Jan
21st
2016
Bittermann · 12:30am Jan 21st, 2016
Let's do a focus group. Can some of you describe her character for me? I need to make sure I'm communicating what I want to communicate. Likes and dislikes? Attitude toward anyone except Mag? Values, principles, politics, height, eye color, full name, history, interests, hobbies...
Answer as few or as many of these questions as you like. "You never said" is an acceptable answer, as well as "who cares" and "My name is AA and I know things these other people don't. [characterization]." Disagreeing with each other is cool, maybe even encouraged.
My name is Arcanist Ascendant and I know things these other people don't. [characterization].
Would love to help, but I have not started reading the story yet :( It's just in my list to get to eventually.
Okay, why not? As I imagine Bitterman, based on my observations of her in-story:
I imagine her tall and angular and maybe Mediterranean or Middle Eastern in her looks, dark-haired and dark-eyed, in spite of the Germanic-sounding name. She's from a working-class family that's been getting poorer and poorer over the past several decades. She developed a bitter and sarcastic sense of humor early on, as a defense. She joined the Army after college due to a lack of job opportunities for people with degrees in English Lit.
Just now she's bitter, which suits her name, but maybe wasn't always. Just now one of the things she hates is being sober, and one of the things she loves is expensive boutique high-grade liquor--Remy Martin VSOP, Hennessey, Lagavulin single malt--which she consumes much more moderately than she sometimes wants to. She tells herself that cheap booze, and, even more so, cheap wine, is for creepy losers who have no taste or self-control--alcoholics, in other words, and she will tell you that she is most definitely not one of THOSE people. She gets loud and angry when she's been drinking, and she knows it, which likewise influences her not to drink as much or as often as she sometimes would like to be able to.
She perceives her environment, the white-collar US military, far removed from the sharp end, to be, approximately, Dilbert in camouflage. She doesn't say this out loud, ever.
I imagine her as pragmatic, intelligent, not especially political, quiet and competent at her job. She is... sarcastic, with a bleak, morbid sense of humor, and the gift of excellent comic timing. You know Jack Benny's thing, that thing he'd do with the knowing pause? She does that, and she's GOOD at it--she could probably be a good comic actress, but that's a small, small world with more people wanting in than there will ever be room for, and she knows that too.
She has a habit of looking down at her feet and pinching the bridge of her nose when she is exasperated, which is a lot lately. She would be embarrassed if anyone knew that she knits in her spare time, to the extent that spare time is a thing in the US military even between wars.
She is irreligious tending towards atheism, or at least was; she does not know what to make of Sunbutt or how to fit benevolent goddesses into her worldview. She tries not to think about it, and in the back of her mind, says to herself, well, it's not like she couldn't be some kind of appealing-looking biological construct sent by sinister alien forces to probe our defenses and mess with our heads. She's never said this out loud to anyone either.
How's that?
3701570 [clever response]
3701610 Two things are especially interesting to me, here. First, some of this is stuff you've filled in yourself, and second, she sounds like Mag in several key ways.
3701581 My to-read list is long as heck, so I know where you're coming from. I like that this question was interesting enough to you that you felt the need to make this comment, though.
3701651 Too many blog things go un-commented. So even if I can't do what the blog ask, or know what its really about, I like to comment just to the poster knows someone took the time to read it.
3701651
Now that I'm done being a smartass I have time for real commentary.I share your response to Humanoid because she sounds a bit too similar to mag. If the question is, 'what do we get from your characterization of Big Bad B, the answer is 'not much' because none of the humans except mag are emotionally characterized very well and none of the humans at all are physically characterized. If you're asking for my imagination...
Bittermann is very, very white- blonde hair, blue eyed, and very much of german descent. Being in a shitty desert in the ass end of nowhere, Nevada, has done something about that, however. She was born in that modern day Sodom, NYC(this is a joke, just in case nobody could tell). Specifically, Queens. Luck would have it that her family's apartment was smack center in the biggest subway dead zone in Queens. This means a couple of things- high crime, low rent, bad schools, and you do a lot of walking. She had one of those brief moments of clarity when she was thirteen years old, realizing that she had no prospects in higher education and no skill in sports. She started running, joined track club, and even convinced herself that she enjoyed it, but turned down a scholarship to instead join the corps for a 'one year tour' to fulfil her civic duty and has been in the Army ever since.
She only votes because her parents learned her right and proper that it's a citizen's duty. She tries to stay out of politics as much as possible. Her beliefs are slightly left of center, mostly shaped by where she grew up, but if asked what she thinks on a topic she'll usually deflect, change the topic or leave the room.
She's shorter than Mag, though not by much, and well muscled in the sort of way it takes women many years of work to build up. She likes her hair long, so keeps it in place with a scrunchie rather than cut it off.
She didn't fit in with any of the cliques at school because of her personality, and didn't have many friends. She's still trying to figure out whether she's actually gay or if she just feels that way because the only people who have ever paid her the slightest bit of attention have been her mom, her two high school girlfriends(the not romantic sort), Celestia, and now Mag.
If you want the honest truth, I have to reread a couple chapters every time you post a new one to re-remember the characters. There is too much of a space with too many other fics filling it. I don't even know who Bittermann is right now.
Bitterman to me is relatively short - no more than 5'5" with darn brown-black hair, very close-cropped, a generally 'butch' demeanor, and probably hazel eyes. She's no-nonsense, tough exterior and largely business-focused. She does have a softer side but it's buried deep and most like to come out when she's good and drunk in the proper environment, but next morning she'll be pissed at whomever witnessed it, through no fault of their own.
She tends to latch overly hard onto machismo to overcome a perceived slight against women in the military which is grounded in several real experiences, so she has a chip on her shoulder about that and an intense drive to prove she's just as good if not better than her male colleagues. To not-Mag people, she's generally gruff and taciturn, except to superior officers where she's very much the model of military discipline, although on occasion she'll get in a fight with someone meriting censure of some kind.
She doesn't really think about politics. Were she to sit down and really focus, she'd probably lean a bit more right economically and left socially, but that's more a product of her environment and her romantic inclinations than any serious thought. As for hobbies, she's a movie junkie, particularly Tarantino films. Huge fan of Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects. Full name is Yvonne Annika Bitterman, because her parents named her after Great Aunts and the like. She went by 'Annie' growing up, but nowadays anyone using anything but her last name or her job title is going to get a death glare.
Values loyalty, bluntness, and honor. Disciplined. Less military out of love of country and more to show she's a badass. Definitely blue collar upbringing. From the midwest, somewhere like Wisconsin or Minnesota or North Dakota. She has two older sisters who are sweet as spun sugar and dote on their younger sister and don't understand how little spunky Annie just can't find a way to be a little more cheerful. Both of them have like two kids each and probably more on the way. One's a schoolteacher - kindgarten, while the other is a stay at home mom and who took up day trading as a hobby and who now has way, way more money than anybody realizes, even her husband.
3701760 3701965 Yep, people are filling stuff in for themselves. Some of it agrees and some of it doesn't, with next to no commonalities in how you guys describe her appearance. You guys agree a little more on her nonphysical stuff, which is slightly reassuring. I can also tell myself that failing to describe someone's appearance is the rule for some of the greats, such as Jane Austen, who was all about deadpan humor and stories hinging on social interactions. Yep, that definitely excuses it.
(FUCK.)
So now I get to decide whether and where I'd like to slip physical description into previous chapters. I guess I should deal with that sometime soon, because the longer it takes me to fix it, the more it's going to irritate me. I'll also be sending AA the character sheets I have for Mag and B.
3701880 And here we have a problem that's very real, but it's just not something I can fix without quitting school or my job or something, so I'm just going to settle for telling a story that at least makes sense in an archive-binge.
I honestly don't know if I could answer most of these questions. It's not that I'm not sure that they're even there so much as I don't really pay attention to this kind of thing to begin with. I'm bad at imagining appearances. When I read a book, the characters never actually have faces to me, in my mental imagery. Incidentally, I'm also horrible at remembering names.
As to her personality, I find it difficult to really get a grip on her yet. What I'm picking up on so far is a professional, kind of stand-offish individual who's slowly warming up to her charges and trying to become closer to them. She has a somewhat wry sense of humor, if the situation with the applejuice-filled hip flask is anything to go by. I may just be interpreting this through the lens of my personality, though, because that's the kind of thing I'd do more because it's funny than because it's practical.
She strikes me as the type of person to have a fish tank at home, though. Couldn't say why. Exotic fish are pretty and in need of human care, but they also don't take a whole lot of interacting with. That seems like it would be her kind of thing.
All right, let's do this.
Physically, in my head Bittermann is a brunette, wears her hair in a ponytail, has a fairly angular European face, and has that lean musculature you see on female soldiers.
Personality-wise, she's not a people-person, she's not the kind with a ton of friends, but the ones she does have she keeps close. She likes Mag and would love to be able to take it further, though she would be conflicted about how to go about it because of their current positions (protector/protected). Even if Mag were to shoot her down volubly, though, she would still be happy to be loyal to Mag and be friends. She is loyal to the military. It has structure and order and rules, and even if she might not like everything that goes on with it, she values order over chaos and law over anarchy. If the world was ending she wouldn't run to stop it, she'd stand on the front lines and defend. She sees Celestia as interesting, maybe as truly Good, but she's not in love with her and though she would turn her back on Celestia, she probably has spent some time thinking about what she would do if Celestia revealed herself to be against humanity. She's seen some weird ass stuff recently, so she isn't quite sure whether or not to believe Mag when it comes to Luna, but is willing to go with the flow until something's proven one way or another.
She doesn't like heights, though she just learned that, and would be happy never taking another magical pony princess ride in her life.
3702031
Well, to be fair, prior to last night I hadn't seriously thought about any of this. If I were answering those questions prior to any serious thought it'd be 'Bitterman is an angry female soldier type who cares about duty, is sarcastic, and has unresolved feelings for Mag'
Then I started having fun filling stuff in. Like her sisters being the most egregious part of it, because obviously there's no evidence for that in the stories but damned if it doesn't make me chuckle to imagine them.
3702031
That would make sense if it were first person and could be explained away by saying Mag doesn't care about human appearances or find them interesting as opposed to Celestia/Luna.
3702031 I understand, man. It's very telling that you're asking for advice that you give more of a shit than quite a few people on my favorite's list. Just keep on truckin', man. The fact that I reread your story to keep up with new stories should tell you it's true. I'm just wondering when the crazed religious extremists show up. I mean, you know that pretty much every religion will have some nutjobs who think that a mere alien's presence is an affront to their chosen deity(s). Not all of them are anti-gun, eh?
3702506 What a wonderful bullshit excuse to keep in my back pocket in case someone whines to me about my failures.
3702336 Yeah, I understood that, but it's also true that everything you filled in there is stuff that you HAD to fill in.
3702060 Her home is the barracks and I can't see them going for the fish idea, but for some reason this logic is completely reasonable to me.
I have a problem where I can't tell one person from another unless I've known them for months. I also have a long-time bad habit of skipping to patches of dialogue when reading a book I like instead of love. Those two facts probably explain a lot about ANS.
3702084 No one likes the Celestia ride. It's like riding on the fuselage of a helicopter.
3703579 Political stuff regarding religion and politics are where I always try to be really careful, because I have strong opinions and I don't want it to ruin the story by letting that eclipse the plot and characters. We've all seen an author ruin their story because they have an axe to grind, and refuse to grind it somewhere else.
Not that a story can't be about the author's opinion on something (Terry Pratchett was good at that, I've always thought) and not that I won't be overjoyed to take the piss out of a few things, but I'm still going to watch myself carefully to make sure I don't get lazy and make the characters hate everyone I hate. You know how it is.