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Katja Haring Blog Entry |
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May 20, 2022, 1:07:16 AM May 20, 2022, 1:08:40 AM 5/20/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." For my WWII anthro series this time, is SS-Helfer Katja Haring, without a garrison cap (top drawing) and with a garrison cap (bottom drawing). She's Major Ludolf Jäger's primary secretary--he has a whole slew of female auxiliaries working in his office--and is so in tune with him that she often follows his orders before he even gives them. Jäger's wife is always worried they're having an affair, but they're not. She's too busy like the rest of Jäger's auxiliaries chasing after Capt. Otto Himmel, who's like the only other guy working in the office. These characters will all have more info on my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. TUMBLR EDIT: "Kameradin Katja," as Jäger calls her, isn't a highly developed character yet, I'm afraid, I just needed someone kind of simple to draw this week but not another Trench Rat like last week. She may unexpectedly develop a big detailed history at some future point like everyone else is, just not yet. In fact, currently, Jäger's swarm of female SS auxiliaries serve more as a sort of character development device for both him and Capt. Himmel, both of whom have experienced significant development since my posts about them. So I guess I should use Katja's page here to update that a bit. Since my last update, I've learned Maj. Jäger is...somewhat more volatile than his previous history indicates. He's quite a contradictory character in that MOST of the time, when things are going well and everyone is in their place, he's quite mellow and cheerful and easy to get along with. He's very much a bureaucrat and very much believes that everyone and everything has its proper place--he knows his, and he makes damn sure everyone else knows theirs. Should anyone step out of their place, or force him to step out of his, he gets very...very...unpleasant. I mean like chewing someone out, screaming fit style, or even on occasion threatening them with execution (one of which he abruptly carries out himself in his office, in front of Himmel, Ratdog, Klemper, and Schavich--even Schavich is shocked, and you know it's especially shocking when Schavich is shocked). (Klemper's reaction on leaving with the others, after Jäger orders Katja to call someone to dispose of the body, is to mutter, "Told you they're (the SS) f**king nuts.") He toes the party line so thoroughly in most respects that I personally consider him the storyline's "uber-Nazi" and he'd be the first one to agree. So how much of an uber-Nazi is Jäger? He originally started out in the Waffen-SS, which in my alternate version of events has been around longer than IRL (the war started earlier, too), and saw a bit of combat before getting injured and switching to an administrative job in the Allgemeine-SS. While waiting for a proper assignment to go through, he decided to give the Lebensborn program a shot, and quite likely fathered at least a few children by the program's anonymous women. Afterward, while touring a Lebensborn nursery and maternal care facility, he met Magdalena (Magda), an unmarried woman who was pregnant from a one-night stand with another SS officer and had chosen to give her child up for adoption since she didn't have the financial resources to care for it on her own. Touched by her insistence that she would have loved to keep the child for herself, plus had always wanted a big family, Jäger proposed that she marry him, and he would adopt the child as his own, instead. Magda promptly accepted--though she did have to ask him his first name again, because she'd forgotten the name of the guy she just agreed to marry and have a bunch of kids with. And oh boy did they have a bunch of kids. By the time the main part of the story takes place, Jäger and Magda have a brood of eight young children (including the first child fathered by the other SS officer, and two sets of twins), with a ninth on the way. It's a sort of running joke that Magda is either pregnant or nursing a newborn (or both O_o ) every time Himmel meets her. All but two of the brood are girls, all are blond with blue eyes like Jäger and his wife, and Jäger absolutely adores them. Whenever the Jäger family appears in the story he calls in sing-song, "Come, children! Schnell!" and they all fall in line from oldest to youngest...usually after swarming Himmel, who reacts with mild panic but gives them all candy. (He always carries candies to give to his son Kolten.) I originally had my doubts that Jäger actually loves Magda, given the rather transactional manner in which their relationship started (as much on her part as on his)--both of them are devoted Nazis (though they both focus more on the superiority of their race than on the denigration of other races--for example, despite his occasionally homicidal temper, Jäger dislikes killing, and thinks resettlement is far better than extermination), and the purpose of the marriage is to produce as many Aryan children as possible (which these two do in spades). By now though, I do believe they also genuinely love each other, with Magda being almost slavishly devoted to Jäger, who fawns over her and the children. (When Jäger ends up becoming the Big Bad in the final story arc, Magda, as devoted to him and the collapsed Reich as ever, plays a very dark and tragic role.) Unlike most other higher-ranking Nazis I've read about, Jäger remains completely faithful to Magda, never taking a mistress or lover despite literally being surrounded by young, single, attractive--and apparently horny--women such as Katja, every day at his job. Magda, however, isn't so sure of this. Despite her husband's endless reassurances, and a complete lack of any proof, she frequently fears he's carrying on numerous affairs (seriously, when would he have the time??), and she always demands that Himmel rat him out. Except Himmel has no such news to share--since Katja et al. are always chasing after HIM, not Jäger. Enter Otto Himmel's recent character developments. He has a nice, improved, VERY long profile here on Toyhou.se so feel free to give it a look. Himmel is a Great War veteran who missed the end of that war due to a severe injury and shell shock, followed by a nasty bout of the flu; he also experienced the death of his wife in childbirth, and was so consumed by grief that he never remarried or fathered any other children, despite these being strict stipulations in the Schutzstaffel, which he joins for convoluted reasons you can see in his profile. Jäger is the one reading through SS applications when Himmel's crosses his desk, and, impressed by his experience and credentials, he promises to smooth the complicated application process out for him if Himmel will work in his office. On learning that this is basically a desk job with paperwork, Himmel agrees, since he's seen enough of combat. Thus Himmel enters the Allgemeine-SS where he deals mostly with collecting and sorting out the slews of personal files the SS keeps on, like, every-freaking-body. It's a dull, repetitive, lonely, thankless job but it suits the gloomy and bookish Himmel well. If only it weren't for Jäger's secretaries. And there are a lot of them. Jäger is of the progressive mindset that women, who aren't allowed to join the SS but can serve as auxiliaries (the SS-Helferinnenkorps, "Helfer" meaning "helper"), are the ones best suited to the type of work his office is responsible for, and so has made a point of hiring them almost exclusively--and his office is big, and responsible for a LOT of paperwork--so every day, the place is full of attractive women in their smart, tight-fitting SS-Helferinnenkorps uniforms. They're required to be young, fit, and single. No wonder Magda worries. Except that her worries are misplaced; Jäger's women know their boss is strictly off limits and insists on everyone knowing their place, so they don't even flirt with him. Himmel is the only one of Jäger's few male employees who remains in the office throughout the day (the others caught on pretty fast, and work either out of other areas of the building, or out in the field), so he ends up the constant target of their attention. Although it's presented kind of humorously and as another running joke that Himmel frequently has to run a literal gantlet of beautiful young women who are all interested in him (being a decorated war veteran and a widower with just one grown child, he's prime marriage material for them), it's really not amusing for him personally, and in fact has a bit of a darker side. Himmel basically has to deal with daily sexual harassment and occasionally what could even be defined as sexual assault every time Katja et al. pin him into corners, kiss him, or outright grope him. Himmel had a very unpleasant and humiliating first experience with women right before he went off to war (underage, might I add--he was fourteen), and like most traumas this stuck with him. So, he really does not like the sort of attention he gets from Jäger's auxiliaries. He wishes to keep his well-paying and non-life-threatening job, though, and everyone else, Jäger included, brushes all this off as just girls being girls. (Jäger also often gently ribs Himmel that he really needs to fulfill his SS duties by getting married again and starting a proper family.) So, while Himmel is really anxious and uncomfortable about the entire situation, and has good reason to be, he keeps this to himself, puts up with it (or avoids it when he can), and everyone else thinks he's the odd one for not reciprocating all the female attention he receives. Well, okay. ONE person agrees that Himmel's situation is a bothersome one he would not want to go through. But this is merely Private Klemper, and he's gay (a big big no-no in the Wehrmacht and especially to the SS), so nobody would take his opinion seriously, either. (Katja et al. ogle him when he visits Jäger's office, too, only he's more outspoken and so yells, "Quit looking at my ass, you whores!") ...Like I said, maybe if I sit down sometime and start mulling over what circumstances led to Katja becoming the sort of person she is--a prim-and-proper, devoted employee of Jäger, perfectly in tune with all his demands, yet perfectly willing, along with her fellow auxiliaries, to shamelessly victimize Himmel every chance she gets--it'll turn out that she's a far more complex character with possible hidden motivations or even traumas of her own. For now though, she's just Kameradin Katja, Jäger secretary and Himmel antagonizer. [Katja Haring 2022 [Friday, May 20, 2022, 1:07:16 AM]] [Katja Haring 2022 2 [Friday, May 20, 2022, 1:08:40 AM]] |