#sorry for the essay adina I just REALLY like fucked up world-building shit

[fantasykiri5]

so which characters do you personally headcanon to be winged avians?

Honestly, mostly just Jimmy, Grian, Wels, and False; Jimmy being a canary, Grian a scarlet macaw, Wels a perigrine falcon, and False a red-tailed hawk.

The other naturally winged species I have is fairies/fae (fairies being a type of fae), which work a lot of different ways since they’re more magical I think, and the only ones I have for being some manner of fae 100% of the time are Lizzie (she’s technically fae, but to use dnd terms she’s more like a god who decided when losing followers or dying to— instead of just dying— trade her traditional divinity to become arch fae.) and Stress, who is a regular children’s-tale-style fairy (which is the subspecies what Lizzie mimics in order to not draw attention of be hunted or shit.)

For other characters species, I actually have a number of very specific headcanons! I’ll put ‘em below the cut though since that’s not what the original question was about

Gem is half elf and half a different elf! Part wood elf and part high elf, with characteristics of both. Currently she’s got a fish thing going on that honestly might be a curse or mutation or something? It wasn’t like that before

Scar is a full wood elf, but didn’t know about it until the beginning of season 9, as he wasn’t raised as an elf and I like to think his ears didn’t grow in until the time he and the rest of Boatem were floating in the void. Elf’s ears are quite long and wood elves specifically can swivel them, but they don’t reach their full size until a while into adulthood and small but pointed ears are incredibly common among players and few are completely human. Scar was raised presumably by Vex? Or in the zombie apocalypse? Nobody’s sure but it wasn’t by elves, he reconnected with that in s9.

Martyn is a half elf, specifically high elf + human

Scott is a full high elf

And Bdubs is 1/4 wood elf, 1/2 halfling (hobbit), and 1/4 human. Occupationally/class wise, he’s a Druid, not to be mixed up with “dryad” which is a species (and not bdubs.)

And moving away from the elves my Joel is a nymph, which is essentially a tree person? But more humanoid than a dryad, which is a tree that is kinda person-y. Joel is more of a person that’s a bit like a tree. I like to think he can turn into a tree sometimes (azalea of course, though for a while I thought maybe Willow? Cherry would also be fitting for s10 but I don’t like having them switch species within what’s technically the same world) and he was born from a tree (and he’s transgender because in legends nymphs are all women, but he said fuck that.)

Pearl WAS human, or the default-humanoid-player species as it were, but got bitten by Ren during double life and turned into a wolfwalker (a piece of Irish folklore; somebody who’s a human while they’re awake and become a wolf when they sleep. They’re human body stays asleep and they form a new one with magic to be the wolf body.)

Etho also WAS human-adjacent, and was turned into a wolfwalker YEARS ago, long before hermitcraft

Ren has been a wolfwalker his whole life, he was born as one

To elaborate on Lizzie and Stress more, the term “fae” is pretty broad, it covers things like folklore fairies, wolfwalkers, nymphs, Allay and Vex, and honestly quite an assortment of other things. There are quite a number of fae creatures that are entirely unique and don’t technically belong to a “subspecies” as well, because fae are just sort of weird like that. It’s a very loose category of being, basically. Anyways Stress is what most would consider a very typical European-style fairytale fairy (with the exception of being human-size) and they’re a pretty common type of fae, they’re related to Allay and Vex, and there are theories that they are an ancestor species to modern-day moth and butterfly (and other flying insect) hybrids, though none have been definitively proven.

Lizzie, as I mentioned above, used to be a goddess. Gods can only fully die when they have no followers left, and when that happens their bodies are essentially sent frozen to another plane to float in space. (THANK YOU Fantasy High for this one, I’ve had vauge ideas for a while and the way Spire is structured helped me figure it out. Go watch Fantasy High basically.) ANYWAYS if a god is in direct danger of that happening they can choose to let go of a portion of their power and become fae-aligned, basically demoting themselves and moving a bit to the left, in order to not die when they lose the last of their followers. So Lizzie is like a demigoddess-but-a-bit-to-the-left, but arch fae are very highly sought after foes for a number of reasons, so what she’s done is essentially disguised herself as the same sort of common fairy as Stress in order to avoid that!

(Also, I’m currently thinking that Gem’s recent sea-monster curse is a side effect of starting to accidentally worship a half-dead god?? Gem doesn’t know she’s doing it, but the universe does I guess. And Lizzie’s domain as a god was DEFINITELY connected to the sea ;D )

Finally, we’ve got simple mob/animal hybrids, off the top of my head there’s Zed (sheep) XB (Gaurdian) Beef (cow) and Doc (creeper+goat+robot+butterfly now, apparently.) I’ve probably got more but idk.

And other than that I don’t think I have any specific headcanons for anyone else? I know I kinda rambled past what your question was but I’ve been cooking some of these up for a while and I wanted to share :D