Look, let’s put aside the fact that manic pixie dream girls are inherently irritating, because the purpose of a woman’s life is not to make a boring accountant realize that he should run around naked in traffic. Unless that is her job, somehow. Unless it’s some sort of life coaching thing. Then I guess… life coaching is a field that really exists, in the real world, that real people pay for. People make choices. But that is never the case with manic pixie dream girls in the movies or television, because they never seem to have calculated career paths. They don’t want career paths! They just want to live!

That’s fine. That trope has existed for a very, very long time. The problem is not that that trope exists, it’s that it’s getting worse. …