Post by LUDWIG BEILSCHMIDT on Jun 3, 2014 16:57:46 GMT -5
`LUDWIG BEILSCHMIDT!
`WELCOME TO YOUR LIFE, THERE'S NO TURNING BACK!
NICKNAMES Lud, Lutz,
AGE 16
GENDER Male
ETHNICITY German
TEACHER OR STUDENT Student
GRADE 5th year
SPECIAL ABILITY(s) Ludwig is inhumanely strong and tough. For instance, he can lift very heavy objects that would normally take a group of people to move (a car, for instance); he can bend steel, shatter rocks, and uproot trees (were he so destructively inclined). His augmented strength means that he can jump further, run longer, and punch harder than your average human. His strength can be scaled, which is something that he's developed very precise control of, so for instance, if he wants to do something that requires a delicate and precise hand (like piping frosting onto a cupcake in a perfect spiral or soldering a wire in place), Ludwig can operate like any other human. When he's not focused, his control suffers a bit: if he tripped while walking to bed, he'd probably punch a hole in the wall or floor. And speaking of tired, the wearier he is, the weaker his general abilities are. When he's at his best, however, he's unstoppable; as he's never pushed his abilities to the absolute limit, Ludwig doesn't know where his strength tops out.
Additionally, his abilities would be fairly useless if he weren't tougher than the average human as well. His body is more resistant to structural physical damage: you could throw him out a window from the third floor of a building and he'd walk away with bruises, scrapes, and sore everything -- but he'd walk away nonetheless. Ludwig isn't immune to injury, but damage that would sprain his muscles, break his bones, or knock him out would be dangerous or even fatal to anyone else.
HOW DID THEY FIGURE OUT? Ludwig was often a gentle, careful, and well-behaved child, so it was not immediately apparent that he had any unusual abilities, aside from having an extremely serious attitude for someone so young. However, the rough-housing that he and his older brother occasionally got into changed that. One day, he got in a scrap with Gilbert, and in anger, his older brother flung some coins at his head. Unhurt but extremely unhappy, Ludwig had shoved the other back and ended up sending him straight through the wall. Luckily, Gilbert's subconscious reflexes had shielded him with metal, so no damage was done to him (as opposed to the Beilschmidts' house, which had a nice new hole) but from that point on, Ludwig became more acutely aware of his abilities. It did take him a while to learn to control his strength better, and he half-suspects that Gilbert was eventually sent away to put a stop to all the property damage he and his brother had been accidentally causing.
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`EVEN WHILE WE SLEEP. WE WILL FIND YOU,
+ Order: Ludwig thrives on cleanliness, tidiness, and the absence of chaos. He's a very organized person, and keeps himself and his space neat. If something is out of place, he tends to stop what he's doing in order to fix it. This applies to other people as well; he's not above straightening out a shirt collar or organizing a bookshelf.
+ The outdoors: The fresh air and open space of the world outside has always appealed to him. He spent quite a lot of time playing outside as a child, climbing trees, rolling around in the grass, or just running pointlessly around, and learned to enjoy nature in most of its forms. He still likes to go outside for walks, exercise, or merely to clear his head.
+ Books: An avid reader since he was young, Ludwig is a huge bookworm. He loves any and all books, although he most enjoys reading fiction and books on things like philosophy, history, and science. However, he'll read anything he can get his hands on (including most instruction manuals). His is a known face at the library.
+ Dogs: Ludwig loves all animals, but dogs are his clear favorites. He finds them smart, loyal, sweet, and exceptionally fluffy. He misses the family dog and would like to get a dog of his own someday.
+ Beer: Having grown up with plenty of exposure to delicious beer, he can safely say it's one of his favorite drinks. Of course, the drinking laws he has to abide by while he's studying at Asher Academy frustrate him.
+ German food: While he is fairly open-minded when it comes to food, Ludwig's favorite cuisine will always be that of his home country. He's especially fond of dishes containing potatoes or würste (or both), as well as pastries and cakes, and lebkuchen in winter.
+ The ocean: Ludwig grew up inland of the coast, but took trips to the seaside with his family and has come to love the beaches, the salty air, and the ocean. He loves swimming, messing around in the waves, walking in the sand, grill parties, sand castles, and so on -- and he takes frequent advantage of the fact that his school is on an island.
+ Exercise: He goes for a jog every morning that he can, and spends time besides that working out in various ways. Keeping in shape is important to him, and being physically fit certainly helps his abilities, but he also just likes the challenge of exercise and the good feeling it can bring.
+ Tinkering: Ludwig believes that the best way to learn how something works is to take that something apart and put it back together, piece by piece. In his childhood, he applied this to machines to learn how things like radios and switches worked, with the result that he's pretty good at figuring out how and why something is broken, and doing his best to fix it.
+ Cars and motorcycles: Once he hit an appropriate age, he insisted on learning how to drive, and while he's an exceptionally safe driver, he's also a bit of a speed demon and loves to race around whenever he can. He also enjoys reading about the latest upgrades and changes to the engineering of vehicles, and in the same vein as his love of tinkering, he's trying to get his hand on his own car or bike to take it apart and put it back together.
+ Baking: Ludwig's secret hobby. He's a decent cook, but a very talented baker, and can make delicious cakes and breads. Baking, along with exercise, are his two favorite ways to relieve stress, and baking is more beneficial because everyone gets something tasty to eat as a result. Anyone who teases Ludwig about baking has clearly never tried something he's made.
LUDWIG DISLIKES
- Mess: Forget villains: Ludwig's arch enemy is grime. He can't stand messy things, and while this applies to both mental chaos (like poor planning) and physical mess (like someone tracking mud into his room), it's the latter that he's always compelled to clean up right away. He doesn't truly enjoy cleaning, but he prefers it to living in what he would consider squalor.
- Hot weather: He has nothing against summer in general, but Ludwig doesn't do well on hot, sunny days. He sunburns easily and suffers in the extreme heat; he much prefers spring or fall, cooler weather, or at the very least, clouds.
- Losing control: This doesn't refer to losing control of his abilities: that's a genuine fear of his. Rather, Ludwig dislikes not being in charge. He's a perfectionist in many ways and only when he's at the helm can he feel like he's doing a job properly. Naturally, being removed from this position frustrates him.
- Ignorance: There's simply no excuse for it, in a world filled with books and computers and planes to take you to new places. Ludwig believes that if you aren't actively trying to understand something, you clearly just don't care that much about understanding it in the first place. And he isn't fond of that type of attitude either.
- Failure: Ludwig hates disappointing people. He somewhat naively believes that every problem has a solution, and refuses to accept that perhaps there are issues he’s not capable of resolving with knowledge and perseverance. When he inevitably does fail at something, he tends to pin the blame solely on himself and his apparent lack of ability. Disappointing himself is hard, but disappointing other people makes him feel far worse, and he goes to great lengths to avoid that.
- Getting teased: There's certainly a lot he can be teased about, but what bothers Ludwig more is that he just has no idea how to respond to teasing, and he has trouble telling if someone is just being friendly (or flirty, even) or if they're actively making fun of him. Usually he reacts with irritation regardless, and then everyone gets in a bad mood.
- Stress: Operating with constant low-level anxiety, Ludwig tends to stress himself out rather easily over even the most mundane things. He's wound up incredibly tight and under stress, he tends to lose his temper more easily. He's even stressed himself out to the point of physical illness before, but aside from baking and cleaning and shedding some of his responsibility (a thing he'd never do), he doesn't have a good coping mechanism.
- Spicy Food: The food that he's used to is delicious, but seasoned relatively lightly. Spices like hot chili are an absolute no for him; even if he could taste the food through the burn, he'd be chugging water for the rest of the meal.
FEARS
x Hurting a loved one: With the ability he has, despite his excellent control, Ludwig fears the inevitable accident where he isn't paying the best attention or overreaches just the faintest amount and ends up wounding someone he cares about. He's convinced that this will eventually happen because even he can make mistakes and accidents do happen, and he quietly dreads that day.
x Thunderstorms: This is the fear that embarrasses him the most, given that he's a teenager. But when he was little, he got caught outside in a thunderstorm, and the deafening thunder and lightning and rain scared him half to death. He's harbored a fear of thunderstorms ever since and tries to keep himself away from windows when one is going on.
x Loneliness: Ludwig isn't the most socially adept person, and although he's trying his best, it's entirely clear to him that he's got many acquaintances but fewer friends. He desperately wants to fix this, but isn't really sure how, and is worried that eventually he'll be left on his own for good.
x Nightmares: Despite his stern veneer, the young man actually has quite an active imagination as well as a good memory. While both aspects have had their positive effects on him, unfortunately they've also bestowed him with some truly spectacular nightmares. Ludwig's less-than-perfect sleeping habits and eternal anxiety only exacerbate this problem, and he struggles to relax enough to fall asleep after an episode.
QUIRKS
~ Accent: Ludwig has a very faint accent when he speaks, but when he's fired up in some way, his accent becomes much more pronounced. He's a bit shy about speaking at times because he thinks he sounds stupid, and still feels the most comfortable speaking his native language.
~ Adornment: He wears an old iron cross medallion - a gift from his grandfather - on a chain around his neck, usually hidden under his shirt.
~ Music: He’s quite talented when it comes to music. He can play the piano and trumpet and can carry a tune very well.
~ Secrets: Ludwig keeps a stash of beer, German food, letters, and special magazines hidden under the floorboards of his dorm room.
~ Food: He occasionally sneaks leftovers out of the school to feed the local stray animals.
~ Escape: When he wants to be left alone, he’ll climb out his window to the roof of the school and sit up there for a while. As far as he knows, there's not a rule about not being on the roof.
OVERALL PERSONALITY
Ludwig comes off as someone fifteen years older than he actually is. Serious, hard-working, and responsible, he's an exceptional student who never gives less than one hundred percent effort on any task he's taken on. While his prioritizing of work and his intense respect for rules have gotten him labeled as a stick-in-the-mud, it can't be denied that Ludwig is absolutely reliable and can be counted on in a crisis. At the surface, however, aside from his industrious nature, Ludwig doesn't make a fantastic first impression: his unusual severity and frank manner of speaking give a distinct impression of unfriendliness, which couldn't be further from the truth: Ludwig isn't actually a mean person, but his outermost veneer seems perfectly tailored to broadcasting the exact opposite.
As he's not fond of small talk or time-wasting, Ludwig tends to be unabashedly frank. His fault lies in assuming that everyone else understands the world the way that he does, and at times he can't see how something he would say could come off as rude or unkind. Perhaps because of this, he prefers to observe and not do so much talking - unless he's been put in a position in charge. While he's a decent leader with his talents for patience, organization, responsibility, and finding individual strengths, he can also be quite bossy and strict. Ludwig does like to be in control of a situation, but he's a bit of a perfectionist and expects others to behave that way while under his guidance. This extends to Ludwig's respect for rules. He's a stickler for them, as long as they aren't beyond stupid or illogical. But because following rules is the Right Thing To Do, he's not above policing people that are breaking them, which hasn't earned him many friends.
The close friends that Ludwig does have know that there is a lot more depth to him than meets the eye. He's got a somewhat sarcastic and sharp sense of humor, is protective of anyone or anything less strong than he is, and is loyal to a fault to those people that he trusts. Around those select few, he's also far more open about his emotions: contrary to his usual visage, Ludwig is actually a normally emotional human being, but he hides it very well behind a wall of stoicism. In good company, he smiles and laughs with the rest of them, but he does struggle a little bit with expressing himself, and tends to react to any uncomfortable feeling - embarrassment, attraction, guilt, and so on - with irritation, making him very difficult to read. In turn, because he's never had a very strong social life, Ludwig is terrible about reading other people, and will happily turn to books to figure out fairly complex issues.
Ludwig does have a bit of a temper. He's unfailingly patient, for the most part, and while he'll get upset at times, he tends to give people all the space and second chances they ask of him. When something does make him genuinely angry, however, he can be downright vicious. There's a cruel and at times borderline sadistic streak in him that bleeds through when he loses his temper, although because of his abilities, he tries everything in his power to keep himself under that level of rage.
On the other hand, despite his somewhat icy exterior, Ludwig is unfailingly kind. He has a soft spot for animals, children, and elderly people, and he'll go out of his way to help someone even when he's running late (as a punctual person, being behind schedule is something he dislikes). Even when his assistance is turned away or shunned, he tends to be fairly persistent in his efforts. Ludwig is the kind of person who would happily throw himself at a cause, heart and soul, and not care about recognition so long as something good was achieved.
Yet for all his book-smarts and practice, Ludwig is still rather naive. He's proud, but not arrogant enough to assume that he's got nothing left to learn, especially about people. A realist leaning towards pessimism, he understands that life isn't going to hand him anything he's not already worked hard to achieve. But Ludwig relies more on reason than on his emotions to make decisions, which doesn't always work out best for him in the end. He's cool-headed even under intense pressure, certainly, but he could certainly stand to be more human.
`ACTING ON YOUR BEST BEHAVIOR, TURN YOUR BACK ON MOTHER NATURE!
[/ul][/font][/font](from tomorrow never dies)
Having read and reread the paperwork regarding Maximantics Corporation, Ludwig felt comfortable in his knowledge of the company and its policies. An hour and a half later, however, he regretted that he hadn't spent that time reading something more entertaining because hardly any of the information arose in conversation. Even the chairman, whom Ludwig had only spoken to briefly, seemed to want to talk more about his heir than about business. Weakly, the German had tried to raise the topic with some of the other attendees, but they didn't seem as concerned or curious as Ludwig was, and quickly shifted the topic of discussion to the stock market, or the price of gold, or even the latest celebrity scandal. Out of his element, Ludwig had politely excused himself to the bar, obtained a glass of red wine, and had lingered there ever since.
The event had turned out to be a popular one, and a fair number of well-regarded people had turned up, including several Ludwig knew well. Kirkland was standing nearby, talking to the rather unhappy looking heir to Maximantics; some distance away, Michael Collins was stalking after an attractive redhead. For a split-second, Ludwig contemplated approaching either of his acquaintances, just to have someone to talk to, but he caught himself quickly: both men were clearly preoccupied. Still, he couldn't sulk next to the alcohol until the gathering ended. Instead, he crossed the room to get a better look at the orchestra.
From this vantage point, the overwhelming buzz of chatter and laughter and clinking glasses died down a little, pleasantly drowned out by music. Ludwig had to admit he was surprised people were dancing. Not that it didn't make sense -- the party had been held in a ballroom -- but he'd always assumed people would prefer drinking and talking to dancing. Even so, a small contingency of couples had taken over part of the floor space, and as the foxtrot the orchestra had been playing slowed to a halt, Ludwig stepped out of the way to let a few of them pass by.
"Nice, isn't it?"
It took Ludwig a half-moment to realize the bearded man who'd materialized at his elbow was speaking to him.
"Oh, absolutely. Very nice," he agreed quickly. "Mr. Bondevik has outdone himself."
"Well, he's got a lot to celebrate and be proud of," he man replied with what was unmistakably a chuckle. Ludwig realized he looked like a corporate besuited Father Christmas.
"I hear he's going to be giving a speech later," he remarked. "Any idea what it's about?" The man blinked at him owlishly, then laughed again.
"You don't look like a reporter at all!" Ludwig's expression turned confused.
"I'm not a reporter."
"Could've fooled me!" the man chortled, before patting him on the arm. "I'm sure he wouldn't want to spoil whatever surprising news he's got planned." A woman with a tray of shrimp walked past and the man followed after her, trying to snag a few, leaving Ludwig feeling disgruntled. Maybe he'd go bother Arthur after all, perhaps to complain about how vague his native countrymen were.
The event had turned out to be a popular one, and a fair number of well-regarded people had turned up, including several Ludwig knew well. Kirkland was standing nearby, talking to the rather unhappy looking heir to Maximantics; some distance away, Michael Collins was stalking after an attractive redhead. For a split-second, Ludwig contemplated approaching either of his acquaintances, just to have someone to talk to, but he caught himself quickly: both men were clearly preoccupied. Still, he couldn't sulk next to the alcohol until the gathering ended. Instead, he crossed the room to get a better look at the orchestra.
From this vantage point, the overwhelming buzz of chatter and laughter and clinking glasses died down a little, pleasantly drowned out by music. Ludwig had to admit he was surprised people were dancing. Not that it didn't make sense -- the party had been held in a ballroom -- but he'd always assumed people would prefer drinking and talking to dancing. Even so, a small contingency of couples had taken over part of the floor space, and as the foxtrot the orchestra had been playing slowed to a halt, Ludwig stepped out of the way to let a few of them pass by.
"Nice, isn't it?"
It took Ludwig a half-moment to realize the bearded man who'd materialized at his elbow was speaking to him.
"Oh, absolutely. Very nice," he agreed quickly. "Mr. Bondevik has outdone himself."
"Well, he's got a lot to celebrate and be proud of," he man replied with what was unmistakably a chuckle. Ludwig realized he looked like a corporate besuited Father Christmas.
"I hear he's going to be giving a speech later," he remarked. "Any idea what it's about?" The man blinked at him owlishly, then laughed again.
"You don't look like a reporter at all!" Ludwig's expression turned confused.
"I'm not a reporter."
"Could've fooled me!" the man chortled, before patting him on the arm. "I'm sure he wouldn't want to spoil whatever surprising news he's got planned." A woman with a tray of shrimp walked past and the man followed after her, trying to snag a few, leaving Ludwig feeling disgruntled. Maybe he'd go bother Arthur after all, perhaps to complain about how vague his native countrymen were.
`EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD!
AGE
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I am Ludwig Beilschmidt and I am a HERO!
I am Ludwig Beilschmidt and I am a HERO!
