Archived Contents of Maggie Stiefvater's Brain

author. brain. full. archived.

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

I feel like I ought to do a final clarification here, seeing as I’ve seen dialogue swirl around my leaving Tumblr.

Very well intentioned readers have said I was bullied off Tumblr, and I’d like to preserve that verb — bullying — for more concerted efforts, more intentional efforts, more malignant efforts. I’ve seen other internet personalities bullied off the internet, and I’ve been in the midst of bullying myself, and it is a different experience than just existing on the internet as a public person.

I’m leaving Tumblr after years on it because it is a very distilled version of the things that are hard about being a person with any fame/ exposure. There are two things I’ve always found difficult about being a (very minor) celebrity: 

1) people decide who you are based upon partial or third hand information, both bad and good, and build up a totally new person — a MaggieStiefvater Dot Com rather than Maggie — to react to. One of the themes in my books that comes up again and again is pleasure of being known, and the displeasure of being seen incorrectly, and the internet encourages the second.

2) You’re outnumbered. So you cannot be a polite, normal person and respond cheerfully to every kind and interesting interaction, as you would in person or even with fewer followers/ readers. Instead you have to either pick and choose, or just shout out information and never reply to anyone, which makes you appear even less like yourself, perpetuating #1. 

This isn’t me-specific. Everybody with any kind of platform experiences this to some degree. 

Tumblr really hones this. It has a very specific fan culture which means creators are definitely put into a Creator Box, which can be both joyful and searing. 

I’m leaving it not because of any current spate of negative or critical comments, but because of many years of #1 and #2. I’ve been on here long enough that people have invented a very strange and unpleasant MaggieStiefvater Dot Com, one that I don’t recognize as having any bearing on my day-to-day reality, and they interact with that person accordingly. I’ve gotten hundreds upon hundreds of these sorts of messages, and while some are absolutely hideous, most are just minor. It is a stranger walking up to you on the street saying “I think your hair looks really awful from the back.” And then another stranger walking up and saying “I know you think you’re funny, but you really are not.” Another walking up and saying, “please just stop writing books.” Another saying “you’re a weird lady and I don’t like you.”*

None of these are soul-wrenching on their own. I like my hair. The people I need to find me funny find me funny. I’m not going to stop writing books. I don’t need to be liked by everyone — no one can be. But eventually, it just becomes stressful to walk down that particular street. Even if it’s also lined by friends, one just knows that every five feet there will also be someone whispering “you’re homophobic because Adam doesn’t have freckles.”

And as I was restructuring my life this year through the lens of my health stuff, I realized: I will just stop walking down that street. There are other paths I can take on the internet, and am taking on the internet, that are more peaceful, and that’s what I need at the moment. 

So to all of you who have ridden to my rescue and have taken time to express care for me, I’m genuinely grateful. But please know the answer of why I left Tumblr as a creator is a little more complicated than one incidence of bullying. It’s a general culture that puts individual creators into the same box as studios like Marvel, and interacts with them in the same way. If you shake your fist at a 747 in the sky, no one expects the 747 to notice. But individual creators on Tumblr aren’t in 747s. We’re barely flying any higher than individual fans, we’re just floating along clutching the string of a really motivated balloon, or something. If you shake your fist, you might actually knock your knuckles on my ankles as I float by. 

But I’m not asking Tumblr to change, because I think Tumblr likes Tumblr, which is totally fine. I just have to float elsewhere. 

I hope that clears things up and also calms things down. Internet drama is one of my least favorite things, and I don’t like thinking my parting is at the heart of any of it.

urs,

Stiefvater

*ETA: And to the folks who tell me “yes, these are the comments of those who are young and figuring things out.” Yes, in many cases they are. But as per #2, there are always going to be hundreds of folks coming of age and cutting their teeth on the internet, and I am outnumbered, and I have too many well-meaning bite marks on my scarred hide. :D

[undertheecho]

So, yesterday, kariganleclair was here, and we cranked up the Irish music and got all domestic goddess-y in the kitchen… and then November cakes happened. THE DELICIOUSNESS. They even taste like autumn.

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

How pleasing it is to see a part of Scorpio Races in someone’s kitchen.

(recipe here)

[maggiestiefvaterposts]

link broke, redirects to this image

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

In honor of Adam Parrish’s birthday today, have a paragraph from the manuscript I’m editing.

[crimeronan]

i remember before maggie deleted twitter, she had talked quite a bit about this draft over there!!

she talked about how she got thousands of words into writing adam at a fictional ivy league school that was the idyllic, perfect American Academia ™ institution. i’m not sure what adam’s arc was here but he loved college and the ivy league and felt like he belonged there.

and then six months after writing all that, she realized she wasn’t being true to herself or to adam’s character. she realized that he needed to go to a real school in the real world and grapple with the way that the ivy league is kind of…. ugly and shitty and classist. i remember she said something along the lines of “it was what he and i wanted, but not what we needed,” quoting from the end of the opal short story.

personally i think that was a brilliant and GREAT decision, even despite how much i want good things for adam always. i have my quibbles about various aspects of how adam’s arc eventually went in the dreamer trilogy, but making him contend with misery at harvard is not one of them. in fact i think that this original dreamer trilogy draft would have rung so hollow and false to me that i would have lost most of my attachment to adam entirely.

i wouldn’t normally meta like this without having the actual tweets to draw from, but i figure it might give people some peace to know that there WERE reasons that this changed / was cut, and they WERE true to adam’s character and to the storytelling itself.

i love love love seeing early drafts and think it’s really fun to explore how stories evolve over time as you tell them!

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Unbelievable. I was going to look up tattoo descriptions in The Raven Boys for … reasons … and found the 2011 first draft of the novel. I see that it was not good, and also that it used to end with Gansey letting Maura drive the Pig.

Where, Stiefvater, did you think you were going with this?

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

weirdest/funniest fan encounter ?

Dear admlynch,

I was flying to Canada for an event a little while ago, and I was feeling beleaguered because I always get pulled over for special searching when I fly — something about my face says “search me,” I guess. 

I had just stepped off the plane and was heading to the front of the line for customs when I heard: “Ms. Stiefvater? Maggie Stiefvater?”

Jesus God, I thought. Not again. What now. 

I turned around and saw a customs agent waving at me. She said, “I love your books.”

urs,

Stiefvater

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Hi Maggie, I'd really like to hear you say a bit more about why you wrote Adam trying to repair the relationship with his abusive parents in the Raven King. What is the merit in salvaging a relationship such as that, and do you think it is possible for Adam's parents to truly redeem themselves? P.S. Can't wait for Call Down The Hawk, hopefully by the time it comes out I'll quit accidentally calling it Call The Hawk Down (every time I do that I'm like SHIT...was that it? That wasn't it...)

Dear courageofhorses,

I have also seen CALM DOWN THE HAWK which is a perfectly appropriate title.

Following is spoilers for TRK

spoilers

spoilers

no seriously

spoilers

CAVEAT: I’m going to answer this with how I interpret Adam’s character, but in the end, the books live without me, so it’s what makes it on the page and into your interpretation that counts.

THAT SAID. I’m not sure I would call Adam’s final move in The Raven King an attempt to repair the relationship, because it’s not about his parents, it’s about him. It’s about what he needs to say and do in order to feel he has the moral high ground; it’s what he personally requires to allow himself freedom.

By the time we get to that final scene of his in TRK, he’s been living on his own for quite awhile, a high school senior who fled his childhood home under duress. In that time, he’s lived through a helluva lot of traumatic and brilliant events. He’s seen his mentor die, he’s fallen in love, he’s dreaded his best friend’s death, he’s learned that he can be a good friend. 

The only time he’s seen his father in that time is when he comes busting through the door of his apartment with violence and Cabeswater intervenes. 

Otherwise, it has been only Adam and his memories of his parents, and if there is anything Adam doesn’t trust throughout the series, it’s his own interpretation of events. He’s been trained his entire childhood to doubt himself. 

So him returning to TRK isn’t about him genuinely trying to repair a relationship, to accept his parents back into his life despite all the’ve done to him. Instead, it’s about him — for the first time, ever — walking back to the trailer he grew up in without fear. He’s just come from graduation, and he’s closing the books behind him. He’s choosing to be blunt with his parents, without fear, older, wiser, more powerful. He knows he can trust whatever he sees as he walks back through that door under his own steam. It will be the truth, not what his battered emotional thoughts whispered to him for 800 pages.

Adam returns to see if, now that he knows himself, these people he saw as monsters still look like monsters. He wants to see if he becomes monstrous in their presence. He wants to feel for the first time in his life the glorious glow of the absolutely certain high ground while looking at his father. 

He wants to exorcise the memory of a fearful man who controlled his life for 17 years by instead facing him with the full knowledge that he has no control over Adam whatsoever. 

And as to the rest: shit, man. Even if your parents beat the crap out of you, it can be hard to make the decision to walk away completely. The voices whisper that maybe it wasn’t that bad –

But Adam says what he came to say.

He came to see if he ever had parents. If, once he didn’t hate himself, they might be different. And guess what: he’s the only thing that changed. They didn’t. 

He fled that trailer last time he left. Like the scared kid he was. But now he just walks out, like the man he became.

So to me, that scene is about Adam coming back to the trailer to realize this about his past:

And this about his future:

And walking out as Adam Parrish, son of no one, only himself.

tl;dr: abuse is a complicated creature with many different roads to closure. Is what Adam does right? I can’t say that. Is what I think Adam did in that scene what you think he did in that scene? I can’t say that either.

But I reckon that’s what I was thinking when I walked him out that door for the last time.

urs,

Stiefvater

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Dear automobile blogs,

Are you wondering what you could possibly drape over hot cars in photographs now that you realize girls aren’t just objects of acquisition? Here are some other delicious ideas for attractive things that would look awesome on the fender of that hot Bugatti:

- steak

- designer watches

- other Bugattis

- your favorite neck tie

- your favorite sock

- just the goddamn car because the Bugatti has always been enough

- you in your underwear

- my continual rage of the sexist nature of the car industry

ur welcome,

Stiefvater

[funkalmighty-deactivated2021033]

time to get a llama. no no bear with me. I know this sounds flippant but look at their eyelashes

Well I’ll be damned, it’s legal to own a llama in the state of New Jersey with an exotic pet license.

I don’t know much about camelid husbandry, but… I’ll learn.You’re a peach, Maggie.

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

who else can I convince to get a llama

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

The llama cycle

TA DA you guessed my next masterwork

1. The Llama Boys

2. Dark Llama, Light Mitsubishi

3. Cave Llamas

4. Here Lies Llamas

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

How do I go about asking a guy to a Sadie Hawkins Dance?

Dear ajrsister,

“Hey! hey! hey manboy! True/false: the phrase ‘Sadie Hawkins dance’ is made possible by longstanding sexist cultural constructs that assume women don’t ordinarily support men financially and/or approach them for a date and so therefore actually underline the status quo by insisting that any events that subvert those ideas be labeled as something unusual.”

If he answers in the affirmative, you can ask him if he’d like to go. If he says anything else, you don’t need that in your life right now, go buy yourself a nice jacket or some motor oil instead.

Most of my teen social life involved bagpiping. I did not dance. This was not, I’m afraid to say, because of principles; it was because I was unfriendly.

I regret nothing.

urs,

Stiefvater

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

The Anatomy of Rage

This post is going to be a mess, because I’m just …untidily angry right now. It began with a series of tweets I made today about my ever-broken Datsun. The mechanic had told my husband that he was “working on that Datsun just as fast as I can because now that I’ve met her I can’t wait to get that little girl behind the wheel again.”

Little girl.

As I tweeted that I was 33 and had earned each of those years and thus preferred to be referred to as “Danger Smog-Dragon” or “Rage-Mistress” or “Ephemeral Time Lady” or “Maggie Stiefvater, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of the Raven Cycle,” a well-meaning fellow replied that perhaps I should “use [my] words, politely but firmly, to his face…” He further observed that he’d told his wife that “you know, Honey, unless you’re willing to SAY THAT to (those people), NOTHING is going to change”.

(note: please do not go search for this fellow on twitter to rage at him; this is not about him. He is set dressing, made more appropriate to the conversation at hand by the fact that he probably is a perfectly nice guy who really didn’t mean disrespect).

I told TwitterMan that I was tired of have to use my words.It’s been 33 years of using my words. Why is it my job to continuously ask to be treated equivalent to a male customer? Why is that when I arrive at a shop, I’m reminded that I have to push the clutch in if I want to start my own car? It’s 2015. Why is it still all sexism all the time?

I discovered that I was actually furious. I thought I was over being furious, but it turns out, the rage was merely dormant. I’m furious that it’s been over a decade and nothing has changed. I’m furious that sexism was everywhere in the world of college-Maggie and it remains thus, even if I out-learn, out-earn, out-drive, and out-perform my male counterparts. At the end of the day, I’m still “little girl.”

Possibly this is the point where some people are asking why this tiny gesture of all gestures should be the one to break me.

Here is the anatomy of my rage.

Step one: It is 1999 or 2000. I am 16. I go to college. A professor tells me I’m pretty. A married man in the bagpipe band I’m in tells me he just can’t control himself around me: he stays up nights thinking of my skin. Another man tells me he can’t believe that ‘a little bitch’ like me got into the competition group after a year of playing when he’s been at it for twenty years. After becoming friends with a professor’s daughter, I’m at her house sleeping on the couch, and I wake up to find the professor running his hand from my ankle bone to my thigh. I pretend I’m still asleep. I’m 17. “If something happened to my wife,” he tells me later, “I could be with you.” At my next visit to her house, I see the wife’s left a book on the kitchen table: how to rekindle your husband’s love.

Step two: It’s 2008. I finally buy the car of my dreams, a 1973 Camaro, and make it my official business vehicle. The first time I take it to put gas in it, a man tells me, “if I were your husband, I wouldn’t want you out driving my car.” I tell him, “if you were my husband, I’d be a widow.” The car requires a lot of gas. I get cat-called every other time I’m at a gas station. Once, I go into the gas station to get a drink, and when I come out, a bunch of guys have parked me in. They want, they say, to have a word with me, little lady. We play automotive chicken which I win because I would rather smash the back of my ’73 Camaro into their IROC than have to stab one of them with the knife on my keychain.

Step three: It’s 2011. I’m on tour in a European country, on my own, escorted only by my foreign publisher. I am at a business dinner, and say I’m going to my room. My female editor embraces me; my male publicist embraces me and then puts his tongue in my ear, covering it with his hand so that the crowd of twenty professionals does not see. My choices are to say nothing to avoid making a scene in front of my publisher’s people, or to say FUCK YOU. I apparently was never offered the choice of not having a tongue in my ear.

Step four: It’s 2012. I buy a race car. Well, a rally car. Someone asks my male co-driver if I’m good in bed. Someone asks me if I got sponsorship because someone was ‘trying to check the woman box.’ People ask me if I drive like a girl. Yeah, I do, actually. Let’s play a game called: who’s faster off the start?

Step five: It’s 2014. I’m driving my Camaro cross-country on book tour. It breaks down a lot. I’m under the hood and a pick up truck stops beside me. “Hey baby,” asks the driver, “do you need any help?” “Yeah,” I reply, “do you have a 5/8 wrench?” He did not.

Step six: It’s 2015. It’s sixteen years after I learned that I was a thing to be touched and kissed and hooted at unless I took it upon myself to say no, and no again, and no some more, and no no no. My friend Tessa Gratton points out that a male author used casually sexist language in a brief interview. She is dragged through the muck for pointing out how deeply-rooted our systemic sexism is. The publishing industry rises to the defense of the male author as if he has been deeply wronged. I tweet that the language was indeed sexist, though I didn’t think it was useful to condemn said male author. A male editor emails me privately to ask me if maybe I wasn’t being a little problematic by engaging in the discussion?

Step seven. Still 2015. Someone very close to me confesses that her college boyfriend keeps trying to push her past kissing, and she doesn’t want to. I tell her to set boundaries, and leave him if he doesn’t. A month passes. This week I find out she just had sex for the first time after he urged her to have several glasses of wine. She doesn’t drink. She was crying. She says, “I didn’t say no, though.”

It’s been sixteen damn years. I’m tired of having to say no. I’m tired of the media telling me that it’s mouth breathing bros and rednecks perpetuating the sexism. No: I can tell you that the most insidious form is the nice guy. Who is a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. I carry my own prejudices that I work through, and I don’t believe in demonizing people who aren’t perfect yet — none of us are. But the nice guy who says something sexist gets away with it. The nice guy who says something sexist sounds right and reasonable. The nice guy’s not helping, though. It’s been sixteen years, and the nice guys are nice, but we’re still things to be acquired. We are still creatures to be asked on dates. We are still saying no, still shouting NO, still having to always again and again say “no, please treat me with respect.”

I was just invited to a car show; the well-meaning guy who asked wanted me to bring my souped up Mitsubishi. I clicked on the event page. It’s catered by Hooters. I’m not going. Yeah, it’s a little thing, but I have a lifetime of them. I’m taking my toys and going home.

“I can’t wait to get that little girl behind the wheel again.”

[rap-ariot]

I call complete bullshit on these stories they were simply made to make men look like pigs when most if not all of these did not happen

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

My friend, I invite you to come to any of my events this year: http://maggiestiefvater.com/appearances/ and say this to my face. I would like to see the expression on your face when you’re saying it, so that I can understand. And then, I’ll tell you these stories with the actual details, and perhaps a dozen more, and I would like you to look at the expression on my face when I tell them, so that you can understand. 

The cool thing about this exchange will be that one of us will be telling the truth. The cool thing about the internet is that they already know which one of us that is. Do you know why? Because you have become just another one of those stories.

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

I just made an emergency run to a bookstore to buy another copy of neil-gaiman‘s GOOD OMENS for Thing 2 (she is 11; it is time) and stopped for gas on the way back.

A man at the station said something to me, which I did not catch. He was pointing at the car. 

ME: Beg your pardon?

MAN: Do you steal … hearts?

ME: *looks into the camera like I’m on the office*

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Don’t worry, I love you too, baby, even though you have an exhaust leak that would make a possum cry acid tears!

When I got this car, I let my father drive it and when he got out, he said, “Margaret, you’re going to kill yourself in this car.”

When I got the Mitsubishi, I let my father-in-law drive it and when he got out, he said, “Maggie, you’re going to kill yourself in this car.”

CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS GENTLEMEN

OH I love both my cars so much that I could vomit

that may be the exhaust leak

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

hey maggie. i'm turning 22 on sunday and i started driving lessons yesterday. i think i finally understand now why you love driving. also can you please give tips on how to release the clutch slowly after shifting to first gear without making the car sound like it's angry? it seemed to be quite a problem for me. thanks.

Dear kzbay,

Congratulations on becoming different numbers. 

It is hard to tell where you are going amiss without being in the car, but it sounds like you may be able to make your car less angry by the judicious use of HEYYYY WHAT? 

I will explain. 

You will want to release the clutch slowly until you feel the engine begin to pull. At the same time that the engine begins to pull, it will also just begin to sound like it is doing God’s work. This is the HEYYYYYY. HEYYYYY is a very long and cautious utterance, and that is what you are doing with the clutch. You can add more or less Ys depending on the clutch, because the sweet spot will vary hugely, especially if you have the air conditioning turned on.*

*this is not a joke 

As soon as you feel and hear the clues above, you want to pull your foot off the clutch very quickly, no matter how far the clutch pedal has left to lift. This is the WHAT. You’ll notice WHAT is said very quickly, like a rabbit shot from a cannon,** and that is the speed with which you will get off the clutch. Again, this varies from clutch to clutch and also from gear to gear. This place can be quite close to the floor or quite far from the floor, which is why the listening and feeling is crucial.  

**this is a joke; don’t shoot rabbits from cannons

I suspect that you are actually doing HEEYYYY WHAAAAAAAAAT??? which means that you are revving up the engine without letting the clutch go so it can use that gas. You will be able to tell if you do the opposite problem (HEY WHAAAAAAAAAAAT) because in that case, the car jack-rabbits forward and then stalls and people point at you.

I hope this helps.

hey.

what?

urs

Stiefvater

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Hey Maggie, much like you my husband is quite into cars (specifically fast ones). He recently watched a documentary about the Nissan GTR and wants to know if you are also enamored with the brilliant design of this car, specifically the fact that you can get 200+ mph and 0-60 in under 3 seconds out of a 3.8 liter, 6 cylinder engine simply by using a more efficient design? I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. He also highly recommends the documentary (by national geographic, can be found on youtube)

Dear mego42,

In fact, I recently sat in a dark gray Nissan GTR and I whispered to it want to go steady? while two salespeople looked on anxiously to see if we were going to kiss.

Alas, I love my messy ‘73 Camaro and my jittery little Mitsubishi Evo too much, so I instead have scheduled an engine swap/ rebuild for the latter next month in order to improve its current 0-60 in 3.8.

I wouldn’t turn down a GTR, though, if it turned up at a signing with the keys in it. Nor, as I’ve mused before, a Ferrari F12.

I will watch the documentary with my Mitsubishi.

urs,

Stiefvater

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Remember 81 weeks ago when Lover brought you Joy for Christmas in the form of a motorcycle? Can we please have an update? Do you ride it? Do you like it? Is it better than the Datsun?

Dear thepaintedbuttons,

This is the face that happened the moment I read the word DATSUN on my screen.

Before ComicCon, I played a game called Will The Datsun Take Me To the Airport. I lost that game. The Datsun won. I had to rent a Mazda 2. A Mazda 2. It was silver. It was an automotive cyst on the mandible of humanity.

Which is to say, it reminded me a little of the Datsun.

Do not say this word unto me again.

urs,

Stiefvater

[maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20]

Why don't you just do what you did in The Dream Thieves? Blow up the Datsun.

Dear frenchfilmelephant,

One fears that if I did that a Datsun subfandom would grow up and send me increasingly resentful messages telling me how I had failed to restore the car the way I did my Camaro. No. I have learned that it is better to let it grow old in the corner of my garage and pretend that it would probably start if I really needed it to.

urs,

Stiefvater