#I traced the skeletal anatomy from google images cuz I could not be bothered to try that hard on a part of the image that wasn't my focus

[overlyimmersed]

I wanna talk about wings

Just in general, rather than any specific Fairy's wings this time.

SO I was gonna a make a post comparing Fairy wings to irl insect wings, but the most I learned about insect wings the more I found I actually didn't have the point I thought I did, so I scrapped that. But I still wanna talk about stuff so.

I now know a lot about bug wings! which are way more complicated than you might think... They look like they're just "dead" material like keratin on mammalian bodies, BUT NO. Chitin is significantly different actually. It's more flexible than keratin is for one thing. And insect wings are actually made of "cuticle" which is different layers of chitin put next to each other. The veins of insect wings can have "blood" flow and even nerves. So wings are actually kinda living structures. The membrane between the veins does seem to be comparable to keratin, in that it doesn't have the blood flow or nerves. But still it's chitin so it's flexible.

Why was I looking this stuff up? Cuz when Harlequin kills Helbram for the first time and he falls over, his wings look very...fabric-y and that always bothered me cuz I always thought insect wings were more rigid then that. But apparently not. Nakaba may have trouble with human anatomy but apparently he knows more about wings than I do :p.

But anyway, since that always bothered me, and my general obsession with fairy wings, I'm always paying a lot of attention to how the fairy characters' wings move in the anime and in the grand cross mobile game to compare them to each other and look for consistency. I run a full fairy team in Grand Cross consisting of Helbram, Harlequin and Gerheade. I also have Gloxinia and Elaine so I can look at their wings too when need be. So I get a lot of time to observe the wing movements. And there are significant differences between the fairies that have starkly different wing structures. And I suppose I have a theory as to why?

As far as I can tell, the reason for the sharp difference in how the wings move between, say my main 3, had to do with the vein configurations of each fairy's wings. Harlequin, Helbram and Gerheade all have different vein configurations from each other. I took some videos of every fairy's grand cross models during idle movements, as well as when they have an attack ready, to show the differences in the movement.

These two have to be separate cuz when you select an action for all three the battle proceeds.

We already know Helbram has substantial flexibility to his wings. Harlequin's wings move and flex about the same way an irl butterfly's do, which is a moderate amount of flexibility. Gerheade's wings seem to be markedly stiffer. If you look at the vein configurations of each fairy's wings, which are better illustrated in the anime than the 3D models, you can see that they are very different.

Gerheade and Harlequin both have very insectoid looking wings, because to veins fork to create cells like irl bugs. Helbram though, doesn't have any cells in his wings, he only has vertical veins that don't fork at all. And between Gerheade and Harlequin, Harlequin's wings have larger cells in general as well as large central cells.

I'm inclined to believe these differences in the number and size of the cells formed by the veins are what causes the difference in flexibility. Since Gerheade has smaller cells, the veins are closer together giving her a more rigid structure, while Helbram lacks cells altogether so he has very little structure over all, giving his wings are more fabric-like movement. Harlequin is somewhere in the middle. Gloxinia and Elaine fall into the same category as Harlequin as they both have very much butterfly-like wings which have the large and small cell configuration.

All this being said, I still don't actually want to believe that Fairy wings are made of chitin. Simply cuz I don't know if that makes sense. Based on the very limited information we have about reproduction, it seems that Fairies are mammals? And mammals don't make chitin. We do, however, make cartilage. Which is a material that offers comparable flexible/semi-rigid structure to chitin. Like your outer ear. That structure is cartilaginous, you can just fold that right over on itself and it doesn't even hurt. But it still hold it's structure all on it's own. So the headcanon that I've held from the beginning is that Fairy wings are actually cartilage and some kind of skin. I drew a diagram for this when I was figuring out how the wings attach.

The dark grey indicates cartilage

My theory/headcanon is that when Fairies get their wings a fully cartilaginous ball-and-socket joint forms attached to the inner edge of the shoulder blades and underlying ribs. The veins are cartilaginous structures, while the membrane is skin. So, unlike with insectoid wings, if you damage the membrane of a Fairy wing it'll bleed. But, also unlike insect wings, Fairy wings can heal since they're fully living tissue with blood supply through the entirety of the structure rather than just in the veins like insect wings.