User blog:DatAsymptote/who wants to hear about IRRELEVANT SIDE CHARACTERS?

Okay, so I just finished writing Airmid Valerian's diary! It’s done! I can store that away as a finished piece I’m proud of.

If you happened to read it, you might realise that some one-off characters may have appeared! These three characters were created solely for the purpose of Airmid’s diary, but I did get quite attached to them, which is why I made this blog post so I can talk about them + share some more information.

These characters are Franklin Mei, Darwin Shrewsbury , and C. Rick Dawkins.

Franklin Mei
"Franklin was a sprite. Quick on his feet, brilliant at computer work. When he wasn’t taking DNA samples on a spin in centrifuges, he did stunt tricks on his bicycle (both outside the lab and inside). One day, I swore to myself, I would as cool as a scientist as this dude."

- Airmid describing Franklin

Franklin Mei’s an air sprite. He’s ethnically Chinese, grew up in Wales, moved to Germany for university to do a Biology degree as a prerequisite for medicine, realised he was more about the science than about helping people, so never sat the entrance exam for med school.

He has an older brother who’s a lawyer dealing with human-fae relations and property management. He also has two younger sisters. One of them wants to be an engineer and solve problems with the fairy housing market.

Currently, Franklin is twenty-five years old and unmarried. He kinda has a thing with another PhD student from the molecular biology department. If you asked him about that, he’ll deny that there’s anything going on.

His job title is a tossup between “evolutionary biologist” and “fatumlogist”. The latter is a neologism I made up meaning “scientist who studies fairies”, derived from the Latin word for fairy and the Greek –ology, “study of”.

He’s a post-graduate student, working on his PhD. He’s working on trying to find the reason why fairies have branched out into so many species, and why they are the most diverse humanoid genus on Earth. (Franklin thinks it’s due to adaptive radiation.)

Franklin also plays a significant role in the Pixie Genome Project, which is this huge undertaking by biologists all around the world, with the purpose of sequencing the whole DNA sequence of pixies.

Basically, Franklin has a very YOLOUAT attitude. He’s serious about his work, but he’s far from serious about anything else. As mentioned above, he literally has done bicycle tricks in the lab. After years of studying evolutionary biology, Franklin has realised that life is literally one of the weirdest things to exist, and because of this, hardly takes life seriously at all.

About the name: I named Franklin after the chemist Rosalind Franklin. His first name is her surname. His family name, Mei, is also a reference. In Mandarin, Rose is Meigui. Hence, Franklin Rose.

(Rosalind Franklin, along with Maurice Wilkins, used x-ray crystallography to deduce the double helix structure of DNA. Unfortunately, her photographs were used by James Watson and Francis Crick without credit, and her important work forgotten. Watson, Crick and Wilkins later received the Nobel Prize for their discovery of DNA’s structure. I’m sure Franklin would have gotten the same Nobel Prize, if she hadn’t died from ovarian cancer (from overexposure to x-rays) a few years earlier. Anyway, Rosalind Franklin is one of my idols and I love her. <3)

Darwin Schrewsbury
"Then, there was Darwin, a brownie, who always cleaned up after Franklin’s messes. He always brought in fresh baking, and cracked jokes about cannibalism when he brought in chocolate fudge brownies."

- Airmid describing Darwin

Like Franklin, Darwin’s also Welsh! Sort of. Darwin’s actually from Australia, the son of Welsh immigrants. Only child, no siblings. He also moved to Germany for university. Originally he was doing a biochemistry degree, but later found his passion for evolutionary biology.

He’s twenty-eight. Managed to afford his own house and lives with his fiancé/partner. They’re set to marry in the Spring of next year.

Darwin’s also an evolutionary-biology-cum-fatumologist. His PhD work focuses on reclassification of fae species. He also has a side project where he’s trying to work out whether fertile offspring production between different fae species is viable, which Darwin’s gained some controversy/notoriety for that.

The Pixie Genome Project is something that he’s technically part of. He uses the parts of the genome already sequenced for his work, but doesn’t contribute any of his own stuff to the Project.

He’s very kind, very protective over his friends. Like any other brownie, he likes to bake and cook and clean places. If you’re at the University of Ever After and the lab you enter is clean, depending on your definition of safe, you can safely bet that Darwin just used it before.

And yes, if you want to ask, the existence of Franklin and Darwin are supposed to be puns. I always thought that the term “science theories” sounded like “science fairies”, so I made characters who are quite literally science fairies.

About the name: Darwin is an obvious reference to Charles Darwin, the world’s first evolutionary biologist. Darwin (the brownie, not Charles) is also Australian. I think Charles Darwin did some important stuff up in Australia? There’s also a city in Australia called Darwin, I think. Shrewsbury’s Darwin’s birth place. It’s somewhere in Shropshire. So yeah, tenuous geography references!

(Anyway, Charles Darwin is literally so great. You know one of the reasons why The Origin of Species got published so fast was because Darwin wanted to use his book as a way of combating racism and stopping the slave trade. And a lot of criticism for the Origin of Species was actually racist criticism. This is how you ally.)

Dawkins
I hope that the names Darwin and Dawkins didn’t confuse you guys when reading. They are really similar AND easy to mix up. Just so you know, it’s  Dawkins  that stole Airy’s microscope slides, not Darwin.

Unlike the previous two, Dawkins’ not a fairy.

Unfortunately for him, he’s an ordinary human, fourth in his family with three older brothers. The first inherited the family business, the second went into the clergy, the third went into the army. Dawkins wanted to do something different, so he went into science.

Currently, he’s a third-year university student doing microbiology. He doesn’t have any plans for his life and his parents see him as eating away their money, studying in university in a major/degree that probably won’t get him a job. They want him to quickly graduate and start earning money. Or for him to get married or something. He has very traditional parents. Which means that he’s a very traditional person. Does traditional things. Thinks traditional things. Probably anti-gun control. He's gained some eminence at the University of Ever After, meaning that people do respect his work and who he is. But he's also become a bit cocky and thinks he can get away with most things (including stealing a poor freshman student's work).

I don’t think he’s evil, per say, but he still is an asshole. If given the opportunity, I would punch him in the face.

About the name: Dawkins is named after two biologists I’m not particularly fond of. Francis Crick was the scientists who elucidated the double helix structure of DNA. He, along with James Watson, used a photograph taken by Rosalind Franklin for their report, and did not give credit. Hence, C. Rick.

Richard Dawkins is the current leading evolutionary biology in the world. He’s irritating and pretentious, and one of those scientists who treat people who are religious as less intelligent. He told black students at the university he lectures at that they were being “too sensitive” for not attending a lecture when a radicalised gun attack was announced. He– okay, I’ll stop before I completely slander Dawkin’s reputation. Anyway, the Rick Dawkins part of C. Rick Dawkin’s name was a reference to this asshole.

If anyone wants to use these characters/mention them/cameo them in any of your work or OCs, you're welcome to! I might use them for later purposes, but for now, view them as