#assemble

How do: You put your gender, sexuality, and romantic attraction down with a line break between them—but, here's the catch, don't use any labels! So, for example, this, "Gender? Agender Sexuality? Lesbian Romantic Attraction? Demiromantic" would be this: "Gender? I hardly know 'er! Sexuality? Girl-kisser Romantic Attraction? My friends, I think"

So, here's mine!

Gender? Yours, fool Sexuality? Yes Romantic Attraction? Only if I know you well enough

TAGS (under the cut, and don't feel obligated to do it!) (and obviously those who I have not tagged can participate too)

Solid state memory .

lol no i forgot to

wigs, assemble. im gonna talk about your boy.

for all intents and purposes, i am not deaf nor hard of hearing nor a specialist, i will try and do my best to portray these things in an accurate way but i am not perfect. clock me.

ludwig has unilateral hearing loss, single sided deafness. complete hearing loss in one ear and partial in the other, and its been progressing over several years. its not congenital, it was caused by an injury in his childhood. he lost all his hearing in his left ear in the event, and his right declined over time. he can hear okay out of his right ear, about moderate hearing loss. he does okay because his familys loud as fuck but he has difficulty in loud group environments or at events without aids. id say it happened when he was about 10 (hes 25 now), so its been happening for a while and hes had different hearing assists for years. hes used to it. just doesnt particularly like talking about it. ludwigs very closed off about his past, hes had a lot more of a life than the others before bowser and even before each other, and it feels too private to share. he wants to keep it to himself. ludwigs not great at opening up and being candid about his life and his feelings and anything that he deems unprofessional. he considers himself more of an authority figure than a peer. this doesnt go down very well but thats a discussion for another day.

so what happened?

he. doesnt really remember.

ive been thinking about ludwigs backstory and its hard to nail down, theres a lot of ways my ideas can go. i dabbled with the idea of cptsd or ptsd ludwig but im not sure whether i want to stick with it. i will have to develop that more. im leaning more ptsd. but i will work on it.

anyway

ludwigs from sky land. where do airships fight? the sky. who gets caught in the crossfire? skylanders. ill give them a proper name at some point skylanders is just the little dragon toys in my mind. not relevant. fifteen years ago there was a helluva lot more turmoil between the mushroom kingdom and the koopa kingdom, im working on my lore but this is what we're going with, peachs dad was in power and he was a bit of an irresponsible twat. shes still cleaning up after his mistakes. skyland lies on the border of the darklands and the mushroom kingdom, in the clouds, where it should be peaceful. unfortunately during this period it was. Not. at all. sky land got caught in a lot of the crossfire and the mushroom kingdom overcompensating for their smaller airforce by being reckless to send a message.

what am i getting at here? the point. uh. ludwig lost his home and his family to stray and reckless cannonfire from the mushroom kingdom airforce. and i imagine a lot of other skylanders did too. its blurry when he thinks back to it, and he pushes it down. he feels very disconnected from the memories. he doesnt dwell on it. its fuzzy and fragmented and he doesnt want to go back to that time in any capacity. the cannonfire, as most cannonfire tends to be, was loud as Fuck and a very close impact. acoustic trauma, or inner ear damage caused by too loud sounds, can damage the delicate little hairs on the cochlea that convert sound to signals- and these dont really regenerate, resulting in hearing loss. completely in his left ear, partially in his right- the decline over time influenced by his already damaged hair cells being subjected to similar trauma over time as part of his job with bowser. those airship battles are Loud.

not directly relevant but i think it ties into why ludwigs. here. with bowser, working for him, willing to accept him as a paternal figure in the wake of the loss of his own. hes fucking pissed at the mushroom kingdom and whilst he has the emotional capacity and skills to understand that peach is Very different from her father, ten year old ludwig who was seeking out help/revenge and thirteen year old ludwig who was presented with the opportunity to get both of those things, did not.

i wanted to touch on what hearing aids he has, just for anybody who gaf. hes had a cochlear implant in his left ear since bowser acquired the guy and realised oh shit. this mf cant hear. as his hearings declined in his right hear hes gotten a hearing aid for it to sorta balance out the difference between the two ears. binaural hearing (when both ears work together rather than just one, facilitated in his case by dual use of the hearing aid and the cochlear rather than just the cochlear) can help with locating a sound and improving sound quality compared to just a cochlear- apparently cochlear implants arent so good at pitch and fine-grained audio information. paraphrasing, im not an audiologist and i dont think you come here for the research side of things. im sorry im a scientist i have to do this. he probably got the hearing aid a few years ago, maybe when he was about 20. he doesnt mind the aids much, he appreciates the restoration of the majority of his hearing abilities that they facilitate and he feels like his experiences give him a new appreciation and understanding of music and a new take on how he interprets the pieces he plays and writes. however it was a big adjustment, especially due to his age, and there are complications that can arise with the implants. hes gotten used to it with time but the frustrations linger.

ludwig also knows sign language, he taught himself using a few stolen library books and took more formal classes as a teenager to build on his skills. hes taught larry and his other siblings bits and pieces of useful words and phrases. its come in handy over the years, larry deals with a lot of anxiety induced selective mutism. its improved with time but back in the day the sign language was definitely a useful tool to bridge that communication gap.

anyway im more known for being silly than my lacklustre worldbuilding skills so i hope this wasnt too unbearable a read and made at least a little bit of sense

thank you for your question i love talking about the little character details i throw in and forget to explain, if yall have any more questions i am happy to answer them. i love talking about medical hcs, i try my best to do them accurately. i am NOT a doctor. nursing school didnt want my stupid ass. but i AM passionate. im like mike wazowski in monsters university.

uhm…

ma’am…….