cataclysmically in my feelings about Clea and the Nevrons
She *could* have created a faceless legion to do the same job, but she didn't. The White Hexga says she created them with "great love and care", and yes it seems to be somewhat under her control/otherwise lost in the sauce but it is undoubtedly the truth. Clea made the Nevrons not just beautiful, complex, and unique, but she also made them artistically harmonic with the part of Verso's canvas they inhabit. Because more than anyone else, Clea loves and respects the work that Verso created - together with herself. She has always painted beautiful, complex, unique, thematically-cogent monsters in that canvas: Sprong was "one of her first creations" (more on this in a bit), the original Lampmaster was the classic eldest sister bully/bolster combo, they played in the Gauntlet together, creatures like the sky serpent seem to be there mostly for ambiance. Many of the Nevrons are even cheery and playful like the Gestrals and Grandis. They *belong* there. What doesn't belong - what flies in the face of Verso's artistic vision - is Aline's diorama and the dolls in it. What others perceive as destruction, she perceives as preservation. The Nevrons are a means to an end, but Clea doesn't half-ass and if she must trespass against Verso's memory, she's going to do it on the god damn theme
Also! HOW do the Nevrons kill people to sequester their chroma? By turning them to statues. Sculpture, her other favorite medium.
I notice also that there's a Sprong outside of The Fountain, where Blanche hides so it doesn't have to destroy the others of its kind because it doesn't want to destroy the beautiful things that belong in this world. The Flying Manor is supposedly Clea's home base - suitably, ominous and untouchable - but could the Fountain be a sort of "Clea's Drafts", expressing more of her true feelings, tucked away someplace private and peaceful?
It seems that Painters can't help but imbue parts of themselves in their works - no matter how much they'd rather not. The White Nevrons express yearning for acceptance, pains of neglect and abandonment, feelings of helplessness, regret, reluctance, insecurity, so on - things Clea rejects herself them for, and wishes to destroy before anyone sees. She does not want to see herself in this canvas; that's why she destroyed Painted Clea and Hauler (notable, that canvas-Hauler is more realistic than the version in Renoir's atelier she doesn't seem to mind). Is that why she only paints monsters - to distance herself from them, or because she can't help but reflect how she sees herself in them? Does she think herself a monster?
And what about Goblu? It seems to be her favorite - it's the painting that hangs on the family gallery wall in Epilogue Alicia, it has several other paintings and sculptures in Clea's rooms, it's one of the four creations in the Flying Manor questline. (ETA: now having thoughts about Goblu being Clea's Esquie........................)
And it's the one that isn't hostile until something it holds precious is touched by these creatures that do! not! belong!!!
