i am not trying to discourse at you i am just genuinely curious why you filtered out mute cass/cass using sign language? ive only been apart of this fandom for like a week but i am non-speaking and unaware why you wouldnt want that in a fic. i hope this doesnt come across as malicious or passive aggressive (i struggle with tone, apologies)
hi, not at all! i understand why a lot of people have the cass using asl headcanon, or even see her as mute, but to me its just a complete misunderstanding of her character and often comes from a place of racist stereotyping instead of genuine representation.
cass is not mute. she didnt know any spoken language growing up. she grows up only reading body language and her brain processes body movement as a language on its own. sign language is its own language, (and for the sake of simplicity im going to be refering to asl), but cass had no basis of a language, so asl would be incredibly complicated for her to understand (in her early batgirl days at least).and we do see when she does learn how to talk, she enjoys talking (albeit short and stunted sentences). shes likes being snarky, she likes being sarcastic, she likes making jokes and finally explaining how she feels about things, and even in the new 52 reboot, she really enjoys reciting shakespeare with basil karlo. she didnt have a choice in these things growing up, david took it away from her, but now as batgirl and with people like babs + bruce shes able to learn and express herself.
a lot of people who dont know much about cass will see that she grew up not knowing how to talk, and jump to "well, shes mute" because its the easier option to portray instead of her fumbling her way through a sentence or trying to understand the way she talks. they read that she knows body language and will portray her using asl because they misunderstand both her disability and asl as a language.
there are ways to write a cass who knows asl, and i do think its something she'd learn eventually as a way to communicate silently on missions or in a tough situation, but a lot of people aren't writing about it in that way. when im scrolling ao3 for cass fics, im trying to find cass fics written by people who read cass comics. its why i have soooo many tags filtered out that dont even have to do with cass. a huge majority of fics that have the mute cassandra cain or cassandra cain uses asl tag is fics where cass is only a secondary character, if that. ones where she'd only show up to hug her brothers and sign that she loves them and leaves the story.
and since i couldnt really find a way to transition into this, im shoving it here. there are a lottt of (mostly unintentional, but still harmful) racially stereotypical headcanons in the batman fandom, from tim drake being east asian because hes super smart and often meek in fanon, to jason being latino because he was poor and angry. but cass, being an asian girl, and being portrayed as silent and docile (fanon cass's entire character being about loving her brothers, being bruces favourite, how she could never disappoint them, how she gets along with all of them. etc) is just. racist. the people who write cass like this are tryinggg to insert diversity and representation into their works but it just comes across as gross and uninformed.
anyway, its veryyy late for me and im not sure if i even conveyed my thoughts properly, but if you want a more in depth post about the fandom portrayal of cass using asl, i highly recommend these posts !
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
2087
dededos
