Those sparkly fur powers, the vivid, colorful design of Furth and all of its inhabitants—it's all a metaphor for the carefree imagination and childlike joy of the many, many young artists around the world and the metaphorical magic that comes from it. After all, the whole comic is designed with heavy kidcore vibes, plus over half the cast is literally composed of characters adopted from those young artists.
Meanwhile, the poison feathers represent growing up, and maturing in the dreariest sense of the word. Those poisoned by the feathers, on top of the existing lethargy, also lose their magic powers and their vivid colors—a metaphor for tossing out that imagination in favor of cold, hard realism, fantastic world elements be darned.
[Evidence for this includes the previously "hip" NoxXxy losing their Leet Lingo and odd eyes and suddenly sounding considerably more down to earth after being poisoned, and Dots—who is stated to have originally been hyperactive, annoying, and obsessed with Chirpalings—being considerably calmer and also denouncing those very same Chirpalings as being "for little kids" after being poisoned.
And on a more "fourth wall"-level note, most of the comic has the aforementioned kidcore aesthetic, propped up by a cute handwritten font and a few deliberate amateur and/or cutesy quirks like a complete lack of antialiasing and random doodles in the panel margins. The dark world that's presumably connected to the feathers, on the other hand, ditches the aesthetic entirely in favor of pitch black margins, antialiased outlines and a generic sans-serif font.]
The feathers primarily targeting children represents the fact that if there's any group that's the most vulnerable to being taught that imagination is useless and life is supposed to be boring, it's, well, the children—no point in trying to run big "reality first" campaigns on TV or whatnot if you can just shoehorn it into the school curriculum.
[More humorously, a few readers of this comic joked in the Foxglove Comics Discord server that the feathers are actively attracted to the Chirpalings for one reason or another. I personally believe that the feathers are attracted to them not because they're deliberate Trojan horses or anything, but because they're toys for children—ergo, a sign of immaturity.]
And then there's Preeny herself. Preeny is special in that not only is she immune to the feathers, but she's also capable of vastly amplifying other people's fur powers and curing those that are poisoned. However, her ability to cure the poison is limited, as she can cure anyone that is only partially poisoned, but anyone that's fully poisoned is pretty much screwed.
All of these factors represent 3 things:
- Preeny's immunity to the feathers presumably represents that her belief in the virtues of imagination and whatnot is much more firmly set in stone and harder to erode than the others'.
- Those that are preened represent those with the actual motivation and encouragement to truly be themselves, instead of relenting in fear of the aforementioned no-fun-allowed authorities. "Cringe is free" and whatnot.
- The ability to cure the partially poisoned and inability to cure the completely poisoned presumably represents how breaking someone out of that "they're right, imagination is useless" rut is far easier when they're not completely consumed by it.
I don't know what else represents what other thing, but this is my best guess. You be the judge, I guess??
