Questionable Content XVIII: "That's only sort of good news"

[Radar]

Honestly, I have no idea what the 'right' way even is for an author to indicate the gender of a character if it isn't plot-relevant. If someone drops a him or her pronoun at some point, we can get a view at least to what those around them think it is. With they, it's not clear if they are nonbinary and prefer they or something else. FWIW, I don't think the way Jeph has handled it is notably good or bad.

Case in point: Vaarsuvius. So many years and no one has the slightest idea what their gender is. This ambiguity was used for quite a few jokes, but did this affect the plot in any particular way? Nope. To be honest, the only plot-relevant gender so far in OotS was Durkon's due to him having a son with Hilgya and only learning about it way later.

So I would say the sane way of looking at it in any fiction would be the following: try assuming different genders of a given character and think if that changes anything. If it does not, there is no reason to care about such details.

edit: awful grammar errors.