In honor of disability pride month and the resurgence of my x-men obsession, I am reposting my nonverbal/nonspeaking x-men headcanons!!
(I wrote these all out once on an old x-men roleplay blog I had but I deleted the blog so the post is also gone. Also, these are just x-men characters, not exclusively the x-men team.)
Scott Summers (Cyclops) is nonverbal autistic and prefers the term nonverbal! He uses a few types of AAC, including American Sign Language and an AAC device. He is also accustomed to carrying around a notepad or communication cards (generally used when he is not superhero-ing around)
Alex Summers (Havok) is nonverbal autistic and prefers the term nonverbal!! Much to the dismay of most of those around him, he refuses to use any type of AAC. He feels that if someone can't tell what he is trying to get across from facial expressions, body language, and occasional hand gestures then they aren't worth communicating with. He does, however, often get frustrated when the people closest to him don't understand him.
Logan (Wolverine) is minimal speaking and does not acknowledge it in any way, shape, or form. He rarely uses words when communicating but makes noises instead (mostly grunting).
Charles Xavier (Professor X) is nonspeaking and uses the term nonspeaking! He has unilateral vocal cord paralysis as a result of a severe infection he suffered as a child that damaged the nerves in his vocal cords. He now has minimal ability to speak (as well as dysphagia [difficulty swallowing], dyspnea [chronic shortness of breath], and wheezy/raspy breathing). He relies heavily on his telepathy to communicate now but this suits him just fine as it feels more natural to him anyway.
Jean Grey has selective mutism, an anxiety disorder causing her to be unable to speak in some social situations. When she was a child she couldn't speak to nearly anyone but with the support of her fellow x-men and extensive speech therapy, she is now able to talk to the entire team using verbal communication and occasionally people outside of the x-men using her telepathy.
Erik Lehnshurr/Max Eisenhardt (Magneto) has frequent verbal shutdowns that often last for days or even weeks due to PTSD.
Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) is autistic and used to experience semi-frequent verbal shutdowns but is now completely nonverbal due to the abuse he endured because of the shutdowns. He uses an AAC device (programmed for both German and English!!) and it is one of his most prized possessions!!
Kevin Sydney (Morph) has infrequent verbal shutdowns due to PTSD from their time under Mister Sinister's control. These usually only last a couple of hours, though a few have continued over 24 hours. They have homemade communication cards that were gifted to them by the team but Morph doesn't often use them due to their struggles with imposter syndrome.
Pietro Maximoff (Quicksilver) is hyperverbal autistic! Not only does he talk a lot but his mutation causes him to speak at speeds a majority of people can't understand. This causes great difficulty when communicating verbally because it takes a lot of focus and energy for him to slow himself down and even when he does he still talks quite fast. The same problem occurs when trying to communicate telepathically or using any kind of gestures. All in all, speaking/thinking/gesturing slow enough for the world at large to understand takes a great deal of energy and he is often very drained after interacting with other people.
Thank you so much for indulging me and reading through all this!! Verbal spectrum headcanons and representation are so so important to me so it means a lot!! Special shout out to @cripplecharacters for everything they do over there but especially finally giving me the confidence to type these all out and share them again!!
Feel free to add your own OR suggest some x-men characters for me to add to the list!! :D
