since i am feeling like blabbing about The Charater(s) (tm) i am going to blather about Katlynn and her bio family bc her and her siblings are so important to me. So, meet the Halloran Family:
Critical Role- Exandria
So we have Katlynn, our unhinged mental asylum patient that gets shoved there after she is punted into Exandria. Really just the side effects of a hike gone wrong. She does have the lovely little feral version of her in Kat’s Cradle, but for now we’re talking To Fall Is To Rise version.
I just need people to understand how alone Katlynn has been her whole life if Caleb isn’t around to do something about it. Her grandfather was her main caregiver till she was twelve and his dementia was severe enough he forgot her at the family cabin over spring break. Before that Katlynn was taking care of him, not realizing that she was obscuring Anrí’s condition from the rest of the family. She just wanted to be helpful— and she ended up twelve years old in an empty house with no one to talk to or help her. Because you think her parents stuck around for her?
Hell no—they were too busy following their protégé children around the world. They had no time for a child that no one bothered with in the first place. Alexis could manage her well enough in their absence. It’s not like their neighbours care or are close enough to realise she is alone either.
Katlynn was so starved for her parent’s attention that she tried to turn herself into the model child just to get them to look at her. The constant comparison between her and her older siblings always leaving her lacking in their eyes. Katlynn was never smart enough. Never charming enough. Never good enough and that girl just… withdrew further and further into herself in an attempt to please her family.
Katlynn became a mirror, reflecting back anything she thinks someone else needs and it is wholly in an attempt to make her family love her.
Alexius gets annoyed that she has to come and drop off groceries every weekend for Katlynn while their parents are away? Katlynn gets her drives as soon as she can even though she knows she will loose the chance to see her older sister. Her parents think Katlynn should try and pursue music? She joins Band and becomes one of their best piccolo players in her school band knowing it won’t actually change her parents opinion of her. Megan and Micheal are aggrieved by her voice? She does not speak, only listens when they are in the room.
And I also need everyone to know how affected Katlynn’s family is by her going fucking missing that day because Katlynn haunts the narrative of every one’s life after she is gone because no one noticed. Her university contacted Alexis, as she was her emergency contact, after Katlynn uncharacteristically missed her classes once her reading week passed. Her professors knew it was out of character. Her professors knew her by name because she had always been too much of a try hard. Her professors knew that Katlynn was five minutes early to ever class come rain or shine because she was nothing if not a creature of habit.
But no one in the Halloran household noticed their little sister going missing because she spent her hole life making herself small for them. Her parents were one of the last to know.
Dragon Age Origins
Alexius blames herself for the fact she didn't notice sooner. The two only called once a week on Saturday and she didn't think that there was anything up with Katlynn missing a call. Alexis was a busy woman, she had her own work out in the forest cutting trees and moving lumber. Maybe the call didn't go through--Maybe Katlynn was just too busy for once. With friends, finally.
(She was relieved that Katlynn had cancelled their Saturday call because she was busy spending time with her friends. She will feel guilty about that relief for the rest of her life because she should have known. Katlynn never missed a call. She valued the time Alexius spared for her too much to ever miss a call.)
When Alexis wakes up in Thedas, on the crash course of meeting a run away mage that reminds her so painfully of the sister she lost—
Anders gets a very attached, very tall, and very buff older sister who is ready to tear down the chantry from the ground up if it means keeping him safe. And if Alexis gets the idea that Katlynn might be trapped in one of the Circles? No Templar or Chantry Sister in the world could stop her. Not when your Grey Warden is a two metre tall forge domain paladin who is Not Playing Nice anymore. (I know Thedas has its own classes but let me make a buff lady who is fire themed and so devoted that it gives her magic. Also Anders is very confused by her everything which is mostly the point tbh)
Baldur's Gate Three
And you think Micheal feels much better? He was the last person to see Katlynn before she went on her hike and they fought. A terrible terrible argument where he said things that you can't come back from. Things you can’t take back—
Katlynn didn't understand why Adam showed up at their parent's house with all of Micheal's things that morning. She took them inside and accepted Adam's well wishes before sending him off, not knowing that Micheal's engagement ended that morning. She didn't know, and Micheal had always sharpened his tongue on others. Did so when he arrived to see his life was in shambles because until this moment no one had ever told him no.
Micheal was suspected of her murder before his alibi checked out and he was cleared of suspicion. The damage from that accusation never quite faded from within the family, from Micheal's carrier as one of the youngest virtuoso’s Canada ever produced. His standing as a renowned violinist is ruined with tragedy.
He can never forget the fact the last words he spoke to his sister were in anger so potent it boarded on hatred for the girl who never fought back. He spent every day for the next five years not giving up on the hope of finding her. That he would turn a corner in the woods and see her face, scared and thin, but alive all the same.
So he can say he’s fucking sorry about everything.
(He is deemed mad by their family. Cast aside by their parents when his talents with his music were wasted on searching for someone who is as good as dead. Alexis is so worried for him. Megan scorns him for deciding to care now when he never had before. How performative of him.)
Micheal ends up on the Sword Coast, close to Candlekeep and he is so desperate to find Katlynn that he would trade anything to just find her. Would trade any piece of information or anything in his power to give and--
He does. He pays the price all in the name of righting a wrong, because Katlynn's been dead from the beginning in his story and he can't escape that.
Ezra is born the night Micheal dies in the name of finding his little sister and he hits the gun running. Fleeing from Candlekeep and the people within as he crashes head long into a certain Nautaloid and the allies within.
Ezra the Bard makes a very...interesting Tav, let's just say that. His tarot cards and status as a college of spirits bard a unique addition to the Tadfools.
Fantasy High
Megan is the last of the Halloran children to go missing and she does not have time for grief as she works her way through her neurosurgery residency. Ezra's funeral followed five years after Katlynn and then in a few months Alexis when she walked into the woods for a job and just never came back. The worst is assumed in both cases, and Megan...
She is on the cusp of thirty and does not bend, she does not break. She attended three funerals with dry eyes and her spine made of steal. She waited till the empty coffins made of wood were buried in the family plot and then she leaves. She has never had time for grief. Not now. And not for her three siblings who had not been able to bear the burdens she endured without faltering.
Five years ago, she had to be threatened by Alexis to come and join the search for Katlynn when it all began, and she did so only for Alexis' sake, not Katlynn. Never for Katlynn. Not when she holds no love lost in her heart for the girl who made herself into a shade in her own life. Respect is not given to those who fade so easily.
Instead, she focuses on her work and nothing else.
(Megan has a picture of Katylnn in her pocket and she stole it from their parents house when they all realised the only photos they had of Katlynn were from her school year book. When she was still Megan's little sister and not lost to the world they grew in. Eighteen and bright eyes and awkward enough that Megan sometime looked at it and is taken by how...young she is. How young she was when she was taken from them.)
Megan and Katlynn, for all their differences had always been the most alike. Stubborn and bull headed and practical where Alexis and Ezra had been more fanciful. So when the impossible happens to her, Megan pushes ahead.
She, after all, has no time for grief.
She is cast in the roll of unintentional baby sitter in the world of Spyre as she tries her hand at assimilating as quickly as possible to achieve her aims. Becoming the main caretaker of the Bad Kids unintentionally as she forms her own relationships and learns the power of friendship by being trauma bonded with a bunch of teens she sort of adopts in one of the most unhinged coping mechanisms ever.
Megan Halloran becomes a professor at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, her specialization as an enchantment wizard leading to some interesting side effects.
[If you guys want to learn more about a specific sibling, or their relationship to one another-> Just ask!! I am more than happy to let you know!]
