ace-muslim:writingfromfactorx:ace-muslim:writingfromfactorx:olanthanide:fuckyeahasexual:Actually Ase

ace-muslim:writingfromfactorx:ace-muslim:writingfromfactorx:olanthanide:fuckyeahasexual:Actually Asexual In Fiction 2.0Open a can of 100% ace. No guessing, no maybes, only confirmed aces.Goodreads List + 3 Free Reads QuicksilverGuardian of the Dead Days of Blood & Starlight The Heart of Aces The Oathbound ClarielThe Bone People Accepting Me Banner of the Damned Wings of Destruction Flesh and FireFirelandThe Tropic of SerpentsThe Clinic The Northern Clemency Tales from Outer Lands Thief of Souls The Deed of PaksenarrionCarrie Pilby Coffee Cake To Be or Not To BeBone DiggersHeart’s ScarRead Vitality Ooooooh.I love me some Oathbound, and I amble around waving it at ace people all the time… but I’m not sure I would say “confirmed to be ace” on the basis that Tarma’s sexuality is explicitly a direct result of her religious status and something she actively chose in response to trauma, and also on the basis that there’s basically no way that Mercedes Lackey had any idea that real asexual people exist when she wrote it. (TBH I am not actually sure she is aware of that even now. I’ve never seen a statement to that effect, anyway.) I mean, is the canon going to take away Tarma’s sexuality from you or anything later on down the line? Nah; actually, it’s very clear how she ends up and what her happily ever after winds up being. But as far as conscious portrayals of asexuality go, it’s not quite there. Lackey actually does a really good job of portraying what it is to be an ace person, but it is bound up in Tarma’s…. complicated clerical status, shall we say. (Basically, Tarma is asexual as part of a compact with her goddess, in exchange for dedicating her life to the service of her people and her clan; in her case, this mostly means earning resources to help refound a clan base.) The fact that she spends most of her time interacting with people who have no idea what her religious stuff means or any idea what her culture is like and aren’t really familiar with her context makes her experience so close to a real-life ace one that you can forget that it’s not quiiite the same thing, especially once she’s settled into her status as Kal’enedral. And especially in Oathbreakers when she and Kethry are acting as a unit and dealing with that obnoxious bard who decided he was in love with her and generally meddling with people’s expectations, and of course her family life. But the thing about Tarma is that… Tarma doesn’t second-guess herself, her asexuality is explicitly taken away at one point (very, very briefly), and she has the enviable position of knowing exactly what is up with her sexuality and why. There’s none of the sense of being alone that ace people frequently have, for example; and I think it’s kind of problematic to position her as “canonically asexual” when she’s actually canonically magically-traded-my-sexuality-away-for-cultural-reasons. Very interesting commentary! I wrote some reflections on Tarma and the Vows and Honor series a couple of years ago. There are definitely ways in which Tarma is not a “canonical asexual” or is not the perfect representation in fiction of asexuality.But I have to step back from this. Oathbound was published in 1988, when I was 15; I read it a couple of years later. It was the only thing I had read at that time, and one of the few things I’ve read even in the nearly 30 years since then that actually represents what my life is like and what kinds of relationships I want to have (I ship Tarma and Kethry as having a queerplatonic relationship). That’s incredibly valuable and I can’t express how thankful I am that a book like this existed when it did. I think it was far ahead of its time and still is in some ways.Absolutely no argument with any of this–actually, when I was growing up, Tarma and Kethry were literally the only model I had for what I wanted and what kinds of relationship I wanted to make. (And I was born in 1990! ) It’s still an amazing depiction of an adult asexual character who has other shit going on in her life past her asexuality, and in some way her total lack of a sense of brokenness or self doubt is actually an awesome escapist fantasy, in a way that I haven’t found with a lot of online fiction with explicitly ace characters. I also agree that in a lot of ways, it’s very much still ahead of its time with respect to portraying ace characters. For example, Tarma’s opinions on children ring very true, especially for a character as family-oriented as she is. So does her reaction to that obnoxious dude who decided he was in love with her, and the offhanded mentions of her giving the sex ed talk to the children at her school (and the suggestion that she should give the talk to Kerowyn). Tarma gets to have opinions on what works for family and relationships that are based in her own experience and observations. Plus the family she winds up with, and the bit where at the very end of Keth’s life it’s not Keth-and-Jadrek or even Tarma-and-Keth-and-Jadrek, but it’s Tarma-and-Keth being old together. Like. The narrative makes it so, so clear that Tarma and Keth are primary partners, however you choose to interpret it, and that they come as a unit. That was huge for me, growing up! And of course, there’s the bit where the stories about Tarma are not stories about asexuality, they’re sword-and-sorcery fantasy stories that just happen to star a character who is basically ace in a way that flavors and informs the story and the character’s actions. That’s still so, so rare to find in ace fiction, whether it’s ace fanfic or published work.  Yep, all of this. I was actually thinking about it a lot over the weekend, thanks to one of the links in the TAA linkspam last Friday and re-reading a lot of what’s been written on asexuality in fiction.At this stage in my life, seeing a representation of non-traditional relationships like QPRs is increasingly important to me, to show that there are more options than either a romantic/sexual relationship, or being alone, and that’s where I think Vows and Honor is most ahead of its time. But I really like the other aspects you highlight here. -- source link

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