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19th Apr '13 8:02:27 PM CelticKnot

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2nd Apr '13 4:40:52 PM naralian

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** It's not uncommon in coming-of-age fiction for the moral of the story to be "undesired changes are an opportunity to make your life better".  The implication of the story is actually that all of the good things now in our protagonist's life were always there or within his reach (there are repeated hints that his poor relationship with his mother, for instance, was a matter of his own stubborn refusal to pick up the phone) and that being taken out of his comfort zone was all he needed to realize what he could do and take advantage of it.
*** Basically, it's not "girl ash" who has the better life, it's "self-aware ash".  He's been forced to examine his past (because details have literally changed) and realized that there was a lot of good in it, whereas he hasn't applied the same scrutiny to his male past.  Chances are that before the start of the main plot-line, girl ash was a whiny teenager angsting over how much her life sucked, too.  Ash's defining personality characteristic gender-regardless is that he has to be dragged into adulthood kicking, screaming, and clawing for any handhold he can find to maintain his teen mopiness.

8th Jan '13 6:04:26 AM TheOneWhoTropes

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3rd Oct '12 9:22:04 PM NoyTelin

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28th Sep '12 1:14:09 PM bulmabriefs144

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28th Sep '12 12:31:33 PM bulmabriefs144

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what's with all the !Ash

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28th Sep '12 12:29:11 PM bulmabriefs144

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removing hottips

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25th Sep '12 10:32:08 PM TwinBird

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22nd Sep '12 11:50:08 AM Kazeto

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21st Sep '12 2:45:00 PM Kazeto

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** He's a guy who can remember his patients by how their vaginas look. That alone (unless he was a pervert, which isn't likely to be the case) speaks volumes about the fact that he is a pretty good doctor. For as long as he really knows what he is doing and reserves jokes for his co-workers (most of whom likely worked with him for a long time and know it's not something "weird" but rather his poor attempts at being funny). And the one with Emily has a pretty simple explanations as well - the only two people who heard it were Ash and Emily, and he thought there was no harm in doing that because they were both girls (that, combined with him recognising people who are his patients by the look of their lady parts), but Emily was embarrassed because from her perspective, he had just said it in the presence of a boy; of course it still isn't something he should be praising her for, but his words in the car are actually his inept attempts at telling her that he did not want to make her feel that way.\\
And besides, there's also the fact that it is a small city, so it would likely be difficult for them to find another competent doctor if they fired him, just as it would be difficult for the patients to find one if they just tried to get to another doctor (more time-consuming than difficult, but the point stands).

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** The answer is pretty simple - Ash's life as a girl was better because there was nothing "she" did not have that "he" had, and yet there were certain things "he" lacked that "she" had. Ignoring the episode with James (because he would perceive his "female" virginity as something he had lost, but virginity is more mental than biological and as a "former" male he shan't really care about that because he did not get the drilling on how virginity is something to be treasured that most girls do), and the fact that he is aware that other men are looking at his body with lust (but it is only that annoying for him because as a "former" male he expects them to look and is thus more sensitive to the whole thing), it really is more positive for him. His relationship with his father is better than it was originally (because his father is not expecting a usual male response from him, and thus allows himself to get a little closer to Ash), likewise his relationship with his mother (because he wasn't stopped by the usual "it's not manly enough" male stupidity and contacted her, and since she seems to be a good parent, even if not an experienced one, yeah...), and he has more friends and also some sort of drive in life that can extend outside his high school life (and before he didn't really care enough about his post-school life). And then there's also the stuff that happened because of the misfile - his friendship with Emily (regardless of his desire to change back into a man and be with her as her boyfriend, and this friendship has helped both of them as Emily is now closer to choosing a college she would actually want to go to instead of ruining her life by choosing a path that did not suit her, and that is if she was even alive at that point in the original timeline), his quasi-friendship with Kate (and let's be honest, he would not have been able to "defeat"[[hottip:*:"be able to force her to get serious during the race"]] her in the original timeline, regardless of whether Rumisiel were there or not), and generally becoming more social (read: social enough to be able to cope with his life later) as the result of being forced to interact with people. Of course, the difference isn't all that astounding, but overall his life as a female was better, and the one thing that could've really changed that were periods, but his case might not be valid here because he was overreacting because of how uncomfortable he feels due to having periods when being mentally a male.//
And here comes the problem that caused the whole thing - the fact that he is feeling uncomfortable as a female because he's constantly reminded of his lost status as a male. For many of us this would not be that much of a problem, because humans are capable of getting used to many things, but in his case it is one and it stems from the relative shallowness of his male self's life. It sounds crazy, but think about it - if you were to describe male Ash's life from his own perspective, you would write "male" and "racing"; that's right, only two words, and that means being changed into a girl made him think that a large part of himself (about 50%) is missing. And he doesn't want to be missing anything so he is trying to get back to being a male, and the realization that he is actually enjoying himself as a female (not in the "this body is awesome" way, but rather "this life is more comfortable [if you ignore the body itself]" one) makes him both scared and angry because he thinks that he is abandoning a fundamental part of himself and blames his own actions and thoughts for that. That is a lot of self-anger and self-loathing, especially when he is also confronted by Emily who tells him that she is also much more comfortable with her current life, because from then on he's also getting angry at himself for not thinking about Emily (who is a girl, and with him as a male that is an issue for him) and still trying to "fix" everything. So he's pretty much in a mental checkmate, not really knowing what to do because there's no "right" choice there, only "more wrong" and "less wrong" one (unless Rumisiel cheats the system somehow) and they aren't labelled so he doesn't know which one is not as bad as the other.

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