Hi Morgane! I think the fairies in Pacific are neat. They aren’t very cute like the KC ones but they have their own charm to it. Are those based on real people?
In short, yes. Any fairy fully illustrated tend to be referring to historical figures. (From an out of universe perspective that’s because I want you to look these guys up!)
Recall in AR we explained that Pacific appears to have a category of “named fairies” who possess many attributes similar to, well, their historical counterparts.
In-universe, STEC doesn’t understand this at all. Nominally, fairies are notoriously difficult to communicate with. Even the shipgirls can only sort of “suggest” things to do for the fairies – they have no issues getting to do their “task” related things (like, say, loading a shell), but anything beyond this for the rank and file and it’s just like herding cats.
For instance, you’ve read about STEC carrying out R&D and stockpiling weapons for the shipgirls. You also know that at any given moment there are probably tens of thousands of fairies literally derping about and doing absolutely nothing on Avalon. Why not mobilize them and get them to, well, build stuff?
You can’t. For one thing, the vast majority of fairies doesn’t seem to really understand orders. They don’t really communicate. Specifically, they seem to have their own singsongy kind of language that (some) shipgirls claim to understand. They are definitely aware of humans and knows the human language, but how much do they listen or pay attention varies extremely considerably.
For instance, let’s say you have a bunch of AO fairies lounging around.
CV Girl: “Guys, it’s training time!”
Fairies: <o/ (very eager and ready to get working)
Mike: “Guys, it’s training time!”
Fairies: zZzzZzz…. (Basically puts it off until they have to do it.)
Or something like this:
Shipgirl: “Time to eat!”
Fairies: “YAAAAAAAAAY!” (is happy)
Shipgirl: “Time to do the dishes!”
Fairies: ??????? (literally rolls around and want to skip out on work)
Certain charismatic individuals can charm some fairies into doing extra work, but as someone in STEC put it, if fairies are meant to also represent humanity in some form, then the astounding laziness that these guys exhibit is pretty a strong piece of evidence.
I mean, you can’t really bug them either. If you nag them too much they’ll just fade “out” of existence and go dark for a while until you stop bugging them.
The exception here are the named fairies. STEC has several theories. They range from “these fairies are actually these people just empowered by God/supernatural force/whatever and turned into fairies” to “these fairies are just fairies who grew sufficiently powerful and managed to take upon a particular identity” to “these fairies aren’t fairies at all but are a totally different category of beings like shipgirls.”
STEC really doesn’t know. What STEC does know, however, is that these fairies are as intelligent (if not more so) than their real life counterparts. What’s more, they can be communicated with. Which means they can be reasoned with and given tasks to assist with the anti-Abyssal effort.
…Except that’s the thing. STEC’s not entirely sure if these fairies are “fairy-enough.” Specifically, these guys behave, well, entirely like real people. Yes, they have access to the full array of fairy powers ranging from invisibility to teleportation to “conjuring” physical illusions. They are more powerful than the non-speaking “ordinary” fairies. They appear to be unique in the sense that multiple copies of the “same person” hasn’t showed up yet.
But their behaviors are entirely human. Or, rather, their behaviors are very different from the ordinary fairies. Personality-wise, the individuals that know them describe these individuals as what they “would” or could be. They seek out entertainment and get bored just like normal people. They have hobbies and dreams and wishes and get fascinated by technology. In short, they lack the single-minded, almost autistic type behavior of the –
Actually you know what. I take what I said up there back. A lot of these guys are so absorbed in their work that they really aren’t too different from the fairies themselves.
I mean, for instance, that guy? Good luck getting him away from his papers.
Oh yeah? Well, excuse me. I’m just trying to get humanity to Mars!”