Sexy Little Things
why Mia and Madeline are not Manic Pixie Dream Girls
I’m pulling out a hat from the cupboard that I don’t often wear anymore, that of the precocious undergrad trying to get away with something cheeky in an English Literature paper. It’s a hat that I wore often through four years as an undergraduate English major and two in an interdisciplinary master’s program that mixed literature, history, sociology, and a smattering of economics. Sometimes it was successful: my essay on “The Dream Life of Balso Snell” as a response to Dante’s “Inferno” was a masterpiece! Sometimes it was a failure: my free verse modern adaptation of Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” got me a stern talking to in the hallway from a stuffy lecturer at the University of London campus where I did my study abroad. I once actually convinced an easily persuadable professor to let me include snippets from “The Way of a Man With a Maid” in my essay on Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel in the House” (and I’m now puzzling out ways to turn that coup into a sexy story that might appeal to a broader audience than people who get off on Victorian literature and erotica).
This is how I would imagine the daring young English major I was might approach the problem of Madeline and Mia (and to some extent Cait) from a few of my stories. I think she would be amused by these characters, and also more than a little turned on (she being eventually me, that seems inevitable). If you want to follow along like someone in Dr. Bogenbroom’s seminar on The Cultural Significance of Contemporary Smut who has done the reading, you can check out Off the Leash, Madeline’s Awakening, and Mia’s Patio Playtime on Amazon; Cait’s First Gangbang is available only to paid subscribers here or on Ream (paid subscribers get the other stories, too — quite a deal!). Of course, I followed along in a lot of seminars without doing all of the reading — who has time for all that Milton, am I right? — and even made useful, hurtful, or pithy comments as required, so if you’re as smart as a third year English undergraduate, you can probably get the gist. But I hope by the end you’ll want to check out these stories anyway!
It would be fairly easy to classify Mia, Madeline, and Cait from Cornelia Quick’s “Mia’s Patio Playtime,” “Off the Leash,” “Madeline’s Awakening,” and “Cait’s First Gangbang” as “Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” a trope that has been common in film and literature for close to a century but which was named and defined by A.V. Club film critic Nathan Rabin in his review of “Elizabethtown.” It would be easy to assume that these characters had reviewed this highly problematic WikiHow article and taken notes: “Be optimistic”, “Embrace quirkiness”, “Have a creative streak”, “Choose bangs” (of the hair variety, not the gang- variety …), “Don’t be too high maintenance”: these seem like tips all three of our characters have embraced (though they perhaps misunderstood “Choose bangs” …). But I contend that while these optimistic, quirky, creative, low-maintenance, and highly-bangable characters look like Manic Pixie Dream Girls (“MPDG” going forward), they are in fact examples of a different creature altogether, a sort of Sexy Little Thing (“SLT”) with an agency and agenda all their own.
It is understandable that one might confuse these characters for MPDGs. For one thing, they are certainly optimistic: in both Mia’s and Madeline’s case, they are putting themselves into risky situations with very little concern for the possible negative repercussions. In “Mia’s Patio Gangbang,” a planned safe activity — partner swapping with Gabbie and Ron (“[w]e had been swapping quite regularly with Gabbie and Ron for about a year at that point”, Mia states) — takes on escalating riskier tones as the preparations go on. First, with Gabbie ill with food poisoning, Mia is faced with a threesome with her husband Bobby and Gabbie’s husband Ron; as she has frequently had sex with them both in the same setting, though always with Gabbie present, this seems only slightly riskier than normal. But then she hears (second hand, through a text from Bobby) that Ron wants to invite a third participant, Evan, whom she met briefly at an Easter party; she agrees to the change, but with little forethought and some concern afterward:
I had already replied "sure" when my brain caught up to my fingers; for a regular cookout, I'm always up to having impromptu additions to the guest list, but then I remembered what else was on the menu for this dinner.
Three on one is a significant change in the plans, but the plans don’t stay even at that level. Soon Ron has invited another participant — an in-law of Gabbie’s, Sam, whom Mia recalls as having suffered an embarrassing premature ejaculation at a Christmas party a few years before. With four males and one female, we have entered the realm of the canonical gangbang. But crossing this Rubicon elicits only minimal concern, at least at first, from Mia: “I'll do my best. I want to be a good hostess.“ she assures her husband.
Madeline is even more carefree in her intentions upon discovering that the casino hotel she’s staying at with her friends Petra and Casey is hosting a swingers’ club for the weekend, complete with sex education seminars and a hedonistic, anything-goes party. Early in “Off the Leash,” Madeline is presented with the concept of a “gangbang” when Petra is reviewing the seminars on offer, including seminars offered by a mysterious man she met at the poker tables the night before:
"He's not my boyfriend," I say, "he's ... a boy who's a friend. A man who's an acquaintance. We had a nice time playing poker, and we shared some drinks; he was charming and invited me to his conference talk."
"Oh, which one?" Madeline asks. She scans the brochure and taps one description. "Is it this one, the 'Ethical Gangbang' one? Because I might want to check that one out ..."
"I think you should pace yourself, Mads," Casey says. "You need to walk before you can run."
"I'm a fast learner," she says. "And I intend to fly this weekend."
Soon Madeline is obsessed with the concept of a gangbang, and after attending the seminar is determined to experience one. As she explains to her friend Kelsey:
"I like cock," I say. "And I like attention. One at a time is pretty great — maybe it just gets better the more you add?"
When Kelsey objects that a gangbang is going to require too much multitasking, Madeline dismisses her concerns, stating,
"Oh, I don't want to do any tasking at all in my gangbang," I say. "I want the guys to be doing all the work. What's the point otherwise?"
Despite the objections raised by Kelsey and Pete, the other member of the couple for whom Madeline is acting as “unicorn,” that the men in a gangbang might be willing to let the other participants do most of the work, resulting in less attention than Madeline might otherwise expect, Madeline remains determined to have the experience, and seeks the assistance of a “Gangbang Coordinator” on her quest.
Both Mia and Madeline exhibit creativity as well. Madeline in particular embraces visual artistry in her interest in body paint, enthusiastically embracing the decorations offered by Pete’s friend Mark to turn her into a living, erotic, “Starry Night” canvas.
He starts on my stomach with a sponge dipped in white paint, drawing a whorl around my belly button, another on my hip. He circles me, dabbing at my ass and my back, and my shoulders. Then he applies dabs of yellow to my tits, and silver to my collarbone. He kneels before me and gently rubs black pain along my mound and down over my pussy; his sponge feels ticklish against my vulva, and I shift from foot to foot, enjoying the sensation.
…
Mark's paint has transformed my body, turning me into a magical and mysterious artwork. I close one eye to flash the star at myself, and I turn my hips to admire the wispy clouds and spray of stars climbing my ass to my hip.
"It's beautiful," I say.
Her body paint, and the image of the starry night as an all-consuming, cosmic engulfment in pleasure, become important tropes in Quick’s description of Madeline’s subsequent gangbang.
Mia’s choice of pre-gangbang arraignment is a bit more conservative than Madeline’s body paint, but is at least almost as imbued with creativity:
After a little consideration, I plucked a simple, white, strapless dress from my closet. The fabric was diaphanous, almost translucent, and it flowed like water around me; I felt like a river nymph when I wore it, ready to lure unsuspecting men to their doom. I tied my long black hair back with a green ribbon — I didn't see a point in trying to do anything fancy with my hair, as I was hoping it would soon be a sweaty, tangled mess.
Deciding to forego panties was a somewhat daring decision, but one that I was very happy to have made. The dress didn't do a very good job of hiding my charms — it was slit far up my thigh and would easily swing in the breeze to reveal everything underneath, and the clinging, translucent material was wonderfully revealing. I decided the panties would only get in the way and were just one more thing to deal with; and besides, it might be fun to flash the guys a little during supper to give them a preview of what was to come.
The reference to feeling “like a river nymph” echoes another Cornelia Quick story, “Hylas and the Nymphs,” featuring a trio of women who seduce the bartender at a rooftop bar. Classical and mythological tropes are common in the series from which “Hylas and the Nymphs” is drawn, but seeing it in an unrelated story suggests that Quick has an interest in making connections between Greek myths and contemporary sexual libertine behaviors. This would make Mia a sort of muse, inspiring sexual creativity in the participants in her gangbang.
The most “pixie” like attribute of Mia and Madeline, which is surprisingly not often referenced in definitions of the trope, is their diminutive size. When one thinks of the classic MPDGs of cinema — Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, Natalie Portman’s Sam from “Garden State,” Kirsten Dunst’s Claire in “Elizabethtown” — the character’s small stature beside her male lead is often one of the most striking visuals. And Quick makes much of both Mia and Madeline being small.
In “Off the Leash”, Petra observes of Madeline as they leave for the casino:
Madeline emerges in a tiny black dress with the neck cut in a V almost to her belly button, as only someone with such tiny tits can safely wear. What she lacks in curves, she makes up for in attitude — for someone so petite, Madeline has a way of dominating any room she enters with her energy and confidence. And both are cranked to eleven tonight in her evocative strut.
Later, when Petra meets Kelsey, who is unusually tall, she describes Madeline’s small stature: “Madeline squeezes Kelsey's ass; she has to reach up a little to do it, as her chin barely reaches Kelsey's chest.”
“Mia’s Patio Playtime” is told in the first person, so we don’t get a lot of direct observation of Mia’s stature, but in excerpts from “The Betwixtmas Switch” that feature Mia and her friend Vanna, we get this description from Vanna’s point of view:
I was more than a little jealous of Mia. With her tiny tits, narrow hips, and tight little ass, she could get away with wearing a microkini that had less fabric in it than a handkerchief and did little more than to draw attention to its general absence of coverage. With my curvy hips and big breasts, I needed a lot more bikini to be decently covered even by Isla de los Secretos standards.
Vanna often observes that Mia is particularly petite, usually in comparison to her own curves, enforcing our image of Mia as a small, pixie-like woman with an outsized libido.
While these aspects — the diminutive size, the creative nature, the carefree optimism — all suggest that Quick is playing with the MPDG trope in “Off the Leash”, “Madeline’s Awakening,” and “Mia’s Patio Playtime,” I will demonstrate that these two characters lack the most important MPDG attribute: “[t]he Manic Pixie Dream Girl 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” (Rabin, 2007). Mia and Madeline certainly do not exist solely for the purpose of teaching young men anything in particular — they are supremely self-interested, pleasure-seeking characters for whom men are largely irrelevant except so far as they can advance Mia’s and Madeline’s sexual agendas.
The precipitating event in “Mia’s Patio Playtime,” despite the blurb (which we presume was written by Quick herself), is not in fact a “bad batch of potato salad”: it is Mia’s desire to have sex outside, which has been thwarted by Gabbie and Ron’s recent landscaping that reduced the privacy at their house. In Mia’s own words:
"But I want the sun in my eyes when I take your big cock in my mouth," I said [to Ron], running my hand up and down his arm.
Had she not been driven by her own desire for alfresco love, the gangbang would never have happened. And while she does in fact focus on Sam in the course of the event, making sure that he gets the best possible experience from the gangbang, she’s seeking her own gratification:
"Sam first," I said, making eye contact with the youngest of the quartet. He gasped, eyes wide, and shook his head.
"Yes," I demanded, "you're about to pop off, and I'm going to come the second your cock touches my cunt — I want us to blow up together in a beautiful explosion. If we both survive, you'll get another round, and if not, well, there are worse ways to die ..."
And Mia succeeds in deriving maximum pleasure from the men on her patio, directing the action throughout — she’s the very definition of the “power bottom.”
Madeline’s agenda is largely the same as Mia’s, but her approach to achieving it is very different. She surrenders control of the gangbang to the Gangbang Coordinator, Debie Dare, and her nameless Unicorn Wrangler who ensures that the event goes off safely and with Madeline’s best interests as the focus. Unlike Mia, who has at least some personal relationship with the four men in her patio gangbang, Madeline’s male lovers are largely anonymous, either masked or invisible to her because of her perspective and the lighting in the room.
In surrendering her agency, though, Madeline acquires a special kind of autonomy. Throughout “Madeline’s Awakening,” Quick refers to a dream that Madeline had that presaged her gangbang, of being held aloft and caressed by many hands. This is the image in Madeline’s mind throughout her gangbang, and it is through achieving that vision that she finds a kind of liberation.
One of the sessions is titled "Hosting Your First Ethical Gangbang." I've got a rough idea of what a "gangbang" is, but I don't know what would make one more "ethical" than another. But the image I had while drifting off the sleep in Kelsey and Pete's bed, of being caressed by a thousand fingers, seems like something in the same category. Is that a dream I could make come true this weekend?
Despite handing over control of the details to Debbie and her wrangler, Madeline takes an active role in achieving her gangbang goals. When she’s frustrated by being perpetually on the edge of climax without reaching it, she demands assistance from her wrangler:
"I need to come," I gasp. "I'm so close, but they keep pulling out ..." I feel like I'm near tears with frustration.
With her desires made clear, the wrangler is able to deploy the correct equipment to make sure Madeline is satisfied.
At another point in the gangbang, a participant attempts anal penetration, which Madeleine had indicated at the outset was something that she didn’t want. But she is able to express a change of mind once the act is attempted:
As the crowd returns, the fingers and tongues resuming their caresses, and as a new lover takes his place between my legs, I signal for my wrangler again. He puts his face close to mine, and I ask, "Can I ... change my mind?"
"Do you want to use your safe word?" he asks, concern lining his face.
"No ... not that ... can I decide ... I want ... what if I want to be fucked in the ass?"
He laughs and caresses my cheek. "Nothing is written in stone," he says. "You can change your mind about anything at any time. Do you want to be fucked in the ass?"
"More than anything in the world," I gasp. I move my head to coax his fingers into my mouth, gently licking and sucking at them. He plants a kiss on my forehead and disappears.
Madeline expresses her needs, demands fulfillment, and enjoys sexual activities (including simultaneous anal and vaginal penetration) that she had not initially anticipated desiring. Her focus is entirely on her own pleasure: any pleasure the men achieve is entirely ancillary.
Rather than MPDGs, Madeline and Mia are a completely different being: “Sexy Little Things,” one might say, diminutive women with libidos far in excess to their size and fierce agency and autonomy in having their libidos gratified. They are distinguished by their selfish focus on desire, and their single-minded focus on sensuality.
Another of Quick’s characters, Cait from “Cait’s First Gangbang” and “The Betwixtmas Switch,” is another, perhaps even purer, form of the Sexy Little Thing. Also described as petite and feisty, Cait provides an account of an attempted gangbang that went poorly, and insists that at least four men are required for it to count: “It's got to be at least four lads giving me a ride, or it's just a plain old good time and not a true gangbang.” She goes on to direct her husband Gary, host Ron, and house guests Roger and Bobby into giving her the sexual excess she craves.
As autonomous, self-directed, independent agents, Mia, Madeline, and Cait represent a kind of erotic trope that stands in sharp contrast to the MPDG. Manic, yes; pixie like certainly; and creatures of dream? Well, you can judge that for yourself. But as far as being a catalyst for male change and growth, these three characters are hardly befitting of the trope — they are as independent of male goals as the centers of gangbangs can possibly be.
