# Manic pixie dream girl > A quirky, free-spirited female character who exists mainly to teach a gloomy male hero to enjoy life, with no goals or inner life of her own. Critic Nathan Rabin coined the term in 2007, reviewing Elizabethtown. Also known as MPDG ## In practice A manic pixie dream girl is a stock character in film and fiction: a quirky, free-spirited young woman whose main purpose in the story is to shake a gloomy male hero out of his rut and teach him to enjoy life. She is whimsical, spontaneous and endlessly charming, but she has no real goals, history or inner life of her own. The story is about what she does for him. The film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term in 2007 in a review of Elizabethtown for The A.V. Club, describing Kirsten Dunst's character as a creature who "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures." He pointed to Natalie Portman's character in Garden State as another example. The phrase spread fast, and in 2014 Rabin wrote an essay apologizing for it, arguing it had become a lazy label applied to any quirky woman. The useful part of the idea for writers is the warning inside it. A character who exists only to change another character is a function, not a person. The fix is not to make women less quirky; it is to give every important character desires, flaws and a story that continues when the hero is offscreen. Several films, from (500) Days of Summer to Ruby Sparks, are built around exactly that criticism. ## She refuses the role **A rooftop at dawn, after a long night out** ``` EXT. APARTMENT ROOFTOP - DAWN OWEN (30), in yesterday's suit, watches the sun come up beside ZOE (28), who wears a vintage raincoat and holds a ukulele she has not played all night. OWEN I haven't done anything like this in years. You make everything feel like it means something. ZOE I'm moving to Lisbon on Thursday. Owen laughs, then sees she isn't joking. ZOE (CONT'D) I took the job before I met you. I was going to tell you around midnight, but you were having such a good time being changed. She puts the ukulele in his hands and goes down the stairs. ``` The scene sets up every sign of the [trope](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/trope) (the raincoat, the ukulele, the sunrise, the hero who feels alive again) and then breaks it. Zoe has a job, a plan and a timeline that existed before Owen, and she sees exactly what role he has cast her in. Her line turns the audience's attention from what she means to him to who she actually is, which is the writer's way out of a stock character. ## What a manic pixie dream girl is The manic pixie dream girl, often shortened to MPDG, is defined less by her personality than by her function. She appears when the hero is depressed, lonely or stuck; she brings spontaneity, music, odd hobbies and adventure; and once he has learned to live, the story either ends or she leaves. Her quirks are presented as gifts to him rather than parts of a life. Common signs include eccentric clothes, a love of old records or obscure bands, a habit of doing something childlike in public, an unexplained lack of responsibilities and very little [backstory](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/backstory). None of these makes a character an MPDG on its own. The trope is the combination of charm with emptiness: we learn what she does, not what she wants. The character is old even if the name is new. Critics have traced earlier versions to screwball [comedy](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/comedy), such as Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938), and to Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, though both have more independent lives than the strict trope allows. The label caught on because the 2000s indie film boom produced so many films built around the pattern. ## Examples in film The examples Rabin named: Claire, played by Kirsten Dunst, in Elizabethtown (2005), who cheers up a disgraced shoe designer after a disaster at work; and Sam, played by Natalie Portman, in Garden State (2004), who helps a numb young actor feel again after his mother's death. Often cited, with debate: Summer in (500) Days of Summer (2009) looks like an MPDG through the hero's eyes, but the film's point is that Tom has projected the fantasy onto her; she tells him clearly from the start that she does not want a relationship. Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) says directly that too many men think she is a concept and that she is just a person looking for her own peace of mind. Deliberate critiques: Ruby Sparks (2012), written by Zoe Kazan, is about a novelist whose invented dream girl comes to life, and becomes a story about controlling another person. The male version of the trope, sometimes called the manic pixie dream boy, has been applied to characters such as Augustus Waters in The Fault in Our Stars. ## Why the trope is criticized The main criticism is that the character is not a person. She is a mirror for the hero's growth, which makes the story narrower and less true, and it repeats an old pattern in which women in stories exist to support men's journeys. Audiences increasingly notice when a woman's only arc is to fix someone. There is also a criticism of the term itself. Rabin later argued that the label had become a way to dismiss any eccentric female character, including well-written ones with full inner lives. A quirky woman is not automatically an MPDG; the question is whether the story treats her as the subject of her own life. For writers, the most practical way to see the problem is the Bechdel-style question: does she have scenes, goals and conflicts that do not involve the hero? If removing the hero would leave her with nothing to do, she is likely a function of his story. ## Related tropes The MPDG is a close cousin of the [Mary Sue](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/mary-sue), an idealized character who is too perfect to be tested. Both are flat characters built to serve a fantasy; the Mary Sue is the fantasy of the writer's own perfection, while the MPDG is the fantasy of being rescued by someone delightful. She also relates to the muse, an older figure who inspires an artist, and to the love interest as reward, in which a woman is the prize at the end of a [hero's journey](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/heros-journey). In each case, a woman's role is defined by what she gives a man. Other trope names followed in the same spirit: the cool girl, from Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, who pretends to share every interest of the men around her, and the strong female character criticized for being tough without being complex. All of these labels are tools for noticing flat writing, not rules for avoiding certain personalities. ## How to avoid writing one Give her a want that has nothing to do with the hero. A job she is fighting for, a family problem, an ambition, a fear. Then let that want create scenes in which he is inconvenient, absent or in the way. A character with her own plans will sometimes say no. Give her quirks a cause and a cost. If she is spontaneous, why? What does impulsiveness cost her, financially, socially or emotionally? Eccentricity that comes from a history feels real; eccentricity that exists to delight someone else feels designed. Let her change too. If the hero learns to live, what does she learn? A relationship in which both people are affected, and in which she can be wrong, tired or selfish, turns a trope into a person. Then test the script by telling the story from her [point of view](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/point-of-view). If you cannot, she needs more of one. ## Official sources & context Sources reviewed Nov 2, 2026 - [Wikipedia — Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Nathan Rabin, 2007)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl) ## Common questions ### What does manic pixie dream girl mean? A manic pixie dream girl is a quirky, carefree female character in a film or story whose main purpose is to help a sad male hero rediscover joy. The term criticizes characters who have charm but no goals or inner life of their own. ### Who coined the term manic pixie dream girl? Film critic Nathan Rabin coined it in 2007 in a review of the film Elizabethtown for The A.V. Club. He later wrote an essay in 2014 apologizing for the term because it had become an overused label. ### What are examples of manic pixie dream girls? The best-known examples are Claire in Elizabethtown and Sam in Garden State. Summer in (500) Days of Summer and Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are often mentioned, though both films question the trope rather than simply using it. ### What does it mean to manic pixie dream girl someone? Used as a verb, it means to treat a real person as a fantasy who exists to make your life exciting, rather than as someone with needs and plans of their own. It is usually a criticism of the person doing the idealizing. ### Is being called a manic pixie dream girl a compliment? Usually not. The term was coined as a criticism of flat writing, and calling someone an MPDG suggests they are seen as a charming accessory to someone else's story. Some people use it lightly to mean quirky, but its original meaning is critical. ### Is Summer in (500) Days of Summer a manic pixie dream girl? Tom sees her as one, and that is the film's point. Summer says from the start that she does not want a serious relationship, and the story shows the damage Tom does by ignoring what she says in favor of the fantasy he built. ### Is there a male version of the manic pixie dream girl? Yes. The manic pixie dream boy is a male character who exists to bring excitement and meaning into a female [protagonist](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/protagonist)'s life. Augustus Waters in The Fault in Our Stars is a frequently cited example. ## Related terms - [Mary Sue](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/mary-sue): An idealized character who is effortlessly skilled, admired by everyone and never seriously tested, so the story loses its tension. The name comes from a 1973 Star Trek fan fiction parody. - [Trope](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/trope): A familiar pattern that audiences recognize across many stories: a type of character, situation or plot turn, such as the chosen one, enemies to lovers or one last job. Writers play tropes straight, subvert them or comment on them. - [Character types](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/character-types): The ways writers and teachers classify characters: round or flat by how complex they are, dynamic or static by whether they change, stock characters by familiar type, and protagonist, antagonist or foil by their role in the story. - [Characterization](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/characterization): How a character becomes specific on the page — the traits, tactics, and contradictions that show up in choices, not a résumé of adjectives parked in an action paragraph. --- Canonical page: