Scott & Ramona

As a pop culture junkie and a feminist, I spend a lot of time bemoaning the state of female characters in mainstream cinema. And at the top of my list of pet peeves is that most supremely irritating and unfortunately ubiquitous of archetypes: the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

But! It doesn’t always have to be that way. It is possible to create a cool, sexy, offbeat gal without turning her into a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Bryan Lee O’Malley did it in Scott Pilgrim, for one:

When Scott meets Ramona, she’s just as mysterious and adorable as you could expect, and true to form, her purpose is indeed to force him to grow up. But she’s also packing some serious baggage, and not the empty MPDG type. The apparently shallow conceit of having Scott fight each one of her evil exes reveals itself as a way of explaining Ramona as a person — as someone who’s wronged and been wronged, as someone who gets angry and sad and yes, even bored.

Check out the rest of that paragraph, plus several more about other quirky women done right at Geeks of Doom. You know you want to…