Name: Bryan Krause
Age: 28 (As of IC Date)
Hometown: Watertown, Connecticut, USA
Current Location: Riding the MetroNorth from New Haven, CT, to New York City
Appearance:
Height: 6’
Weight: 210lbs
Build: A bit more fatty than he’d care to be, but generally healthy.
Markings: Has a tattoo on the underside of his right forarm that reads “Until the finish line carries you home.”
Bryan can be… a bit jarring…
He was raised to believe in certain standards of excellence, and in always being able to raise the bar on those standards; yesterday’s best can only be today’s worst, and today’s best can only be tomorrow’s worst. To an extent, he takes this sort of mantra more seriously than necessary, and finds himself in difficulty when it comes to coping with times when he hits barriers or experiences limitations in the progress he is able to make. It’s frequent that he finds himself gravely discouraged in moments in which forward momentum is lost.
Firmly a believer reaching one’s potential, he extends that manner of thinking when he considers his peers and his environments. Having seen the best in himself, he strives to display his best self to others. Upon seeing the best in others, he grows to expect the best from them. When he perceives himself, another individual, a group, or even a place, as not at least living up to their highest potential in a situation, frustration ensues on Bryan’s end, typically manifesting in what some regard as temper tantrums. It was this very mentality, and reactiveness that resulted in him leaving his previous day job.
All in all, Bryan is of a sort that can’t happily live knowing he didn’t put up an effort, and even more so, one that is driven in the face of anyone that would doubt his ability. Taking his failures and others’ reservations of him, both recent and distantly passed, as motivation to prove he’s better, he will, with little thought, go above and beyond to prove his worth, even to the extent of putting himself at risk.
Beyond this eccentricity, Bryan displays a genuinely invested and caring individual. Whether it’s care for a person, or care about a task, there’s little room in denying that he is devoted. Even in the moments when he asserts that he ‘doesn’t care anymore,’ this divestment is in word only, and extant on the surface, and only for a brief moment. He’s tender with those that he knows to be struggling, as he understands, from his own experience, what it’s like to be in a rough place, and the importance of having a friend to lean on. Though he won’t allow himself to lie for the sake of sparing a friend’s feelings, he’ll always be one to search for words of encouragement, and keeps his criticisms constructive.
Biography: Bryan’s history with Pokemon is a strained one. Over the course of his late teenage years he made efforts to become a trainer. With his parents’ permission, he began training at age sixteen with an Eevee, dubbed “Ev,” as his partner. In those younger days, his passion for Pokemon was something unbridled, and a burning force in his heart.
As he grew older, ‘real life’ always seemed to find a way to pull Bryan away from any serious push to become a trainer. Often one to play it safe, Bryan chose the ‘stable’ route of day jobs, and getting a college education, over going out into the world and investing into being a Pokemon trainer. While he showed some promise, his reservations with taking the risks involved frequently kept him from rising as far as he could. By age 28, his attempts to keep up with his Pokemon training and his day job brought him to the point of burnout.
Following in the wake of a particularly rough weekend tournament, in which he witnessed Ev, among the rest of his team, get dealt a particularly harsh defeat, Bryan saw reason to discontinue his efforts as a Pokemon trainer, and focus on work, and keep his Pokemon as companions.
It was a short lived existential crisis, however. The Monday morning after the tournament found him witness to a new inspiration. Realizing how far off his dreamed path he had fallen, and knowing more than before just how capable he truly was, he resolved to rekindle his passion for raising his Pokemon, and soon leave his day job to pursue life as a Pokemon trainer. But things always get worse before getting better; as much progress as he made, his time spent at work over the next year proved a constant drain and epicenter for frustration.
His resentment towards the life of a laborer, and towards not living to his own potential, boiled over recently in a spat with a manager, prompting Bryan to resign his position on the spot. Already prepared for the occasion with a packed backpack with the supplies and funds needed to kickstart his journey, he returned home, gathered what he needed, and caught the next train out of town.
Pokemon Team: Ev, the Eevee, Level 20- Quick Attack
- Bite
- Double Kick
- Headbutt
Ability: Adaptability
Kai, the Pidgey, Level 17- Gust
- Mud-Slap
- Quick Attack
- Wing Attack
Ability: Keen Eye
Raph, the Scraggy, Level 16- Headbutt
- Feint Attack
- Low Kick
- Sand Attack
Ability: Shed Skin
Fun Facts: There are three things in the world that Bryan finds unconditional fulfillment in: Pokemon, the great outdoors, and music. Among his belongings in his travels are a drum practice pad, a pair of sticks, and a set of panpipes, as well as having enough music on his mobile device to last him several hours without repeating a track (unless he backtracks to it).
Bryan has long aspired to travel the world. Though he's seen much of the United States and parts of Canada throughout his younger days, he longs to leave the North American continent. His first desired destination would be Australia.
