LATE ECLIPSES open thread. Have a party.

1) My question in the previous post about insanity totally made you cackle, didn't it? I had NO IDEA that Amandine was a Firstborn when I asked that. Go, go accidental irony!

2) I see what you did there! I love that you foreshadowed with Grianne about and her dancers; it didn't click with me until they were hunting for Oleander that you'd explained the poisoning method practically in the beginning. Nicely done.

3) I had to reread the dream sequence maybe five times to figure out what we were seeing. Mostly it was "Huh. Why would Amandine refer to Daoine Sidhe that way? Isn't she Daoine Sidhe?"
But this means that Oleander knew that Amanandine isn't Daoine Sidhe (and apparently what she is). DOes this mean Simon knows, too?

4) How do we progress from Firstborn to race? I assume that each Firstborn is unique - that there aren't born two proto-dryads like Acacia, nor two beings like the Luideag. So how does a single Firstborn give rise to a Fae race? Do they have children by another Firstborn, and those children then have more children, etc., until they even out into something recognizable as a race which has some consistent combination of abilities?

I'm trying to not be crude, but might fail. I assume that, for the most part, Fae have children sexually. Which, when referring to two unique individuals, will yield children who are themselves unique. The only way I can see for this to eventually offer races with consistent traits is, well, a whole lot of inbreeding. Is this what happened?

2) I see what you did there! I love that you foreshadowed with Grianne about and her dancers; it didn't click with me until they were hunting for Oleander that you'd explained the poisoning method practically in the beginning. Nicely done.
I don't see what she did there! What are you referring to?

When we first meet the Candela, Grianne, we're told how a Candela has Merry Dancers which serve the Candela - but if the Dancers die, so too does the Candela. This effectively foreshadowed how Lily could die by poisoning the waters in which her pearl resides, and to a greater extent how Luna could be hurt by poisoning her roses.

Oooh, nice!

Yeah...
When Toby was paired with Grianne in the hunt for Oleander, it clicked with me and for a moment I wondered if Grianne was what had inspired Oleander's method... followed by a much longer sense of dread as I feared that Oleander had been advertising her method of poisoning and in fact Grianne actually was Oleander. But that wasn't the case, so it was "just" solid foreshadowing.

Holy schlamoley. I didn't catch this either.

Seanan, just when I think I know your brain...

I had a guess earlier that was way off base, but I had a thought about Simon. Do you think it's at all possible, in relation to your third question, that Simon is Toby's REAL dad? If Amandine can change the balance of Toby's blood, couldn't she have changed it to mimic mortal human blood? Oleander's final speech has so many statements that seem prophetic (I saw someone else noted that in an earlier message), and she did say that Amandine had stolen something from Simon. I could see a mother doing all she could to hide her 'last one left to play heir' from a nut job father, including the fiction of a mortal father.

And I love the Luidaeg's comment about Toby's being able to do much more than even she imagines - I'm assuming it's her ability to change blood. Would Toby then be able to make all changelings 100% fey? That would truly tick off elitists like the Queen and her court. Toby IS a hope chest then.

Well, I have strong doubts about Simon being Toby's real father. however, Seanan has all but said it will be an important plot point, which is fairly obvious anyway. Right now what we "know" is that Toby is a hell of a lot more than half fae, but she seems to still feel that she has mortality. She believed that her mother was a pureblood and her father was a human. This is clearly not the case; to get the mix we're seeing, the most likely answer is that one of her parents is pureblood, and the other a changeling. I assume that her mother is straight-up pure Dochas Sidhe (not gonna look for the diacritical marks, thanks), so my conclusion is that Toby's father is a changeling. I don't think Simon is a changeling, and thus far I don't think we've met, nor heard of, a changeling who might be Toby's father.

There are a few things I'm wondering about, regarding both what Oleander and the Luideag said, but see no real need to speculate. I'm sure we'll come back to this book repeatedly and go "Oh! So that's what she meant!"
While Toby's abilities are powerful, I am dubious that she can make someone be 100% fae - from a plot perspective it would be horribly overpowered even with crippling drawbacks, and from within the narrative it apparently took years and great effort for Amandine to make Toby seem like a Daoine Sidhe, and not all that good a Daoine Sidhe at that. Moreover, the hope chests seem to operate in a more elegant (and less painful!) way. I suspect that while Toby may be able to effect changes which are incredible in their own right, turning a changeling into a pureblood is probably well beyond her talents.

Of course, if she coupled her abilities WITH the use of a hope chest... well, that could be interesting.

Good points.