put your canine teeth in the side of my neck

Being written by a cishet white man.

Ah! Jokes! But seriously, that is actually part of it lol

Grace's worst: he never shuts up. Asocial tendencies. Devalues himself while also aggrandizing himself and yes it's very contradictory and annoying. He's just like that. He's avoidant. Of responsibility and risk, personal and professional. But he wants to be rewarded for being special, and he wants to be liked, so this leads to him being flaky. He wants to be in control, but fears the responsibility, so he prefers others to take the lead while resenting and envying them. He has a deep seated drive to be correct, and always has to get the last word- relationships and his academic career suffer here. If he believes he is right, you are not convincing him otherwise. He is very focused on his own life and rarely reaches out to others. He's entitled and often inconsiderate of other's emotions, and tends to prioritize only himself. He likes to use humor to diffuse situations and deflect problems, even at really inappropriate times. Related: he cannot read a room for shit, so that makes him oblivious. Willingly so, in my opinion, which would also make him a liar, but this is up for debate (he is a biased narrator of his own life lol). He has cowardly tendencies, basically. Holds a grudge over perceived and real slights for decades. He lashes out when angry and yells a lot. In the movie, he breaks things. Also he eats diner food for breakfast every goddamn day. What the fuck. How do you afford that as a teacher! Buy some groceries! Learn to use a frying pan!!!!!!!! good GOD man

Grace's best: Huge softie! He's very sensitive and he's not afraid to appear vulnerable or weak or show emotions like sadness! He is very curious and willing to learn new things. His intellect is pretty vast- he's smart, well rounded in a lot of subjects, and he's funny. Goofy. Silly. He makes people laugh. He has a very disarming personality and comes off as charming to many. People like him (when he actually spends time with them). When he actually lets himself connect with others, he deeply cares for them and overcomes his most antisocial tendencies (for the most part). He's usually kind and often accommodating (when he likes the person). Has a knack for unconventional problem solving, as well as arts and crafts. He's impulsive and quick acting when he's given a problem he believes he can solve. He really is a good teacher, and he loves teaching kids. He would make a really good uncle.

Rocky's worst: BOSSY. Controlling. Impatient, demanding, often brusque to the point of rudeness. Short temper. Mean humor. High maintenance social needs. Clingy. Oftentimes dismissive of human issues and comfort. This is worse in the book and played for laughs a lot, but Rocky has a really hard time dealing with the reality that Grace is Human, the fallibility of Grace's mind, and the concerns Grace has about his quality of life. (I feel terrible for saying this bc it's not his fault but) he is unimaginably lonely and deeply traumatized and not dealing with it, like. at all. Or at least not in healthy ways. This seeps into every part of him. He's a workaholic and he keeps busy so he's not distracted by his perfect memory of his various traumas. He's impulsive. And secretive. He does not give out personal information without cause and even with cause he stays clandestine about it. You are never getting a straight answer out of him if you've pissed him off recently, either. And I like to believe that Movie Rocky lies for fun. just because. To fuck with Grace.

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.