...and Gilligan's Island was just a three-hour tour. =)

This has all the elements of the "dragged kicking and screaming into femininity" tales that normally annoy me: a typical macho guy becoming the stereotypical weepy woman seemingly overnight; the protagonist beginning to like men despite being exclusively attracted to women before. (Though admittedly, it could have been a front Dale put up to disguise/cover up bisexual feelings he didn't want to admit to).

But note that I said "normally"--even though this story fell out of the transgender fiction trope tree and hit every branch on the way down, I was willing to shut down my inner David Spade (or more appropriately, Kathy Griffin? Maybe Eddie Izzard, considering the genre). You know, that little snarker inside my head just waiting for an excuse to use its vast arsenal of sarcastic one-liners? I just couldn't bring myself to employ it for this story.

Despite his/her resistance, Dale became a woman, and despite mine, I've loved this story from the moment I first read it on Fictionmania. If anything, I love it more now. Why? Well, if there's anything I've learned in the years of my transition, it's that true love respects neither gender nor sexual orientation. It was obvious from the start that Dale and Leroy were meant to be together, so I hardly feel I'm spoiling the story if I say they do. Fate simply had to perform its machinations to ensure that they did, even if it meant Dale had to become a woman for far more than "just one day."

And I cannot help but put myself in Dale's place. Would that I could find a charmer like Leroy.

The characters are multifaceted and very human--like Dale, none of the characters are what they appear to be at first glance. Without giving too much away for those who choose to read the reviews first, John is not quite the party-animal headbanger with perpetually pickled brain cells, nor does the disfigurement of Dale's sister automatically make her noble. There's a lot of the "pity poor me" vibe about her at first, and she initially comes off as manipulative and a bit spoiled--as would be expected from a girl who had spent her life in beauty pageants.

There's one loose end of the story that has me curious--namely, Dale and Jenni's mother. I would really like to know what her reaction was to the news that her son had become her daughter. I half expected her to make an appearance in the story at that point, trying to mold Dale into a beauty much as she had done Jenni before the accident (and again, trying to live out her ambitions through her children). But no. I suppose all I'll ever be able to do is speculate.

This story could easily have been farcical tripe in the wrong hands, but it's so deftly handled as to be one of the classics, up there with the stories of Bill Hart, Morpheus and Jennifer Adams.