WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Shadows House Episode 9, "A Birdcage and Flowers," now streaming on Funimation.
For the past few episodes, the children of Shadows House have been tangled up in their Debut, a rite of passage into high society -- if they succeed. Their progress is closely monitored not just by Edward, the sinister Master of Ceremonies, but also by a group of Noble Shadows from the Adult building, who cruelly treat it as a spectator sport. However, in Episode 9, there is one Noble notable for being the creepiest, by far, of the bunch: Sophie, the Shadow dressed as a butterfly.
In the first part of Episode 9, John -- Shaun's extra-extroverted Shadow master -- saved both his Face and Ricky from a rolling boulder by awakening his soot powers and pulverizing the rock with an explosive punch. This impresses all the adults, but Sophie goes a step beyond, unrolling her skinny butterfly tongue to lick the window, gushing over the amount of soot John. She was so excited that her Shadow face dropped, revealing the human one, albeit still with the sooty butterfly tongue.
The other Shadow adults note that Sophie loves soot too much, and that she shouldn't be showing her human Face in this environment. Sophie, still blushing over John's display of power, quickly composes herself and regains her Shadow appearance. This scene, which lasts barely a minute, makes the Shadow hybrids more confusing than ever.
Leaving gross subtext aside for a moment, Sophie's fondness for soot is not a surprise. Shadow powers, of course, are powered by soot, and an easy way to assess the potential of young Shadows is by measuring the amount of soot that they produce. This is why, everyone thinks that Shirley won't survive -- because she doesn't produce any soot at all. At a more basic level, small soot bugs become large Phantoms when they gather for long periods of time. So for someone who values powerful people among all else, in the Shadows House, it would be natural to covet soot.
However, Sophie implies that she would like to eat Shaun's soot (again, let's leave aside the not-so-subtle implications) -- so does this mean that, at some level, all Shadow Nobles consume soot, or is this just part of Sophie's powers, like Edward can control sound and Shaun can throw explosive punches? But, in that case, how does eating soot affect her powers?
The other interesting aspect of the scene is how flustered Sophie becomes when she realizes that she's showing her human face -- and in front of Aileen, a Shadow that she considers a servant. While by this point it's clear that the whole point of the Shadow/Face pair is that the Shadows can merge and take over their Living Dolls, it is surprising that they would not want to show off their faces and, instead, keep them guarded like a dirty little secret. Lower-ranking Shadows, like Aileen, Edward and Jer, have to wear their faces in the day-to-day, so this might be a marker of class in the Noble Mansion. But still a strange one, considering the trouble these Shadows go to indoctrinate and eventually take over their Living Doll servants.
