#mute!jason

@bodytheft

I’m not sure it would really change anything. If Jason is fighting with some sort of team (like the Outlaws), then targeting whatever allows him to communicate more easily could hamper their teamwork, but this Jason is less prone to working with others for exactly that reason. It’s harder for him (at least until Roy makes the mod for his suit) to communicate with people in any kind of quick combat scenario. So he does most of his fighting solo.

I can’t imagine that going well, honestly, or Jason even attempting it. Black Mask might be fine with having a ‘silent but deadly’ sort of vigilante attack dog on his payroll, but I don’t think he knows sign language and I don’t think he’d even entertain learning it, which would leave Jason mainly unable to communicate. I don’t think he’d be alright ‘working’ for someone so out of control, without the ability to more easily manipulate or guide him. If he did do it anyway, it might progress along the same lines.

Artemis reads Jason’s not-a-villain tells through the fact that he’s holding back in combat and shielding her from the bullets of the goons, not from anything he says. And she pretty much flings him around regardless of what he actually agrees to or not. Bizarro, on the other hand, would be a pretty big wild card. It’s talking that originally gets through to him, so without the ability to talk it might not go as well.

But then again, Bizarro does have very much enhanced hearing, and people with damaged vocal cords are still generally capable of like, faint whispering. So Jason could theoretically still talk to Bizarro, and I think he’s smart enough to realize that.

There’d be a lot less sarcasm, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, I think a batarang getting thrown past his head can still make him freeze up sometimes, if it catches him off guard. And even if it doesn’t, it’s still probably a nasty reminder that is going to leave him a little unstable.

I think that the Batfamily must at least know some level of sign language. At least enough to get by, even if it’s not a full understanding of the language. It’s too useful a skill to have for them to not have picked up at least some, given its varied uses (such as communicating at times where they need to be silent). So it would probably be less that Jason can’t communicate, and more that he needs people to be directly looking at him for him to communicate effectively, and I imagine that would be a stressful thing to have to keep them looking at him.

It is really interesting to think of Jason being injured, and not being able to make his hands work well enough to get across what he wants to say. The Batfamily is probably too observant not to notice that he’s in pain, but he wouldn’t be able to give them information if necessary. Also worth noting that a good bit of sign language uses two hands, so having say, one broken arm or something would vastly limit Jason’s ability to ‘speak.’ ‘Frustrating’ might be underselling it.

Those are... some very specific scenarios. Uh, alright, so... Firstly I think if Jason is trapped under debris in a burning building, alone, he’s pretty much fucked regardless. If he’s got someone with him though, him being able to shout for help or not might not make much difference. The person with him would continue to search, especially if they only knew it collapsed on him/he was inside, because there’s an entirely probable chance that a collapse would have knocked him unconscious and he wouldn’t be able to yell anyway. So if another vigilante knew he was in the building, and that building is now a bunch of flaming debris, they’d keep trying to find him until either there was no hope, or they got word that he was otherwise out of the building.

Also, speaking/yelling is not the only way for someone to make noise. Jason is also fully capable of banging the floor/material around him, or firing a gun, to name the first couple things that come to mind. A gunshot is absolutely just as effective as a shout, especially in that situation.

As to the second scenario, that’s... really a very exact thing. It would be messed up I guess, if it somehow happened. I’d actually personally be much more interested in him being captured/tortured by someone who didn’t know that he was mute, so they thought his silence was him being obstinate instead. I think that’s more likely to happen.