Online personality tests, part 2

Continued from Part 1, in which I channeled the three main characters of Disciple in taking an online personality test to determine their Myers-Briggs personality types.

One of the monkey wrenches in Kate and Kiefan's relationship is Anders. His relationship with Kate moves much more gradually and faces a number of hurdles, but he's got an in with the readers (so far) so it keeps things interesting. 


Anders' profile

He's an ESTP, which is almost completely my opposite and one might think it's difficult to write a character who is completely different from yourself. In truth, Anders has been... well, not only easy to write but difficult to let go of. All three of these characters have been in my head for a long, long time and even when the other two have faded into the background Anders... never does. Psychologists, feel free to extrapolate and hypothesize. :)

Anyway, again, an accurate sketch of him. Kate and Anders will have their disagreements -- they've already begun, in the part I'm currently finishing up -- but they come from differing expectations and things left to rankle... not head-on collisions as between Kate and Kiefan. Intriguingly, the website's analysis backs me up again.

What 41Q says about their relationship (edited down a bit):

Your relationship type: "Symbolic"

This symbolic relationship is identifiable by one partner being exactly what the other partner sees when he looks into a mirror. It is not referring to a mirror of the physical self as much as mirroring the best qualities in each partner. While the good qualities are present in each, a different focus is placed on each quality. One partner is dominant in each quality. [...] In the early days of the relationship each will try to do what the other wants. Over time, this can become something that is not always agreeable. [...] If the stable partner tries to stifle the unpredictable one too much, the romance between them will flicker and die. On the other hand, if the unpredictable partner refuses to follow any practical plan for the relationship, the practical partner will grow disgusted with that refusal. That may destroy the relationship.

This is interesting for me because I had not thought in terms of Kate "stifling" Anders -- it could be that their relationship may not get to that stage in the context of the story, as stifling is a long-range, gradual thing, It's also a good question of how much of Anders' "unpredictability" Kate is going to put up with -- tying directly in to "how unpredictable is he, really?" In this re-incarnation of the story he did pick up a bit more bad-boy persona and the implications of that can be sneaky.

And now for the hilarious part: I plugged in Anders' profile with Kiefan's. They aren't "in love" with each other, but if you strip out that context the results still surprised me. 

What 41Q says about their relationship (edited down a fair amount):

Your relationship type: "Nominal-Congruity"

The nominal-congruity romance is made up of two partners who think of themselves as very different and individualized. However, others do not see much difference in them. It is true that they share the same interests and that is what draws them together as a couple. [...] Although this couple shares many interests and activities, each one has a different reason for doing so. They seem to adjust and accept the superficiality of their understanding of each other. [...] They do have great respect for each other and the romance they share and it is not unusual for them to go through life together, happily.

At the beginning of the story -- before Kate became an issue between them -- my gut kept telling me that Anders and Kiefan had a polite, rather "professional" relationship despite the fact that there were a dozen reasons for them to hate and/or avoid each other. I had no explanation for this. I worried that it would seem artificial. And I also had a sneaking suspicion that once Kate became an issue all those reasons would bubble up and make it very easy for Kiefan and Anders to get murderous about each other.

Maybe it's not so artificial after all. 

I'm not blogging this to say "Look how good I'm doing!" and I hope it doesn't come across that way. These are characters I've known a long time and I plugged them in because they're currently on the front burner. And I still got some interesting pointers out of it.

I should do this with my science fiction crew, too, because they are much "younger" characters than the fantasy gang. And now that I'm wrapping up Part III of the monstrosity, it's probably time to look at Orbital Shifts again...