Where Did Winged!grian Come From? I Love Him But Want To Know Why Everyone's Art Has Him With (quite

Where did winged!grian come from? I love him but want to know why everyone's art has him with (quite pretty) wings.

came from a lot of things! as it is with many things in the hermitcraft fandom, keep in mind some of this originates from “the hermitcraft fandom really likes non-human characters, as well as giving characters Recognizable Character Trait to make them visible in art, especially if their skin is kind of plain otherwise”. (that has generally been my observation at least, keep in mind that i’m new around here.)

so, anyway: season 6! it was grian’s first time using an elytra, and he started out pretty bad at it! however, over the course of the season, he got so good at flying it basically became his whole thing. elytra course was very hard and the speeds he could complete it at were impressive. he just… really liked flying, man. he also played a “"superhero”“ character called poultry man, who would fly around and throw eggs at people. and, hey, chickens have wings, right? (if you’ve seen him as a chicken man, hey, now you know who that mysterious chicken man is! nice!)

and sometimes that’s enough, you know? however, also big during season six - and i know some people don’t like blaming this fic for everything because newer fans haven’t read it but from everything i’ve heard it’s still important - there was a popular fic called "and the universe shifts”. (it’s still the third most kudosed fic on ao3 under the tag, under shells in the foam and a tommy superhero fic i haven’t read that apparently must have grian in it.) in it, we find two things that stuck around in fandom: the most common watcher tropes and design, and the original popular “hey grian has wings” fic, where his wings were because he was a watcher. (note that i have no idea if this is the first fic where grian had wings; i wasn’t around then. i just know this was the first stupidly popular one.)

if you’ve seen grian’s wings as purple, this is probably the origin point, and at that point, a lot of people started giving him purple wings.

however, then season 7 started! not only did new fans start to come in during season 7, but grian picked up new bird imagery! namely, the entire “pesky bird” thing started to happen during season 7, as well as all of his parrots. grian being a pesky bird (parrot) in the jungle was all a lot of fans needed to start shifting the design - his wings became the parrot wings that are probably his most common wing design because of that during season 7. plus, he was still clearly one of the best fliers out there and enjoyed it, which was enough to keep giving him wings.

at this point, i’d say that within the fandom, the original atus part was lost - new fans just saw people give him wings and were like “heck yeah its a guy with wings, haha, pesky bird” or “ooh watchers have wings” and didn’t know there used to be a Big Fic that made that stuff popular fanon. so then, and then especially during season 8, fanon started shifting more directly just… assuming grian has wings.

since then, there have been little things that affirm to the fandom that grian should have wings. he refers to them as such, some comments he made during 100 hours about needing his wings, i think doc just outright called grian a pesky bird in his april fool’s episode in season 9 which is really funny to me for some reason. it’s become a pretty established part of grian’s design, to the point that i’m pretty sure it’s known to all of the hermitcraft creators and to the point that some people can’t recognize a grian if you don’t put wings on him, lol, even though that’s not really an aspect of his skin.

i’d say at this point also the wing designs tend to just… vary by artist and what they like! i’ve seen a lot of people trying to take them from stuff he does every season because it’s more fun that way. i know i’ve joked about grian’s wings being shaped wrong and the wrong colors to actually be any real bird, and also the thing where they have eyespots, so that’s a thing in my design, although i’m not an artist! at this point the why grian has wings varies too: some will tell you it’s because he’s a watcher, some will say it’s because he’s very good at flying, some will say it’s because he’s a pesky bird. up to the individual, and technically he also doesn’t need to have wings! it’s just sorta like philza in that it became really established fanon that keeps on skirting the edge of just sorta being canon at this point.

anyone who’s been in the fandom longer than me can add to this and i’ll reblog it