Name: Bryce Danner
Gender: Male
Age: 27
Appearance: Younger than he looks, his thin glasses cover green eyes and slightly colored skin, topped off by an underwhelming mass of dark brown hair covering his ears and flopping down onto the back of his head in a straight-yet-messy manner. He has a well sized nose and is about 6' 2", or quite a bit over the Japanese average height. He usually grins- although he can pull the whole "straight face" off as well, and his ears are usually covered by his hair. He has a thin figure, which ruins what many people think a "Bryce" would look like. You'll often find him working with wires, but nowadays Bryce also deals in sculpting and pottery, and you'll sometimes find clay on his arms and his cheeks after he's done working.
He tends to wear whatever he was wearing around the house outside-- which is usually cargo pants and a plain t-shirt, with some splotches of clay depending on when he left the house and on what he was doing. Usually, this means pottery, and pottery tends to mean a mess; but it pays the bills at times, and it's something he enjoys. Unfortunately, pottery and electronics doesn't tend to make you look amazing, so while his skin is unblemished bar a small scar here and there, it's apparent that while he puts some time into hygiene, he doesn't put time in spiffing up-- although, given his hair which easily puts itself into a ponytail and his lack of facial hair, he doesn't find the need to. He sometimes carries around a rucksack, and these are filled with tools and clay due to the month. When you dig in deep enough, though, his electrical tools are easily located as well.
Personality: Bryce's cheerful and outspoken exterior are ever prevalent, but he's finding the seriousness which he's finally beginning to embrace. As a result, some of the silliness from his youth is gone [bar potato executions]; while he's still pretty happy-go-lucky, Bryce has become grounded in his methods. Among friends, Bryce is still happy, silly. He's willing to do things for the sake of having fun, even if he tends to have a bit more foresight than some of his friends on whether or not something will end well, or in disaster. Not only that, but he remains very idealistic; he's optimistic and stands up for what he thinks is right, but this also paints him as naive. He isn't necessarily naive, however, just a self-declared humanitarian. However, when focused, Bryce becomes colder, and less forgiving of people-- to the point where sometimes, he has to ask himself whether or not he's taken off a mask, or if he's putting one on. Either way, it gets his work done, and it gets him money. Slowly, but surely, he's become a person who finds "flow" and a need to work in a way that often produces productive and physical, tangible results, even if it calls for intense focus.
Bryce has an overwhelming appreciation and love for rice due to his childhood-- perhaps even a borderline obsession-- but this appreciation spread to take over his outlook on different foods, most notably potatoes. Over the course of his childhood, and on the odd day, Bryce will call for a "potato execution," which over time has become less of a charade and more of a stress reliever; while he still displays his eccentricity whenever he's performing them, it's become less about how much he hates potatoes, and more about all the different ways you could, in theory, torture a potato. And, also, blowing up potatoes. We do some of that too.
Otherwise, though, Bryce has one underlying factor-- a pursuit of his own goals. He will not stoop to any and all methods, but he has quite a bit of determination within him as well as self-confidence, and although he looks like and thinks himself to be a coward, he's actually a bit more headstrong and calm in a crisis than he thinks he is. However, in the face of things that are large insects about the size of his thumb, he loses his cool pretty quickly. He's also quite capable physically-- not equipped to knock anyone out anything less than a large wrench, but enough for him to move from place to place quickly. He's also not very prone to anger, but when he does get angry he usually immediately goes to cool off by doing something else, like video games or performing potato execution. Left unchecked, however, it used to fizzle out; nowadays, it tends to move him to a much colder and meticulous method of thinking and strategizing.
Starting Location: North
Talents: Bryce's most useful talent tends to be not just his knowledge of electricity, but his knack for strategy which occasionally shines through. He's also quite nimble, dexterous, and has a good aim, and, clearly, he's got a knack for creative thinking, tinkering, and pottery.
History: Bryce lived with both parents in a normal home in a normal town in an equally normal place; perhaps, then, that's why the things he remembers most about his childhood are his days spent at home.
Bryce's father was a potter. He worked simply and meagerly to support his family at a large department store, sure. He tried to salvage computers that he didn't understand at first, sure. But first and foremost, he was a potter, his wife showing off the work he did around the house and celebrating his work. This, however, didn't matter to Bryce's father, and eventually it wouldn't matter to Bryce once he first sat on the potter's wheel. He was about eight, and he'd only heard his father working away at it late nights, not understanding the sort of passion it took to devote so much time to a craft until he put his hands on the clay. And even then, Bryce met the practice with distaste, only looking away in favor of dismantling computers and connecting wires with the money he gained from mowing lawns.
Eventually, however, Bryce sat down with his father and observed his work and the intricacies of it. Even further down the line, Bryce began to put his own fingers onto the clay, to mold the clay; further down the line, Bryce began to understand what his father meant by a passion.
And so it began. As a kid, Bryce had displayed many signs of what seemed to be extraversion and a want to be outgoing, but the older he grew the more he messed around with old, salvaged computers and little robotics kits that he saved up all of his money to buy. When his father first got his hands off the wheel and worked longer hours, Bryce began to experiment on his own; by looking at books scattered around the makeshift garage studio, Bryce got a rough idea of what he was supposed to do. Perhaps his motivation came from the idea of the rice that his mom placed in the pots in the back of their household. Perhaps his motivation came from the idea of simply doing something new as a kid who didn't have access to much else besides the things he saved all his money for. Perhaps his motivation was simply that-- an intrinsic motivation that was simply there, regardless of whether or not he had an actual interest in the craft. Regardless, as Bryce grew, he received input from his father, and quickly began to exhibit a passion for two areas-- ceramics and electronics.
The tinkerer he started out as, however, prevailed. And so, he entered a vocational high school studying electronics, while ceramics stayed a side hobby. Halfway through it, though, he'd move to Japan with his parents after his father lost his job. This only made him even more fluent in Japanese, and when he moved out of the suburbs and into Tokyo after making it out of high school alive, he established a small electronics repair business. Eventually, he bought his own potter's wheel, and began to not just little gadgets here and there but also pottery that he'd make in his spare time. At around the age of twenty-one, Bryce's little gadgets really started to hit it off, and he went from the occasional two hours of spare time in a weekday to a little of it on any given day, due to higher demand and more time dedicated to selling gadgets and making them efficiently. At this point, however, he began to exhibit a part of his personality he didn't even know he had within him-- an intense focus which brought out a colder side of himself that he was disturbed by because he
wasn't disturbed by it, so to speak.
Eventually, business began to slow down again, but Bryce had made a big enough profit to not worry about it and take more time off. At this, he began to focus more on pottery, and quickly improved the craft which he'd only worked on on the side. Within a few years, he was working small-time exhibitions and was making enough sales to coast on. So, he devised a plan-- spend six months of each year working on gadgets, and spend the other six focusing purely on ceramics, alternating between them-- so ceramics and gadgets, every other month.
At the beginning of the Sekirei plan, he's in a month of ceramics-- laid back and often out for a walk.
Other:
- Scary good at Melee, but nowhere near pro good. Otherwise, Bryce has a decent understanding of games and has a large library [thanks, Steam].
- His distaste for potatoes has partially to do with the fact that they cost less. Usually, this means that there'd be an affinity for them, but potatoes often signified that things were going wrong at the Danner house-- even if no one wanted to admit it. No one really liked, or likes, potatoes anyway. ...Right?
- Let's be clear, okay? He's a happy guy. Happy guy.
- He lives pretty comfortably nowadays. He's made enough to support himself and hefty expenses, and his gadgets and pottery have attracted the eyes of important people before, allowing him to have connections that aren't too usual for the average person his age. He's also been able to attend events that most people his age haven't. It's likely that he's heard Fia before as a result.
- His parents live out in the country, and continue to prefer to live there.
- While he's strategically adept, leave him with too much time to make a very important decision and Bryce will often be pretty indecisive up to the point at which the strategy needs to be implemented.
- He has, and will, put up flyers concerning how terrible potatoes are and how much better rice is. He will never stop.
