OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #8: THE BALLAD OF VRISKA AND
TEREZI, OR: I BROUGHT MY GIRLFRIEND BACK FROM THE DEAD AND ALL SHE DID WAS BLOW
HERSELF UP IN THE FURTHEST RING
So.
Let’s talk about Vriska.
*earsplitting crack of ominous thunder*
I actually really enjoyed Vriska’s storyline in Act 6 and 7
of Homestuck, and I think it’s a phenomenal ending for the character.
*Screams ring out. Small children crying can be heard. Big
burly men are weeping and fainting. Rotten tomatoes start flying at me. The
juice begins to run down my previously spotless Rogue of Light outfit.*
I think it’s a phenomenal ending for Vriska because it’s critical of Vriska and everything she
believes about herself.
*brief pause*
*Tomatoes start flying at me again, but from the other side
of the room this time.*
Seriously, though, Vriska’s storyline in Act 6 and 7 not
only makes a fitting culmination for the character, but explores some of
Homestuck’s most essential themes. I’m going to explain my reasoning here,
which you may or may not agree with, but I hope you’ll at least find it
interesting.
First, though, we need talk about what Vriska is, and what function she serves within
Homestuck.
Bless you for this meta, because THIS is the thing I feel like people miss, when they forget that Homestuck is a dissection of narrative arcs and storytelling itself.
And if you think Vriska never got a happy ending, you are buying into the same false assumption that the living Vriska bought into— that you are only as ‘real’ as your plot relevance and important deeds and status as a Player Character.
Dead!Vriska is not a ‘fake’ or ‘failed’ Vriska, and it is this Vriska who finally gets the chance to ask “Is ducking out of the plot in pursuit of my own happiness as criminally weak and selfish as I have been taught? Is happiness selfish?”
And it’s dead!Vriska who gets the conclusive happy ending with dead!Terezi, who has also gotten to grow (and decide that she did not want to make the ‘right’ Alternian choice of killing someone she loved in service to a greater narrative purpose).
Living!Vriska and Terezi? They’re left as the plot relevant main characters, with that unanswered question hanging over them.
domestication syndrome is one of the coolest findings from recent genetics
Yes!
Basically scientists have found that if you start selecting for people-friendly animals, you see a bunch of hypothetically unrelated traits start showing up in all sorts of mammal species: floppy ears, piebald/patterned coats, etc.
This is true for everything from cows to dogs to rats! One of the coolest long term studies on this has been the Russian fox experiments.
So essentially the science goes like this:
You have two copies of every genes, one from each parent.
We tend to simplify genetics, and say that for every single gene you have it is random,l coin flip which copy you pass on to you offspring. We also tend think of genes as a 1:1 ratio of genes—>traits.
But! This is not quite the case.
Genes have a specific physical location and order relative to each other on your chromosomes, and the chance of genes being inherited together goes up the closer together they are located. This means random, unrelated traits can wind up being more commonly inherited together in specific patterns just because those genes are located close together, and you don’t get that completely random reshuffling of two parent’s traits. Some of them tend to stay “stuck” together.
This is called linkage, and it’s why you often see red hair, pale skin, and freckles together, for example.
The second factor that plays into this is that a lot of times 1 gene affects several different traits (or several different genes affect 1 trait). This means that sometimes you really *can’t* untangle two traits because they have a similar cause. For example, say genes for increased aggression are responsible both for making a spider a better hunter (pro) and making a spider more likely to eat its offspring (con). Because the same gene is the cause of both things, natural selection can’t really untangle them.
Circling back to the redhead/freckles/pale skin example, these traits are affected by a number of different genes, but also one gene in particular: MCR1, a gene that changes how your body responds to hormones promoting melanin production. Again, one gene related to pigment production can affect a BUNCH of different traits. (And also skin cancer risk. Fun!)
Domestication Syndrome in mammals turns out to be due to both linkage and genes affect by multiple traits!
See, when we domestic animals we want them to be friendlier/less aggressive, which normally translates to less FEARFUL.
And it turns out that the same genes involved in adrenal responses and other stress reactions are also involved in melanin, cartilage, and bone production. So when we domesticate animals we get these recurring changes in pigmentation (white patches, piebald costs), floppy ears (cartilage), shorter muzzles and other changes in physical stature (bone growth), etc.
We also wind up selecting for a lot of neotenic genes in general— that is, retention of childhood traits into adulthood. That’s because baby animals tend to have lots of friendly/trusting/biddable/curious traits we are looking for.
And honestly, who can say no to a face like this?
ps, since it was mentioned:
the same genes involved in domestication probably help animals form social groups in general. if you need to get along with and trust strangers you need a decrease in the panic/aggression genes.
cats, for example, probably domesticated themselves when they started living close to each other and to humans to feed off of pests in grain silos.
and yeah, some some recent theories suggest humans may have ‘domesticated’ themselves:
yo i’m like 99% sure this fruit of the loom commercial on spotify is narrated by sylvanas’ VA and i about lost my mind hearing sylvanas’ exact voice tell me about underwear
Yogg-Sarongurt 