Stalking Is Funny If It Is Female After Male

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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, especially if she is conventionally attractive, but even if she isn't one way or the other, she is far more likely to be treated sympathetically and the whole thing far more likely to be Played for Laughs than if the gender dynamic were reversed.

In Real Life, it shouldn't need to be said, stalking is a Bad Idea™ and, depending on the extent to which the stalker goes, almost certainly illegal no matter which genders are involved. Unfortunately, this trope can be found in Real Life insofar as men are often less likely to be taken seriously by the authorities than women in a similar situation. That said, as with similar tropes, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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) , though the stereotypes regarding stalking aren't quite identical to the stereotypes regarding rape.

Examples of Stalking Is Funny If It Is Female After Male include:

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.
• 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.
  • In a twist, it isn't funny 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.

Fanfic

• Played straight in the Death Note fic A Cure for Love when Misa gives Light a Forceful Kiss and everyone laughs. Averted earlier when L warns Light just how dangerous Misa's "crush" is:

L: It must have quite distressing to come home and find your family murdered only to watch the perpetrator evade justice... However, considering that psychological trauma, she is most definitely and unsurprisingly unbalanced. She exhibits signs of erotomania in relation to you, Light-kun. Light: I wouldn't go that far... It's a crush. I can handle it. L: Yes, by avoidance. I dealt with a case where the victim handled it in the same way as you're doing. Didn't end well. Light: They died? L: No, but 56 other people did when their stalker decided that their deaths would be an appropriate tribute. Light: Oh, that's comforting.

• This is Lampshaded in the Death Note fic Fever Dreams. Many background characters find it humorous how Misa stalks Light (or even think he's lucky to be stalked by a hot celebrity chick) and only when Misa gets really violent and crazy do people even consider calling the cops.

Film

• The Wedding Crashers B-plot in its entirety is fully described by the title.

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.
• Two and A Half Men: Rose being Charlie's stalker is a Running Gag.
• Played for Laughs with Harper's stalky crush on Justin in Wizards of Waverly Place, before Harper's Relationship Upgrade.
• Played with in one episode of Law and 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.
• Brooke Shields lept into this trope with both feet in the 1996 Friends episode "The One After the Superbowl: Part 1" as Erika Ford, a Stalker with a Crush who thinks Joey is actually Dr. Drake Ramoray, the character he portrays on a soap opera. (They eventually get rid of her by convincing her Joey is actually Ramoray's Evil Twin.)

Music

• The music video for Sugarland's "Stuck Like Glue".

Visual Novels

• Played straight in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. Ema managed to follow Edgeworth from the airport all the way to an amusement park by following his footprints. Edgeworth was appropriately creeped out, but the whole thing was Played for Laughs.
• Interesting example in Persona 3: At the beginning of the game, a female NPC will be stalking a male NPC classmate due to the fact that she has a crush on him but is too shy to relate her feelings. As the year progresses, she becomes disgusted with him upon observing his less appealing characteristics and stops tailing him. However, in an ironic twist, the male student has now become infatuated and begins stalking her instead. Both accounts are played for laughs within the context of the game, but some fans of Persona 3 have noted that they found the male classmate stalking a female not so much funny as disturbing.

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.

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.
• 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!
• Heloise on Jimmy Two-Shoes. 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. That show also has funny male after female stalking.
  • ...Not really. TDWT, or at least its fandom, is actually a great example of this trope at work. 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.