Bark Skin Disease
What kind of illness turns skin into tree bark?
- Quite a few genetic conditions could cause scaly patches
, but the most famous "treeman" disease is Epidermodysplasia verruciformis. This is likely what her condition is intended to be, because of a...less than pleasant detail about how it progressed for her. Epidermodysplasia verruciformis is caused by a genetic blind spot in the immune system that allows HPV to run rampant. HPV includes more common warts and cold sores, but also venereal diseases, and it's specified that she first started getting scales on her crotch area. Since she didn't have the condition from childhood, she didn't inherit it in utero, which means she contracted it about midway through her marriage to the only man she ever loved. Poor Lottie...
Lottie's hair color
In her character model, she has dark red hair. But in her song sequence, she is blonde?
- Maybe it's the same thing that made her skin wooden. It could've turned her hair into bark-y stuff by the time she was working for the Midway. Maybe it also helps those branches and leaves on her neck and shoulders grow...
- But, this doesn't explain an image of her you see both in her song sequence and on the wall of her place in the Midway. She looks adult, has the wooden skin AND has blonde hair...
- A wig may do the trick?
- In her song sequence it's mentioned that she's been in the habit of dying her hair since she was 14 (She could possibly have started even earlier, 14 was just the first time she dyed her hair blonde specifically) She has probably either reverted to her natural color or tried a new look out since her portrait was painted.
