In Defence of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Men write us shallowly and then accuse us of being shallow because that's how they see us lol. Spot on.

Things like the magic pixie dream girl remind us neurodivergent people (include me) how people only like us as a concept, but not as actual people, especially neurodivergent women and girls.

Removing the men from the equation or sidelining them while focusing on the girls would be so nice to see. The characters themselves are honestly so precious and interesting and the writing does them dirty every time

"so much of girlhood is performance art" This is so uncomfortablely true. As we grow into our 'balanced fae real women' selves some of these things do cement others go away. Its trial and error i suppose.

I think what John Green means on "paper towns" is that actually, the whole mystery and search for the manic pixie dream girl, are created by the boy. She has her own life, her own decisions that she took by herself, informed by her own life which we- through the protagonist's eyes- have never even thought about. We spend the whole book looking and longing for her, but in the end, she was never ours. In the end, we have this big plot twist that she wasn't there for him, she didn't love him, he barely knew her. I think this is the criticism in the book and I saw this when I read it, but I think it might've been a bit too subtle and too easy to be misread for what John Green claimed it was supposed to be, if that makes any sense

The worst part of internalizing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was realizing it led me to romanticize Stale White Wonderbread Boys who thought they should be the center of every narrative in real life. Eventually I realized that I deserve partners who are interesting in and of themselves and not with me because I make them feel like they are more interesting than they really are. Stale White Wonderbread Boys can often show up as ‘Nice Guys’ until you realize the fragile egos and the unchecked entitlement many of those types carry. They often think that they can become more interesting if they just get an interesting girl to like them. Which is still a form of objectification. I would be lying if I didn’t say that the process to get to this realization was not a painful one with many hurts and disappointments.

I had my manic pixie dream girl's moment with my first relationship. He said he would never leave me, that i changed him forever... and then he left. On a last phone call (i never cried that much in my whole life) he said that he was tired of me acting childlike, he hated my dangling earings, that i was weird... Well, years has passed and turns out that i'm a Autistic ADHDer. A year after our breakup he wanted to come back into my life. I said a clear NO. He is dead to me.

My favorite "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" Is Lorelai Gilmore for this exact reason. She has all the personality traits associated with the concept but is viewed through the lens of a variety of people(including herself). Both favorably and unfavorably and is allowed to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this personality type.

Having to reject the stale white bonderbread boy because I could imagine the look on his face of utter disgust once he found out the manic pixie dream girl attributes were not the result of fun quirkiness but instead directly caused by childhood experiences of death, abuse, drugs, and fear … has anyone else experienced this ?

this is exactly why i fell in love with The Virgin Suicides! the boys are so infatuated with the manufactured image they created for the Lisbon sisters that they don’t even see the slow, painful death happening right in front of them. their pain and suffering becomes yet another thing for the boys to feed off of. we see how the boys grow up, start families of their own and move on with their lives. in all those years, they still don’t understand their role in the tragedy. the girls are immortalized as mere objects in the mind of the boys who fantasized about them. in the movie we don’t fully understand why the Lisbon sisters resorted to suicide. it’s not laid out for us like it is in the book. but i actually appreciate this artistic choice. we’ll never fully understand the Lisbon sisters because our protagonists never cared enough to understand them.

"So much of girlhood is performance art." Genius.

I feel this on a spiritual level. Guys who approach me with the intention of forming a romantic relationship are always like: "You're not like the others." Most of them told me that they are attracted to me because I am "weird" or "quirky". Bro I just have autism, it's not that deep. 💀 Amazing video as always <3!

I feel like "perks of being a wallflower" is a more nuanced example. Like Charlie isnt just a stale self insert. He's an s/a victim trying to find himself again. And yes in a way Sam is a manic pixie, we do know things about her and id argue all the characters outside if Charlie are just there to help his journey of self discovery and healing

There is an Irish folklore creature that is a scary but cool, Vampiric, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the Leanan Sidhe. She's a vampiric fairy-muse who offers poets and artists alike with creativity and inspiration and imagination..... in exchange for half of their lifespan. This lore was used to explain the sad and premature deaths of many a poet and artist and author.

i hate the negative connotation that manic pixie dream girl carries, and stale white wonderbread boy is a beautiful term that i will use from now on. also, great video to watch before the scott pilgrim anime release! (apparently theyre focusing more on ramona in the show, which hopefully fulfills desires of wanting to see more of her character. the comics actually show ramona being a lot more in depth; she and scott grow together, rather than her being a tool for him to evolve.)

while watching this video, i realized that so many of the films i love that were made in recent years depict women who, if they were secondary to a white man, would inevitably fall into the manic pixie dream girl trope. lady bird, marie antoinette, fleabag, nellie from babylon, juno, frances ha, and perhaps even barbie. but they're the center of the story, and that's why it's interesting and why i love it so much. i can see the type of women i relate to and aspire to be for who they are, not for what men think of them. that's insanely liberating. we don't have to understand them through the lens of an annoying stale white wonderbread boy. they're interesting and charismatic, so they're the protagonist. like, imagine annie hall without having to see the world through woody allen's eyes! imagine annie hall but it's just annie hall! that would've been such a dream.

i really hate the manic pixie dream girl trope bc it doesn't usually show any of the actual real sides of being manic - mania is extremely dangerous. it puts people in the hospital, and actually physically deteriorates your health, specifically gray matter in the brain. it's not a fun quirky cool little experience. often, the flip side of mania, once it stops (and it does, mania can't happen all day every day for people and if it does, that is very very bad) people usually go into a similarly long depressive episode, which is also extremely dangerous and can cause people to self harm, or even end their own lives. mania isn't cute. it is a mental illness that causes people to experience actual psychosis, and is very very dangerous.

How dare you address my lingering nicotine addiction that started in my pursuit of being a manic pixie dream girl era

As someone who highly relates to manic pixie dream girls (I'm autistic, so that might have a little to do with it) I married what a lot of people might consider a wonder bread boy. Mainly because he's kind, understanding, empathetic and grounded. He is stability in what is normally, for me, a very chaotic world, where it often feels like people don't seek to understand me, or don't have the patience to. I've never felt more safe, secure or heard by anyone than this man I've married. He's your typical gamer, that doesn't seem to express much whimsy, but I'm often imaginative enough to carry both of us away in conversation. This isn't a fresh relationship, I've known him for twenty years, and been married to him for seven. I wouldn't trade him for anyone. This doesn't work with all bread. Some can be stale, and their interest is shallow. But what drew me to him was his kindness and understanding, and how much we could make each other laugh.

It always makes me so upset how the whole point of Scott Pilgrim is that both Scott and Ramona aren’t great people (heck most of the characters except Knives and Wallace aren’t tbh), and yet up until recently it was mainly Ramona who got flack when Scott is just as bad if not worse than she is. She got stuck with the MPDG label despite not even really being one when you look more into it, and suddenly she’s the worst characters ever who “ruined a whole generation of girls” (as that stupid song so lovingly put it). She’s not perfect and she’s not supposed to be. Scott represents those guys in geek/alternative/underground spaces who think they can do no wrong because they aren’t “popular”, but can’t see that they themselves are usually the problem. Like I wish more people could see that you’re not supposed to want to be the characters of SP, but since the main story line is an average white guy and a beautiful girl getting together I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m glad more people are realizing this though, and with the anime coming out it’ll be cool to hopefully see this point more realized than a 2 hour movie could do