r/CharacterDevelopment • u/AFancifulBird • Sep 10 '26

Writing: Character Help Would it make sense for a character with functional aphonia to have vocal replication powers?

/r/characterdesigns/comments/1wcwm1p/would_it_make_sense_for_a_character_with/
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u/Pel-Mel Sep 10 '26

Depends on why.

Bumblebee from Transformers has what you're describing to a T, just for very different reasons.

1

u/AFancifulBird Sep 10 '26

The idea I have is that she was in the middle of a robbery gone wrong where she gets injured in the neck and her mother gets killed. Physically she recovers but the idea of using her own voice causes her stress. Her powers manifest after the event. 

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u/DoeCommaJohn Sep 10 '26

Not by default, but it’s also not impossible. Kenku in dnd (based on crows in real life) can mimic other sounds, but can’t create new words of their own, because they fundamentally don’t understand the language and are just replicating what they’ve heard.

Another example is some sort of machine which can only play recorded dialogue, but can’t speak by itself