Gaelan Meloy
Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 11:07 pm
Name: Gaelan Meloy
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Modeling, Instagram, fitness, cooking, social networking, social media
Appearance: Gaelan is a young caucasian male of mixed Irish and Montenegrin descent, standing at 6′1 and 156 lb. As an aspiring model his body is slender but defined; not overly-muscled, but not twiggy. His face is oval-shaped with a strong jawline and cheekbones. His head sitting on a thin, but similarly defined neck. His lips are of average size and colour, but tend to be slightly downturned, something Gaelan usually works to hide as it gives off the impression that he is always frowning or unhappy. His eyes are a deep brown, almond shaped and sitting beneath angular threaded eyebrows and holding a medium refined nose between them. His complexion is impeccable thanks to generous genetics and a regular inexpensive, but effective skin care routine that has kept him free of visible zits and acne since early high school.
His hairstyle often changes depending on current trends and what is required for job bookings - in the past several years Gaelan has tried out a buzz cut, Ivy League cut, crew cut, caesar cut and a faux hawk, before defaulting to his current haircut. Gaelan currently wears his dark brown hair as a skin fade along the sides reaching to a 3" guard shave at the peak, while on top his hair fades back to front from a 1 ½ inches to 3 ½, worn in either a quiff or a comb over. While Gaelan has issues surrounding wealth and status symbols, his only exception is in his fashion. Gaelan seeks out the latest in quality trends and labels, even if they're second-hand, as long as he can make it look fashionable. In the summer he defaults to wearing shorts or loose long pants alongside simple short-sleeved shirts, while in the winter he leans towards a more layered look over big bulky pieces like jackets or thick coats. He also wears jewelry and bracelets on occasion.
On the day of the abduction, Gaelan was wearing a white cotton jersey t-shirt with hemmed sleeves underneath a light blue button-up, a pair of skinny jeans torn at the knees, Burberry leather trainers with white Calvin Klein socks, and his hair combed over rather than quiffed. Among his accessories were two thin leather bracelets worn on his right wrist - one from his mother's shop, the other a gift from his girlfriend he's worn regularly for almost a year. He also wears a blue Fitbit of the Charge HR line on his left wrist, and a chrome heart necklace with a cross on the end, itself a gift from his father.
Biography: Gaelan was born to Keeley Meloy, the daughter of wealthy socialites based in Philadelphia, and Adam Kostic, the son of a rich Montenegrin family also based in Philadelphia. The two met when they were only teenagers, and quickly struck up a close physical relationship, one that resulted in Keeley becoming pregnant at 17 years old. Her family insisted on giving up the baby for adoption in order to preserve her future, but Keeley similarly insisted on raising the baby with Adam, due to her strong growing attachment to him in her later months of pregnancy. This led to many fights throughout the pregnancy, and eventually she and her parents had such a bad falling out that, even though she was seven months pregnant at the time and still attending high school, they demanded she leave their house. Keeley lived with Adam's family for the next few years - his parents were fond of her, and were close with Keeley's family, but that came with the caveat that even though she wanted nothing to do her parents, she would regularly see them whenever the Kostic family hosted parties or gatherings. It eventually reached the point where even being in the same city as her family was too much for her to handle, and Keeley made plans to leave Philadelphia - there was nothing else there for her, as even though she she finished high school, she failed to attain a scholarship or acceptance to any of the universities she sent in applications for. She wanted Adam to come with her, but he was heading to the University of Pennsylvania after a gap year and, as much as he was fond of Keeley, couldn't give up his life for her. Feeling betrayed, she bought the next available bus ticket heading out of the city, and with nothing but her son, all the money she'd managed to scrounge and save at short notice, and a suitcase of luggage on her person, kept travelling until she was as far away from her parents, Adam, and Philadelphia as she could manage.
She eventually ended up in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she spent several nights burning through what remained of her savings by having to stay in motels in order to not sleep on the streets. She lucked into finding employment at a locally owned 4.5-star hotel; working as a maid, paid by cash, and finding residence at a nearby trailer park, sharing with a fellow employee, which is where she and her son lived for the next few years. While Keeley had never had a job before, and in fact the entire enterprise of moving away from her entire life and all the comforts she'd ever known was the biggest shock she'd ever faced, the very real threat of homelessness for her and her son meant she was a quick learner, and after two years on the job she ended up the head housekeeper of the hotel due to a combination of several staff members quitting, and her burgeoning management skills, resourcefulness, and ability to work and lead a group.
Gaelan's early childhood was an otherwise uneventful one - he only has vague recollections of Philadelphia, while he has strong memories of the years growing up in the trailer park, playing with the other children and being looked after by various other trustworthy parents of the park, sometimes including Keeley's fellow employee on the few days she had off. He was an inquisitive child, always exploring under supervision the various nooks and crannies of the area in and around the park, as well as the nearby children's park. The only thing he really missed was his mom, who worked such long hours that she would only really see him when she got up in the morning to drop him at another parents' home, and when she got home from work at night. They would make the most of that time together, though, even if it amounted to not even more than fourteen hours a week.
By the time Gaelan was due to reach preschool, the hotel Keeley worked at had begun to branch out in locations all across Tennessee, including Memphis and Chattanooga. Their newest branch in Chattanooga was looking for already experienced staff to transfer there and quickly teach and manage the newly starting staff, and Keeley jumped at the opportunity to do so - despite having made a few friends there, she was not particularly fond of Clarksville. Keeley used the opportunity between her acceptance and her first day at work in Chattanooga to travel to her new city and hunt for houses and apartments, and she managed to find and secure a cheap but run-down two-person apartment adjacent to the city centre and similarly close to her new workplace. Within days, Keeley and Gaelan had moved to Chattanooga.
Despite the difficulty in sending Gaelan to pre-school, both financially and in finding a carer for him afterwards while she was at work, Keeley was determined not to let Gaelan fall behind in life because of her own mistakes. As such, Gaelan thoroughly enjoyed pre-school, playing and making friends with other children and learning all new things, which would set the stage for how he approached his life. While he always wanted to hang out with his new friends, Keeley would always manage to fanangle it so that it happened at the other child's house, as she was ashamed of showing off her and her son's living conditions to the other parents, something Gaelan eventual came to take notice of and become self-conscious towards. Even as Keeley's position at her work improved and she could afford to fix up and redecorate the apartment, the shame still lingered and it became a habit not to have people over unless they were extremely good friends of either Keeley's or Gaelan's.
Gaelan was initially a rather sporty child, playing many sports on the playground and enjoying the rush of it all. His two favourite sports were basketball and soccer, sports that he was initially rather good at after much practice - he tried out as many positions as possible in each sport, wanting to be good at all of them. However, when he was ten years old, he suffered a bad fall during a basketball game which saw him painfully dislocate his shoulder. While he was given the appropriate aid, the pain caused through the dislocation gave him a temporary aversion to playing sports and being active, as he became self-conscious that he would injure himself just as badly again. While he initially got over his fear, by the time he had, he lost his passion for the sports and never seriously tried out for them again.
Gaelan's life through to middle school was an otherwise uneventful one - he picked up a few fun hobbies here and there such as bug-collecting, a brief interest in cooking, an even briefer one in learning to play the guitar, but these were all extremely brief and ended well within a year. Due to being a sociable and likeable child, he found a group of popular friends he became a part of, including his best friend for most of his childhood Ivy Langley, and the only real noticeable development was Gaelan becoming increasingly defensive towards his own relative poverty, poverty which Gaelan throughout his childhood had accepted it would be unlikely he would escape from, and eventually transfering that into a dislike of rich people. In his mind, his mother worked harder and was kinder and nicer than anyone he'd ever known, yet they still lived barely above the poverty line, so for rich people the opposite had to be true - they had to be lazy and cruel. The only thing that challenged his view on this was getting to know Ivy's life, being at her house and finding out exactly just how rich she was - it gave Gaelan pause, made him question his own views, because how could one of his friends be a bad person? He began to lessen his stance, at least until several significant events happened in his teenage years.
When he was twelve years old, Gaelan came home from school one day to find his mother having coffee with a man he'd never met. While not surprised, the man greeted Gaelan like he knew him, and Keeley eventually introduced him as Gaelan's father, Adam. Back in Philadelphia, Adam had finished a Masters in Business at the University of Pennsylvania, although he was having trouble committing to employment and instead decided on a second Gap Year on his parent's money, using the opportunity to track down Keeley and find out if she was doing okay. For the next few months, Adam was back in Gaelan's life as a father figure he never had, although he tended to act more like a generous uncle, buying Gaelan new games and clothes on a whim or even taking him and his now-girlfriend Ivy out on their dates to the movies, things which showed off the money and wealth Adam owned (or at the very least, his parents owned). While Keeley had since moved up from housekeeping to becoming the junior manager of the hotel she worked at, and thus had more time to spend with her family, she began to resent Adam for making being a parent look easy and fun.
When Gaelan was at school one day, Keeley and Adam had a major fight regarding how, in her mind, he abandoned her with a baby she had to raise himself and was now swooping in to reap the benefits of parenthood despite never having been there for Gaelan's entire life. Despite missing several key parts of the story, like how it was Keeley herself who abandoned Adam and Philadelphia, it reached the point that Adam ended up leaving in anger for good by the time Gaelan returned home from school that day, upon which a tearful Keeley ended up spinning their situation in a way that made Adam seem yet again like the bad guy. This began to affect Gaelan, as he'd grown very attached to his father, and it eventually re-ignited his worldview on rich people - that they were cruel, craven, and morally corrupt, and it reached the point that he had a massive falling out with his girlfriend Ivy, ostensibly due to her issues surrounding the ignorance of her own privilege but actually due to his own issues around wealth and richness cementing themselves as his worldview, and Ivy being in his life conflicting with that. Over the next few weeks, Gaelan would end up leaving their entire group of friends, and told himself to never distrust his first impressions again.
Having burned his bridges with his original group of friends, Gaelan worked towards making new ones throughout the rest of his schooling days that did not resemble his old ones in any way. Still being rather sociable, Gaelan managed to surround himself with a rather eclectic group of people with a variety of interests that had little to no similarity to those held by his old friends, and they became some of the closest people in his life, sticking together through thick and thin. While being popular reaped social and material benefits for Gaelan, his new group gave him more personal fulfillment, bouncing him back from the doubt in his mind upon abandoning his original friends and convincing him he'd done the right thing - these people ended up being some of the closest in his life, and he often drops what he's doing in order to help them out, regardless of circumstance.
In order to mentally distance himself from the years he spent with his old friends, Gaelan started to reintroduce himself to some of the old hobbies and habits he picked up before them. While bug-collecting, soccer, basketball, and playing the guitar were no longer things he felt much passion for, if any at all, he found real relaxation in cooking. While he tended to shy away from complex recipes, as they often had ingredients he would only use once and had nor the time to track them down nor the money to splurge on, he would often master a recipe, then start experimenting with that recipe to find what would fit. As long as he didn't experiment too wildly, making his own meals would always be better and tastier than take-out, or frozen meals prepared in five minutes or less. He also started jogging early in the morning, mostly out of a desire to stay fit and active without actively participating in a sport he knew he'd still hold some aversion to.
As he started getting older, Gaelan started to think more about what he was going to do when he became an adult. While a lifetime living in near poverty had made him resign himself to following in that same pattern, his mother's rise to becoming one of the managers of the hotel she used to change sheets and clean toilets for gave him hope he never had before - he started looking at office jobs and positions in management not as far-off dreams, but opportunities that were available to him, even if he wasn't the type to consider working in an office for the rest of his life thanks to his upbringing. What gave him even more hope happened one day when he was hanging out with his friends at the mall when he was fifteen, and he was approached by a man claiming to be scouting for a modelling agency. While initially laughing him off and becoming subject to ribbing amongst his friends for the rest of the day, Gaelan's curiosity was piqued and he started doing research - the man apparently did represent a reputable modelling agency in Chattanooga, and wasn't some sort of scam artist, or a prank pulled by a friend or enemy.
Over the next few weeks, he started looking for a decent photographer who would take his photos well for the cheapest price, and eventually built up the tiny beginnings of a portfolio that he eventually compiled and brought with him when he visited the agency for the first time. While his looks and poses left something to be desired, the agency saw potential in him, and the only reason Gaelan didn't sign himself to the agency then and there was some alarming things he read in the contract, most of which referenced ownership of Gaelan's image, something which he wasn't ready to give up or relinquish control of yet. He elected to try a more freelance route to becoming a model, one which involved more freedom and control over his image at the expense of not getting as many jobs or shoots. The whole process was worrying to Keeley, as she was concerned what such an image-based industry would do to Gaelan and what he would end up involved in without her there. Gaelan sated her worries by proving to her that he'd done research on the industry and the risks involved, such as drug use, unhealthy eating habits, and all the general risks involved with visiting sets and locations with complete strangers, swearing on his life to her to reduce these risks to himself whenever possible. While he didn't initially expect for himself to become a world famous model overnight, opportunities didn't exactly come jumping out to him, having miscalculated the opportunities available to him in Chattanooga as a male model.
In order to increase his portfolio beyond the opportunities given to him by his own efforts, he started attending open casting calls for models in his age group and sometimes beyond, often held in Nashville or even further. While he was more often than not rejected, he took rejections as the opportunity to learn that they were, and often started to emulate and crib from his modeling competition, stealing poses and stances to incorporate into his own looks. The jobs and shoots he did achieve at first barely even covered the cost of gas to and from the city. However, Gaelan still took every shoot as the opportunity it was and keeps his best work at the forefront of his modelling portfolio. As he got older, the opportunities started appearing more frequently, and as such he had a little more money to spend on himself - while he was more inclined to spend money on necessities for himself or his mother, sometimes even a night out at a restaurant. Gaelan often bought himself quality designer clothing items, either buying items he liked wearing as he modeled or buying items that completed sets he earned as payment through his modeling gigs. Gaelan's time as a model gave him an eye and a taste for good fashion, and though he would obviously sometimes model clothing he could never afford, it was more often than not clothing he never liked in the first place - he liked simple, more elegant streetwear he could wear for multiple occasions, rather than anything ultra-specific.
It was also at this time that Gaelan started to aggressively brand himself online. While not the owner of his own website, he did, however, transform his Instagram account into something carefully curated, forcefully marketed and categorized. He posts selfies or portfolio excerpts to his account every day, and includes the most important hashtags of the moment in order to reach as far as possible . The first time one of his photos reached over a thousand "likes" felt like one of the greatest accomplishments of his life. Compared to most people at his school, Gaelan is practically famous on Instagram, although he still only has slightly less than 6.5 thousand followers. He is also never one to leave out carefully chosen exerpts of his personal life - he posts pictures of himself with his girlfriend of the moment as regularly as he does pictures of himself, although he makes sure he does not reach the point of overdoing it.
Gaelan also felt the need to keep himself in shape as he moved further into high school. While he was very much into sports when he was younger, he still felt a slight aversion to the practice due to the somewhat irrational fear of dislocating his shoulder again, and instead kept himself fit by attending the gym at least three times a week, although he has had days where he felt a twinge in his shoulder and skipped working on his upper body that day out of misguided safety. For the sake of what he hoped was a future career, he never made himself put on a heap of muscle, instead opting to tone himself and keep off excess body fat. He also began to meticulously calculate and track his calorie and macronutrient intake, often meal prepping for an entire week in order to get the right amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates, give or take a light cheat day or two. This was more often than not overdoing it, however - as a result of his learning to cook and understanding food from a younger age, Gaelan could whip up something tasty as well as nutritious off the top of his head without too much prompting or research.
Gaelan's early pubescence and the feelings contained within felt more like he was fulfilling a role that was expected of him rather than something that felt natural. He liked his first girlfriend Ivy, but their ascension to dating was rather quick in his eyes, even if it was enjoyable for the time it lasted. After their explosive and painful breakup, Gaelan did not date anyone for several years, leading to many rumours about him being gay, which he was quick to quell in a young panic. Once he started modelling, however, he found a confidence in him that had been dashed since his time with Ivy, and began dating and becoming items with several of his classmates again. However, despite his looks and confidence, many of these dates ended badly due to the girls he was seeing writing him off as shallow, not helped by his modelling being well known amongst his peer group, thus swamping him with the stereotypes associated with the profession. This eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as while Gaelan did not consider himself to be shallow, the girls he started dating and becoming items with in response were as surface level as one could reach - attractive, but not particularly deep thinking or critical, and as such wouldn't accuse Gaelan of being shallow. Although he sought deeper relationships with girls, he was afraid of being criticized for the way he acted around them, and so he always pursued girls who wouldn't criticize him for acting that way, which in turn made him believe he was actually acting that way, and thus ended up blaming the girls he dated for it, a cycle which would not be broken for many years.
In stark contrast to his branding of himself, however, Gaelan was not someone who wanted to be loved or adored by everyone - he just wanted to be understood. Ever since he broke ties with his old friends, he worked hard to make sure he was not only friends to those who he felt needed friends, but also friends who would support and surround him for who he was, as he greatly felt after his old friend group fell apart he wasn't worthy of it. However, moving into his senior year, he eventually found and began a relationship with a girl who managed to see past his problems and understood and liked him for who he was. This was the longest relationship Gaelan had ever been in, a relationship that lasted until all the way through to the end of his senior year.
By the end of Gaelan's sophmore year of high school, Keeley was becoming unfulfilled with her position at the hotel - after 13 years of working there, she decided she wanted to run her own business, and began looking into options for owning her own boutique in the city centre. However, several days of research told her that it was unlikely such a venture would get far off the ground in Chattanooga, so she instead looked into something similar - an alternative clothing store, selling mostly items of clothing and accessories aimed at various subcultures like hippies and goths, or at least those who wanted to look like them. Her main plan was to cater mainly to demographics of Gaelan's age and slightly older, as many people in Gaelan's year tended to live on the middle class side of the socioeconomic divide, with lots of free spending money. It took almost a year of saving to safely afford the base costs for starting up her own retail business, but by the time Gaelan reached the end of his junior year, Keeley's shop was open for business. The first few months were rough, and there were times where it didn't look like the store would break even, but word of mouth soon spread and Keeley started to make substantial profit.
As he went through high school, Gaelan began to notice that Ivy was positioning herself in direct social opposition to him, often spreading rumours and gossip about himself or any number of his friends. The rumours were rarely completely factual, but they were always cruel and mocking. Gaelan could handle anything Ivy spread about himself, mostly due to the fact he had nothing to hide and most of his life was completely open, but he would not abide by rumours spread about his friends. As such, Gaelan would often resort to similar tactics used by Ivy. Gaelan was not a fan of it, and often found it completely contrary to how he saw and presented himself, but as his friends were often the victim of Ivy's gossip, he felt the need to stand up for them in a manner that nobody else would, even if they were perfectly capable of doing so for themselves. This, along with his general feud with Ivy and by extension her large group of friends, has earned Gaelan many enemies at George Hunter High.
As such, Gaelan is often a social enigma at his school - he has all the makings and capabilities to become one of the most popular kids there, but all his friends run contrary to this. He is friendly, sociable, and welcoming to anyone new he meets at first, although he has grown to become distrusting of anyone he knows to be friends or acquaintances with Ivy, as well as anyone known to be much richer than the average high school student, which can often result in Gaelan first seeming welcoming, but then becoming closed off and distant. To his friends, Gaelan is one of the best friends one could ask for, but getting on his bad side is often an exhausting struggle in social politics.
Gaelan generally does okay as far as his academics are concerned - many of his senior year subjects are geared towards allowing him to transition into attending the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga with ease, which is where he intends on pursuing a degree at their business school. Inspired by his mother, he is hoping to study towards achieving a Bachelors in Business Management. Keeley eventually became the senior manager of the hotel she worked for, and Gaelan is hoping that, while his current dream is to become a driven and successful model, he can achieve just as much success in the same line of work as his mother should something happen to his initial goal. Gaelan's relationship with his mother remains close - while not the world's best son, he does his best to make her proud, while Keeley herself is proud she created a life to raise her son comfortably in.
Advantages: Gaelan is bigger, taller and fitter than most of his classmates, which puts him at an immediate advantage. HIs years of social networking and working on his charm mean that while he is far from the most influential person at his school, his social skills may still earn him some currency in an otherwise lawless place . He is skilled at working his way into friendships, defusing tensions, or talking people down from decisions they may regret, which while not infallible, could get him very far.
Disadvantages: Gaelan is often ruled by his first impressions of people, and it is very difficult to change his mind when it is set. This means that he could very easily turn away someone otherwise valuable to himself and his survival just because he didn't like them off the island, or if their name came up on the island in any sort of bad context, such as the announcements. In his time at George Hunter High, Gaelan has intentionally and unintentionally made various enemies, which can very easily come back to haunt him in a situation like SOTF. On the flipside, Gaelan also has a tendency to put his friends needs above his own, which could easily work contrary to his own survival on the island if he groups up with these friends, or anyone he comes particularly close to.
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Modeling, Instagram, fitness, cooking, social networking, social media
Appearance: Gaelan is a young caucasian male of mixed Irish and Montenegrin descent, standing at 6′1 and 156 lb. As an aspiring model his body is slender but defined; not overly-muscled, but not twiggy. His face is oval-shaped with a strong jawline and cheekbones. His head sitting on a thin, but similarly defined neck. His lips are of average size and colour, but tend to be slightly downturned, something Gaelan usually works to hide as it gives off the impression that he is always frowning or unhappy. His eyes are a deep brown, almond shaped and sitting beneath angular threaded eyebrows and holding a medium refined nose between them. His complexion is impeccable thanks to generous genetics and a regular inexpensive, but effective skin care routine that has kept him free of visible zits and acne since early high school.
His hairstyle often changes depending on current trends and what is required for job bookings - in the past several years Gaelan has tried out a buzz cut, Ivy League cut, crew cut, caesar cut and a faux hawk, before defaulting to his current haircut. Gaelan currently wears his dark brown hair as a skin fade along the sides reaching to a 3" guard shave at the peak, while on top his hair fades back to front from a 1 ½ inches to 3 ½, worn in either a quiff or a comb over. While Gaelan has issues surrounding wealth and status symbols, his only exception is in his fashion. Gaelan seeks out the latest in quality trends and labels, even if they're second-hand, as long as he can make it look fashionable. In the summer he defaults to wearing shorts or loose long pants alongside simple short-sleeved shirts, while in the winter he leans towards a more layered look over big bulky pieces like jackets or thick coats. He also wears jewelry and bracelets on occasion.
On the day of the abduction, Gaelan was wearing a white cotton jersey t-shirt with hemmed sleeves underneath a light blue button-up, a pair of skinny jeans torn at the knees, Burberry leather trainers with white Calvin Klein socks, and his hair combed over rather than quiffed. Among his accessories were two thin leather bracelets worn on his right wrist - one from his mother's shop, the other a gift from his girlfriend he's worn regularly for almost a year. He also wears a blue Fitbit of the Charge HR line on his left wrist, and a chrome heart necklace with a cross on the end, itself a gift from his father.
Biography: Gaelan was born to Keeley Meloy, the daughter of wealthy socialites based in Philadelphia, and Adam Kostic, the son of a rich Montenegrin family also based in Philadelphia. The two met when they were only teenagers, and quickly struck up a close physical relationship, one that resulted in Keeley becoming pregnant at 17 years old. Her family insisted on giving up the baby for adoption in order to preserve her future, but Keeley similarly insisted on raising the baby with Adam, due to her strong growing attachment to him in her later months of pregnancy. This led to many fights throughout the pregnancy, and eventually she and her parents had such a bad falling out that, even though she was seven months pregnant at the time and still attending high school, they demanded she leave their house. Keeley lived with Adam's family for the next few years - his parents were fond of her, and were close with Keeley's family, but that came with the caveat that even though she wanted nothing to do her parents, she would regularly see them whenever the Kostic family hosted parties or gatherings. It eventually reached the point where even being in the same city as her family was too much for her to handle, and Keeley made plans to leave Philadelphia - there was nothing else there for her, as even though she she finished high school, she failed to attain a scholarship or acceptance to any of the universities she sent in applications for. She wanted Adam to come with her, but he was heading to the University of Pennsylvania after a gap year and, as much as he was fond of Keeley, couldn't give up his life for her. Feeling betrayed, she bought the next available bus ticket heading out of the city, and with nothing but her son, all the money she'd managed to scrounge and save at short notice, and a suitcase of luggage on her person, kept travelling until she was as far away from her parents, Adam, and Philadelphia as she could manage.
She eventually ended up in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she spent several nights burning through what remained of her savings by having to stay in motels in order to not sleep on the streets. She lucked into finding employment at a locally owned 4.5-star hotel; working as a maid, paid by cash, and finding residence at a nearby trailer park, sharing with a fellow employee, which is where she and her son lived for the next few years. While Keeley had never had a job before, and in fact the entire enterprise of moving away from her entire life and all the comforts she'd ever known was the biggest shock she'd ever faced, the very real threat of homelessness for her and her son meant she was a quick learner, and after two years on the job she ended up the head housekeeper of the hotel due to a combination of several staff members quitting, and her burgeoning management skills, resourcefulness, and ability to work and lead a group.
Gaelan's early childhood was an otherwise uneventful one - he only has vague recollections of Philadelphia, while he has strong memories of the years growing up in the trailer park, playing with the other children and being looked after by various other trustworthy parents of the park, sometimes including Keeley's fellow employee on the few days she had off. He was an inquisitive child, always exploring under supervision the various nooks and crannies of the area in and around the park, as well as the nearby children's park. The only thing he really missed was his mom, who worked such long hours that she would only really see him when she got up in the morning to drop him at another parents' home, and when she got home from work at night. They would make the most of that time together, though, even if it amounted to not even more than fourteen hours a week.
By the time Gaelan was due to reach preschool, the hotel Keeley worked at had begun to branch out in locations all across Tennessee, including Memphis and Chattanooga. Their newest branch in Chattanooga was looking for already experienced staff to transfer there and quickly teach and manage the newly starting staff, and Keeley jumped at the opportunity to do so - despite having made a few friends there, she was not particularly fond of Clarksville. Keeley used the opportunity between her acceptance and her first day at work in Chattanooga to travel to her new city and hunt for houses and apartments, and she managed to find and secure a cheap but run-down two-person apartment adjacent to the city centre and similarly close to her new workplace. Within days, Keeley and Gaelan had moved to Chattanooga.
Despite the difficulty in sending Gaelan to pre-school, both financially and in finding a carer for him afterwards while she was at work, Keeley was determined not to let Gaelan fall behind in life because of her own mistakes. As such, Gaelan thoroughly enjoyed pre-school, playing and making friends with other children and learning all new things, which would set the stage for how he approached his life. While he always wanted to hang out with his new friends, Keeley would always manage to fanangle it so that it happened at the other child's house, as she was ashamed of showing off her and her son's living conditions to the other parents, something Gaelan eventual came to take notice of and become self-conscious towards. Even as Keeley's position at her work improved and she could afford to fix up and redecorate the apartment, the shame still lingered and it became a habit not to have people over unless they were extremely good friends of either Keeley's or Gaelan's.
Gaelan was initially a rather sporty child, playing many sports on the playground and enjoying the rush of it all. His two favourite sports were basketball and soccer, sports that he was initially rather good at after much practice - he tried out as many positions as possible in each sport, wanting to be good at all of them. However, when he was ten years old, he suffered a bad fall during a basketball game which saw him painfully dislocate his shoulder. While he was given the appropriate aid, the pain caused through the dislocation gave him a temporary aversion to playing sports and being active, as he became self-conscious that he would injure himself just as badly again. While he initially got over his fear, by the time he had, he lost his passion for the sports and never seriously tried out for them again.
Gaelan's life through to middle school was an otherwise uneventful one - he picked up a few fun hobbies here and there such as bug-collecting, a brief interest in cooking, an even briefer one in learning to play the guitar, but these were all extremely brief and ended well within a year. Due to being a sociable and likeable child, he found a group of popular friends he became a part of, including his best friend for most of his childhood Ivy Langley, and the only real noticeable development was Gaelan becoming increasingly defensive towards his own relative poverty, poverty which Gaelan throughout his childhood had accepted it would be unlikely he would escape from, and eventually transfering that into a dislike of rich people. In his mind, his mother worked harder and was kinder and nicer than anyone he'd ever known, yet they still lived barely above the poverty line, so for rich people the opposite had to be true - they had to be lazy and cruel. The only thing that challenged his view on this was getting to know Ivy's life, being at her house and finding out exactly just how rich she was - it gave Gaelan pause, made him question his own views, because how could one of his friends be a bad person? He began to lessen his stance, at least until several significant events happened in his teenage years.
When he was twelve years old, Gaelan came home from school one day to find his mother having coffee with a man he'd never met. While not surprised, the man greeted Gaelan like he knew him, and Keeley eventually introduced him as Gaelan's father, Adam. Back in Philadelphia, Adam had finished a Masters in Business at the University of Pennsylvania, although he was having trouble committing to employment and instead decided on a second Gap Year on his parent's money, using the opportunity to track down Keeley and find out if she was doing okay. For the next few months, Adam was back in Gaelan's life as a father figure he never had, although he tended to act more like a generous uncle, buying Gaelan new games and clothes on a whim or even taking him and his now-girlfriend Ivy out on their dates to the movies, things which showed off the money and wealth Adam owned (or at the very least, his parents owned). While Keeley had since moved up from housekeeping to becoming the junior manager of the hotel she worked at, and thus had more time to spend with her family, she began to resent Adam for making being a parent look easy and fun.
When Gaelan was at school one day, Keeley and Adam had a major fight regarding how, in her mind, he abandoned her with a baby she had to raise himself and was now swooping in to reap the benefits of parenthood despite never having been there for Gaelan's entire life. Despite missing several key parts of the story, like how it was Keeley herself who abandoned Adam and Philadelphia, it reached the point that Adam ended up leaving in anger for good by the time Gaelan returned home from school that day, upon which a tearful Keeley ended up spinning their situation in a way that made Adam seem yet again like the bad guy. This began to affect Gaelan, as he'd grown very attached to his father, and it eventually re-ignited his worldview on rich people - that they were cruel, craven, and morally corrupt, and it reached the point that he had a massive falling out with his girlfriend Ivy, ostensibly due to her issues surrounding the ignorance of her own privilege but actually due to his own issues around wealth and richness cementing themselves as his worldview, and Ivy being in his life conflicting with that. Over the next few weeks, Gaelan would end up leaving their entire group of friends, and told himself to never distrust his first impressions again.
Having burned his bridges with his original group of friends, Gaelan worked towards making new ones throughout the rest of his schooling days that did not resemble his old ones in any way. Still being rather sociable, Gaelan managed to surround himself with a rather eclectic group of people with a variety of interests that had little to no similarity to those held by his old friends, and they became some of the closest people in his life, sticking together through thick and thin. While being popular reaped social and material benefits for Gaelan, his new group gave him more personal fulfillment, bouncing him back from the doubt in his mind upon abandoning his original friends and convincing him he'd done the right thing - these people ended up being some of the closest in his life, and he often drops what he's doing in order to help them out, regardless of circumstance.
In order to mentally distance himself from the years he spent with his old friends, Gaelan started to reintroduce himself to some of the old hobbies and habits he picked up before them. While bug-collecting, soccer, basketball, and playing the guitar were no longer things he felt much passion for, if any at all, he found real relaxation in cooking. While he tended to shy away from complex recipes, as they often had ingredients he would only use once and had nor the time to track them down nor the money to splurge on, he would often master a recipe, then start experimenting with that recipe to find what would fit. As long as he didn't experiment too wildly, making his own meals would always be better and tastier than take-out, or frozen meals prepared in five minutes or less. He also started jogging early in the morning, mostly out of a desire to stay fit and active without actively participating in a sport he knew he'd still hold some aversion to.
As he started getting older, Gaelan started to think more about what he was going to do when he became an adult. While a lifetime living in near poverty had made him resign himself to following in that same pattern, his mother's rise to becoming one of the managers of the hotel she used to change sheets and clean toilets for gave him hope he never had before - he started looking at office jobs and positions in management not as far-off dreams, but opportunities that were available to him, even if he wasn't the type to consider working in an office for the rest of his life thanks to his upbringing. What gave him even more hope happened one day when he was hanging out with his friends at the mall when he was fifteen, and he was approached by a man claiming to be scouting for a modelling agency. While initially laughing him off and becoming subject to ribbing amongst his friends for the rest of the day, Gaelan's curiosity was piqued and he started doing research - the man apparently did represent a reputable modelling agency in Chattanooga, and wasn't some sort of scam artist, or a prank pulled by a friend or enemy.
Over the next few weeks, he started looking for a decent photographer who would take his photos well for the cheapest price, and eventually built up the tiny beginnings of a portfolio that he eventually compiled and brought with him when he visited the agency for the first time. While his looks and poses left something to be desired, the agency saw potential in him, and the only reason Gaelan didn't sign himself to the agency then and there was some alarming things he read in the contract, most of which referenced ownership of Gaelan's image, something which he wasn't ready to give up or relinquish control of yet. He elected to try a more freelance route to becoming a model, one which involved more freedom and control over his image at the expense of not getting as many jobs or shoots. The whole process was worrying to Keeley, as she was concerned what such an image-based industry would do to Gaelan and what he would end up involved in without her there. Gaelan sated her worries by proving to her that he'd done research on the industry and the risks involved, such as drug use, unhealthy eating habits, and all the general risks involved with visiting sets and locations with complete strangers, swearing on his life to her to reduce these risks to himself whenever possible. While he didn't initially expect for himself to become a world famous model overnight, opportunities didn't exactly come jumping out to him, having miscalculated the opportunities available to him in Chattanooga as a male model.
In order to increase his portfolio beyond the opportunities given to him by his own efforts, he started attending open casting calls for models in his age group and sometimes beyond, often held in Nashville or even further. While he was more often than not rejected, he took rejections as the opportunity to learn that they were, and often started to emulate and crib from his modeling competition, stealing poses and stances to incorporate into his own looks. The jobs and shoots he did achieve at first barely even covered the cost of gas to and from the city. However, Gaelan still took every shoot as the opportunity it was and keeps his best work at the forefront of his modelling portfolio. As he got older, the opportunities started appearing more frequently, and as such he had a little more money to spend on himself - while he was more inclined to spend money on necessities for himself or his mother, sometimes even a night out at a restaurant. Gaelan often bought himself quality designer clothing items, either buying items he liked wearing as he modeled or buying items that completed sets he earned as payment through his modeling gigs. Gaelan's time as a model gave him an eye and a taste for good fashion, and though he would obviously sometimes model clothing he could never afford, it was more often than not clothing he never liked in the first place - he liked simple, more elegant streetwear he could wear for multiple occasions, rather than anything ultra-specific.
It was also at this time that Gaelan started to aggressively brand himself online. While not the owner of his own website, he did, however, transform his Instagram account into something carefully curated, forcefully marketed and categorized. He posts selfies or portfolio excerpts to his account every day, and includes the most important hashtags of the moment in order to reach as far as possible . The first time one of his photos reached over a thousand "likes" felt like one of the greatest accomplishments of his life. Compared to most people at his school, Gaelan is practically famous on Instagram, although he still only has slightly less than 6.5 thousand followers. He is also never one to leave out carefully chosen exerpts of his personal life - he posts pictures of himself with his girlfriend of the moment as regularly as he does pictures of himself, although he makes sure he does not reach the point of overdoing it.
Gaelan also felt the need to keep himself in shape as he moved further into high school. While he was very much into sports when he was younger, he still felt a slight aversion to the practice due to the somewhat irrational fear of dislocating his shoulder again, and instead kept himself fit by attending the gym at least three times a week, although he has had days where he felt a twinge in his shoulder and skipped working on his upper body that day out of misguided safety. For the sake of what he hoped was a future career, he never made himself put on a heap of muscle, instead opting to tone himself and keep off excess body fat. He also began to meticulously calculate and track his calorie and macronutrient intake, often meal prepping for an entire week in order to get the right amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates, give or take a light cheat day or two. This was more often than not overdoing it, however - as a result of his learning to cook and understanding food from a younger age, Gaelan could whip up something tasty as well as nutritious off the top of his head without too much prompting or research.
Gaelan's early pubescence and the feelings contained within felt more like he was fulfilling a role that was expected of him rather than something that felt natural. He liked his first girlfriend Ivy, but their ascension to dating was rather quick in his eyes, even if it was enjoyable for the time it lasted. After their explosive and painful breakup, Gaelan did not date anyone for several years, leading to many rumours about him being gay, which he was quick to quell in a young panic. Once he started modelling, however, he found a confidence in him that had been dashed since his time with Ivy, and began dating and becoming items with several of his classmates again. However, despite his looks and confidence, many of these dates ended badly due to the girls he was seeing writing him off as shallow, not helped by his modelling being well known amongst his peer group, thus swamping him with the stereotypes associated with the profession. This eventually became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as while Gaelan did not consider himself to be shallow, the girls he started dating and becoming items with in response were as surface level as one could reach - attractive, but not particularly deep thinking or critical, and as such wouldn't accuse Gaelan of being shallow. Although he sought deeper relationships with girls, he was afraid of being criticized for the way he acted around them, and so he always pursued girls who wouldn't criticize him for acting that way, which in turn made him believe he was actually acting that way, and thus ended up blaming the girls he dated for it, a cycle which would not be broken for many years.
In stark contrast to his branding of himself, however, Gaelan was not someone who wanted to be loved or adored by everyone - he just wanted to be understood. Ever since he broke ties with his old friends, he worked hard to make sure he was not only friends to those who he felt needed friends, but also friends who would support and surround him for who he was, as he greatly felt after his old friend group fell apart he wasn't worthy of it. However, moving into his senior year, he eventually found and began a relationship with a girl who managed to see past his problems and understood and liked him for who he was. This was the longest relationship Gaelan had ever been in, a relationship that lasted until all the way through to the end of his senior year.
By the end of Gaelan's sophmore year of high school, Keeley was becoming unfulfilled with her position at the hotel - after 13 years of working there, she decided she wanted to run her own business, and began looking into options for owning her own boutique in the city centre. However, several days of research told her that it was unlikely such a venture would get far off the ground in Chattanooga, so she instead looked into something similar - an alternative clothing store, selling mostly items of clothing and accessories aimed at various subcultures like hippies and goths, or at least those who wanted to look like them. Her main plan was to cater mainly to demographics of Gaelan's age and slightly older, as many people in Gaelan's year tended to live on the middle class side of the socioeconomic divide, with lots of free spending money. It took almost a year of saving to safely afford the base costs for starting up her own retail business, but by the time Gaelan reached the end of his junior year, Keeley's shop was open for business. The first few months were rough, and there were times where it didn't look like the store would break even, but word of mouth soon spread and Keeley started to make substantial profit.
As he went through high school, Gaelan began to notice that Ivy was positioning herself in direct social opposition to him, often spreading rumours and gossip about himself or any number of his friends. The rumours were rarely completely factual, but they were always cruel and mocking. Gaelan could handle anything Ivy spread about himself, mostly due to the fact he had nothing to hide and most of his life was completely open, but he would not abide by rumours spread about his friends. As such, Gaelan would often resort to similar tactics used by Ivy. Gaelan was not a fan of it, and often found it completely contrary to how he saw and presented himself, but as his friends were often the victim of Ivy's gossip, he felt the need to stand up for them in a manner that nobody else would, even if they were perfectly capable of doing so for themselves. This, along with his general feud with Ivy and by extension her large group of friends, has earned Gaelan many enemies at George Hunter High.
As such, Gaelan is often a social enigma at his school - he has all the makings and capabilities to become one of the most popular kids there, but all his friends run contrary to this. He is friendly, sociable, and welcoming to anyone new he meets at first, although he has grown to become distrusting of anyone he knows to be friends or acquaintances with Ivy, as well as anyone known to be much richer than the average high school student, which can often result in Gaelan first seeming welcoming, but then becoming closed off and distant. To his friends, Gaelan is one of the best friends one could ask for, but getting on his bad side is often an exhausting struggle in social politics.
Gaelan generally does okay as far as his academics are concerned - many of his senior year subjects are geared towards allowing him to transition into attending the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga with ease, which is where he intends on pursuing a degree at their business school. Inspired by his mother, he is hoping to study towards achieving a Bachelors in Business Management. Keeley eventually became the senior manager of the hotel she worked for, and Gaelan is hoping that, while his current dream is to become a driven and successful model, he can achieve just as much success in the same line of work as his mother should something happen to his initial goal. Gaelan's relationship with his mother remains close - while not the world's best son, he does his best to make her proud, while Keeley herself is proud she created a life to raise her son comfortably in.
Advantages: Gaelan is bigger, taller and fitter than most of his classmates, which puts him at an immediate advantage. HIs years of social networking and working on his charm mean that while he is far from the most influential person at his school, his social skills may still earn him some currency in an otherwise lawless place . He is skilled at working his way into friendships, defusing tensions, or talking people down from decisions they may regret, which while not infallible, could get him very far.
Disadvantages: Gaelan is often ruled by his first impressions of people, and it is very difficult to change his mind when it is set. This means that he could very easily turn away someone otherwise valuable to himself and his survival just because he didn't like them off the island, or if their name came up on the island in any sort of bad context, such as the announcements. In his time at George Hunter High, Gaelan has intentionally and unintentionally made various enemies, which can very easily come back to haunt him in a situation like SOTF. On the flipside, Gaelan also has a tendency to put his friends needs above his own, which could easily work contrary to his own survival on the island if he groups up with these friends, or anyone he comes particularly close to.