Sweet on Polly Oliver



""A chick, huh. Now I feel better about that Raging Stiffie.""

- Berserk The Abridged Series

"That Oliver, what a guy! He's a real friend and man's man! He may be small and look a little girly, but I really connect with him on a level I didn't think I would since I broke up with Lily... anyway, we're going out to dinner next week, and I hope he likes this wristwatch I got him... I know it sounds fruity but it's just friend stuff! I mean, what guy wouldn't want to spend time with such a stud? I mean, uh... ooh! Almost time for me to pick up Oliver to the game!"

No matter how flawless the Sweet Polly Oliver's disguise at fooling her male peers, there is some primordial part of a man's brain that sees through the disguise... and is attracted to their new drinking buddy.

This is especially true for the Casanova, whose refined "babe-dar" can detect estrogen even when the eyes can't. Of course, this will get very confusing and distressing to the unwitting male admirer. They'll be turned on and not know why, and if they're not too bright might say "have I met you before?" (which they have, only as a woman).

Expect the poor lech to have a lot of sexual confusion about his "feelings" for "another guy", and be incredibly relieved when she stops masquerading. Polly Oliver, if not oblivious to her effects, will (depending on the jerkiness of her admirer) feel guilty or gleeful. If she would normally pursue this guy romantically, she may reveal the ruse to mixed relief and feelings of betrayal.

It's rare for the man to actually be gay or bi in this situation. However, it's more common (especially in Shakespeare) for a woman to fall for "Oliver" and only give up when the disguise is revealed or, these days, to not care.

Compare Attractive Bent Gender, and Unsettling Gender Reveal (for when finding out the love interest's actual gender makes them the wrong orientation). A subtrope of Gender Reveal.

Anime and Manga

 * There's an example with Nagisa in Urusei Yatsura. He looks just like a girl, but Ataru and Mendo actually get suspicious by the fact that they, despite going after everything in a skirt, aren't attracted to "her". Ataru instantly realises Ryuunosuke's real gender as well, and goes after "him" along with all the girls.
 * Happens towards the end in the Ouran High School Host Club anime to Kasanoda, when Haruhi is the first person who is nice to him. Then he finds out she's a girl, and continues to see Haruhi anyway.
 * In Knight Princess the female main character is disguised as a boy to be a bodyguard of the princess. Her fellow bodyguard develops a crush on her and gets rather confused.
 * In Hana Kimi, Nakatsu feels conflicted because he thinks he is falling in love with Mizuki, but he also believes that Mizuki is a boy. Unfortunately for him, when Mizuki is finally revealed as a girl, Nakatsu finds himself in the loser side of the Love Triangle.
 * Some would argue that he was always on the loser side of the triangle. Nanba, the ladies man Dorm RA, on the other hand proclaims that he knew he was right about Mizuki being a girl all along, because his ladies radar never lies.
 * In the historical manga Kaze Hikaru, the main character Sei (disguised as a male samurai) has a large number of men chase after her with varying degrees of seriousness. In an interesting twist, most of them don't sense she's a girl; they are unrepentantly chasing after 'him' in the hope of a homosexual relationship, following the historical samurai tradition of homosexuality. Early on in the manga, one of the men enamored with her (Kanji, if I recall) almost discovers her gender—by way of attempted rape.
 * Subverted in Girls Saurus, where the entire student body of the boys' school Tsubasa goes to is attracted to him because they think he's really a girl masquerading as a boy. Later, a lesbian completely falls for him... even though she actually knows he's really a guy.
 * It takes a bit of prodding from a Trickster Mentor before Penguin Revolution's Yuzuru Narazaki recognizes his attraction to Yukari Fujimaru for what it is. Once he does, he decides that If It's You It's Okay and confesses his feelings to "Yutaka," still completely oblivious to the fact that Fujimaru isn't actually male.
 * Ranma 1/2 references this trope in one storyline that occurs shortly after Wholesome Crossdresser Ukyo joins the series as Ranma's final Arranged Marriage. As part of her "masquerade" as a boy, Ukyo attended an all-boy's junior high school. There, she came to the attention of another Wholesome Crossdresser, a boy named Tsubasa Kurenai... who promptly declared he was in love with Ukyo and harassed her in pursuit of a relationship. Until the storyline in question, she had no idea that Tsubasa had actually seen through her disguise and believed him to be the homosexual version of this trope, attracted to "his" Bishonen looks. Akane and Ranma, meanwhile, believed a straighter version of this trope- aka that Tsubasa was a girl who had fallen for Ukyo under the mistaken belief that the Bifauxnen was actually a guy.
 * Kill Me, Kiss Me is a Manhwa originally created by Korean author Lee Young-you revolving around two identical cousins of different gender who end up switching places, so the girl can get near her crush. The boy agrees due to the fact that they each attend all-girl/all-boy schools. The girl is a much better fighter than the boy, attracting the attention of her crush, who has the exact confusion mentioned above. Meanwhile the boy is tormented by all the girls that have a crush on 'her' that cannot be dated because of the true gender.
 * Another manhwa, Love In The Mask, has a tough girl who's forced into being a male bodyguard, apparently because a girl wouldn't be taken seriously. She has a crush on a boy who views her as his little brother who he's always tussling with... and napping with... and cares about more than anyone else... and at one point uses her toothbrush after they shared her bed and dreams he's kissing a girl who looks like his "brother" (just how close are brothers in Korea??). Later they play Romeo and Juliet in an all-guy school play, to the fury of another guy who knows her secret and has a crush on her. Oh, and another guy also develops a crush on her when she's dressed as Juliet. The girl she's guarding also has a crush on the first guy and often wonders why she's jealous of two male friends.
 * Upon Sou's and Mashiro's first meeting in After School Nightmare Sou thinks of Mashiro as a cute girl—despite Mashiro's act as a normal man. Sou is, however, not troubled by his attraction to Mashiro.
 * Of course, Mashiro is not neccesarilly a man nor a woman.
 * Inverted in the anime adaption of Karin, where a flashback shows Ren thinking this was the case with his roommate, based on how he felt attracted to him. It turns out the guy was really a guy, and Ren was just reacting to his stress. At least that's what we're told.
 * Subverted in Angel Diary, in which Bi-Wal seems to see through Dong-Young's disguise but in fact
 * While he's not sweet on her, Gintoki's, um, trusty radar knew that was really a woman in Gintama.
 * Inverted in Mint Na Bokura, where the hero Noeru, posing as a girl, befriends Sasa, a boy who usually doesn't get along with girls at all... and thus believes that his feelings of friendship for Noeru mean that he's in love with "her".
 * Inverted and combined with Hot for Teacher in I My Me! Strawberry Eggs. Student Fuko is sweet on Wholesome Crossdresser Hibiki-sensei.
 * The manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time implies that Link feels this way about Sheik, who is really Princess Zelda in disguise.
 * Happens a few times in Half Prince with both genders in and outside the RPG. But who can blame them? (S)he's just that Bishonen, that she even drools over her character once.
 * Inverted, sort of, in Heartcatch Pretty Cure. Tsubomi was quite smitten towards Itsuki before learning about "his" real nature.
 * Inverted in Mai-Otome when it's hinted that Shizuru feels something for "Prince Takumi"; but since it's also hinted that she's not really into guys, she suspects he's a fake.
 * In one of the latest chapters of Nononono one of Nonomiya classmates has a rather... vivid dream with her visiting him in his room, after waking up he is greatly disturbed by a realization that he just had a wet dream about someone he considers "a perfect male specimen".
 * Subaru Konoe from Mayo Chiki.
 * Yozora Mikazuki from Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai after having her haircut halfway through the series. Same can be said for Yukimura Kusunoki, who was known to everyone as a male cross dresser, turns out to be a real genuine female when Kodaka and Yukimura went bathing. The thing is Yukimura has always believes that she is a male herself and frequently refers to Kodaka as "Aniki".
 * Chiharu Eniwa of Girl Got Game find himself feeling something for Kyo Aizawa, a girl who is cross-dressing as a boy in order to join the school's famous boy's basketball team. While he doesn't outright question his sexuality, he does freak out over how cute he finds "him."

Comic Books

 * Marvel 1602 had a rather interesting subversion with a Love Triangle involving the Expys of Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and Angel. Jean was posing as a boy to avoid rousing suspicion about Javier's school (no such thing as officially educating girls in the real 1602 England, much less co-ed schools), and was romantically involved with Scott. When she tried befriending newcomer Inquisition-escapee Angel, Scott becomes jealous, figuring that Angel like everyone else knows she's really a young woman. (He gets gigantic-size hints, but fails to parse them.) Eventually, Scott discovers he didn't, and apologizes for being such a jerk about his mistaken territoriality...and Angel responds, "You were not wrong. I saw a boy...but I believe I was in love with that boy."
 * Happens in an issue of Weird War Tales with an officer in a POW camp during the American Civil War being extremely relieved to learn that the "drummer boy" he was attracted to was actually a girl. And then the zombies show up...

Fan Works

 * In the Zelda fanfic The Weekly Hyrule News, this happens between Link and Sheik. Played with in that Link realizes he wasn't sweet on Sheik/Zelda because he picked up on her real gender subconsciously, but because he's bisexual. Incidentally, it's well-written.
 * Some Mulan fanfics have used this trope with Shang and "Ping" since the film avoided it.
 * The Bet, a SasuSaku fanfic by Blade Redwind is the epitome of this trope, questioning-his-sexuality and all. (Wish someone knew more fics like these!)

Film
""I didn't want to touch you. I didn't know why. I thought there was something wrong with me. I loved you..."
 * Victor Victoria has this.
 * In the stage version, it's slightly different than the usual Gayngst of this trope. Marchand (the guy) is in tially repulsed by the idea of having a relationship with another man, but eventually decides that it doesn't matter. He tells Victor he doesn't care if Victor is a man and kisses him. Victor then reveals herself to be a woman. Marchand says he still doesn't care and kisses her again. While it's true that he's happier to be with a woman, there's no sense of extreme relief when he finds out because he loves Victor/Victoria as a person either way.
 * The entire point of Just One Of The Guys.
 * Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There. Possibly averted, as she's supposed to be playing a male, but still justified because she looks more like Dylan than the five other actors who play him in the movie.
 * The live-action movie version of Rose of Versailles shows Fersen being extremely relieved at discovering that Lady Oscar is, indeed, a lady - and admitting that "I was beginning to wonder about myself".
 * Yentl: After the heroine reveals her, ahem, "self" to her love interest, he bitches her out for a while, and then reveals the following to her:


 * A rare Bi the Way version happens in Sorority Boys, where three frat boys dress in drag to infiltrate a rival sorority. The sorority's president falls in love with one of them as a woman and is extremely upset when the ruse is up. However, she's more bothered by the trickery than the fact that he's a man, and they get back together in the end.
 * The entire plot of She's the Man.
 * This is a major plot device in Tomboy. Laure introduces herself as a boy, and spends most of the film falling in love with a local girl as a boy. It isn't until the last 10 or so minutes of the film that the object of her affection learns of her sex.

Literature

 * Played with in Pamela Kaufman's historical novels, in which Richard Coeur de Lion falls for the disguised heroine because he thinks she's a boy. Strangely, actually having sex with her does not disabuse him of this notion. (Considering Richard I was...ahem...rather fond of his minstrel Blondel, amongst others...) Squick!
 * Twisted all over the place in Monstrous Regiment, where
 * From Jingo, "One of the minor laws of the narrative universe is that any homely featured man who has, for some reason, to disguise himself as a woman will apparently become attractive to some otherwise perfectly sane men with, as the ancient scrolls say, hilarious results. In this case the laws were fighting against the fact of Corporal Nobby Nobbs, and gave up."
 * Poor Jamie Fletcher, the teenage ship's boy in L.A. Meyer's Bloody Jack series, beats himself up mentally for quite a while thinking that he is inappropriately attracted to fellow shipmate Jack (actually Sweet Polly Oliver Jacky). Luckily, she likes him too and eventually reveals herself to him.
 * That's a big part of the plot in João Guimarães Rosa's The Devil to Pay In The Backlands, a classic of Brazilian literature.
 * Théophile Gautier's 1835 novel Mademoiselle de Maupin is probably the first work to spell out this situation and use it as a major part of the story.
 * Subverted in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Hawkmistress, where Orain has feelings for Romilly when she is dressed as a boy. However, it turns out.
 * Subverted in Delia Sherman's Through a Brazen Mirror. The king had been denying to himself that he was gay; initially he was delighted to find out that his crush was a woman—now it was okay to admit he was attracted! So he required her to dress in woman's clothes (which she was uncomfortable doing); but that only made him realize, wait, that really wasn't what interested him, and finally face the truth.
 * In The Thurb Revolution by Alexei Panshin, hero Anthony Villiers' old friend Fred Fritz confesses to Tony that he's become oddly attracted to young David Clodfelter. Villiers, more perceptive, or at least more consciously perceptive, realizes that David is not only a girl, but Gillian U, the girl Fred's father (the Emperor) has been trying to fix Fred up with. A snatch of conversation in the next book indicates the engagement has been made formal.
 * In Mary Stewart's The Last Enchantment, Merlin is puzzled by his attraction to his new boy apprentice, Ninian, who turns out to be a girl, Niniane.
 * In Ann Pratchett's Bel Canto, a group of young paramilitaries take a bunch of hostages, and over the weeks relationships form between the two groups. Interpreter Gen is attracted to one of the paramilitaries, a pretty young boy. The boy turns out to be a girl. Gen is relieved.
 * Inverted in one of the Judge Dee stories by Robert van Gulik: a young woman came to the judge, asking for advice because she'd lately found herself strangely attracted to another girl living close to her. As it happened, Judge Dee already knew that "the other girl" was actually a young man who'd gone undercover to investigate the suspicious death of his sister—and the young man had admitted to the judge that he was quite attracted to the girl who was now (needlessly) worrying that she might be a lesbian.
 * Subverted in Pocket in the Sea, Tagget doesn't have a crush until after the reveal.
 * A variant is The Beacon at Alexandria by Gillian Bradshaw, because "Polly" — Lady Charis, posing as the eunuch Chariton — narrates the story, and she hasn't the least idea of the young man's attraction to her until after a presumably erotic dream ("Never mind what it was about; you were a girl in the dream") caused him to deduce her true gender. He implies that this dream was his first awareness of feeling more than friendship for "Chariton." He's quite irked with himself, since his job requires him to be something of a detective, and he'd missed so many clues..

Live-Action TV
"Casanova: Mine doesn't do that."
 * Edmund Blackadder (in Blackadder II) towards "Bob".
 * Several Benny Hill skits, like the double cross-dressing spies skit.
 * There was a Colombian mini series called "Cartas de Amor", about the rocky relationship between Cupido, a very convincing Bifauxnen who works as a match maker thanks to her talent to write the titular Love Letters and was called to solve all the romantic conflicts in a little neighborhood, and Manuel, a unrepentant Casanova who likes the state of romantic indefinition in his neighborhood (because he can get the unsatisfied women for him) and sees Cupido's actions as opposed to his own interests. When all their conflicts are solved and her real gender is revealed, many neighbors are not very convinced of either her femininity or his manhood, so they want proofs. Then, Cupido says something in the line of "the main proof of his manliness is that he could see the woman in me behind all the costume and the farce."
 * One Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode finds Quark strangely attracted to his waiter (who turns out to be a female disguised as a male).
 * In one episode of Northern Exposure, Chris the DJ takes a sabbatical at a monastery and finds himself overwhelmed with lust for one of the other monks, in spite of "him" always wearing "his" hood up in a largely shapeless robe and having taken a vow of silence. Near the end the monk breaks her vow of silence to help sooth Chris's inner confusion. (In spite of being pretty relaxed in every other way he has apparently always been all about women prior to this.)
 * Inverted in an episode of Reno 911!. Lieutenant Jim Dangle, who is gay, finds himself having an inexplainable attraction to the female homeland Security agent Suzy Kim. At the end of the episode we discover Suzy Kim
 * This revelation also prompts a discussion by the force (brought up by Garcia) Jones insists that it does, of course, even if most of the men on the force liked Kim.
 * Plot of the Korean drama The First Shop of Coffee Prince, with the added twist that the Polly Oliver of the story gets mistaken as a man by the (heterosexual) male lead, and hired to pretend to be his gay lover so that his mother will stop trying to fix him up with women. Oh, and then she starts working at the coffee shop he owns, which features attractive male waiters as a selling point.
 * In a BBC version of Casanova starring David Tennant, Casanova reaches the point of confessing If It's You It's Okay to a "man" he met at a party. "He" then removes a prosthetic from her trousers.

"Joel: Mr. B, you're hot!"
 * This relationship really happened, it's in his memoirs. Casanova insists he isn't sinning (in that particular way, that is) because he can tell she's a girl, but she (still claiming to be male) points out that he doesn't know that and is in love with her already. In real life there was quite an interval between perceiving that bulge in her pants and learning that it was fake, during which time the poor bastard was terribly confused. He records a lengthy lecture she gave him on what would happen if she let him check and he found out he was wrong, namely that he wouldn't be able to stop loving her and would come up with all kinds of arguments about male homosexuality being purer and more intellectual than heterosexuality, citing historical examples, until he wore her down—and he pretty much admits it. He also continues calling her Bellino (her masculine alias) interchangeably with Teresa (her real name) in the narrative for some time after revealing her actual gender; make of that what you will.
 * In Will and Grace, Jack (who's gay) finds himself attracted to a woman at a party. He starts doubting his sexuality until it's revealed that the "woman" was actually a man all along.
 * In Young Americans, Hamilton, who's straight, is a little confused and bewildered by his attraction to his schoolmate, Jake, who is really a girl in disguise. Then again, Jake is played by Kate Moennig (aka Shane on The L Word), a real life Bifauxnen who is known for inducing such feelings in straight women.
 * In the short Mr. B Natural, shown on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the titular character (a man played by a woman, a la Mary Martin) has this effect on Joel:

"Mel: I love you! Jiló: I love you too, Melchiades! Mel: No, not Melchiades... Amelia! (they later marry)"
 * The first episode of Brazilian miniseries Copas de Mel had Mel disguising as a man to travel with the Brazilian team for the 1958 FIFA World Cup. She develops a crush for the wardrobe boy Jiló, and after Brazil wins:

"Head-Maid: [Noting that Berta, Carolins sister, notices that Arid ignores her in order to chat with "Carl"] Arid is not that interested in girls. I mean, he is not like Bertas brother. [Cut to "Carl" giggling over something Rosilda wrote in her "conversation-book" and kisses her hand] Berta: [Looking slightly nauseated] Yeah..."
 * Used in the Swedish mini-series The Girl At The Stone Bench when fraternal twins Arid and Rosilda both fall for the new servant "boy" Carl. Problem? Carl is actually Carolin, who seems to really enjoy to flirt with the girls who think she is a boy. Played to some really dark irony:

"Mr. Sheffield: Oh thank God. I thought all those years of working in musical theater had finally caught up with me."
 * Played even better when Arid finally comes out to Berta. Because she thinks his love for her "brother" is because Arid somehow notices the female Carolin inside (he doesn't), gives him the most open minded acceptance any gay teen could hope for in 1914, focusing on that "Carl" was a charlatan, not worthy of him. Contrast when his sister told her about her perfectly normal crush True Love and was instantly pushed back, with her using words like "That's impossible!" and "That is Wrong!". Poor girl.
 * Happens in The Nanny, Fran dresses up as a guy to get into a men's only club to talk to Mr. Sheffield. After a while she reveals who she was resulting in his classic:

Music

 * Much of the humor of the old sea chantey "The Handsome Cabin Boy."
 * A version of this was recorded by the band Pentangle, titled "A Maid That's Deep In Love". You can listen to it here.
 * The singer of the band Rough Trade is a Butch Lesbian with a very deep voice. Their most famous song, "High School Confidential", is about the narrator's Perverse Sexual Lust over a hot, bitchy blonde (who is the Alpha Bitch), so it's pretty common to mistake the singer for a man.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

 * The Chinese legend Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (often known as The Butterfly Lovers)

Theatre

 * Some productions of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night emphasize this between Orsino and Viola, though it's not explicit in the text, including the Hippie Musical Adaptation Your Own Thing and the high school adaptation She's the Man.
 * This Troper is waiting for adaption where Viola and Sebastian are identical twins and where Viola (given a more masculin name, of course) is gay and where Sebastian is straight. Let the Duke be Gay rather than "In love with the Idea of Love", it would totally fit.
 * In All Shook Up, Orsino is portrayed as a Ladykiller in Love... with a 'man'. He explicitly has to deal with suddenly having 'homosexual' feelings, and even fully accepts and chooses to act on them before the masquerade is revealed to him.
 * Ditto some productions of As You Like It. Though Orlando must at least have started to suspect Rosalind's identity.
 * Also, some productions of Cymbeline may emphasize this between the main character Imogen and Cadwell/Guiderius (and Polydore/Aviragus.)
 * It's one of those situations where the princes have several lines expressing the noble lines of Imogen and how they truly love her..
 * A Very Potter Musical subverts this in the sequel when Dumbledore is only attracted to Umbridge because he thinks she's a man in drag.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy V: Bartz and Galuf fawn over the sleeping before they discover she's really a woman.
 * Persona 4: Kanji Tatsumi feels this way towards upon meeting "him" for the first time, which of course only serves to make Kanji's already-present issues of gender confusion worse.
 * Princess Waltz: Even before Arata realizes Chris Longfield is pulling a Sweet Polly Oliver, he finds himself extremely attracted to "him", causing everyone around them to wonder if they are commiting Ho Yay. It only gets worse when Chris admits to really being a girl, which takes what was already strong attraction and kicks it into overdrive. Considering the game is an H-Game, and Chris is remarkably underendowed for a girl (Saber from Fate/stay night looks less manly than Chris, and she's arguably Saber's Expy), but Arata finds her incredibly hot anyway, which for this genre is an amusing but rather touching subversion.
 * For the uninitiated, H-Game women usually have some variant of Ms. Fanservice or large breasts as a rule, making the subversion more jarring.
 * in Rule of Rose was in fact

Web Comics

 * A complicated version appears in the webcomic Boobs Ahoy. Wilhelm pulls a Sweet Polly Oliver at one point and ends up attracting the attention of a boy named Kaworu, who also gives Wilhelm a case of Stupid Sexy Flanders.
 * Inverted in Kevin Bolk's It Sucks To Be Weegee. Luigi is telling Link about the irritating time he had at the bar last night—he couldn't catch the eye of a single girl all night, but some guy in orange armor named Sam-something was way more interested than Luigi was comfortable with. An exasperated Link just lets it slide.

Western Animation
"Zapp: Leela! So it's you I've been attracted to! Oh God, I've never been so happy to be beaten up by a woman! Leela: Let's do it again sometime."
 * Zapp Brannigan in the Futurama episode "War is the H-Word". He finds private "Lee" intriguing in very uncomfortable ways, to the point that he's visibly relieved when Leela drops the disguise and punches him in the face.

"Jerry: I'm not gay? Dave: No dude, you're totally still gay!"
 * In Clone High, Joan dresses up as "John Dark" to play basketball. She adds a mustache. Kennedy begins to feel attracted to her. As Kennedy's adoptive parents are a gay couple, he has a lot of soul-searching done.
 * Cleopatra (the show's Alpha Bitch) was also attracted to "John Dark" (although she was MUCH more aggressive about it than JFK). At the end when Joan reveals herself, Kennedy shows relief at not being gay, while Cleopatra is just intrigued.
 * In Family Guy Chris Griffin becomes infatuated with a tomboy he completely believes to be male, and after she kisses him he writes in his diary that he kissed "him," but didn't want a serious relationship. When she revealed herself to be a girl to the dimwitted Chris, they became a couple after some disbelief, exacerbated by the fact that Chris is incredibly awkward around girls but wasn't this time until the reveal.
 * In Code Monkeys Mary feels that she isn't being respected enough by her boss so she decides to dress up like a man and call herself Mitch. She tells everyone at work that Mary died, and that she wanted Mitch to continue his work. Her co-worker Jerry showed signs of having a crush on Mitch the moment he showed up, fantasized about him, and even admitted he was gay for Mitch in front of a crowd before he kissed him and blew her disguise when her mustache came off.


 * Never outright stated in Cybersix, but Lucas really, really likes Adrian; Cybersix's "male" alter ego.
 * In Mulan, we have Captain Shang, who grows close with young soldier Fa Ping, an awkward klutz who eventually Took a Level in Badass and earned everyone's respect and friendship. When he finds out that "Ping" is in fact a girl (namely Mulan), he is of course shocked, particularly because during those times, a girl joining the army is a crime punishable by death. Fortunately, Mulan had saved his life earlier and he repaid the debt to her by merely abandoning her. When she manages to save the day a second time, Captain Shang's feelings for her become obvious to everyone except perhaps him.

Real Life

 * Inverted with Anne Bonny and Mary Read, a legendary pair of 18th century female pirates. When they met, Anne Bonny was openly female, but Mary Read was a Sweet Polly Oliver. Mary eventually revealed her gender when Anne developed a crush on her. They later went on to become Back-to-Back Badasses.
 * That's certainly possible, but by the time their ship was captured and the crew brought to justice, both women were pregnant. Anne presumably by her lover, Calico Jack, and Mary by hers, the ship's doctor.
 * The real Crowning Moment of Awesome being that, since they were both pregnant, neither could be sentenced to death, despite a long and unashamed career of piracy.
 * Unfortunately, Read died after childbirth in prison. Bonny disappeared from the record, but is believed to have been rescued by her merchant father and lived a long and straight life in colonial South Carolina.