My thoughts exactly. Not feeling making yet another compressor clone. All about doing shit in unconventional ways. Modelling expensive analogue hardware is only used to justify price tags. "Oh compared to the hardware it's not that expensive at all" Fuck that, I'd rather make something that gets unique results and provides all the control you don't get in the 3 knob dealies that have better GUIs than backend code.
I'm trying to go at it through a functional perspective, how do I want to process this audio perceptually? Then find a way to make it happen on those terms instead of modelling the process of hardware circuits just because "that's how it's done" and expecting the user to conform to the controls.
That said, I'm designing a compressor with 2 ratios, 2 thresholds, 2 releases, and 3 envelope stages so I'm kind of talking out my ass on the whole 'conform the controls to the user instead of vice versa' thing.
It's all in the name of more precise control though, which ultimately will give the user a more direct handle onto the audio instead of trying to manipulate a small set of parameters into a sweet spot to get what they're after. If the underlying architecture is more flexible and suited to the kind of jobs you'd want to do, you don't need to abuse devices meant for other purposes, like you said.
It'll be a nice useability exercise to format the GUI in a non-confusing way after I settle on the final parameter set. Just the act of naming things will be hard. I've always kind of hated plugins that had super subjective parameter names that didn't tell you what they were actually doing underneath. But at the same time, if you're using a design the user isn't familiar with in the first place, you sort of have to label things on a subjective basis. 'VCA Transfer Curve Fulcrum Threshold' sounds a bit fucky and probably won't fit in the space above the knob.

Going to try and have a strong visual component that makes things more intuitive. Knobs or LEDs that light up during attack/release stages for instance. Gonna have a nice transfer graph and a functional layout too so the parameters don't seem so cryptic. I know that goes against the adage of using your ears instead of your eyes, but I'm going to still keep things aesthetic instead of technical. No millisecond values to zero in on, just a nice GUI that bounces and pulses along and lets you set things up by feel.