#ghost trapper

1. This poses a really curious question actually. Do you think Trapper leaving is a blessing because he got to live unseen by the narrative or do you think that his leaving forced him into a role similar to olorin? Or did he cease to exsist when he was no longer relevant.

and of course the answer to that is: [prolonged scream]

the other answer is: 

- if a blessing, then one with teeth, because we’re still asking questions about how he feels after the story and even in the nicest of versions where he’s totally find upon coming home, the things that happened (culminating in Henry’s death) still happened. at best s1-3 of MASH is Trapper’s own ghost-story/he’s being haunted by them...

- if ceasing to exist, because... well, technically that is what characters do when they are no longer there (except, they don’t often, they persist in some way and that is more below’s answer)... then I start to go into places of asking about other characters who suddenly disappeared, like Oliver or Ginger, and considering what it means for characters in a narrative like this one (where things happen in seemingly random ways, because xyz is happening in the writers’ room) who get left behind. what does it mean when we push characters closer to self-awareness of the narrative? when they know they don’t exist after their final episode or when we close the book? are they conscious of every time we rewatch/reread/rehear the story and wind them back to life? do they know when their final scene is coming? Idk how obvious a comparison this is, or remember how good the book was, but very sophie’s world, no? (I should reread it, I haven’t read it since I was a teenager, but it definitely struck me then so...). also of course the neverending story -- book moreso than movies. and ok, literally because I just watched it, but Etta in “Butch and Sundance” saying she’ll leave before the “scene” when they die, and so she does... characters with awareness that the end is coming....

- and if living as an observer who suffers for those left behind, but with no power over the narrative, well then:

Secondary question off that, do you think he continued to see what was happening in the narrative when he got home? I wonder what it was like to see himself be mourned. It must be scary to see just how important you were to peoples survival when you were only keeping afloat yourself.

see this is what I think I’m really into, headcanon-wise, in this mythology Trapper... thing... we’re pondering... what is the importance of the witness? even a witness who cannot change anything or even alert others to being a witness to their story? 

what does Trapper become when he is invoked (what is going on in as time goes by when he noticeably isn’t mentioned, whyyy would you do this to me show!) -- what function does he serve in the latter seasons especially? what does it mean that he has no (in-universe) agency over how he is talked about and when he is brought back to some kind of life? does he see the 4077th all the time, or just when someone is thinking of him? 

and since you used the word “mourned,” + “ceased to exist” is Trapper technically just as dead as Henry? or maybe juuust a tad less, since Henry gets to actually die and Trapper exists in the strange limbo of he was just... gone.