I am still stuck in Youth in Revolt. I am now trying to imagine what it would take to be able to make a gender-reversed stalker narrative like this work--where the high school girl "falls in love" and is resolutely determined to get the guy. She will drive down to Santa Cruz and sneak into his dorm. She will get him expelled from school by enlisting someone else to drug his coffee each morning. She will destroy his dreams, and he will like it. She will lie and steal and develop an alternate "bad girl" persona. She will set downtown Berkeley on fire. And she will still totally and unquestionably be the hero.
Well, not if I wrote it, because hello, a stalker is a stalker is a stalker, and I like my moral ambiguity too. And that might not be a bad story, even. It could be quite illustrative, really.
And also let's insert the usual stuff here about how simple reversals never work because the sides aren't equivalent and the power system is rigged. Yes, I know, that's the point, really. But still.
But what would it take for her to be the unvarnished hero? Minus perhaps a slight patina of "ooh, naughty, that's sexy..."?
What would it take to make her the hero?
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