Darwin
 | This page is pretty raw LLM output. |
| Darwin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Gender | Male |
| Species | Cat |
| Breed | Cornish Rex |
| Occupation | Student |
| Affiliation | Track team |
| Debut | Track Meet, page 10 May 30, 2022 |
Darwin is a brown-and-white cat on the Roseville High School track team, one of the runners who adopted Mike as their star recruit in Track Meet. He is the friendliest ear on the team and, for one whispered moment, the only one to wonder whether recruiting a guy who slams faces into tables was such a good plan.
Personality
Darwin is generally happy to be along for whatever the track team is doing. He gets wide-eyed over other people’s romances, clasps his hands in delight in the audience of a school play, and hands out winks and finger-guns when a friend’s two stalkers pair off with each other. Practice, as far as he is concerned, is mostly a good place to catch up on the news.
He is less enthusiastic when the team is about to recruit Mike. Having just watched Mike slam Paulo’s face into a table, Darwin quietly asks Finn and the others whether this is really the guy they want.[1] He is a bit protective of the team’s dignity, too. When James announces to Mike that the whole team talks about him, Darwin tenses up.[2]
Appearance
Darwin is a brown-and-white cat with rather large ears.[2] At practice he wears the track team’s running uniform, the same blue Hornets kit Mike wears when he joins.[3]
Significant events
Before James transferred to Roseville, Darwin attended Sue’s play with Felix and Finn, as James later explains in Participation Trophy.[4] The short intermission One-Track Mind also places Darwin at the team’s lunch table during Love Again and High Expectations, before Mike joins.[1]
Readers first meet Darwin in Track Meet, seated with the track team behind Mike in the cafeteria while James tries to recruit him.[2] Once Mike agrees, Darwin stands in uniform with the rest of the team, staring at their new runner in delight,[3] and later crouches beside Mike and James at the start line while the coach looks on.[5] In Link Play, he is part of the smiling team image Mike calls to mind to push out the memory of Lucy’s glare.[6]
In Second String, Darwin spends practice talking with James. He hears from James that Paulo and Daisy have fallen for each other.[7] Later, Mike watches Darwin and James chat and walks off unnoticed.[8]
Major relationships
James
James likes to narrate his own life, and Darwin is the teammate who actually wants to hear it. Their debut scene together has Darwin joining the chorus trying to shut James up in front of Mike,[2] and in One-Track Mind he needles James about the rotten-milk mishap with some belated hygiene advice.[1] In Second String, he is James’s warmest audience. When James reports that his two stalkers have fallen for each other, Darwin finds it kinda cute, then winks and finger-guns him with “If they can’t have you, they’ll have each other!”[7] Later that practice he asks after the new girlfriend and hangs on every word of James’s Burger-Tron story.[8]
Minor relationships
Darwin is briefly baffled by Finn’s priorities. Told that Mike is worth recruiting because the kid can run, Darwin’s only answer is a flat “Why are you like this Finn”.[1] Otherwise he chats happily with Lucas and Max at the team’s lunch table, with Felix listening nearby, while James challenges Lucy to a race.[9]
Quotes
If they can’t have you, they’ll have each other! Darwin, finger-gunning James over Paulo and Daisy in Second String
You.. you sure we should try to get this guy to join the team? Darwin, watching Mike introduce Paulo’s face to a table in One-Track Mind
Why are you like this Finn Darwin, after Finn insists the kid can run in One-Track Mind
Trivia
- Darwin’s first line, “Don’t tell him that!!”, is shouted in unison with Lucas, Felix and Finn rather than on his own.[2]
- Three of his spoken lines come from One-Track Mind, which Veronica describes in her commentary as a fun little intermission between chapters.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 One-Track Mind, page 1
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Chapter 115: Track Meet, page 10
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 115: Track Meet, page 12
- ↑ Chapter 126: Participation Trophy, page 17
- ↑ Chapter 115: Track Meet, page 19
- ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 32
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 124: Second String, page 5
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 124: Second String, page 14
- ↑ Chapter 127: Line in the Sand, page 40