#a lot of snakes rely on movement and heat to figure out where to strike

[buttered-milky]

https://youtu.be/XqXZ0tJppok?si=kF5httv3agxyOzqe

Messmer can actually turns into a snake it's his original form, and he looks soo abused and neglected maybe because of the seal?

Eeeee okay so. The summon he uses a: appears to have more blood and/or burn wounds on it. and b: otherwise has most of its scales and doesn’t have the transparency effect I thought it had like the winged serpents!! Also there’s a bunch of eyeballs all over the place but we’ll get to those later.

Burn wounds are pretty straightforward and also interesting since they imply either the serpent fucked around and found out (Messmer burned it) or the serpent fucked around and found out (burned itself like an idiot, not surprising in the slightest for snakes since they miss prey strikes all the time and are, in my humble snake owner opinion, some of the dumbest creatures you’ll ever meet. Curious yes. But also. Idiots)

The snake Messmer turns into has much deeper wounds and scarring on it than just the summon of the abyssal serpent. This snake also appears to have a blind right eye (note for any reptile keepers who care: not the temporary blindness that comes with shedding). Its body is very misshapen and there are scales trying to protrude along the spine, and in several places where there don’t appear to be any wounds the scales are just…missing. This is as expected not good for snakes! They need those scales! I am honestly not quite sure how to interpret the overlapping layers of scales in some places. Like sometimes it looks like a shedding issue but also it seems like it’s the attempts of two souls trying to occupy one body? Also missing shed transparency effect! Idk what the hell was going on in my brain or if it was just lighting but I was sooooo fucking sure of the shed buildup. I was also really tired though and don’t care. The visual read was still fun. It can be a headcanon to me <3

So on those thoughts of it being two souls trying to occupy one body. What strikes me about this design is that some of the wounds look like bite scarring you’d see from live prey fighting your snake back. Again, this is a thing entirely avoidable with good husbandry (don’t live feed unless absolutely necessary). The scales to me still imply shedding has gone very wrong at some point. You’d expect to see shedding heal and scar over these wounds, but they’re all fresh. Very symbolic. You can’t heal violence by just pretending it doesn’t exist.

Ideally when a snake is wounded, you do routine care to help them with sheds and make sure the wound is clean. The scales will grow back and the wound will scar, but it will take several sheds and consistent work! You cannot, as Marika tried to do, just put a bandaid on it. You also can’t just lock a snake in a cage it will hurt itself trying to get out of (ie messmer himself) and expect that to go even remotely well.

Some of this feels like visual symbolism of self-hatred. Like I said, the base serpent looks like it’s gotten in a fight. With its host. Some of it also feels like visible neglect (ie the wounds not being healed, missing scales)

I’m gonna discuss the eyeballs bc I fuck w them immensely. First of all congrats Messmer on having an Eldritch Horror in ur body. Second of all, all these eyes appear to have lids. Actual snakes don’t. They have hard eye caps instead and cannot blink. Some of the eyes seem like they might not be able to blink, but the scales around them are still more closed than you’d expect? I fuck with it. Fits with Messmer’s blindness motif which maybe I’ll make a post on eventually. But in regards to the base serpent specifically, of course violence can afford to close its eyes and be blind to who it chooses to hurt. Violence is also something that, when committed, always seems to haunt you. Its gaze will always be there.

It’s interesting that Marika replaced Messmer’s eye to seal the serpent off, and so maybe it grew more eyes? That could be why the scales around them aren’t correct—they’re trying to protrude from the body. This occurs in both the summon and the physical snake form Messmer has. Repression of identity = Eldritch horrors? Sure I’ll take that fromsoft.

Final thing on the eyes. They’re red, not green. The winged serpents have green eyes, Elden Ring’s color of endurance. Super fitting! The abyssal serpent’s eyes are all red, the color of rot and death in this game. Red to me also feels primordial given its use in lightning by the dragons, but I digress. It’s pretty obvious why a base serpent would have base powers. This thing is old as fuck.

Okay. I’m sure you all thought the post was done but one last note on snake biology! So, snakes’ tongues retract into their mouth. When a snake opens their mouth you won’t see a forked tongue just curled up, hanging out. It’s in a little pocket for safe keeping :)

Neither of the base serpent’s forms appear to have the anatomy for this, since there are eyeballs replacing this anatomy. This is problematic for Messmer in a snake form specifically since he’s blind, and real snakes compensate for shitty vision by having an incredibly strong sense of smell. Messmer’s snake form also doesn’t have the heat pits that the abyssal serpent has. Heat pits are another part of snake anatomy, usually located below the nostrils, and are what they use to “see” heat and locate prey. In pythons (like the winged serpents) you’ll see multiple heat pits all in a row above the lip as opposed to the single very deep pit behind and below the nostrils in vipers. This single pit is what the base serpent (summon) has. Neither Messmer’s base serpent form nor his winged serpents have heat pits which is…interesting. It could be a modeling error but I don’t think so given base serpent has very clear heat pits.

My point is, Messmer is somehow even more blind than you’d expect from a snake. Maybe this makes sense given Messmer carries an internal fire, which would likely fuck with infrared? Still interesting nonetheless.

In summary: The base serpent alone (summon) seems overall in better shape than its other form (transformation). I think this is pretty straightforward symbolism—as a being on its own the serpent would probably be fine. It’s just that it uses Messmer as a host and this causes issues. Fuck around and find out I guess, base serpent.

And holy shit Messmer Cannot fucking see. Good luck with the seeing eye snakes babe because snakes notoriously have shit vision !

(Also just an aside both of the base serpent forms kind of have narrower faces than you’d see on a real snake? Like they’re more eel like to me. Anyways.)