I'm like so many years late to this realization but I've been thinking about the small ways in which Fig struggles with her identity throughout her life, and my mind has latched onto Brennan's off-hand comment somewhen in Sophomore Year, when they're deep in the throes of Nightmare King Horrors and thinking of ways to not have to make the nightly wisdom saving throws, that Fig, as a tiefling, needs to have a full night's sleep, because despite her mother being an elf, she is not.
It's such an obvious thing. Of course she can't trance. She's a tiefling. She has always had to sleep for 8 hours every night. Her entire life. Even before her horns grew in. Even when everyone was under the assumption that she was a wood elf like her parents.
This isn't ever brought up again, but I think it's nice how it weaves into her relationship with who her middle school self was trying to be, the self-described "typical cheerleader mean girl elf who dressed in pinks and loved to fit in". It's a really small and overlooked detail, but it does wonders to illustrate how, even before everything collapsed on her, she wasn't that girl. She only wanted to be that girl, so very desperately, because above all else, Fig Faeth Loves and wants to be Loved. She's not very good at pretending otherwise.
I wonder if it ever came up after sleepovers with the other girls she used to hang out with. I wonder if they thought it was weird. I wonder if Gilear worried on late nights about it being a health issue. I wonder if Sandra Lynn dismissed the thought. "It's just sleep, Gilear. Plenty of people sleep." I wonder if she listened in on those conversations.
I wonder about the many ways in which Fig Faeth has internalized the belief that there was something inherently wrong with her.