Veronica has spent a considerable amount of time and effort ingratiating herself with the "in crowd" at her high school, only to find herself missing her less "cool" but considerably nicer old friends. The arrival of rebellious bad boy JD seems like a welcome distraction from her growing unhappiness and the resultant friction with her new crowd.
JD seems to offer Veronica a way to re-establish her own independence and identity, and a way to strike back at the "friends" that are making her miserable. But perhaps JD's ideas of an appropriate response are a bit more extreme than Veronica's expecting ...
I loved Heathers when I first saw it as a teen, shortly after its original release, but man oh man it is very clearly a product of its time. I'm not just talking here about the hideously 80s fashion and the frequency of character's smoking - though both are endemic throughout the film. I'm not even talking about the problematic attitudes toward sexuality, which in the film's defense are often meant to be problematic. I'm talking about how in one of his early scenes, JD uses a gun at school. Yes, it's only loaded with blanks, but he does point it at two fellow students and pull the trigger. In 1989, this was presumably meant to make him cool and edgy (since the two other students are jerks) but in 2018, I think reactions are going to be a bit different!
In fact, watching Heathers today, I was most struck by how much the changing mores of society have impacted the way I saw JD: so many of the things he does, which barely registered with me at the time, now all ping red flags. This almost certainly harms the film for new viewers, but for someone who grew up with it, it's quite a fascinating thing to experience.
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