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I honestly love the idea that Curly gets his voice back through a chunky buttoned AAC, even if it was originally for a pet or service animal. Daisuke would probably give it to him after finding it in storage from the last shipment and ask the crew to record little things for Curly to say or hear whenever he gets bored and presses buttons listlessly. The sensation of pressing those buttons probably hurts him, but the reward of taking his autonomy back in this way must be a relief after months of having no voice, literally and metaphorically.
Anya makes every single medical-related request she can think of possible so Curly can have a say in his own care, giving him a voice that can be heard and understood. She records numbers and the names of medications, requests for food or water, eyedrops, and even requests for a hug. She's writing down every request, even if it's something she thinks he'd never say out loud. The poor woman has to be gently herded away from the buttons after each recording session because she’d just keep repeating herself for hours trying to perfect it.
Swansea secretly takes time out of his day to find every curse he can in multiple languages and dialects from around the world so Curly can say them. He drops them off at the nurse's station but never mentions it ever again, and nobody but James does either. After Curly spends hours pressing each new button over and over again, it’s clear that Swansea has even used different tones for each one and recorded them. He gave Curly a button of him cursing out Jimmy, which Curly can press to hear the recording whenever he feels like calling the asshole names. The older man hates to admit it, but he does enjoy hearing his own voice insulting James in Curly’s way, hearing multicultural insults being said in Swansea’s very not Australian accent.
Daisuke tries to mimic how the captain used to sound to record because it would just be neat if the captain could have his own voice again. The kid does a pretty good job mimicking the man’s accent his voice is still a little off but it’s still endearing the amount of effort he puts into it. He also decorates the room and the AAC with stickers and doodles.
When streaming Daisuke sets up a Curly cam so that when the captain has the energy to watch, the audience can see his reactions. Curly can also press a key to change the emoji at the top and use his AAC to interact with chat. Anya drew his icon to be a sockpuppet, remembering a conversation they had had where he had been overworking himself and called himself a clumsy ol’ sockpuppet, which Anya had been amused by enough to nickname him that. Daisuke makes Curly into a chat emote, and more often than not it’s an illustration of the sockpuppet kermit scrunching or a live curly reaction screenshot. Daisuke would probably also get a following that has various disabilities and try to ask his chat for tips to make things easier for Curly to interact with the crew.
