Is the character physiologically mute, psychologically mute, or a combination of the two?
I have selective mutism IRL. My case is pretty mild, but something I find is that when I'm in a very stressful situation, I often can't communicate at all besides pushing away things I don't want and reaching for things I do want. Even if someone hands me my phone (that I usually use to communicate when I'm having trouble), my fingers lock up the same way my throat does. It's really frustrating, because these are the kinds of situations that it's most important to be able to communicate complex ideas quickly, and the most I can do is grab at things like a baby... and of course, the frustration itself makes me feel even worse.
I think that's something to bear in mind if there's a psychological component to the mutism - sometimes the method of communication doesn't seem to matter so much as the fact that it's live, real-time communication with a real person who's right there. Where stressful, high-tension situations are concerned with psychological forms of mutism, complicated devices might not make communicating any easier.
Ofc, if the mutism is purely physical, then none of this applies - but I thought it might be worth sharing my personal experience!
Either way, the phrase you may wish to research is "Augmentative and alternative communcation", or AAC. Even the wikipedia page has a bunch of different options, both high-tech and low-tech, as well as examples on usage. Low-tech AAC like picture boards or phrase flipbooks (basically like a physical version of the auto-translation feature) would be super easy to make in Eorzea with little expertise or expense; possibly to fill the gap while the character is waiting for something more complex to be crafted, or saving up money to commission it.
I have selective mutism IRL. My case is pretty mild, but something I find is that when I'm in a very stressful situation, I often can't communicate at all besides pushing away things I don't want and reaching for things I do want. Even if someone hands me my phone (that I usually use to communicate when I'm having trouble), my fingers lock up the same way my throat does. It's really frustrating, because these are the kinds of situations that it's most important to be able to communicate complex ideas quickly, and the most I can do is grab at things like a baby... and of course, the frustration itself makes me feel even worse.
I think that's something to bear in mind if there's a psychological component to the mutism - sometimes the method of communication doesn't seem to matter so much as the fact that it's live, real-time communication with a real person who's right there. Where stressful, high-tension situations are concerned with psychological forms of mutism, complicated devices might not make communicating any easier.
Ofc, if the mutism is purely physical, then none of this applies - but I thought it might be worth sharing my personal experience!
Either way, the phrase you may wish to research is "Augmentative and alternative communcation", or AAC. Even the wikipedia page has a bunch of different options, both high-tech and low-tech, as well as examples on usage. Low-tech AAC like picture boards or phrase flipbooks (basically like a physical version of the auto-translation feature) would be super easy to make in Eorzea with little expertise or expense; possibly to fill the gap while the character is waiting for something more complex to be crafted, or saving up money to commission it.
![[Image: tUzrT.png]](https://puu.sh/tUzrT.png)
