Not Stupid Homestuck Headcanons

Ectobiology VS Genetics and more theories

((⚠️HELLA IMPORTANT⚠️You might read too much if you don't read this. Okay this is actually mostly science and a theory that I did for the Homestuck Amino Newsletter, but shoooosh. I thought it was mildly interesting. Shameless self promotion isn't THAT bad... This is app pasted directly from Amino so there are header things for customizing the posts.
((Tl;dr skip if you don't like science

[BC]Homestuck Theory
[C]By: Subway

[IC]Genetics vs Ectobiology

[IC]In most fandoms, genetics is a subject that one could easily overlook. After all, when it comes to fictional families, artists can usually just make them look generally alike and call it a day. Homestuck, however, is a bit different. Genetics is a field that has importance strewn all throughout Homestuck. Every character's chumhandle is a combination of the letters GCAT and U. The significance of this is that GCAT is the initials of the genetic markers in DNA. Replace T for U and you have the markers in RNA, another important chemical in the field of genetics. The only exception is EB, the ectoBiologist, Homestuck's equivalent of a genetic engineer. EB also used to be GT, ghostlyTrickster. There's also another character that's simply called GCAT. Space players must build universes through breeding for certain traits. Then there's the fact that many characters(ex. John, Rose, Vriska, etc.) unknowingly wrote encoded genetic instructions for first guardians. That part especially shows how Homestuck displays the power of genetics as a theme, since this caused the existence of 2 major villains, Doc Scratch and Bec Noir(possibly LE, but let's not get into his temporal dealings with being the Doc). The point is, Homestuck is a comic that holds genetics highly, as such, this is a fandom in which the genetics of the characters should not be taken lightly.

[IC]This, is where we can find a new revaluation in ectobiology. First, however, you must understand a few concepts in genetics, which I will summarize and simplify, though if you would like to read a bit more on exactly how Alleles and punnett squares work, I suggest  checking out the ectobiology challenge from January. In genetics, there is a phenomenon called incomplete dominance. To simplify it, it's basically when both the dominant and recessive(a gene that does not show when a dominant gene is present) Alleles(alleles are a way of representing a gene with two letters, ex. AA, Aa, aa{capital is dominant and lowercase is recessive}) are present, but rather than the dominant gene masking the recessive gene, as usually occurs, a trait that is a mix between the dominant and recessive traits appears.

[IC]So why exactly is Incomplete Dominance important? Let's look at the genetic Alleles of Roxy and Dirk. Now keep in mind, before people storm in about their headcanons about what beauty treatments people do for their hair, we have seen them both wake up on Derse, so yes "they woke up like that". Roxy has curly hair, this would be represented by the Allele combo [a,a], since the curling of hair trait is one of Incomplete dominance(meaning that any trait gives certainty of the Allele combo, as every combination shows a different result). Dirk's hair is straight(one of the only straight things about him), meaning his Alleles would be represented by [A,A].

[IC]Now, since Rose and Dave are their ectochildren, let's just see what would happen if Dirk and Roxy had kids. Using the method of a Punnett Square, I was able to figure out something peculiar. 100% of the time their offspring would have {A,a} hair, meaning they would have not the straight hair seen on Dave and Rose(once again examining Dream selves who couldn't have styled their hair in their sleep), which would require them to have {A,A}, but "wavy" hair thanks to the Incomplete dominance of the gene mixing the curly {a} trait and the straight {A} trait. Essentially, Dave and Rose cannot be the biological children of Dirk and Roxy through conventional genetics. But what does this teach us about ectobiology? All this looks like on the surface is a picky critique that's looking too deep, but that is not the case. This is in fact a breakthrough in our knowledge of ectobiology, and how it differs from regular biological reproduction. Rather than mixing genes the way one normally would, by combining the Allele pairs of the parents, it seems to fake the traits individually. Take the genes for Dirk's straight hair, give Rose Roxy's eyelashes, and Dave Dirk's physique, and mix them that way instead of usual methods.