#spewpurr posts

“What If I Turned Your Blood Into Mercury” (palette prompt from @ fivepointpalettes)

Fleshing out some connections between Vox and flukes with a page of brainstorming scribbles.

I didn’t write it down here, but trematoda having both sexual gametes simultaneously brings to mind Vox’s ‘Omega’ claim.

I mentioned in another post that the Vees are aquatic lifeforms (a snail and two betta fish), but now I’m here to posit that they’re also the various parasites infecting those lifeforms.

Velvette is / has the parasite that causes Velvet disease (Oodinium Amylaceum). Pretty straightforward proposition, I think. (It should be noted that I got the symptoms list from a page about parasitic infections in snails In General, rather than about Velvet disease specifically. As it happens, information on the effects of Velvet disease in snails is less readily available than information on the effects of Velvet disease in betta fish. Who knew.)

Both snails and O.A. don’t handle copper very well. I mention this on the offchance that Season 3 brings to light some previously unknown copper allergy of hers, or has a throwaway scene where she scoffs at a penny… Y’know, placing my bets. Also on the topic of placing my bets: ‘Amy Lace’ sounds like a model’s stage name / fashion line… jus’ sayin’.

Valentino is / has the parasite that causes White Spot disease (Ichthyopthirius Multifiliis). Angel Dust exhibiting symptoms of this same parasitic infection could be foreshadowing that Angel is falling into a cycle of abuse / becoming like Valentino. An especially tragic thing about this interpretation is that the wings behind his head in this shot are usually interpreted as foreshadowing that he’ll get redeemed. (The way he’s reaching for Husk here also reminds me of Valentino during the ‘Poison’ flashback, when he and Angel are dancing.)

Vox is / has the parasite virus that causes Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (Novirhabdovirus Piscine). Well… I actually think he’s something else, which I’ll discuss below, but I did want to highlight VHS as a possibility that I explored along the way because… teehee, VHS tapes. Also, Vox being a virus instead of a parasite would line up with his depiction as a ‘phage, and support the ‘computer virus’ analogy.

Which brings us to the alternative interpretation here, where Vox is / has the fluke parasite Trematoda (a type of flatworm). This remains more in line with the trend of the other two Vees being / having parasites. Being a flatworm specifically is really interesting, because one of the first epithets used to refer to Vox was ‘flat-faced prince’— and being a fluke specifically is really interesting because… teehee, he’s ’just a fluke’.

The Cornteeth sisters could ride their steed astride (they were much smaller, and could all ride at the same time), but they could also drill into its flesh for more leverage. This did not seem to hurt Cornteeth the steed— furthermore, drilling into its flesh seemed to allow them to communicate in some way (I intuited this from “dream insight”— the unexplained information you have in dreams sometimes that wasn’t obtained through logical thought or rational observation).

This “dream insight” also gave me the feeling that they understood English, but I wanted to try to confirm this objectively— so “I” (the mostly lucid viewer of the dream) had “dream me” (the person in the dream who the dream camera/narrative seemed to be following, and whose actions I had some control over, but who wasn’t actually “me”) try to clarify which of the four(?) Cornteeth sisters she had found, and the worm in her fingers started glowing in response to her question. (She may have just been glowing in response to auditory/thermal stimulus, so I offhandedly directed “dream me” to perform the “once if yes, two if no” test. But then I considered that this test didn’t really address the underlying problem ((if Cornteeth glows once, is that confirmation that they understand, or are they still just glowing automatically in response to stimulus?)) and tried to restructure the test in a way that would eliminate this uncertainty.

Parasite!Vox as a Gaiaonline avatar! I don’t know which eyepiece best represents his pop-up eye, so here’re three different versions. (The hat on the middle one looks different because I have two top hats layered here, and the layering conflict resolved differently with that arrangement of items. I could have removed one top hat or the other for consistency, but. I didn’t do that.)

If the middle eyepiece weren’t an eyepatch, or I could finagle some way to remove/obscure the strap, I would choose that one, hands down— it looks really similar (the white pupil especially)— but the strap is incredibly conspicuous.

The item pose I used for the eyepiece on the right comes part-and-parcel with green scales around the eye and green ribs superimposed above the shirt. The super-imposed ribs could represent the blue exo-skeletal ribs he grows around his vest in macrophage form, but I’m already representing those with the blue bands by his shoulders, and I don’t know if I like the green or not. It does help break up the image a bit, though— the different color helps center attention on his eye / body, and I like the way it frames the bow / cravat.

The eyepiece on the left is much more subtle than the other two— it looks more balanced / coordinated with the rest of the colors on the outfit. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not necessarily the best way to represent a fucked-up rectangle popping out of your face, either.

Also, here’s a version with a background that I put together to represent the Season 2 finale. I didn’t use the pixelly / glittery eyeshadow for this one, which is a shame, since the cannon has some similar glowy pixel bits on its display. (Fun fact: the cannon is actually mounted on his shoulder, and just looks like it’s in the background because it happens to line up with the hill. There’s also an aura / glow between him and the canon, which adds a bit of shading and provides an illusion of depth.)