It's usually you who does the bogging down, friend.
The original question had nothing to do with grammar tropes or creative writing. It was a straightforward question about redundancy of a particular tag.
I think it's rather clear what I was getting at, and really I think you guys are over conflating it. Which is why I left AW to begin with a while back--because the arguments here gave me panic attacks since they so quickly digressed into a pointless surface-level, and became bogged down in little semantic side-arguments. It seems like people aren't wanting to even try to understand what others are saying.
The question mark gives an intonation, yes, I agree. Yet you can have a question without it. In fact, I looked through that book I was reading and noted that just about every question mark is replaced by a comma in conversations between two particular characters. Those questions with commas are answered by the other characters, who recognize the interrogatives despite the lack of question mark. So what makes these quotes not questions, if they are answered and recognized as such?
My argument is--or was, rather--related to the OP's question--I wanted to recognize that it is possible to write questions in a very pared down way, without 'asked,' without even a question mark, if it fits the tone.
If you look at my above posts, I definitely attempted to answer the OP as well as addressed what I thought was an incomplete argument on the basis of the question mark. The question was about redundancy, right? Well, I was making an argument that a question mark, while not necessarily redundant, can be removed and a question remains a question.
I don't need anyone to verify this, like I said, I've seen it before and I'm confident it's perfectly legitimate.
Language is and should be an evolving form of communication. Conventions are conventions, not hard and fast rules--not in fiction, in my reading experience. You just have to be aware of what your choices are doing to your narrative. And I wanted to present the OP this choice, if he or she wasn't already aware of it.
I'm not trying to drum up arguments, but it's hard not to get a little upset when you can feel the back and forth slipping past your intended thesis. I thought what I was saying made perfect sense. I guess not.