‘Fixing’ the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Mainly to get away from that trope, just give the girl a personality that would exist without the main character. Looks are very superficial. But making them not exist for the main character but the main character joining her like an on-ramp to her life will keep her from being a pixie girl. She has to have goals that existed before the main character joined her. These goals should also be achievable if the main character left her. And the main character's life can be changed because of her, but he should not be "saved" by her. Just more mutual relationship on both sides.

My biggest issue with these kinds of love interests is usually just that they have no personality beyond love interest. Thei life revolves around their love interest and their character revolves around their relationship to the love interest. I know nothing about her that doesn't somehow relate back to her love interest. She basically can't exist as a character without him. Just give her a personality and character of her own and you've stepped away from most the pitfalls to me. Friends, family, hopes and dreams of her own seperate to the love interest, you know?

To add to the points said above about making her a well-rounded character: give her some flaws that cannot just be explained simply as quirky character traits. You're already doing that a little with her appearance, but you can make what would typically be a 'quirky' character trait a real hindrance. Having a bubbly personality is fun until she is bubbly in a situation that is inappropriate, being easily distracted is funny until she forgets something majorly important or puts herself in danger because of it, etc.

Why not subvert it a little more and just leave them as friends?

I never got around to writing it, but I came up with an idea for story playing on this idea...and subverting the living hell out of it.

So, the basic premise was that you have this author, and he meets this lovely young quirky artistic woman who wants nothing more than to make him happy. In the background is a subplot about him having pissed off the mob somehow and them putting out a hit on him, so he has the police around him warning him about this super assassin called "the Wolf," but this is a subplot - the main plot is his relationship with this girl, and the quirky things she does around him (like tape recording herself helping out with difficult chores), etc. And then, they reach the point where they're about to consummate the relationship...

...and she whips out a silenced pistol and puts two bullets in his heart and one in his head. Turns out that subplot wasn't a subplot - she is the Wolf. All of the quirky things she was doing, like tape recording the sound of her doing physically demanding things, was to infiltrate and ensure her escape (by playing it back to make it sound like they're having sex while she cleans up the evidence).

The rest of the story would be the cat-and-mouse game between the Wolf and the authorities trying to catch her.

I mean, I thought it would be a neat subversion, and a nice play on The Day of the Jackal at the same time. Pity I never got around to writing it. Might do someday, though, once I'm finished with the Re:Apotheosis series.

I mean, to 'fix' a trope I think it's natural to start with the core of what the issue with it is:

• How does one 'save' another person simply by knowing how to exist in modern society? I think a more likely outcome is he tries to save her, but it doesn't go as smoothly as he thought
• If he succeeds, he must have changed in some way to make him different from all the other people who know how to exist in society but couldn't 'save' her. This would make him no longer (completely) ordinary.
• The whole concept of 'saving' tends not to be a binary success/fail state in reality either. Maybe he helped her, but it's unrealistic for him to have solved all her problems
• Therefore she'll have ongoing problems in her life, which would leak into his life, meaning she will have an impact on his life beyond 'making it more interesting and fulfilling'
• I guess the crux of it is making those problems actual problems that cause real difficulty and frustration for the guy, instead of being just another way to 'make his life more interesting and fulfilling'

Disclaimer: I can't name an example where I've seen Manic Pixie Dream Girl play out, but I'm pretty sure I have at some point. Either way, I might not have the best grasp on it.

The issue I had with this trope is pretty much covered by @HGohwell. The girl either doesn't have a life outside of the love interest or focuses on the love interest disproportionately.

In the story I'm writing, one of my characters has a lot of traits of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and another would qualify as the Average Everywoman Admirer.

The difference is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl-like has other friends. The Everywoman is afraid of connecting with people more than superficially, so she's going to have to learn how to do that if she ever wants to get closer with Dream Girl. Also she's going to have to do this unprompted by Dream Girl, since DG doesn't know that this is a problem. DG also has her own problems that can't be solved by Everywoman (but they can support each other!)

I don't have anything to really add to this, I just really like it. I think the kinds of characters that are typically Manic Pixie Dream Girls can be fun, but their existence is usually relegated to nursing the problems of someone who doesn't do nearly as much in return. It's a shame.

One of the biggest issues with the MPDG is often the man she's interested in. It's always like... the girl is talented, fun and really extra, and then the guy is just the dullest person to ever live, and she likes him because....errr.......?

This is why the only examples of the trope I really like are:

Scott Pilgrim (but the comics, not Michael Cera's sleepy, low-energy performance) because Scott is a very extra guy; he's in a band, he gets into fights and has exes and baggage of his own. In fact it turns out Scott and Ramona really aren't so different in the end. Scott is convinced he's this happy-go-lucky guy who the world has it out for, but realises that his tendency to just drift through life, always taking and never giving, never considering the consequences of anything he does, is actually hurtful to others. He and Ramona both need to learn to not be so wrapped up in themselves.

Ah My Goddess! Keiichi is the opposite route to Scott Pilgrim in a way, because he is the nicest man alive, but it's appropriate because Scott is a mess on the same level as Ramona, and Keiichi is a noble, self-sacrificing guy who strives to be on the level of literal heavenly being Belldandy. In a moment of desperate loneliness, this reliable, kind-hearted guy everyone takes advantage of, wishes a goddess on the phone was his girlfriend... and now faced with actually having a literal goddess as a girlfriend, he steps up, provides her with a safe home, takes care of money, even welcomes her mischief-causing sisters, and deals with all the magical crap in his life like a champ. When reading or watching Ah My Goddess! I never felt like "What does Belldandy see in this guy?" because Keiichi is just as committed to being fair and kind to others as she is.

For me, the secret ingredient is that even if on the surface the main character seems like "the normal one", they need to meet their partner's energy somehow in a way where you can buy this is a relationship that would work due to shared values and life goals. It tends to work better if "the normal one" turns out to be just as much of a freak under the surface and that the "weird one" was instinctively drawn to that.
Otherwise it's just this boring fantasy scenario somebody has come up with like "what if I made absolutely no effort to do or say anything interesting, present myself nicely, have interesting experiences to talk about or even to go out and interact with women at all, but then a woman came and found me and she was super hot and nicely presented with cool clothes and said and did loads of cool, interesting things and was way into me just for existing and also made me do cool things so I could do cool things while still maintaining an apathetic facade?"

I’ve fell for this trope and I didn’t even realize it. My character Theta from my science fiction novel (formerly screenplay) from Omega of Hope. She is very bubbly, is a little hopeless romantic and has a crush on the cyborg character Knox. Originally I intended her to be nerdy, logical cool headed character, but that completely changed. Before I knew it, the tomboyish, thick glasses smart Alec turned into a naive, admittedly annoying but kind and sort of Disney Princessy character.

I wanted to keep her bubbly and shy and romantic nature in the novel and take out the annoying aspects of her that I grown to hate.

Ngl I've been meaning to commentate on Manic Pixie Dream Girl-archetype in my comic... in the action genre. I remember mentioning I wasn't going to satirize archetypes beyond season 1 at risk of it being derivative, but I REALLLLLY have a bone to pick with this one. Scott Pilgrim was probably the only good one imo.

I never really had problems with them in the romance genre. I'm just like "Eh... the writers are usually writing what they're into...". I do think there can be improvement, but I honestly think all of this depends on a different person.

Yeah, I'm sure if somebody wrote these stories like that, it'd be really good!

When I say "the dullest person to ever live", I don't mean that the male character in these stories is a quiet, understated guy with hidden depths, who listens intently. MPDG stories like that are rare. Ah My Goddess! Is the only one that came to mind for me, and I explicitly called it out as one that's actually pretty good.

What I mean by "dull" isn't quiet. Being quiet isn't dull, because it's an unusual character trait. Most male love interest characters in Romance written for women, the love interest is the guy you just described. He's quiet and doesn't speak much, but he has an intensity to him, and he's a good listener (It's literally a cliche for straight women to say they like a man who's a "good listener").

I mean dull as in basic. The male character in a MPDG story is not written for women to think "wow, he's quiet, but so deep! Swoon!" about like Mister Darcy, he's written for a male audience to say "yeah, I can relate to this guy!" by male writers who... man, I dunno, they have a really low opinion of other men, I guess? So, generally a guy who dresses in the most average way, his music taste is whatever's kind of typical for his age range, he likes football and hanging out at the bar/pub with other guys, has no hobbies... he's the kind of guy who thinks his "nerd friend" is nerdy because he likes Star Wars. He's not quiet; he talks a lot, but just not really about anything interesting.

Ah, I see, someone who's dull outside AND out inside. Well...... maybe she thinks he's a "fixer upper".

Yeah, that's the premise of most MPDG stories. Super interesting woman finds very boring man and makes him an interesting person.

Another problem I see in most types of male protagonist is the problem that their personality. They are boring. They are completely wrapped up in getting a girlfriend. Nothing else really matters to them. Would you be friends with someone that his only goal is to get a girlfriend? No, that person is boring. He also doesn't have goals or ambitions beyond being with the girl. They usually don't have friends themselves and maybe ask why? Because they are not people to be friends with. Everyone always talks about the girl in these comics, but the men are usually just as bad if not worst in a real life evaluation.