#mister fitz

Garth Nix short stories are great because it's always something like "the himbo knight needs to sleep with the cannibal catgirl pirate captain for the sake of The Plan. they are now fighting monster starfish. the dead starfish chunks are forming into a gigantic kaiju. oh, and what is Wizard Pinocchio doing? don't worry about it ;) [distant explosion]"

What if you were a travelling knight and you fell in love easily and you went into a tavern but you knocked into a woman by accident and she thought you were disgusted by her appearance because she has a facial scar, but you were raised among women who practise ritual scarification so actually she's like Marilyn Monroe to you and you tell her she's beautiful but she doesn't believe you and she's challenging you to a duel and the living puppet who raised you is watching you through all of this and based on your past flirting experiences this is barely making it into the top ten of your worst flirting attempts, and the puppet has a blue tongue. and pronouns.

Diversity win! the self-motivated puppet who broke into your temple and murdered your god is genderfluid