mentioned this a bit on my other blog… Vriska’s reference to slime as troll “secretions” would seem to be in reference to sopor slime, lending support to the notion that the cocoon a troll sleeps in could literally be the cocoon they crawl out of post-pupation: in holometaboly (the complete metamorphosis from a larva to a pupa), the organism releases enzymes to dissolve itself completely before regrowing itself in its new form. if that’s what a cocoon is filled with - perhaps mixed with a little bit of the troll’s own dissolved form - then it would certainly qualify as “secretions”.

compare this to the trolls’ Quest Cocoons, which they find in place of Quest Beds; when a human lays down to ascend, they’re expected to undergo what Andrew calls in his commentary a “final nap”, but when a troll lays down, they don’t just sleep; their body is completely destroyed. the thought that trolls might dissolve completely in their sleep and reform upon waking immediately brought me back, surprise surprise, to my observations of Evangelion, where it seems the pilots are cursed to remain children forever by being dissolved and born again every time they enter the Eva. at first choosing to view sopor slime as something that originates from the troll’s own body feels at odds with the cherub poison interpretation… but perhaps the venom of the Lord of Time who can’t grow up should be an enzyme that forces you to pupate over and over forever?

(I briefly joked that “pie filling” actually being something that clowns secrete makes it fit more with the “weasel snot” and “elf tears” that come with it in Problem Sleuth - one or two people seemed to take this as a play on “cream pie”, which was unintentional; but if trolls did dissolve into green slime in their beds, then using that slime as their reproductive material would be about as close to an ectobiology analog as you could possibly get…)