olanthanide: fuckyeahasexual: Actually Asexual In Fiction 2.0Open a can of 100% ace. No guessing, no
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 Fire Fireland The Tropic of SerpentsThe Clinic The Northern Clemency Tales from Outer Lands Thief of Souls The Deed of Paksenarrion Carrie 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. -- source link