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when you’re writing a conflict between two characters or factions of characters, you need to consider whether their disagreement over the premise or over the methods. put another way: do they disagree on the problem or the solution?

this is a genuinely tricky thing to identify, especially in very complex narratives, so let’s do some very simple examples.

the situation: pacifist nation X is about to be invaded by empire Y. the laws and cultural practices of the Xians make violence and death so abhorrent that even accidental death is as minimized as possible. the Ylings, on the other hand, are totally cool with straight up murder and think diplomacy is for wimps, but are also pragmatic enough that they won’t waste troops if they don’t need to. the king of X calls in his council and asks for their opinions.

character A: It is more noble to die for one’s beliefs than to live having broken them. We should allow the Ylings to invade us and if we die, we die. character B: If all life is sacred, then our lives are also sacred. We must fight back against the Ylings, even though that means we’d be committing violence.

A and B agree on premise but not solution: they both acknowledge that the Yling invasion is a bad thing that will lead to their deaths if unopposed and that the nonviolence code is important; what they disagree on is priorities and methods.

character C: We should invite them into our nation as honored guests. Maybe they’ll spare us or at least kill us more mercifully. character D: We should propose an alliance and intentional annexation in exchange for our lives. Being part of the Yling Empire is a pretty sweet deal, actually.

C and D agree on solution but not premise: they’re both okay with just letting the empire walk in and invade, but C thinks the invasion would be a bad thing and is just trying to minimize the damage, and D thinks it would be a good thing and wants to maximize the rewards.

character E: We should fight the Ylings and stay a sovereign nation; the nonviolence code is stupid and holding us back. character D: We shouldn’t fight the Ylings and try to be peacefully part of their empire instead; we’d be true to our code and reap the rewards of an alliance.

E and F disagree on both premise and solution.

Now, all possible permutations of this argument are fine. “Is this the best way to solve the problem?” and “What actually is the problem?” are both great sources of conflict. Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s entire plot is an argument over the methods to prevent death and crime, but everyone agrees that crime is bad; one of Zuko’s big character development moments is when he realizes that the problem with the world isn’t the other nations ungratefully rejecting the prosperity and unity offered by the Fire Nation, but that the Fire Nation routinely commits genocide in their quest to colonize the rest of the world.

The issue is when a disagreement over methods is treated like a disagreement over premise. The characters are positioned like one side’s entire worldview is correct and the other is wrong, but it turns out they actually disagree with what the other does rather than what the other believes.

A big giveaway that what you’re seeing is about methods and not underlying beliefs? If at any point it is said or implied that one character “goes too far.” “Too far” implies a point before that cutoff that the other characters or the reader would be okay with. You can’t go too far if going any distance in that direction is wrong. “Frollo in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame goes too far when he tries to kill all the Roma in the city” implies that the problem isn’t racism in general, but mass murder specifically, and that if Frollo was only nonviolently racist, that would be fine!

Like, you know the joke about the guy who offers a woman a million dollars to sleep with him, then ten dollars after she accepts the million dollar offer, and when she’s offended and says she’s “not that kind of woman,” he says, “Oh, we agreed you were that kind of woman, now we’re just haggling over price”? If your characters are arguing about the best way to solve a problem, they have already agreed about the existence and nature of the problem. Now they’re just haggling over price.

Again: that kind of storyline is okay if you actually do want to discuss extremism v. moderation of the same basic principle. It’s okay for two characters to argue over the best way to free all of their country’s slaves. It’s also okay for two characters to discuss the best way of practicing slavery, if you want to show how ingrained it is in society or how even the character you think is a moderate is still evil or something. What doesn’t work is if your intention is to say how awful slavery is, but then the entire conflict is over the treatment of slaves rather than whether slavery is okay.

I'm gonna be talking, of course, of grammatical gender, because of this viral image:

I'm sure you've seen an image like this floating around and people crying about how having non-binary be translated with a feminine and masculine form depending on usage defeats the purpose of the term.

But it doesn't!!!

Spanish is not like English, it has ✨grammatical gender✨ which has nothing to do with gender identity whatsoever. It's not that we believe chairs are female and stools are male, our grammar is just like this. Every word has a grammatical gender and there must be grammatical gender concordance. Thus, non-binary must have both a feminine and masculine form to use depending with which word you're pairing it.

Let's say you want to talk about a "non-binary person". 'Person' in Spanish is 'persona' a grammatically feminine word (despite its usage being gender neutral and encompassing people of any gender, as I said, grammatical gender ≠ gender identity). Because 'persona' is a grammatically feminine word, you have to apply grammatical concordance accordingly, and so to say "non-binary person" you would say "persona no binaria".

Now let's say you want to talk about "non-binary gender". 'Gender' in Spanish is 'género' a grammatically masculine word, and because of that to say "non-binary gender" you would say "género no binario".

See? It's not about grammatically imposed misgendering, it's about how this language is built.

But Shine, I hear you say, that's all nice and good, but how do I refer to my non-binary friend? And well, dear reader, you're in luck because I'm not only Spaniard but also non-binary myself.

In Spanish 'friend' (like a whole lot of words) has a feminine and masculine form. When those words are used to refer to people, grammatical gender does match gender identity. For the most part. And broadly speaking, feminine words are associated with the vowel -a, and masculine with the vowel -o (this is not universal, there are exceptions to this, I'm trying to paint the broad picture to give you a general idea).

So what about gender neutral? Well, officially we don't have one. The Real Academia Española doesn't recognize it... But the RAE isn't word of god, it compiles usage, so the more a term is used, the more chances it will be officially recognized. Not using a term because it's not officially recognized is actively detrimental to the goal you want to achieve.

Okay, not an official gender neutral, but what have we come up with? Well, at least in Spain, it's associating gender neutral to the vowel -e. So you have the femenine ella/la/-a, the masculine él/lo/-o, and the gender neutral elle/le/-e.

Now time for practical examples!

"My friend, David, is a boy." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amigo, David, es un chico."

"My friend, Liz, is a girl." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amiga, Liz, es una chica."

"My friend, Alex, is non-binary." 🇬🇧 → 🇪🇸 "Mi amigue, Alex, es no binarie."

And that's how you do it!! At least in queer friendly spaces in Spain, can't speak for other places. I have seen the 'x' thrown around to make gender neutral in Spanish, but -e is way more intuitive for spoken language, so I like it better.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

Person who is Insane About Drawing Those Characters

Person who appears to do nothing but write while their life is going to shit

Person whose brain appears to be running a low-level analysis of the media 24/7

Person who reblogs practically everything they encounter about media

Gif-Maker 9000

Person who just shares hearts in group chats

Person who has been working on something they share snippets of every six months or so, which will be done "soon" they promise