[cisgender male, he/him] Welcome to Aurora Bay, [CONRAD FORREST]! I couldn’t help but notice you look an awful lot like [JAKE GYLLENHAAL]. You must be the [FORTY-ONE] year old [HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHER]. Word is you’re [EASYGOING] but can also be a bit [DEFENSIVE] and your favorite song is [“LOVE LOVE LOVE” BY THE MOUNTAIN GOATS]. I also heard you’ll be staying in [OCEAN CREST APARTMENTS]. I’m sure you’ll love it!
A T A G L A N C E
Full name: Conrad Forrest Date of birth: 22nd of March, 1985 (41 years old) Gender: Male (he/him pronouns) Location: Ocean Crest Apartments Occupation: English Teacher at Aurora Bay High School Relationship status: Single Time in Aurora Bay: 2 1/2 years (since August 2022, however grew up there from birth to age 18) Faceclaim: Jake Gyllenhaal
B I O G R A P H Y
Conrad, these days, lives a life of simplicity. His apartment was small, yet cozy. His free time was filled with quiet hobbies; games of chess, puzzles, trying desperately to teach himself to book more than burnt toast. He enjoyed the peace, he enjoyed the silence, and he certainly didn’t miss a single thing about where he had been before.
Conrad was born in Aurora Bay on the 22nd of March, 1983, and from the very start of it all, he had been eccentric. Or, at least, his family had been. Creativity was encouraged, with his parents pushing him and his siblings towards any form of art that called to them. As a child, he had spent hours creating stop-motion, hand-written movies with his siblings, or crafting props or costumes for their impromptu performances, or painting animals on the walls of their small home. Looking back, Conrad supposed that it was there that he had first fallen in love with writing and storytelling.
At school Conrad was known for being intelligent, but always seeming to have his head in the clouds rather than in the present. It seemed his mind was always in the future, planning for a life that everyone was certain he would achieve one day. His teachers always told him that he could be something brilliant if he applied himself — but he struggled to apply himself. If it wasn’t creative, he wasn’t interested — and if he wasn’t interested, he struggled to work at it.
It was his English teacher that first picked up on that. She noticed how, when allowed to let his mind run, the grades that Conrad would earn were vastly greater than the ones he would get when told to do something formulaic — and, with him, she worked to find ways to help him achieve his real potential.
And it worked. With her help, Conrad was able to perform well and earn the grades that everyone had known he was capable of — and with those grades, he was able to get into a good college.
It was never a question, what he was going to study.
After completing a degree in English Literature, Conrad moved away to finally pursue his dreams of screenwriting. At twenty-one, he was full of hope and confidence that this world was designed just for him, that his stories were ones that Hollywood would be begging to produce. For a while, things went well — he networked, started developing a portfolio, worked on some short films… He got married. He tried to build a life.
Yet the years passed by, and the shining career he had thought his writing would bring him to never came to be. Slowly but surely, he found himself becoming disillusioned with it all, and gradually falling out of love with the very thing that had driven him there in the first place. Worse, his marriage began to break down, and before Conrad knew it, there he was — out of love, out of work, and alone.
At thirty-five, he believed most people had their lives together. They had careers. Families. Lives. How had Conrad ended up without all of those things?
So, he started again.
And to do that, he decided to go back to where it all began.
He got his teaching license, and began working as a student teacher. He passed his exams. He moved home, and applied to work at the school that had first encouraged him to chase his dreams.
Moving back home after failing to realise those dreams of his was never going to be easy, and Conrad felt his embarrassment of the whole situation every time he went back to the places he had hung out as a child. Still, if he were to rebuild his life, he needed to start somewhere — and what better place than going right back to the start?
Besides, if nothing else worked out for him, at least — at least — he could try to be the one that encouraged a kid’s dreams, just like his old English teacher was for him.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Positive: Conrad prides himself on being quite easygoing and difficult to annoy. He works hard, tries to do his best, and wants nothing more than to encourage and inspire others. Despite everything, he still quietly has big dreams and enjoys being creative.
Negative: Conrad can be defensive when certain nerves are hit, and has become slightly jaded. He can also be unsociable and withdrawn, especially around people that he doesn’t know or people that he’s reuniting with for the first time.
O T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Conrad collects film continuity Polaroids! Despite how jaded he has become about the entertainment industry, he still loves hunting for photographs of old films being made.
Conrad cannot cook — but he’s desperate to learn, because there’s only so many times a guy can burn toast before he has to ask himself some serious questions.
Deep down, Conrad still loves writing — he just hasn’t quite had the motivation to do it for a long while.
Conrad is a fanatic for old movies with stop-motion in them. Movies like ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and ‘Clash of the Titans’ are a real guilty pleasure of his.
C O N N E C T I O N I D E A S
Coworkers/fellow teachers
Game night friends! Conrad loves a board game night or pub quiz, and it’s be great to have some friends with similar interests
Friends from his years as a screenwriter
People from his original time in Aurora Bay — this can be positive or negative given that he suddenly left and didn’t look back for twenty years, and is now back in town
Book club friends/friends interested in literature in general
Writing buddies :)
Anything goes — if you have a connection idea in mind give me a shout!
@aurorabayaesthetic
