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Stalking Is Funny If It Is Female After Male
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Oh oh oh / She's following me! Oh oh oh / She's out of her tree! Oh oh oh / She's off of her rocker! I want to marry my stalker!
A man who creeps after a woman, spies on her and builds a stalker shrine in her honor is creepy. The woman, however, not so much, though usually only if she is hot. And when played for laughs, the stalker will most definitely be female and attractive one way or the other.
Notice, that female stalker can be creepy, too. Compare Stalking Is Love and Stalker with a Crush. This trope is related to and often overlaps with Abhorrent Admirer. This trope tends to serve as the Lighter and Softer Sister Trope of Double Standard: Rape—Female on Male, note (and, often times, serves as a more family-friendly substitute and/or metaphor for it) though the stereotypes regarding stalking aren't quite identical to the stereotypes regarding rape.
Examples
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Advertising
- A series of commercials for the Android smartphone featured a girl who couldn't stop talking about her new Love Interest, Brad, and all the different ways the Android's apps let her keep tabs on him. She could go through his Facebook and compare herself to photos of his ex-girlfriends, watch his Twitter to see if he mentioned her, and so on. Taken to the disturbing extreme when she talked about checking in on Foursquare... which had just declared her the 'mayor' of Brad's closet. The wide-eyed, vacant, faintly unhinged expression on the actress's face only made it that much creepier, but the whole thing was Played for Laughs. Hard to imagine them being as funny if the stalker was male.
Anime and Manga
- Axis Powers Hetalia: Russia's younger sister Belarus stalks him and tries to force him to marry her, totally Played for Laughs.
- In Death Note, Misa Amane stalking Light (a Cute and Psycho Yandere Serial Killer Killer stalking another Serial Killer Killer) is mostly Played for Laughs.
- In the anime and manga of Dragonball , Videl's stalking of Gohan is usually this.
- Not to mention Chi-Chi: her entry in the Tenkaichi Budokan was just her way to bully Goku into marrying her because of a promise he had made when they were both ten years old.
- You really can't deny that Hinata is this for Naruto, what with how many times you see her watching him from the sidelines. However, she's one of the more sympathetic examples out there since she is very clearly shown to truly care about him.
- Mizore Shirayuki from Rosario + Vampire initially averts this due to her yandere tendencies, but when she moves past those, her stalking habits become far more comical. She has hidden in trash cans, outside the second story window, and many, many other strange places. All because she finds it "fun".
- Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei has a girl stalking her teacher...persistently. But that's just one thing in that anime that Crosses the Line Twice. And in a twist, it isn't funny just because of the student stalking her teacher, but because now the student is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend, the ex-boyfrind by his current girlfriend, etc. leading to a chain of stalkers.
Comic Books
- Knives in Scott Pilgrim has a bit of this for Scott, but she gets over it.
- Harley Quinn with the Joker of Batman
Fan Fic
Film
- The Wedding Crashers B-plot in its entirety is fully described by the title.
- On the other hand, Fatal Attraction is probably one of the most memorable depictions of stalking on film, and it subverts this trope.
- Subverted in He Loves Me He Loves Me Not, a French movie starring Audrey Tautou. The movie starts off playing this trope straight as is seen through her own eyes. Halfway through the movie, it's flipped and seen through the eyes of her crush.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Kat from the sitcom The Class stalks Benjamin, taking disturbingly specific pictures of him and developing them herself, then stacking them in large piles and knowing exactly where to find a particular picture. Initially funny, until she starts dating Benjamin and he finds the pictures. But then he forgives her.
- Myra Monkhouse in Family Matters. Even when she and Steve Urkel are in a relationship.
- Played with in one episode of Law & Order (or possibly SVU). A guy is faking some stuff to make it look like his ex-girlfriend is stalking him (I forget his exact reason). When the police question him he claims that he found it somewhat flattering which makes the police very suspicious since that is not a normal reaction.
- Two And A Half Men: Rose being Charlie's stalker is a Running Gag. Even the fact that she murders him is Played for Laughs.
- Played for Laughs with Harper's stalky crush on Justin in Wizards Of Waverly Place, before Harper's Relationship Upgrade.
- Also Played for Laughs with Mel in the music comedy show Flight of the Conchords. She stalks Jemanie and Bret, the two members of the band, despite being married. She is also the band's only fan.
Music
Video Games
- Amy Rose from Sonic the Hedgehog. It's supposed to be adorable because she's a little girl and he's a famous hero but thinking too much about it can be creepy sometimes, especially when she's throwing herself on random Hedgehogs when confusing him.
- In the Archie Comics, Amy Rose wished herself older - twice - to get Sonic's attention more effectively. She's effectively wished away about about five of the most innocent and carefree years of her life to hurry along the boobs and monthly bleeding. One day that's going to come back to haunt her...
Visual Novels
Web Original
- Noticed and defied by The Nostalgia Chick's obsession with Todd In The Shadows. Because people were rooting for her more than they were for Todd to get Obscurus Lupa, the Chick went through some Sanity Slippage very quickly and started kidnapping him, tying him up, stealing his stuff in order to manipulate him to go out with her, tried to kill Lupa because she rejected him, expressed a wish to make love to his corpse, looked forward to a "date" where he would be a vulnerable drunk, and sexually assaulting him when he was asleep. Still Played for Laughs (as is Todd for Lupa), just pitch-black ones.
- The "Overly Attached Girlfriend
 " meme. Most responses are to the effect of "I wouldn't mind being kept locked up in a dark room with my legs broken so I can't run away by her". In the videos by Laina herself, however, the tone is definitely meant to be horrifying. Misaimed Fandom indeed.
Western Animation
- Played straight and inverted on The Fairly OddParents. Timmy is constantly trying to shake off Tootie and Veronica, who are so madly in love with him and do incredibly creepy things to get his affection. Of course, Timmy has also done plenty of creepy things to get Trixie's attention, but it's just as funny.
- On Family Guy, Meg usually stalks guys who are nice to her. She stalked Brian, Joe, and Kent. However, it came to a point that her stalking wasn't played for laughs and the police had to stop Meg from raping Brian. Kent once called her a psycho after she attempted to trick Chris into sleeping with him.
- Yo for Chum Chum in Fanboy and Chum Chum. Let's see, now - she has a shrine dedicated to him and has repeatedly attempted to kidnap him. She fails mostly because of Fanboy, who's always protecting Chum Chum from her. So far, there were two episodes in which her uses of Fanboy's distraction/handicap to take Chum Chum away became a major plot point.
- Helga from Hey Arnold! has a shrine to Arnold in her closet, made out of his used bubble gum that she collected, for Gord's sake! It's not always Played for Laughs, though.
- Heloise on Jimmy TwoShoes. Given that the show runs entirely on Black Comedy, it fits very well.
- Also subverted with Heloise's stalker, Peep. He's male, but it's still played entirely for laughs.
- On Johnny Test, both Susan and Mary's obsession with Gil and Bling-Bling's obsession with Susan are Played for Laughs. However, Bling-Bling is a flat-out Abhorrent Admirer, with Susan fully aware and utterly disgusted by his advances. Gil, meanwhile, seems completely unaware that the girls are interested in him. He did call them out on their behavior once, when they locked him in the lab to keep him from encountering any of the rampaging Gil-bots, yet remained clueless as to why, and continued to treat them normally in later eps.
- On Phineas And Ferb, Candace Flynn was like this to Jeremy before their relationship started. Linda even mentioned her shrine.
- Sierra to Cody in Total Drama World Tour. And in the fandom, Sierra fans often argue that it's alright that Sierra stalks Cody, because it's just a Gender Flipped version of Cody "stalking" Gwen. The thing is, Cody never stalked Gwen—he obviously has a crush on her and has occasionally edged into creepy territory (sniffing her hair, for example), but never did anything weird enough for Gwen to stop considering him a friend. Sierra, however, ignores all of Cody's obvious objections while she steals all his underwear, messes with him while he sleeps, paralyzes him all Played for Laughs. There's a reason lots of fans dislike her.
- Billy The Cat features, at one point, a human girl who knew that Billy the cat used to be human, and was saved by him from being permanently turned into a cat herself. Toward the end of the episode, she finds Billy, picks him up, and kisses him on the mouth, (even though he's a cat) saying "I'll never forget you." It's clearly meant to be an endearing way for her to thank him, but it's made clear that Billy feels uncomfortable at it, and you can't help but think it wouldn't be as endearing with the genders flipped.
- Jolly Mouser involves Billy rescuing a bunch of female cats who were imprisoned on a ship to be sold as pets. After they're rescued, they all surround him and take turns kissing him, even though he voices some discomfort at this.
- A Star Is Born features Mr. Hubert, also a cat, and for that matter one who's sort of a mentor to Billy, becoming famous among cats for his role in cat food ads. The episode ends with several female cats chasing him off screen and Billy's reaction being "go get him, girls!"
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