It's a God-Awful Small Affair

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Lexil
Contact: Plurk is Lexil, Discord is ladylazarus#2235. PMing this account is also fine!
Other Characters: L Lawliet

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Elsa Mars
Age: 62
Canon: American Horror Story: Freak Show
Canon Point: After selling the show to Chester and siccing the mob on Stanley, but before Massimo's arrival at camp.
Character Information: http://americanhorrorstory.wikia.com/wiki/Elsa_Mars

Personality: Regal, talented, sophisticated, and beloved are all words that describe the woman Elsa Mars wants desperately to be. Enchanted by the silver screen and envious of the stars who have graced it with their fame and beauty, Elsa has always fallen short, grasping from afar, taking what she can and resenting what she can't. She is a pretender by nature, surrounding herself with imitations of glitz and glamour and placing herself in any environment where her star can at least seem to shine brightly. She's no fool; she is old and experienced enough to know deep down that she is a liar, a phony, and "the biggest freak of all", but her darkest heart is one she guards as closely as her secret wooden legs.

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Understanding that dark heart is crucial if one endeavors to understand Elsa. In the 1932 Weimar Republic, following the first World War, she was a dominatrix in a sex club. Her reputation was that if one was looking for something "creative," they went to her, and she excelled and gained a following. She attained a small amount of fame in pornography, culminating in a traumatic event where she was hired to unknowingly star in a snuff film. A drugged Elsa's legs were amputated below the knee with a chainsaw and she was left to die, eventually rescued by a soldier who was in love with her. He took her to a master woodworker who fitted her with prosthetic legs and won her heart, but the two respectively damaged people fell out of touch for years. Elsa is jaded and disillusioned as a result of her life's difficulties, disappointments and disasters, and the last thing she wants is to be seen as a weak victim. Attracted to a life of glamour, fantasy and perfection, it's ironic that a world-weary former sex worker would find her place at the helm of one of the country's last surviving freak shows, if tragically fitting. Next to "god's mistakes," after all, Elsa can hide her amputated legs and pretend that she is their savior, deity, and vision of effortless perfection... even if many of her freaks are more talented and remarkable than she is by a long shot, inciting her contempt and envy.

As the owner of Fraulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities, what Elsa lacks in talent and stage presence she makes up for with having a keen eye for opportunity. Wearing the guise of a generous and charismatic benefactor, she has "rescued" a variety of human oddities from their circumstances, swooping in a whirl of furs and feathers into orphanages, hospitals, asylums and other locales peopled with desperate unfortunates. Though the world of freak shows is dying in 1952, she runs one of the last ones, and is fiercely dedicated to her troupe of performers. Caring for and promoting them is not only Elsa's livelihood, but an ostentatiously noble purpose she can bend toward while convincing herself that she is not ultimately a pernicious influence on the lives of all she touches. There's no question that she exploits her performers, even if she treats them well. She calls them her monsters even as she seems to treat and respect them as human beings. And most of her musically talented employees end up playing backup to her underwhelming headlining act.

Even if her reasons for assembling them are largely self-serving, providing her a means of living her songbird dreams in front of a live audience drawn by other attractions, it's clear throughout the series that she feels varying degrees of genuine affection for most of them. She seems instinctively attuned to the needs of others, appearing in their lives in countless yearned-for roles; a mother, a savior, a lover, a friend. Though Elsa considers Ethel a sister figure and engages in a secret affair with Paul, the miniature woman Ma Petite and the "pinhead" Pepper are perhaps the purest examples of Elsa's love in the form of a strong maternal instinct. She treats Ma Petite like a doll or a baby, cuddling and doting on her, and she takes what is very nearly a calculating appraisal of every possible way she could fulfill Pepper's base, personal, and spiritual requirements. With these two, at least, it's clear that her devotion to them goes beyond seeing them as exploitable monsters and into a kinder, gentler territory. She is devastated when she believes Ma Petite to have been eaten by a wild animal, horrified when her true fate is revealed, and unflinchingly shoots Dell when he confesses to smothering her. When Desiree expresses concern that Pepper will hurt herself following the death of Ma Petite and, shortly after from natural causes, her soulmate and fellow "pinhead" Salty, Elsa seeks out Pepper's sister to reunite them. She believes this to be the best course of action for Pepper and follows through, in spite of it being tremendously painful for her.

Because of the points at which she approached and recruited her troupe, Elsa is seen by many of them as a mother figure, and certainly sees herself that way. At her birthday party when she's speaking vulnerably and honestly with her surrogate sister Ethel, Elsa claims that the freaks are "all my babies." Still, Elsa falls short in the selfless parent role, as she unfailingly thinks of herself first; there can only be one headliner, after all. She says in one of her most revealing moments "I have survived because I know one must be willing to destroy anyone, anything, even the ones you love to keep the gods in check." She would never hurt one of her babies out of sadistic pleasure or cruelty, but Elsa does what it takes to survive, both literally and to preserve her coveted place in the spotlight.

Regarding Elsa's spotlight, she guards it jealously, and it's the quickest way to become her enemy or her friend depending on the skill it's manipulated with. She is a shrewd and intelligent woman, but she wears her ambition and desire on her sleeve. When Bette and Dot are recruited by the show and Dot turns out to have true vocal talent, Elsa sees the twins as an immediate threat and is even willing to sell them and lie about it to eradicate her competition. When Stanley is intent on keeping Elsa close so he can have access to her unusual performers, he does so by promising her fame and fortune after winning her over to the prospect of performing on television. Initially dismissing television as "the death of art", Elsa is willing to hear Stanley out after her singing bores a local audience, leaving her shattered and humbled. Essentially, the con man knows exactly to play on Elsa's fears and ambitions, and she doesn't make it particularly difficult.

Elsa's talented, and no one can truly dispute that. It's just that she's not talented in the ways she would like to be. A German expatriate, she has worked in pornography, prostitution, cabaret and the circus, she's still beautiful beyond middle age, and she's actually genuinely amazing at accurately throwing knives with deadly force. She's a savvy businesswoman with excellent instincts, but at the end of the day, she wants to sing, and her heavily accented voice manages to be both harsh and frail at the same time. She pours earnestness and devotion into her performances, lays her maimed soul bare for an uninterested or critical audience, and still persists. Mrs. Mott calls her singing the most freakish thing on the stage. Edward Mordrake's ghost calls her "a tattered waste of oxygen who bolsters herself with contempt for others." Still, Elsa clings selectively to every bit of praise she's offered, even if it's intended to manipulate her. She's easily flattered, perhaps even desperate for people to try to offer her the validation she offers her own "children."

Elsa is so desperate for that validation, the elusive applause of a nonexistent audience, that she has to provide some of it for herself. She's quick to assume that people want to compliment her skill and beauty, and she's confident and charismatic enough to pull off a certain level of pride. But ultimately, Elsa's dogged pursuit of a singing career comes across as more than a touch vain or even narcissistic, it comes across as downright delusional. When she rehearses on Halloween night, breaking circus tradition and luring the ghost of Edward Mordrake to the camp, she at first believes him to be a talent scout there to turn her fortunes around, even assuming that he has been seduced by her singing. Elsa does what it takes to survive, and the idea that she doesn't have what it takes to succeed in her desired career late in life is one that might kill her if she fully allowed herself to realize it.

Elsa is scheming, more than capable of playing a long game and ensuring that her tracks are covered and her future secure. She reacts to catastrophe and crisis pragmatically, as seen when she murdered Ethel half in self defense and half in cold blood. After putting a throwing knife through the woman's eye, she collaborated with Stanley to stage an elaborate suicide involving a car accident and decapitation by chain. Following Maggie's confession and the revelation of Ma Petite's fate, Elsa arranged for Chester's welcome dinner to build up theatrically to Stanley's downfall. When Bette and Dot warned her about the impending mutiny of her troupe, she was not only able to leave before they came for her but secure $10,000 in cash from an eager Dandy. These situations all required a cool head and planning, as well as the ability to anticipate the reactions and suspicions of others and act accordingly.

American Horror Story is a canon filled, season after season, with twisted, strange and unsettling characters. Of all of them, Elsa racks up a high sin count, even speaking relatively, but in spite of this, when death finally catches up to her, Edward Mordrake does not add her to his roaming band of pure freaks. Instead, she attains what few characters in AHS do, which is a blissful afterlife. After finally finding success in Hollywood and becoming a household name, her postmortem paradise is rejoining the dead members of her troupe, including her beloved Ma Petite, where she headlines and finally hears the thunderous applause she's always craved in the environment she considers a celebration of art rather than its death. Elsa does some terrible things over the course of her life, but the forgiveness of her "children" redeems her enough to make her brief glimmers of humanity visible.

5-10 Key Character Traits: Vain, delusional, scheming, ambitious, envious, forceful, stylish, spiteful, tragic, maternal
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fits!
Opt-Outs: Just demon, because I'm already playing L as one.

Roleplay Sample: Test drive!