out of team RWBY and JNPR who would be the best character to be a mute? I think Ren would be too stereotypical myself, but Nora I think would be really good pick. ASL plus her energy would just be a fun little combo imo. What do you think?
Nora’s a good choice, animation-wise I think it’d be intriguing to see all the expressiveness she puts into her signing. Plus it would add additional reason for her closeness with Ren if he took the time to learn sign language just to communicate with her.
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But honestly I think mute Yang would be really interesting. Especially if you think about it in terms of her losing her arm: not only is it her losing her method of combat, but it’s her losing a key part of her language. I can imagine her shutting down almost entirely, using her missing arm as an excuse to not even try to communicate with others. Her recovery would definitely have been a lot longer, more involved process. And, in terms of her character, it would be interesting to see if she would still be the same person if she had grown up mute. Would she still have been the social butterfly/party girl we were introduced to at the beginning of the series? Or someone entirely different? It would be an interesting path to explore, one personally even I couldn’t fathom all the details of.
Other things to consider:
•Ruby and Yang signing private messages back and forth in front of others. Ruby wordlessly asking Yang if she’s okay at times, Yang flashing encouraging messages to Ruby across class, Ruby and Yang shittalking teachers right in front of their faces and snickering about it. •Blake and Yang being such natural partners because, even before learning sign language, Blake is able to sense how Yang’s feeling using her heightened faunus senses. It would be little things: tracking increased heartbeat when Yang’s scared, catching little twitches under her eyes when she’s annoyed, listening to her breathing to tell if she’s pushing herself too hard. Just little ways she could understand Yang in battle even without that consistent way of communicating.•Blake and Yang bonding over their shared persecution: Yang for her muteness, Blake for being a faunus.•Blake actually sharing her identity as a faunus with Yang earlier than others due to this level and trust, also due to a strong certainty that unlike some people (Jaune) Yang wouldn’t ever accidentally blurt out her identity to the world.•Weiss, despite all her schooling, having a more difficult time than the others learning sign language and getting constantly frustrated by it. Insistent that she pick it up just as quickly as the others, Weiss takes additional, private lessons with Ruby to help her keep up. She pays Ruby in academic subject-tutoring and warm cookies.•JNPR also learning sign language because they’re just that kind of good people.
•Jaune always messes up signs and Yang doesn’t tell him because it makes her laugh.
•Ren sitting through classes with the rest of his team, only to reveal he knew sign language the whole time for some inexplicable reason: “I don’t know, I just picked it up a while ago.”
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I probably went on longer than I should have haha. In any case, very, very nice pitch. Well done. ~☆