there's something so interesting to me about the contrast between floyd being canonically very intelligent yet he's constantly perceived as being very dumb/obtuse. it's kind of a strange case but it probably has to do with how floyd speaks, i think.
his speech pattern isn't fancy or flowery at all, he uses pretty simple vocabulary and the things he does and says have seemingly no rhyme or reason. compared to everyone else who's deliberately shown as intelligent in the cast, he seems dimwitted in comparison.
but floyd's words hold way more weight than first meets the eye. something like this line from book 3 SEEMS like he's just throwing fuel to the fire:
but we know octatrio's relationship is built on deep trust and believing in each other's ability. floyd and jade genuinely believe that they should wait for azul to realise the situation and stop first. where jade goes for a more direct "azul! stop this at once!" floyd intends to show azul how ridiculous he's acting in hopes of getting him to stop. this line sounds pretty crass of floyd, but in the context of the octatrio's established relationship, it's very specific and intentional.
floyd has complex ideas, but he expresses them in a simplified way that can be very easily misunderstood. floyd's habit of dumbing down his thoughts is a trend with his behaviour. maybe because he thinks faster than he can catch up with, maybe he just couldn't be bothered to explain himself to others. either way, it's clear the dissonance between how he talks and how he thinks is what really creates this illusion that floyd is dumber than he actually is.
his "mood swings" are also an example of this. he switches from one emotion to another for seemingly no reason at all, and he doesn't care to give an explanation to alleviate that confusion either. best you'll get is "i'm just not in the mood" or "i just feel like it right now".
he says very little about what he's actually thinking. he's very laidback, and he lives in the moment. so when complex emotions present themself to him, he can't be bothered to explain these emotions long enough for him or for other people to understand him. if he's upset, he's upset. if he's happy, he's happy. he's not going to bother telling you exactly what is making him upset or excited, because HE knows, and that's all that matters.
(on a side note, i really appreciate how family members like georgina and jade are extremely accepting of floyd's mood swings compared to everyone else. it's very sweet to me.)
actually if you break down the things he's doing/thinking subconciously, he's VERY smart. stuff that automatically happens in his brain that he doesn't have to say out loud, you can see where his intelligence really shines.
floyd is very observant. but he doesn't come across that way at all to people around him (unless they already know how he is). we've seen how sharp he really is, picking up skills and clocking people's personalities relatively immediately even though he's never done/met them before. we see this with stuff like him having legs for only, like, 2 years or less and already he's pretty adept at footwork heavy stuff like dancing and parkour and sports, as well as (a little less noticably so) with how he assigns nicknames to people based on things about them that he notices.
jade and floyd's intelligence types (if you could call it that??) contrast so interestingly imo. unlike jade who is analytical and will dig deeper and deeper on his subject of interest until he has a complete understanding of it, floyd will leave as soon as he thinks he's done with something and rarely does he come back to it (including things like emotions, skills, opinions, so on and so forth).
the REASON why floyd becomes easily disinterested is because floyd's first guess is pretty often the correct answer. being able to notice small details or pick up on techniques is part of his natural ability, to the point that he can do basically everything effortlessly. so where jade has to stay back and really analyze what's going wrong to be able to get the right answer, floyd is already moving on to the next thing. as a result, failure is intriguing to floyd. he gets excited when his abilities and skills are challenged, and he thrives off of challenging people ten times stronger than him and then getting his ass beat because NOW he's got something to work towards.
and it's not just physical skill either. floyd is good at reading people and has fairly good intuition when it comes to people's nature or strength, that's why he often doesn't dig any deeper and assumes things based off the things he already guessed about someone. he comes off as insensitive or shallow because to him, that's how it objectively is (for example, how he talks to epel in his beanfest vignette).
and he isn't going to think any differently until you literally PROVE to him that he's wrong and that you aren't just barking without any bite. add on top of that, his simple vocabulary and how he presents his ideas in a very non-complicated way, it's pretty understandable why people think he's arrogant and that he himself is all talk and no show. (again, see his interaction with epel in his beanfest vignette).
(if you're someone like azul, who floyd first assumes is squishy and a crybaby, and you literally flip that assumption on his head when you become such a master at potions and alchemy, take away people's talents one by one and basically become the second coming of the sea witch herself. fuck yeah you're gonna intrigue him. you just challenged his understanding, and that's going to excite him so, so much. if you keep showing him sides of you that show him you're deeper than the sum of your parts, that you're so much more than what floyd first thought of you, of course he's going to drop that shallow nickname and acknowledge you for ALL of you, just like you've shown him he SHOULD be.)