#how their crimes directly affect other popular characters/whether an existing fandom-wide attraction to them already exists/whether

[musical-chick-13]

Who do I feel as though genderbent mello would get girboss treatment

See, I go back and forth on this, because my instinctive reaction is that you are absolutely right. There's the whole implied Catholicism thing (people love to use that as an aesthetic, which, fair, I used to be Catholic we have some banger art and designs), there's the leather and Fashion Choices™, there's the "is a criminal who kills people but isn't The Worst One Here" and there's the "main target of their ire is an unpopular character" all of which are prime traits for fandom girlboss-ification.

The conflict I find myself having, though, is that this character is. Angry. That's kind of his Thing™. And if he were a woman........people really don't like angry women. Especially if they act out about it. If they're lucky, all that happens is they get called "crazy" or "hysterical." But most of the time they get called [insert gendered insult or death threat here]. (Remember when I got harassed multiple times irl for simply dressing up as a fictional character at a con, good times.) A female version of this character would have "conventionally attractive thin young person" to her advantage, and people are kinder to female characters if they fit into that category than if they don't. And, again, a major source of this character's anger involves their misplaced disdain for a character the fandom at large (sadly, incorrectly) does not have a ton of love for. And those things might be enough to override the general fandom distaste for destructive anger in female characters.

I'm going to go into this further in my "almost-genderbent DN" post (which is. it's coming. I just. chronic illness. words.), but I guess it would depend on how unhinged (and, specifically in what ways she is unhinged) the story makes this genderbent version of her. Some types of "unhinged" are seen as delightful or even narratively palatable, and some aren't. Because there is a general-fandom threshold between, "The crimes make her cool™" and "The crimes make her the devil incarnate" and I'm trying to fully parse out where exactly that threshold is. And once I have a more concrete idea of it, all of you will be the first to know. :)

(Another factor in whether or not she gets Girlbossed™ is probably to what extent (if any) genderbending her changes her relationship with Matt. Because they're a pretty popular ship, and if a character choice makes a ship more or less appealing in the eyes of the fandom...historically, that's going to change the general perception of that character.)