Character development & Audience

Here is a piece I wrote to develop my characters and further help me understand where I wanted to take the characters. 

Mrs. Laderman isn’t a Mrs. at all. She’s actually a man in women’s clothing, most notably a nun’s habit – although she is far from godly. She acts as Claudia’s advisor and career, her costume is part of a ploy to design upon Claudia.

Mrs. Laderman’s real name is Jacob Miller. He was a former inmate at Briarcliff Sanitarium for the criminally insane. Before his exile to Briarcliff Jacob was a married man, to wife Wendy. However, forced in to a heterosexual marriage by his abusive father Jacobs homosexual tendencies often surfaced in the form of him adopting his wife’s clothes and frequenting young men. His habits worsened and over a period of time Jacob was permanently adopting a female persona, much to his wife’s dismay. His wife caught him in the act in their marriage bed one evening and after a heated row, Jacob slaughtered his wife and current lover. Days later Jacob found himself in Briarcliff, the year being 1962. His time at Briarcliff was short-lived,  although befriended Sister Mary Eunice who would later heavily influence his Mrs. Alderman persona. He remained there a total of two years, managing to escape through his charming and manipulative manner when the sanitarium was sold to the state in 1965.

After his escape, Jacob found himself an apartment occupied by a Mrs. Laderman whom he smothered and disposed of. He adopted her identity from then on.

She became close to Claudia, who lived across the hall, when she would frequently arrive with gifts for Claudia such as food, toys and unusual items often encouraging her unhealthy obsession with horror and the occult. Mrs. Laderman would always make her presence known to Claudia by announcing her arrival with a “Special delivery!”.

Having very little experience of the outside world Claudia has never questioned Mrs. Laderman’s unusual appearance or dress and looks to her as a sort of twisted mother figure. Unknown to Claudia, Mrs. Laderman is actually responsible for her parents disappearance when she was 6, which went almost unnoticed by Claudia who is used to an unsupervised childhood. Mrs. Laderman encourages Claudia’s imaginary boyfriend, Quentin, but instills the suspicion in to her that Quentin in unfaithful which provides a constant disappointment to Claudia, although she would never speak upon it, instead Claudia suffocates her concerns and vents her frustration through physical abuse towards Quentin often keeping him under restraint in her apartment and abusing him.

Claudia has very little understanding of how the world really is. What she does understand has been obtained from 60s horror films and text, provided by Mrs. Laderman.  Being in her twenties and having never felt true human compassion Claudia yearned for a companion and thus developed the figure of Quentin.

Claudia is an innocent at heart, she’s merely the outcome of neglect and manipulation. But she’s unaware of this.  She’s addicted to horror films and fiction and bases her understanding of the world around them. The only woman she has ever related to is often the victim of vicious crimes ad horror. Claudia understands two types of women – those who get murdered often due to the sinful sexual exploits and the girl who survives. Claudia most relates to the first. Deep down Claudia craves human contact, she’s lacked it her entire life, which is the reason for her conjuring of imaginary Quentin. But her desire for contact and pleasure means she assigns herself to this horror archetype and assumes that she is wicked and will ultimately meet her demise. This confusion between what she yearns for and what she understands of the world causes her great frustration. However, on the outside Claudia seems of a cheerful and confident disposition, a guise mounted to retain her claim on Quentin who fears is unfaithful – a concern installed upon her by Mrs. Laderman.

Mrs. Laderman’s manipulation of Claudia reaches a climax when Claudia snaps under growing suspicion of Quentin’s affairs (enforced by Laderman) and stabs him. Wracked with guilt, Claudia seeks Mrs. Laderman’s help, which she willingly provides. However, the manipulative Mrs. Laderman had always intended this and uses her position over Claudia to have her carry out acts of vengeance on her behalf towards those who wronged him or acted prejudicially towards him when he lived as transsexual Jacob Miller.

Mrs. Laderman frames Claudia for murdering Miller’s abusive father, when she tries to tell the police of her innocence all that can be found at Laderman’s apartment is the rotting corpse of the true Mrs. Laderman.

Forced in to Briarcliff and to socialize with her fellow inmates, Claudia slowly has an awakening to the fact that she’s been manipulated her whole life and the world isn’t always the way she been taught it was. On top of this and the overwhelming guilt for Quentin’s apparent murder, Claudia slits her own throat in her cell promising Quentin that they can be together forever now.

Audience Demographic

"AHS is producing outstanding ratings, growing though its first four weeks in the network's target audience of Adults 18-49."

tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/10/...american-horror-story.../109061/

I would add to this by saying that the largest proportion of this demographic would consist of women as well as homosexual men. My reasons for this are that the main characters in Asylum are predominately female. Also, the producers of AHS Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk are renowned for creating series that empower homosexuality as well as other minorities such as 'Glee' and 'Modern Family'. Asylum is very much concerned with the theme of homosexuality - one of the main character is treated as Briarcliff for being lesbian - I believe my character of Mrs Laderman particular fits in with this demographic as it's an intriguing one as well as the fact that it shows empowerment of those who are homosexual. 

I feel my character of Claudia also appeals to this demographic because a lot of women would be able to relate to her story - trying to fit her identity to what she understands of the world and her yearning for human relationship.