#the second most heart player thing is to get mind on the true zodiac quiz.

[taxi-boi]

happy cascade day, heres my trollsona.

tackzi buoiye

[sayaratyriea]

Why and How you got the wrong Aspect: an analysis!

Okay, everyone’s running around like the anthill’s been kicked over after the Extended Zodiac release. People are complaining that their results aren’t right, that the test has to be wrong, that the aspect characterizations are somehow not totally in line with canon, et cetera and so on and so forth... We have the new descriptions of WHAT the Aspect personalities are, but after hearing no fewer than 4 different people complain (rather specifically) that they got Life when they “should’ve” gotten Blood, I decided to poke through the test in an attempt to decide how the test actually determines this stuff. Because it’s really interesting, and everyone’s done so much intense analysis, and I don’t actually think we were all the way wrong? But I also think that the test is doing a good job at analyzing the things it’s actually asking--the problem is, it’s not asking you what it maybe should be. 

This is all kind of inspired by a text post I saw earlier doing a primary analysis of the test questions--I can’t find that post right now, but if I do track it down I’ll link it. For now, Taz’s interpretation! This is a pretty simple test, really. Each one of the 12 questions corresponds to one pair of Aspects, and is intended to show which one of the two the test taker is inclined towards. The point of this post is to explain (my understanding of) how this test works, and also provide answers as to how you might have gotten an Aspect that you feel doesn’t fit you quite right! There are quite a few ways to get the wrong answers here, even though the canon descriptions of the Aspects seem spot-on and perfect. It’s a fairly well-made system with a somewhat poorly-designed quiz attached. 

This got pretty rambly, so see the readmore for the rest of the post!

First things first: a brief recap of each question, what it asks, and what the results are. 

Question 1 is Breath vs Blood: tldr; do you see yourself as more of a Loner Hero type or a part of a large system of interlocked characters? Loner hero is the Breath answer, and the extended cast is Blood. 

Question 2: The second Breath vs Blood. This time, it’s show or tell. How do you lead and teach people? By inspiring them or by demonstrating? This is a duality that’s often been attributed to active/passive /classes/ in the classpect community, so it’s interesting that it’s being tied to aspects here. Anyways, Breath players show and Blood players inspire by example. 

Question 3: Obviously Light vs Void. Would you rather know everything or be content with knowing that mysteries still exist? Light players want to know, Void players like mystery. Simple stuff. 

Question 4: Another Light vs Void. When someone’s wrong about something, do you correct their errors, or just point out how dubious their information is? Light likes illuminating the truth (heh), and Void would rather cast doubt on the false information. 

Question 5: Time vs Space, very shallow. Time players like time travel, Space players like distance. 

Question 6: The second Time vs Space. Which do you value more, the end results or the journey along the way? Time players value the result, and Space values the journey. 

Question 7: Heart vs Mind. Would you rather know yourself in full detail and intimacy, or have the power to make the most rational decisions? Heart is self, Mind is reason. 

Question 8: Heart vs Mind part 2. Would you rather know your true potential or the consequences to your possible decisions? Heart is potential, Mind is consequences. 

Question 9: Hope vs Rage. Would you rather have firm conviction in your own beliefs, or would you rather cast doubt on the beliefs of those who are wrong? Hope has conviction and Rage is skeptical. 

Question 10: Hope vs Rage #2. When you’re in an awful situation, will you stay there until you’ve planned an escape route, or destroy everything and start from scratch no matter the consequences? Hope will stay, Rage will burn it down. 

Question 11: Life vs Doom. When you see another person in pain, are you more likely to try to help them, or just empathize and try to relate to them? I don’t like this question--it’s worded vaguely and phrased in such a way where if you don’t choose the Life answer then you get guilted for it. Anyways, Life will help, and Doom will... “relate,” whatever that means. 

Question 12: Life vs Doom #2. When you encounter someone in a situation so awful that there’s no way to help, are you more likely to be horrified and fight the inevitable, or feel resigned to the fate of the world? Again, this is a heavily slanted question and could be worded FAR more effectively to produce a less biased quiz. Life fights back, Doom is resigned to destiny. 

So there you have it, those are the questions! With that in mind, I’m still trying to figure out how they’re “weighted” when you give multiple strong answers, but the general gist is that the quiz assigns you the Aspect you provided the most Firm Yes answers to. I got Life because I replied strongly in the Helping direction on the last two questions, which overpowered some of my wimpier answers to the other questions. 

So what does this mean about the aspect results?

That’s what this post was supposed to be about, after all! I’m not going to pick apart the questions that I think work well, but there are two sets in particular that OFFEND me in how poorly designed they are, and I want to dissect them a little because they seem to cause a lot of problems for people. 

First things first, I want to address something about this quiz that’s really bothering me: the whole skew of the Life vs Doom duality. Specifically, the questions meant to assign the Life and Doom aspects in this quiz are really, really bad. I suspect that Life is being assigned far too often, and Doom not nearly enough, because of this problem. Doom got super shortchanged here! 

There’s something that Question 11 in particular wants to be asking that it just isn’t, and that glitch in wording could be causing a lot of skew. Frankly, I don’t think anyone’s impulse is to empathize with a person while “not doing anything” about their situation otherwise. What this question wants to ask is, when confronted with someone in despair, do you try to fix the situation materially and remove what’s causing them distress, or do you try to speak to them and relate to them and listen to their problems? Doom’s Aspect description heavily emphasizes empathy and commiseration. While Doom is not the aspect that tries to fix problems, and Doom is not the advice friend, Doom seems like it really wants to listen. I think this question should be rephrased along these lines: “When you see someone suffering, are you more inclined to help them get better? Or is your instinct to listen to their troubles and empathize with them, without necessarily offering advice?” 

Also, Question 12 should maybe be rephrased in the context of hearing, like, a news article or something. You’re reading about a horrible awful disaster somewhere else, do you feel terrible that nothing can be done or are you resigned to disaster as the Way the World Is? That’d feel a lot less...weird. 

SO like, if you got Life and you don’t think it fit you that well, it’s probably because of those two wonky questions! I think the majority of people are more inclined to do something active in times of trouble than they are to sit around apathetically the way these questions imply Doom would, so if you gave stronger answers to questions 11 and 12 then they may overpower anything else in your test. The majority of people help their friends and want to help other people, that doesn’t mean that the majority of people are proactive enough in that specific way to be Life aspects. In particular, a lot of Blood players seem to be landing on Life when they don’t necessarily belong there.

With that whining out of the way, the rest of the results! 

There’s a really simple reason why people are getting answers that they don’t think fit them: the questions on this test are actually determining slightly different traits than the traits emphasized in the aspect result descriptions. Seriously, they are! Blood is the worst culprit of this, but they all do this to some extent. 

I’m addressing Blood first, partially because it’s the most common victim in cases of “I should be this aspect but I got Light/Life instead!!!” and partially because the questions for Blood are really... interesting. 

Blood, in the traditional fandom approach AND in this test, is supposed to be the aspect about Friendship and Bonds. But in this test, the questions that are most related to friendship and empathy have NOTHING to do with Blood. Seriously, they don’t. Look at the list again. Friendship and relationships are almost never relevant in this quiz, which sort of makes sense, but they’re sort of important for some of these aspects? They’re not there. The two deciding questions that would give the Blood result are more about how you impact the group, not about how the group impacts you or how you relate to them. Regardless of what the description on your results page says, the test itself looks for these traits (and ONLY these!) to identify a Blood player: 

They consider themselves only one role in the “play” of reality, surrounded by equally important alternate protagonists, and

They lead others through inspiration and motivation.

There’s nothing in here about friendship and empathy--two elements of the Blood aspect that are generally considered the Most Important Ones by a lot of analysis writers, and also the Blood description itself. The key defining factors of Blood are its reliance on the power of groups, and Blood’s skill at giving advice and helping people, but those traits don’t actually have anything to do with the test questions that’ll give you Blood as a result. The only question with a firmly Blood-affiliated result is Question 2, which is kind of tangential to begin with! I guess this means Hussie considers the “inspirational leadership” aspect most important, but his own aspect description seems to disagree with him there. 

I personally think that a lot of Blood players are mistyped as Life because of the wonky Life/Doom questions I complained about earlier--as Blood players prioritize friendship and empathy and helping people, they’re wont to give very strong positive “yes I will always help people and want to help people” responses to questions 11 and 12. This doesn’t mean that they’re Life players, it just means they take their actual aspect seriously! See: my earlier rant about those questions and their multitude of issues. This also means that Life itself is unfairly vague, and probably getting way more results than it really should. Blood and Life are already very closely related, and this test is NOT helping people distinguish them. 

The Light/Void questions are pretty good for determining which side of that particular duality someone lands on. A Light player will respond strongly to indicate that they seek knowledge all the time, and a Void player will hang out in the background, those are fine. The worst impact these questions seem to have? They skew the rest of the test. A set of wonky, poorly-worded questions is gonna result in people providing a lot of noncommittal middle answers, so if you gave a “moderately strong” reply in the Light direction to both of these, then you’ll get Light if you didn’t have a very firmly dedicated slant towards something else. 

Space/Time are pretty solid, the first option is a literal power preference (which does seem slightly out of place with the rest of the questions but w/e) and the second one does apply fairly directly to the Space/Time duality. I think they might be different to past approaches on that pairing, but I don’t know, I never pried too deeply into this duo. 

Heart vs Mind, again pretty well-designed, they achieve what they need to achieve. Not much to say about those. 

Hope vs Rage is a really interesting pair because they’re two aspects that Hussie’s been kind of vague on in the past. I think Question 9 could be better phrased, but that’s just me. A few people have complained that Rage isn’t getting assigned often enough, but to me it just seems like it’s not as common of an aspect? I don’t see anything inherently wrong about how the test sets it up, people just don’t answer strongly in that direction. 

And... yeah, that’s where I’m at with this test. All the “wrong” answers are happening because 4 out of the 12 questions are Badly Designed enough that they sort of ruin the rest of the thing! So if you’re still feeling like your result isn’t the one that really fits you, this is worth keeping in mind. It’s a test, and tests can be flawed! Even though the 8 questions I didn’t bully seem to work very well, they are still only 8 questions. No personality test can really know you better than you know yourself. :)

(Also, regardless of your theories on how classes work in correlation to aspects, there is still a relationship there. So you might just always have a class skewing your answer! this has been a PSA from your local prince of doom who consistently gets life on all these tests because of... idfk inversion or something who even knows) (#EXERCISE FUTILITY)