Whoops okay. SPOILERS FOR SOME OF THOSE ARE BELOW. (Surprising how often "this character is gender-variant/etc." is a plot point! Another pattern.)
Fortunate Fall does pretty well? I can't remember if the narrator's genderless or whether gender is just considered irrelevant to the story (it's first-person very very close). I know that the author of that, Raphael Carter, is not cis--also a factor in the book's favor.
Bone Dance does the intersex-narrator-as-big-reveal thing, and it's related to the narrator being an android (? as I remember? it's been a while) so that's not the greatest; pretty sure there aren't any other gender-variant characters in that.
Above's antagonist is intersex and gender-variant, which is a plot point (check, check, check) but the reasons sie is an antagonist are pretty clearly divorced from hir intersex and gender-variant-ness. Also, sie gets to tell hir own story (with sie's own pronouns) at the climax of the book, which helps somewhat. So again, falling into some patterns--but there is nuance.
Relating to the lack of trans guys: Eon is a very recent YA-ish fantasy novel with a girl-living-as-boy as main character, which has a minor character who's a trans woman. The trans woman character is pretty well handled but again, falling into a pattern.
I should probably just write a YA secondary-world fantasy novel with a trans guy protagonist, instead of talking about it all the time, but in any case I really want it to exist.
no subject
Fortunate Fall does pretty well? I can't remember if the narrator's genderless or whether gender is just considered irrelevant to the story (it's first-person very very close). I know that the author of that, Raphael Carter, is not cis--also a factor in the book's favor.
Bone Dance does the intersex-narrator-as-big-reveal thing, and it's related to the narrator being an android (? as I remember? it's been a while) so that's not the greatest; pretty sure there aren't any other gender-variant characters in that.
Above's antagonist is intersex and gender-variant, which is a plot point (check, check, check) but the reasons sie is an antagonist are pretty clearly divorced from hir intersex and gender-variant-ness. Also, sie gets to tell hir own story (with sie's own pronouns) at the climax of the book, which helps somewhat. So again, falling into some patterns--but there is nuance.
Relating to the lack of trans guys: Eon is a very recent YA-ish fantasy novel with a girl-living-as-boy as main character, which has a minor character who's a trans woman. The trans woman character is pretty well handled but again, falling into a pattern.
I should probably just write a YA secondary-world fantasy novel with a trans guy protagonist, instead of talking about it all the time, but in any case I really want it to exist.