Headscratchers / October Daye

• In book 4, Toby is elf-shot, and changes the balance of her blood to more fae so she won't die of it. But she's still a changeling, so she still should have died, and even if she made herself pure fae, she should have slept for a hundred years. (In book 9, she gets elf-shot again, and this time changing the balance of her blood does nothing.)
  • It's slightly complicated because in the book 4 situation she actually does die. She just gets better.
• Similarly, in book 7, when Toby gets addicted to goblin fruit, finding a hope chest and shifting her blood back completely cures her addiction. She's still a changeling! That shouldn't happen! She should still be addicted!
  • The answer to both of these is that being more fae makes Toby's Healing Factor stronger. Caffeine and alcohol both no longer work on her—elf-shot and goblin fruit are obviously much stronger drugs, but it's the same principle. (Possibly the reason the elf-shot hits harder the second time is that Amandine isn't there to help her.)
  • Also, the Luidaeg tells her in one of the books (One Salt Sea I believe) that changing Gillian’s blood will save her from the elf shot as changing her all the way human or fae will ‘burn the elf shot’ completely out of her blood. It’s further supported by Ashes of Honor, when she gets addicted to goblin fruit. Changing her blood, even from more human to more fae changling, still burns the goblin fruit out of her system and ‘cures’ her. So it’s not so much the fact that she’s still a changeling that matters, and that she used specific on herself/others that removes the likes of elf shot etc from the victim. So there’s nothing left of said substance to cause them to fall asleep, or be addicted.
• The story of how exactly Toby first found the seacave knowe that the False Queen used and how she became a knight is different pretty much every time it's mentioned, in ways that are impossible to align. Similar questions are raised about the existence of Dawn Winterrose and exactly when she died, because wildly different dates are given in different stories. Most of this would be easier to handwave if it weren't for the novella of "Strangers in Court", but that's also the one telling things directly as they "happened" and therefore should be definitive.
• Prisoners in the Queen's iron dungeons spent weeks in agonising pain to break their spirits so that they would agree to anything to get their lives back. Toby was a fish for fourteen years. August was trapped completely alone for decades. The story makes it a point that this is no big deal for a pureblood because they live on a different timescale and can just kind of zone out. With all of these examples, why is trapping a pureblooded shapeshifter in a cage for only two human days supposed to break them to the point where, as the text says, they might "never be okay again"? Obviously it was unpleasant and would need some recovery time, but compared to the timescale fae are supposed to operate on, a couple of days in the dark doesn't seem like it should be worse than weeks of torture, etc.
  • Because the cages prevented them from shapeshifting in the first place. Changing forms is as natural for them as breathing yet they were trapped, in mind and body, their greatest power and strength, the very defining feature of their beings turned against them. To say it was unpleasant is an understatement.
  • Also, none of the purebloods we see who were trapped in the dungeons for long periods or alone for decades seem to be all that okay. They're perhaps coherent when humans might not be, but they certainly seem to have psychological effects.