Reviewing Sarah J Maas's Call Her Daddy Interview Through the Lens of Dark Personality and Dark Behavior Checklists
Source: Poisonous People: How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life
Disclaimer: I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical professional capable of diagnosing someone. (Though I am in medical research.) Even if I was, a 2-hour interview is not an evaluation.
However, this book is specifically designed to be used by people who are none of those things. And it's meant to be used as a tool by the general public to try and prevent people with toxic traits from affecting their lives.
This is not meant to be a diagnosis or even an assurance that someone is toxic. However, exhibiting multiple traits on the following lists can be an indication that someone is not a healthy person to be around.
Dark Personality
2) Any question she didn't want to answer she doesn't. Usually they're ones that could make her look bad. She didn't include a content warning for Silver Flames, which could be considered a professional boundary for some.
3) All she did was ramble and go on tangents in the first part of the interview. The birthing "story" was a 10-minute filibuster so she didn't actually have to answer the question.
5) See this post, because I'm not outlining all the ways she was arrogant, conceited, and entitled in that interview a second time.
6) Her entire attitude towards her parents' lawyer friends. Her whole 'they were wrong' thing when they were just telling her to be realistic.
7) She was mad at the people who literally saved her life because they didn't do it the way she wanted them to. Even going so far as to dehumanize one of them. Speaking of which, the way she wanted would have almost certainly gotten her killed.
8) Filibuster. I refuse to call it anything else.
9) "I wasn't like other girls"
11) Trying to get out of a required class as a spoiled undergrad by saying "I don't really have to take it right?" and telling this story at 40-years-old without an ounce of shame.
12/13) Her entire demeanor gave off these vibes. Like she thought she was better than others in her life because she wrote a few books.
15) I mean this was an interview about her, but she barely talked about the books. It was mostly "me me me". And when it came to talking about the books or the writing, she gave quick answers that paled in length to the ones about her.
16) She said one nice thing about others in her life and about 7 or 8 rude/insulting/mocking/blaming things.
17) She laughed when describing her father being uncomfortable with the sex scenes in her books.
18) Her husband was struggling and needed a break, and all she did was complain and make it like a few hours (that she didn't even give him) was the reason the book took 6 years.
Dark Personality Checklist: 14/18
Dark Behavior
Psychopathy
1) "I was going to get published even if it took me until I was 80" (paraphrasing because I don't want to go looking for it). And as far as I can tell from the interview, she had no backup plan. She acted like college was a waste of her time. I wonder whether she expected her parents and husband to support her until she actually started making money from a book and was just lucky it happened fairly quickly.
2) She talked so much about how she would spend hours in her room by herself, how she wasn't like "other girls", etc. Not to mention the poetry class thing.
3) See note for point 1.
4) "I didn't care if people liked her" when talking about Aelin. She shirks any questions about people being hurt by the things she says or what she writes.
5) Absolutely no remorse for how her writings and actions affect others. It was the reason for the filibuster. Also, look up the Breonna Taylor post.
Machiavellianism
7) She was happy to associate with her parents' lawyer friends when she thought they could give her an in to the publishing world. But once they warned her about being realistic, she shirked them and acted like they knew nothing when looking back with survivor's bias.
8) That filibuster was an attempt at getting pity and sympathy. It might have worked if I was 14, because that's when I learned most of the medical ethics logic she failed to see at 32. (Granted 14 was also the first time I saw someone die, so I should not be used as a basis for the average person. But a friend of mine said she learned this stuff watching sitcoms as a kid, so I'm not too far off.)
9) Poetry. Class.
Narcissism
10) Literally her entire career is a grab at the spotlight, and the interview is just one facet of that.
11) She wrote an entire self-insert bs book plot because she was upset a life-threatening medical emergency meant she wasn't in control and had to give it to the professionals.
12) She gave one compliment the entire interview, and it was about something her parents did for her. Nearly every other mention of someone in her personal life was a complaint/insult/degradating comment.
13) Her entire "origin story" was all about how her entire life was about reading and writing and how she knew from the start she was different.
Sadism
14) She complained about her husband wanting her to parent her children while he took a nap. Since they were home, presumably this was the evening or weekend. Be an adult, Sarah. She also complained about and made fun of her parents and their friends multiple times.
16) Two words: Breonna Taylor. She never apologized, never took it down, then drew away from social media claiming "mental health" as though that post didn't affect other peoples' mental health.
Dark Behavior Checklist: 14/16
Final Score: 28/34
Again, this is not any sort of claim for Maas’s mental stability. But according to Dr. ten Brinke, "answering "yes" to more than a few of [the] questions" in the first list is indicative of a possibly poisonous personality. I feel 14/18 is more than a few. And 28/34 overall is pretty damning.
This is why I have no sympathy whatsoever for anti-intellectuals who complain when discussion posts use too much academic language. "You can't expect me to whip out a dictionary every time you post—" BITCH I LOOKED UP "AHEGAO" FOR YOU. OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF MY HEART.
In high school, my teacher flat out told us that if we're reading in class and don't understand a word, we had her permission to take out our phones and look it up.
Also, this is what the introduction of an academic journal. It's to help those who don't know a lot on the subject to understand what the hell they're talking about.
[ID: A series of six GIF panels shows Ncuti Gatwa standing on a stage lit in red and purple neon, wearing a sheer dark brown shirt patterned with sparkling silver web-like lines and high-waisted trousers. Vertical signs behind him read “LIVE” and “MUSIC.” White captions appear across each GIF as he speaks to the audience.
In the first GIF, he smiles with his hands clasped together as the caption reads, “Millions of you watched me as Eric in ‘Sex Education’...”
In the second GIF, he grins and clasped hands while the caption reads, “And maybe 12 of you watched me in ‘Doctor Who’...”
In the third GIF, he shrugs with both hands thrown outward as the caption reads, “Hey, maybe that’s why I kept crying.”
In the fourth GIF, the caption reads, “And even though I have since regenerated into Billie Piper...”
In the fifth GIF, the camera cuts closer to his face as he gives a baffled sideways look. The caption reads, “I don’t understand it either.”
In the final GIF, he leans forward intensely with his hands clasped again as the caption reads, “I still love ‘Doctor Who.’ And I got to meet so many crazy characters.” /End ID]
(Crowley’s shirt is based off of a design by Art by Veya, and the flags featured are the lesbian, gay male, genderfluid, bi, non-binary, intersex, trans, and demisexual flags. The fact that there are so many more flags that would work to include if there was more space says a lot about the characters, I think.)
Guess who's back with a brand new and admittedly chaotic edition of our Pride Month challenge!
For 2026, we present:
Summer of Pride - This or That Trope Edition!
That's right, we're going beyond Pride Month and creating all summer long!
For twelve weeks, beginning June 1st, we encourage you to create something, choosing this or that from our predetermined list.
Y'all, when we say these tropes battled it out to be featured, we mean it! We literally spent an evening coming up with our competitors and let them duke it out as either Yoshi or Kirby on Super Smash Brothers... so yes, when we said chaotic, we meant chaotic!
We hope you will join us (@queenofbaws, @unicornaffair, @jadedsunshine) in participating! Use the tag #SummerOfPride2026 so that we can find and share your posts.
As always, we're encouraging CREATIVITY! Doesn't matter if it's fanfic, art, a mood board, a list of headcanons, whatever... if you create it using one of the tropes as inspiration, we hope you'll share it!
Sometimes you hear a song and a fic pops into your head full formed. This is a trap. The fic may be fully formed in your brain, but you still Have to write it down. This is an important step that most people forget about.
