From a broader perspective I've always wondered, "Why does a fixed attitude domain impact a situation domain and vice versa?", and "Why does a psychology/manipulation domain impact an activity domain?"   As in why are they so dynamically opposed that a situation could never impact an activity or an attitude upon a psychology?

The key to the dynamic pairs in the current incarnation of the model is that represent the opportunity for greatest direct conflict.  The companion, dependent, and component views are relevant, but do not provide the same type of relationship as the dynamic pairs.  We chose the dynamic pairs because they represent the relationships most aligned with Western (American) sensibilities and problem solving.

At the heart of a story is an inequity -- an imbalance.  The question is, "How does one best resolve the inequity."  To make sense of something, one must have (or create or decide on) a context with which to find meaning.  That means there must be some common base against which one measures everything else.

The domains (structural classes) are created by combining internal and external with state and process.  The four combinations create the four classes:

• STATE + EXTERNAL = SITUATION
• STATE + INTERNAL = FIXED ATTITUDE
• PROCESS + EXTERNAL = ACTIVITY
• PROCESS + INTERNAL = PSYCHOLOGY (MANIPULATION)

So, when evaluating an imbalance between a situation and a fixed attitude, the common basis is that they are both states -- that becomes the baseline or context within which to evaluate their differences.  The imbalance between the two classes then appears to be reduced to a question of where the 'problem' and 'solution' exist:  External (Situation) or Internal (Fixed Attitude)?

Activity and Psychology share 'process' as their baseline and then look to the balance between external and internal between them.

For the above reasons these classes are compared to create the domains and not the other possible combinations.

So for a Main Character, the domain that is most challenging to his personal perspective is the one that has a shared baseline ("We're alike, you and I"), yet ALSO offers an alternative approach ("No, we're nothing alike!").

Why does it seem to shift according to the Perspective (Throughline) chosen?

Context creates meaning. It is the combination of the four perspectives with the four domains that collectively describe and allow us to identify the nature of an inequity. You need look no further than the Dramatica table of Genres to see how combining perspectives with domains creates meaning. For example, combine the situation domain with the "they" OS perspective and you get a situation comedy OS throughline. If you combine the same perspective with the activity domain, you get a physical comedy OS throughline. Yet you need all four perspectives bound to the four domains to have a complete exploration of an inequity, which is one of the foundations of a Grand Argument Story.

Follow-up question:

So the true inequity of a story doesn't necessarily lie in one Domain or the other, but rather between all of them? In that case, an inequity can never truly be defined, correct? You can't say Well, the inequity of this story is injustice...You would need all four Domains to actually surround and approximate that inequity.

You are correct.

According to Dramatica there are four different ways of defining a problem - a Situation, an Activity, a Fixed Attitude or a Way of Thinking. These correspond to the theory's four Domains, respectively Universe, Physics, Mind and Psychology.

In order to create a complete story Dramatica calls for each one of these Domains to be assigned to one of the Four Throughlines: the Overall Story Throughline, the Main Character Throughline, the Impact or Influence Character Throughline and the Relationship Story Throughline. These Four Throughlines correspond to the four different contexts one can take in order to assess meaning: They (Overall), I (Main Character), You (Impact Character), and We (Relationship).

The reason for the Four Throughlines, or Perspectives, seems clear -- an Author would have to explore a problem from all the different perspectives in order to understand what is really going on. But why do the four different Domains have to be explored? Wouldn't it be just as good to look at the same Problematic Activity from the They perspective, the I perspective, the You and We perspectives so that one could understand what is truly wrong with that particular Activity?

An inequity is an imbalance between things, not the things themselves. It does not matter if the "things" are perspectives or domains in which the associated problems manifest because the inequity can be anywhere. The purpose of the problem-solving process is to identify, isolate, and address the inequity as best as possible. The largest areas in which the inequity can be identified are the perspectives and the domains. One way to identify the effects of an inequity is to look for conflict.

Conflict is the product of effort to resolve an inequity as it meets resistance. We look for conflict as we attempt to identify an inequity's source(s). If we neglect to look in all the possible places conflict can exist, we open ourselves (and the story) to missing the entirety of the conflict and a true understanding of the inequity, leaving the real likelihood of failing to resolve the inequity thoroughly. So, all four perspectives and all four domains must be explored in order to understand the nature of an inequity and the nature and source(s) of conflict generated by trying to resolve the inequity.

Wouldn't it be just as good to look at the same Problematic Activity from the They perspective, the I perspective, the You and We perspectives so that one could understand what is truly wrong with that particular Activity?

The storyform expresses the effects of an inequity differently in each domain because the context for each domain is different. The Situation domain shows the inequity in the context of an external state. The Activity domain shows the inequity in the context of an external process. The Fixed Attitude domain shows the inequity in the context of and internal state. The Manipulation/Psychology domain show the inequity in the context of an internal process.

Using different perspectives on the same domain shows the effects of the inequity within the different contexts of the perspective. This may give us a greater understanding of the difference in the perspectives, but it would not give us any greater understanding of the inequity as it is expressed in that single domain. Conflict does not exist BETWEEN a domain and a perspective, so shifting perspectives on a domain will not provide more insight into the nature of the inequity.