Kathleen Madison

Concept

Profile

Vital Statistics

FULL NAME: Kathleen Patrice Madison.
AFFILIATION: Citizen (Shusai).
AGE/DOB: 27. August 14^th, 2047.
GENDER: Female.
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual.
OCCUPATION: Matchmaker. Parents come to her with profiles of their children (and their families), and Kathleen finds an appropriate match. Oh, and her matches are always perfect.
THEME SONG: Fairytale by Sara Bareilles.
RESIDENCE: Hollywood Park. Her home is financed largely by her own business, although her family's money did make some initial payments. Kathleen's apartment is filled with only the nicest furniture, with the best textiles and well-matched color palettes. Why yes, she has employed an interior decorator in the past. But while the basic design is very well put-together and clearly paid for, her apartment is filled with so much crap that sometimes it's hard to tell. Kathleen is a collector, and it's obvious from the sheer amount of stuff that she has sitting on every flat surface. She can help it if she loves to buy things, useless or no! It's a flaw she'll readily admit to. She also owns a small storefront in New Chelsea that she uses as an office for her matchmaking business.

Appearance

HEIGHT: 5'4".
WARDROBE: Only the latest and most tasteful styles, of course! She does have a flair for the flamboyant—but only in color. In actual design, her clothing is just as modest as anyone else's, but she picks the brightest colors she can find. If there aren't bright colors available in the store, she'll special order it. She can afford it, after all.
MISCELLANEOUS: Small tattoo of a butterfly on her ankle. No one knows about it, not even her sisters. And considering her lack of any romantic entanglement, no man has ever seen it besides the one who slapped it on her. It's definitely not on the straight and narrow, but considering the fact that she
PB: Amy Adams.

Personality

PERSONALITY: Kathleen is, and always has been, a woman with too much of a mind of her own. While she has all the training of a model young lady, she isn't quite the woman that she ought to be, given the way she was raised. She has a little too much to say about, well.. everything. It's rare that Kathleen isn't the one to initiate a conversation. She does tend to come on a little strong—what, you mean she's supposed to stop asking questions at some point?—but it's usually well-intentioned. She's just not quite suited for the society in which she lives.
…..She's a major busybody. Everyone else's business is hers—and after all, why shouldn't it be? It's her job! How is she supposed to provide accurate matches if she doesn't know every detail about the people in question? Unfortunately for everyone she interacts with, though, this need to know doesn't just end with her work. It spreads out to every aspect of her life, meaning that she'll pester people with questions and demand to know answers. She hates being in a situation where she doesn't know everything that's happening. In fact, not knowing what’s going on gets her seriously agitated. She fixates on information that she can’t have, using any methods—coercion, begging, bribing—to get her hands on it. It doesn’t matter how small a thing it is; if she can’t have it, she wants it.
…..But while she can be very easily frustrated by things, she doesn’t have that stereotypical redhead temper. She’s far more likely to get frustrated and childish than she is to get truly angry. Her methods involve glaring, scowling, and muttering things under her breath—occasionally throwing things when she’s feeling particularly upset, though that’s rare. Generally, her moods are stable. And while it may not take much to frustrate her, it’s much more difficult to really anger her; at least the kind of anger that leaves you emotionally drained. In fact, just about the only people who have managed that are her siblings. Most people simply aren’t close enough to her to actually anger her.
…..It’s not that Kathleen tries to keep people at a distance—for the most part, it’s the opposite—but her personality and ideals carry certain social stigmas with them. People of her own social standing are usually somewhat reluctant to relate with her, and those outside of her social standing are the ones that she shouldn’t be relating with. It’s a lose-lose situation. While she may not hold with the exclusion of people from other social classes, she can only press her associations so much; while she pushes the limits of acceptable, there’s only so far she can go before she breeches them entirely. As a sharp, intelligent woman, she’s aware of where those lines are. So by route, she has very few close friends—but she talks to anyone and everyone. Kathleen has the gift of gab, and it’s nigh impossible to curb her tongue.
…..Along with that gift of gab comes quite a few opinions. She's an incredibly opinionated woman, which some seem to consider a detriment, but which she is quite proud of. She's an independent, intelligent woman, capable of holding her own in a male-dominated society. What's not to be proud of? In fact, that pride might be her fatal flaw; Kathleen has absolute confidence in herself and her ability to make perfect matches. Were she ever to find out that her sister's marriage—her first match, and the basis for all the rest—isn't as perfect as it seems, she'd be devastated. All of her confidence rests in her "perfect" matches. Somehow, she manages to overlook the fact that society's expectations of women mean that it's unlikely she'll ever hear complaints.
…..Despite the fact that she helps to arrange marriages, however, Kathleen is uninterested in getting married. She wants to be in control of her own life, and she knows that a husband would be the end of that. He'd expect her to take care of him and be a dutiful wife, and she just isn't. Period. She values herself too much to be subservient. She's a true feminist, though it's hard to say where she would have picked up the opinion. Perhaps it's just her temperament; that authoritative attitude that she has had since childhood. Any union, for her, would have to be perfectly equal, and that just doesn't happen.
…..She's also considering premarital sex, although with decidedly more trepidation than she usually uses when approaching any kind of major decision. Considering her intention never to marry, she'll never have sex.. but she certainly doesn't want to die a virgin. Her objection is not moral, because she doesn't understand why it's such a stigma in the first place—but it's still a stigma, and therein lies her issue. It's another case of not wanting to press an issue too far.
…..But despite her feminist views and feelings on premarital sex, Kathleen has never considered the revolution. She doesn't believe in their methods, feeling instead that if more people followed in her footsteps and made some small social change in their community, society itself would change.
…..Most people, though, will see her only as the garrulous, slightly off-center matchmaker. It's better that way—safer—and she's satisfied with that.

History

NPCs/FAMILY MEMBERS: Rodney Madison — Father, 59.
Caroline Madison — Mother, 51.
Elaine Madison — Sister, 30.
Sophie Madison — Sister, 22.
David Madison — Brother, 21.
HISTORY: As the second child (and daughter) of Rodney and Caroline Madison, it was clear that Kathleen lead a charmed life from the start. Both parents came from good families, and her father was an attorney in a firm that would continue to pull in more than enough money to support his expanding family. And despite an occasionally overprotective older sister, Kathleen never wanted for anything in her youth. She was raised upon the Shusai scripture and took to it—for the most part—like a fish to water. Anything she wanted, she got—and if she didn't get it immediately, all it took was a little sniffle or a convincing, "But I need it, don't you see?"
…..As she grew older, it was clear that, while she may have taken the manners and breeding to heart, Kathleen wasn't quite the model young lady that she should have been. She was just a little too pushy; she liked getting her way too much to be the obedient woman that she was expected to be. This became particularly evident when, during her fifteenth year, her older sister Lainey left for school. Kathleen immediately became a little dictator, ruling over her younger siblings with an iron fist. While they were only nine and ten and hardly up to anything too scandalous, she demanded to know where they were at all times. She assigned chores, and doled out punishments if said chores were not completed to her satisfaction. Any impudence was met with a cuff on the ear or a stern talking to.
…..Of course, once Lainey returned during the summers, Kathleen relinquished her control instantaneously. At least as much as her need for control would allow. She was careful never to step on toes, however, recognizing her older sister's authority, even while she might have resented it. It was around this time—her sister's final year at Mrs. Littleton's—that Kathleen realized her own exceptional talent: she could look at two people a determine whether they'd be a good match, based on the information that she knew. And quite often, she knew a lot; she was equally as much a busybody at school as she was around her home, and a bit of a gossip as well. If her parents knew of another family's dirty laundry, she knew, too.
…..But while she'd been predicting the success rate of marriages to her siblings for months, she wasn't given the chance to actually put her skills to use until her sister received two proposals. Immediately, Kathleen insinuated herself into the equation, ignoring the fact that her sister was perfectly capable of choosing her own husband. She insisted—quite loudly—that Lainey choose Randall, as he was obviously the much better match. She'd never be happy with that neighbor boy. And while Kathleen's advice may have had nothing to do with Lainey's final choice, she still took all the credit for it. Even today, she claims that her first match is a model for all the rest—just look how happy her sister is!
…..By the time of her sister's engagement, Kathleen was already enrolled at Mrs. Littleton's. While she wasn't quite the top of her class—she never could curb her tongue entirely—she was far from a disappointment. But for Kathleen, the best part of school was the chance it provided for her to hone her skills. More than a few of her fellow young ladies were receiving offers, and Kathleen began giving them unpaid advice. And, being the busybody that she was with a keen understanding of what qualities were most advantageous for a marriage, her matches were always flawless.
…..As daughters told their mothers of the advice they were receiving, word of Kathleen's skill with matchmaking began to spread. But it wasn't until a friend thoughtfully pointed out that she could get paid for her services that she actually considered it as a career. This, of course, was a radical departure from the lessons of Mrs. Littleton's school—and ultimately, what would serve to label Kathleen as a bit of an outcast.
…..Shortly after her graduation from school, Kathleen received an offer of marriage herself. Three, in fact. After all, she was a lovely young lady, and while there were a few rumors that she was a bit of an odd duck, she was still from a good family and hardly anything to scoff at in terms of a potential wife. But Kathleen would have none of it. She wanted a career in which she could use her skills, and even more importantly, she didn't want anyone bossing her around. Not even one very handsome suitor who she actually considered for several days, before deciding that no one was going to rule over her. Unsurprisingly, her decision was the cause of an uproar in the family, and a minor scandal in society. True, the decision not to marry wasn't quite as bad as some she could have made, but the choice to become an independent woman was certainly not what was expected of her.
…..For months after that, Kathleen was excluded from polite society. Despite her parents' objections, she moved out of their house and into an apartment of her own. She was sick of the arguments and the claims that she was such a disappointment, and wouldn't she just reconsider? No, of course she wouldn't. Once Kathleen made up her mind, it was made up. She started a consulting business out of her home, offering her matchmaking services for a fee.
…..At first, business was slow. She was, after all, an outcast. But she had a few friends who stayed quietly loyal, and they passed glowing recommendations on to other people, who in turn passed those along.. and within a year, Kathleen's business was booming. Enough so, in fact, that she was able to open a small office in an empty storefront. On a social basis, she was still seen as someone who you didn't want to have afternoon tea with, but her ties to quite a few important families via business guaranteed that she at least had a place at dinner parties and social events. And quite honestly, that's enough for Kathleen. She actually takes pride in being independent, even if it means that she's ostracized and seen as someone you don't want your daughter taking after. She owns a successful business and still has a place in society—how many other women can say that?

Relationships

Sister of Lainey Monroe.