Kevin is a Corruption avatar and I will die on this hill. The themes of being consumed by something that loves you, being twisted and warped by an overwhelming force that creeps in and overtakes you, changing you into something completely unrecognizable. And it loves you. It loves you, it shines its light upon you and it burns you with love.
There's a direct parallel you can draw to how Prentiss was lured in by the hive with singing, "There is a wasps’ nest in my attic. A fat, sprawling thing that crouches in the shadowed corner. It thrums with life and malice. I could sit there for hours, watching the swirls of pulp and paper on its surface. I have done. It is not the patterns that enthrall me, I’m not one of those fools chasing fractals; no, it’s what sings behind them. Sings that I am beautiful. Sings that I am a home. That I can be fully consumed by what loves me." "It’s more of an everywhere. A feeling. Are you familiar with trypophobia? That disgusted fear at holes, irregular, honeycombed holes. Makes you feel that itch in the back of your mind, like the holes are there too, in your own brain, rotten and hollow and swarming."
The Smiling God is described in similar ways: "Beyond her, no longer just on the horizon, much closer than that, is a light, spreading across the desert. The light is alive and malicious and vast and encroaching. It buzzes and shines and everything about it hurts those who are close to it and destroys those who are within it." "Orange triangles, growing bigger and bigger as I traced my way deeper into the spiral. There was a soft light just around the edges of the triangles. When I looked at them, I felt the light in my head and it pounded like a migraine against the back of my eyes. I could not look at them. I could not look away." "The beautiful majesty of living as one under the unrelenting love of a Smiling God[.]"
How she describes the dichotomy: "Perhaps I’ve always heard it. Perhaps the itch has always been the real me, and it was the happy, smiling Jane who called herself a witch and drank wine in the park when it was sunny. Maybe it was her who was the maddened illusion that hides the sick squirming reality of what I am. Of what we all are, when you strip away the pretence that there is more to a person than a warm, wet habitat for the billion crawling things that need a home. "
And Tryptich: "What they did to me. I’m not myself anymore. I’m a smile, and a twitch of the wrist. It has been years, Cecil. I’ve drifted away from myself. Sometimes I am one me, and then again I am the other. What they did to the sentient heat trapped temporarily in my body. [...] The power of the Smiling God is an endless flow. It ebbs, like the tides. But, like the tides, it returns."
Now, you could argue that the Smiling God as a whole is more Desolation coded, with all the talk of devouring and ceaseless appetite. The All Smiles' Eve story shows the Smiling God destroying everything the Good family knew, a senseless act of destruction done swiftly and unceremoniously. Kevin talks about how the Smiling God will devour us all, stripping our flesh and making us pure. I think that aligns less with the loss of the Desolation because it's all about how the devouring changes you for the """better""", not about the loss that comes with it. There is of course the Flesh aspect with the gaping maw and devouring of flesh, but I think that's shown less in the main show than it is in supplementary materials that I don't own, so I won't pull any quotes out here. However, it's worth mentioning the Smiling God has multiple angles you could touch on.
But Kevin specifically, and his Congregation, are aligned with the Corruption. The way they sweetly manipulate you with kind words, luring you in and changing you so completely. He describes greeting a newcomer: "He missed his friends and family, but everyone here in Desert Bluffs convinced him that we were all his friends and family now. Just look at our smiles, we shouted as we surrounded him." There's a lot more I could say here, but I think the aspect of the Corruption that has to do with love is deeply underlooked.
Kevin might be uncanny just because of the body horror and our familiarity with Cecil, but the actual themes of his narrative are more important.
