#he randomly reasserts that he was disowned for being trans which we already knew. and then tosses in his deadname.

[vaugarde]

im reading two different books with a main trans male character back to back and i am almost in shock at how jarringly different these portrayals are in terms of quality. (at the risk of ppl getting pissed but i wanna say it anyways, first book was “every heart a doorway” and the book im reading now is “the thirty names of night”) like it helps that the second one im reading was actually written by a nonbinary person and has several things to say about bigotry and being transgender and syrian, but the first one was basically begging for brownie points by constantly having kade experience and recall transphobia at kinda random times that really didnt add anything to the story that we didnt already know, and kade never really gets to talk about his trans experience beyond being misgendered and disowned. and that’s not to say i think the first author is transphobic and got off on his suffering or anything, i think she had good intentions and wanted to talk about bigotry towards kids, nor that no trans man will ever read this book and feel seen by kade and appreciate his character, which i think matters the most at the end of the day, the actual execution just feels clumsy. meanwhile im only one chapter into the second book and it already has more to say about how transphobia affects the main character and how it affects his relationship with teta and they even have an uncomfortable gynecology scene that perfectly captures the dismissiveness and dysphoric interactions but does so with just enough respect and intent that it feels authentic without being exploitative.