I know its a kids series but it would've been fairly funny if sophie had used slang that didnt translate as slang
"The council wants someone to blame. I suppose ill have to bite the bullet" sophie elves dont use guns? Even if we did they wouldn't shoot you? Sophie dont bite bullets they'll hurt your teeth
"Hey Keefe good luck confronting your dad, break a leg!" Sophie why are you wanting me to get hurt this is hard enough
"Oh Edaline, Grady, where was I? Haha I plead the fifth" the fifth of what sophie? Why are you begging a number? Just answer the question
"I have a good feeling about this mission, knock on wood" sophie dont knock on wood I know you have a weird relationship with trees but its quite rude to knock on the representation of people corpses like that
The kotlc "elves can't handle violence! Guilt or smth!" thing is really pmo because. No. There's no way they're that fragile
I believe that its simply because of how they're raised. Most elves live without a hint of exposure to violence in their lives, and so they aren't accustomed to bloodshed and gore and stuff. I doubt they even consume vaguely violent media aside from history books (?). Their whole lives are spent under the idea that violence is impossible in their perfect shining world
Now, humans. They have extremely short lives as compared to elves. Death is always a constant. Theyre raised knowing they could die anytime. Murder and violence and death frequents the media they consume. They build up a tolerance and acceptance to death
Tl;dr elves just aren't used to violence imo, they defo have the capacity for brutality
headcanon that sophie slips into english sometimes when she's surprised or startled or otherwise overtaken by a strong emotion. mostly when she's the first one to speak, or she uses a phrase that doesn't have an elvin translation (as a sort of parallel to how sophie can't translate some spoken elvin phrases). she has no idea though since she canonically has a hard time telling english and elvin apart.
things that would be entertaining to throw this into:
part of why fitz gives her surprise hugs and gifts so often is because a small part of him is hoping for a little "oh my god!" and he really likes that he's one of relatively few people she knows that can translate it
it is EXTREMELY funny to fitz to alternate between using elvin and english in a conversation w/ her and watch her unconsciously flip between the two depending on what she last heard. (sophie foster is literally the only elf ever that could confuse the two, w/ how different the languages are.) it is also one of his favorite methods for spoiling biana's fun when he suspects she's trying to spy on them
sometimes sophie starts ranting in english without realizing it. it only makes her angrier when she gets blank stares from, say, sandor, and then she storms off. they have no idea what the deal is, but those were some angry consonants.
the polyglot aspects of keefe's brain mostly interprets language by "oh that's writing" and "oh i heard that" and "oh i guess that other thing means something". which sometimes looks like sophie throwing her papers down and exclaiming something in english only for him to counter in egyptian and them going back and forth like that for a while and then keefe asking a question he saw on a french sign once, and then you check in on them again ten minutes later and they're...using australian sign language? as far as keefe's concerned they only made one language switch (spoken "enlightened" to sign), and everyone else is like. no. (sophie can canonically tell english and french apart.)
ik it's not spoken, but i think that when sophie's writing for herself, she writes in english since that's what she grew up w/. and sometimes mixes up writing in standard elvin versus black swan cypher runes. so sometimes people in study hall are like "hey can i see your notes for multispecial studies?" and she goes "hopefully you can read my handwriting" and passes over an extremely cryptic mix of 'human' and 'rebel runes'. they pass it back to her wordlessly and uh, where'd all the rumors about writing in code for confidentiality come from...?
dex knows a decent amount of english from his mom's romcom movies, but he's not quite fluent like fitz or sophie. so sometimes the best he can do is pick out pieces he understands, attempt to fill in the blanks, and attempt to pick the best movie quote for the situation. it is social russian roulette at its finest and has derailed multiple team valiant meetings
i know it’s most likely that shannon added the whole “all elves can automatically understand the enlightened language” thing to easily explain how an english-speaking girl like sophie could interact with her fellow elves without having to reveal her polyglot ability too early, but i personally like to believe that all elves have a small amount of polyglot genes in them, and that’s why they can do this (and i beg people to realize that just because these guys can talk from birth does not mean they are fully making sense. they still need to learn how to use their mouth muscles properly, especially because i’m assuming that like humans they’re not born with many teeth. and they’re not going to know what every word means right away. they still have to learn things 💔 it’s not like they’re spitting shakespeare lines from birth with perfect clarity)
this would also tie in well with the fact that polyglot is the most common ability to have if you have two abilities. most polyglots develop a second ability, which would make sense if it was already a part of their genetic structure before manifesting (in this case, the change in elves’ cells that apparently happens when they manifest would occasionally cause their polyglot gene to mutate into a full ability spanning all languages). & apparently there are very few polyglots who don’t develop a second ability, which only emphasizes this imo
im rereading the books for the first time in a long time and early keeper is an absolute TREASURE
I was pretty lazy today so no headcanons on uniforms BUT as a bird nerd I had to look more into halcyons and they’re a genus of king fisher (think like kookaburra relative, which are also in the subfamily halcyoniae anyways lol) but I read that there’s a myth about them that they lay their eggs at sea, which according to Shannon so do moonlarks so I’m betting that’s where she got her inspiration lmfao … also i csnt draw 12 year olds im sorry guys I tried to make them look baby but alas
anyways im on everblaze now. I’m trying to read free of bias and as someone who was never much of a fitz fan (IN MY DEFENSE… I was on Kotlc instagram in 2019 and they HATE him…) he is now my baby ❤️
am I allowed to headcanon that over time shades slowly lose the ability to see color and soon everything is just black and white variants aka shadows and not shadows and that’s why shades will wear black a lot because it’s like the one color they can properly distinguish from other colors
dexiana kissing eachothers scars, Dexiana laying together talking about them while the other traces them with their fingers. Biana explaining how it felt to be cut with the mirror and get the scars on her left side, Dex talking about how it felt to be kidnapped and get the scar beneath his ribs. Biana giggling about any other silly scars she has from curling irons or kitchen disasters, Dex laughing about his stupid scars from soldering irons or bunsen burner mishaps. dex admiring Biana's stretch marks, biana admiring Dex's top surgery scars. I just I just I just ughhhhhh Dexiana loving each other :((((
