In a completely unrelated note to what I’m about to discuss: Happy 25th birthday to my darling Teddy Bear! White-Harp wishes him a happy berfday too. *\(^.^)/*

Summer: Your typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Lately I’ve come across something in all my work reading that has become common enough to warrant a blog post. Her name Quirky McSprite and she is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

You are all familiar with Manic Pixie Dream Girls–they exist everywhere, both in real life and in various forms of media. Take a walk down any street in Greenpoint or Williamsburg and you’ll meet 8 million hipster girls who fit the criteria. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl seems to be the most prevalent onscreen these days, starting with Annie Hall and tracing her path from Penny Lane to Sam from Garden State and most recently ending with Summer from 500 Days of Summer.

This, my friends, is a big problem.

Back when I had short hair. I still want to be Audrey Hepburn when I grow up.

Look, I get her appeal. I really do. I cultivated that “aura” myself once. I wrote an entire novel about me her that will never, ever see the light of day. Yet I still really love that waif-ish, pixie, perpetual childlike innocence associated with them and I want to be Audrey Hepburn when I grow up. Many of my female friends are real life Manic Pixie Dream Girls and I don’t find them annoying (otherwise we wouldn’t be friends, no?).

Unfortunately, in fiction the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is evolving into another type of Mary Sue. There are many sorts of Mary Sues and many definitions of them, but I define a Mary Sue as a female character whose traits must be contained within qualifying quotes. You know the type: she’s “Spirited!” and “Spunky!” and “Just A Normal Girl!”. In other words, she’s not actually a person.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is starting to become a Qualifying Quotes character. She’s “Quirky!” and “Free-spirited!” and “Saved By The Love Of A Good Man!” However, The Manic Pixie Dream Girl has a slightly different set of problems that need addressing than the Prototypical Mary Sue. Your typical Mary Sue is generally a vehicle for the reader to enter the story, but the Manic Pixie Dream Girl functions as an object of desire.

In fact, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl has a lot in common with the Tortured Brooding Hero. Both are usually irreparably broken in some way and are often “healed” by the story’s end by the Power of Love. However, while the hero almost always gets to be “fixed”, this particular girl has about a 50/50 chance of finding happiness. Holly Golightly from (the novella) BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, Alaska Young from LOOKING FOR ALASKA, and Summer from 500 Days of Summer are three that didn’t have a Happily Ever After, while Sam from Garden State and Claire from Elizabethtown are two who do. (Interestingly, the original ending of Garden State left Sam as one of the Unhappy ones.)

Done properly, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a great device. She has existed as a muse for poets, songwriters, and artists throughout the ages. She is the girl behind The Velvet Underground’s “Stephanie Says” and Weezer’s “El Scorcho”. She is Bob Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, a “Scorpio sphinx in a calico dress”. I love Capote’s BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S and all of John Green’s novels and they both have Manic Pixie Dream Girls. She often comes into Everyman’s life and changes how he sees the world, opening his eyes to spontaneity and laughter before flitting out again.

Where the Mary Sue is Ordinary Perfection, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is Mysterious Vulnerability. Her quirky, strange ways are often the fractured results of a kaleidoscope worldview she uses to hide her wounds. Male protagonists generally find the hints of vulnerability appealing while being baffled by her seemingly unpredictable behavior. Except said “unpredictable behavior” should be transparent to the reader, even if it isn’t apparent to the Everyman narrator.

When the raison d’être for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s free-spirited ways is missing, she transforms into Quirky McSprite, an odious creature I’d like to slap across the forehead for her stupidity. And unfortunately, Quirky McSprite is more stupid than anything else. She makes Grand Gestures and does Slightly Illegal Things to prove that she is “Spontaneous!” and “Mysterious!” It’s when a character needs to prove her Manic Pixie Dream Girl status is when the trope begins to grate on my nerves. It’s not cute to break into a high-security bank vault “for kicks”, okay?

I have similar problems with the Tortured Brooding Hero, but that is a function of being an Idealized Romantic Partner. (And a post I ought to save for another day.)

What are your thoughts? Manic Pixie Dream Girls: love ‘em or hate ‘em? Any examples where she was done well?