this murder bird has killed , && she will kill again !! do not underestimate her willingness to stab you for literally any occasion .
okay realistically , generally speaking , toothiana does not aim to kill unless she feels the other person ( or animal , spirit , whatever ) to be a threat to her or her work . but her hyper-vigilance mixed with that somewhat short temper mentioned earlier means that bar can be surprisingly short . in the books , toothiana’s willingness to kill pitch despite the recent realization that was once human ( or whatever koz is ) is an alarming && introspective moment for nightlight , so i think it’s fair to say that she is more at ease with the idea than most of the others . && it should generally be assumed that once toothiana has recognized an intent / considerable probability of being harmed , the prospect of killing a person to avoid that rises very high on her list of possible responses to anything thereafter . ( by the by , i'm really grateful that my rp partners tend to be really respectful of toothiana's ability to be a threat , bless u all )
which makes sense , because death was something she was made to be very familiar with during key shaping moments of her life . ‘ kill or be killed ‘ was a takeaway from what she experienced as a child , && that means in turn , at the very least , she always has it in mind how to kill someone if she needs to for her own ability to sort-of-relax , && at the worst the feeling of ending a life can provide an unhealthy sense of catharsis && control , like a step past the thrill that comes from mere battle . the death of an enemy can be satisfying to her , which would already be dangerous grounds if she were , say , not so inclined to do good on a more holistic level .
furthermore , she fantasized about being strong enough to kill the monkey king / villagers who took her parents && ancestors away which are not normal thoughts a developing child has blended into their daily life . && finally , she’s played a spectator to the world for long enough that i think her morality in regards to taking a life would no longer necessarily align with ours . she is not going out of her way to try && find things to kill , but it’s probably a consideration that comes to her as a solution to problems more readily than most .
i do , however , also imagine that MiM is not especially keen on the idea of his guardians playing murderous vigilantes , && have it in mind that tooth is held to that standard as a general rule , which she does her best to follow ( to varying success ) . she still keeps to her own judgement for when it’s necessary to make exceptions , && in a very extreme case tooth might be willing to kill in light of disrespect , or to prove a point , but she hasn’t done anything like that since she was much younger due to those constraints .
honestly it’s a bit of a necessity / deus ex machina for my blog , because otherwise tooth’s character would not be able to stand by && witness some of the things children go through without killing the people responsible . but of course these weren’t issues being considered when she was written for a children’s fantasy series , && is only a problem i have to deal with in exchange for acknowledging other darker realities , so i kind of . . . sidestep that topic in threads when i can . it’s not an interesting subject to explore too deeply because while i’ve tried to fit it in as naturally as possible , in the end the justification really just comes down to ‘ i need it to be this way to run my blog TT___TT ‘ && not any complex facet of my portrayal lol
anyways , in addition to all of this , i discussed in this headcanon of toothiana’s physical characteristics a while back , that her features are that of a hunter , so being able to kill something certainly aligns with her acceptance of her own body . additionally , the sister of flight were not opposed to killing other things ; they were all considered warriors . in fact toothiana knows that they were even fine with eating humans , && so her ancestry supports it just fine as well . if the sister of flight had a very peaceful , ‘ all life is completely sacred , blood should be avoided at all costs ‘ sort of society along side her father , i think tooth might see things differently in order to respect that . but instead we get a murder bird who is making an effort to murder as little as possible .