he has -- the order of the world as he understands it, his place in that world, what his worth is -- something interesting there as well about some of the overlaps between him and Hawkeye that neither dares to acknowledge!)

so to finally allow that to happen -- to be that intimate with him for a moment!

6. I dunno whether to make BJ his own post, because I’ve mentioned it several times already, and may just keep doing so (so maybe I’ll wait and see what happens Next, because BJ’s journey has been a fascinating knot for me to untie since he was first introduced), but all of these things -- does Peggy still need me, are we still the same people (will we be able to create something new when I return), is anything from my old life still reconcilable with who I am now, should I let Peggy go???

and then -- because again I feel like they belong together -- what is Peggy to me, and that whole life that’s back home... what do I see when I look towards her and Erin and home? Why do I have to do that in order to keep sane?

(the line -- war correspondent -- where he says he has to live for tomorrow because he can’t live for today -- sir! Sir!!! the life-ring that Aggy illustrates around him! Fuck! anyway yeah, it’s whole own post I think or I won’t stop here)

7. And then... you know... Hawkeye Is Not Okay the saga continues -- I’d SEEN an image of that boat with the limbs floating around him!!! I’d seen it on hastily-scrolled-past posts, often also including an image of Hawkeye in a blue dressing gown and I mention it again because I note that in the dream his gown was blissfully still red (which I guess just means worse is yet to come)!

I mean! I don’t even know you guys! He’s removing his own arms! which have become prosthetics! so he can give them to others!!! so he can no longer be a surgeon!!!!!!!!!!! because he has no arms!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so he can’t do anything to help!!!!!!! and they keep coming anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and the boat!? the limbs floating all around him?!! while he’s in the boat?????!!! and he has no arms!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the young boy in class sequence before that????!!!!

I don’t even. and then in s9 we got “letters” in which a young boy accuses (rightfully) doctors in Korea of being a part of the war machine, which, again, the show has intimated several times, but to just! Say It!! AND in the aftermath of “heal thyself” -- fucking! madness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

he can’t be a surgeon if he has no arms you guys... he can’t do the thing that gives him purpose that’s become a monster because now it’s in service of war, because he’s falling to pieces, and maybe he wants that in some way, wants to be unable -- physically unable -- ,so that he’s relieved of the duty of it, but they’ll keep coming regardless, whether or not he has his arms mind

and is the lake crabapple cove?????????

most of them feel like they’re reaching forwards in time as well as backwards (Potter’s the main outlier, but then, he’s not afraid of the future, he’s seen it all). they’re not just about where they are, they’re where they may go? sometimes in a literal sense (Klinger and Toledo), sometimes more abstract, but quite obvious in its questions/fears (Margaret, BJ, Hawkeye), and then the ones that I’m waiting on, because their potential futures feel less defined/like they may still shift (Mulcahy dressed as a... Cardinal? but unable to divorce himself from the violence he’s seen in favour of personal ambition perhaps? Charles performing surgical tricks with growing desperation as he loses his audience)

this episode feels prophetic...

#MASH #hawkeye pierce #margaret houlihan #bj hunnicutt #max klinger #charles winchester #sherman potter #father mulcahy #im watching MASH #i wrote 'syncopation' first and then looked at it and was like... ah you're having a music moment... but syncopation as an analysis of MASH #is what it made me think about #rhythms as an analysis of MASH youknow?#because syncopation IS what im talking about here -- the way the rhythms are disrupted on a meta and a narrative level #they're placing stressors on rhythmical moments that are usually subtext you get it???#fuck #ok i have to go but youknow???????????

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weaselle · 2 years

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Wishing Rod 🎣

(if you think you’ve caught the rhythm try it out loud it’s fun)

got a pole or maybe stick that made me trip into a whole-ass pit and so i gripped it when i slipped up out the hole and this is just a line, a piece of twine that tied my feet that i can keep in case a string is just the thing i seem to need.

[[deep breath]] Now these are all the screws oh i been screwed a time or two and i’ve been nailed for mistakes that I have made, i failed (true) but the collection i’m inspectin’ is a treasure trove of magic that i grabbed from tragic happenstance, a pleasure that I have it [[breathe]] cause i’ve landed on my toes i’m standing closer to a potion full of life and death and motion yes i guess that it’s an ocean so i open up my pockets for the clock that’s never right [[breath]] i strip it for the gears i’m seeing clear and in the night right beside my frightened fears in the flare from inner light I can make a useful tool out of souvenirs of plight.

[[breathe]]

I tighten up the time ‘n’ tinker think i’ll take a look pull a pin from my skin that i bend into a hook for a mystic fishing rod made of oddness that i master i’m a witch i stitch with laughter watch me craft it from disaster - then i bait it with intention, wade where schools of wishes dwell… swing a thing i’ve made from failure and prepare to cast a spell

#idk i tried to reformat it a little #did some minor edits #i have no idea if the internal rhyme schemes and cadence switches come off the page #but if you hear it out loud it's pretty bomb if i do say so myself #poem #poetry #writing #when you say it out loud some of the inner rhymes like Pockets / Clockthat's stand out a #little more #and lines like Tighten Up The Time An' Tinker Think I'll Take A Look get a bit more fun #but then again other lines become a pain in the ass #and it took me forever to figure out where to breathe #i know it looks super un-rhythmic probably but i swear it can be said nicely to a good beat (or even a metronome)#if you cock your head to the side on Pole and then to the other side on Stick and then keep that rhythm with your head has the metronome #that might get you on the beat i'm on #but then i cadence switch and syncopate some swing in the the second verse so idk

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