"GAYDAR 3000 ACTIVATED. ANALYZING LIFEFORM 'QUISTIS TREPE'. BISEXUALITY DETECTED."

[draegonhawke]

Reading back over the latest of my slash-annoyed entries, possibly the issue would benefit from some re-framing.

One thing I come back to a lot is the concept of marking. (It's one of those concepts I kinda obsess over - like signification, but discussing that is going to have to wait until I feel like I really understand it.)

Markedness is a

Comments

[mister_duster]

Not being a linguist, but finding this quite interesting, I would like to contribute that English in particular is quite lacking in "Marking." The only reason I'm starting to realize this is because German is obsessed with it and it's very difficult as a native English speaker to understand that every definite article plays a crucial role in a sentence. It's very strange to realize how one's native language is so completely dependent on word order.

[draegonhawke]

AT LEAST IT'S NOT SANSKRIT.

...by which I mean, yeah, English is comparatively very stripped-down, especially when it comes to things like, say, noun declension. (Though we do retain declension in our pronouns! Even if it looks pretty vestigial.) Though I have to imagine that makes the memorizing-lexical-forms of English words a little easier.

That, and we also don't mash all our nouns together, unlike some languages I could name. German.

[squeemu]

UTTERLY RANDOM

How did you get that weird strike through? It looks sort of like a marker.

[draegonhawke]

I actually went into Photoshop and made a custom background image which slipped into the CSS of a normal strikethrough: TEXT GOES HERE. It's a background image, so text appears on top of it and so it only really works with black text, but it's fun times. (And part of the wide suite of CSS trickery I employ in BTR from time to time.)

[squeemu]

That's a really interesting point. In my women's studies class they talked a lot about the assumed setting and privilege and all that (without describing it as "marking") but... yeah. It would be really difficult to find a good way to subtly mark someone as asexual.

Also, I realize that this doesn't really contribute anything, but it got me thinking about how I view characters. A lot of them I do see as sexual, but there are a few that I just cannot imagine having sex. Squall and Holmes are two of those characters.

[draegonhawke]

Marking may not be the common term for it, at least in a sociological/anthropological sense - I don't know. I come from a linguistics background, so those are the terms which leap first to mind for me ^^;.

Squall and 9th Doctor were two characters I definitely read as asexual. (I have no idea what's going on with 10th Doctor, except that apparently the writing staff worships at his feet and would prefer the fans did too. Which, uh, no.) I'm trying to think of other characters who have actually pinged as asexual to me, and... there aren't a lot. Which, whatever, I don't need a lot. But I like them to exist from time to time.

And then there are a bunch which just don't ping at all, so.

[ryuu_no_hime]

If you're writing something else and you don't call attention to non-default attributes, well, people will probably just read them as a white male and go on with their day.

I know I was certainly guilty of that when I was reading David Weber's Honor Harrington series. The Star Kingdom of Manticore was so obviously supposed to be the future analogue of the British Empire, so I was expecting Queen Elizabeth III to be white. And then, several books in, it was mentioned offhandedly that the House of Winton was actually phenotypically African. And I was like, "Huh." (I thought it was a neat trick. Dunno what fandom thought, if anything.)

As an asexual myself, I find that I tend to project that onto characters when I'm reading. I'm always mildly surprised when characters start expressing an interest in sex. Same goes with romance (though less so), despite the fact that I'm not an aromantic.