Quiz: In Which Danmei World Would You Die First?
Danmei worlds look gorgeous as long as we watch them from the safety of the couch. Long hair, stunning robes, swords, cultivation, mountain sects hidden in mist, pavilions, temples full of lanterns, ghost cities, palaces where every other person has a secret, and of course those dramatic looks two people exchange that say more in five seconds than I manage in half an hour of talking.
It's very easy to think you'd actually want to live there. I wouldn't, because the longer I read danmei, the more I suspect I'd survive in a world like that until lunch at best. I wouldn't even have to pick a fight with a ghost king. It would be enough to poke at something a little too much, open a door that was supposed to stay shut, or ask one question too many of someone who has obviously been waiting eight hundred years for people to stop asking.
And since I unfortunately have exactly the kind of personality that needs to know why that door is forbidden, I started wondering where the rest of us would die. Not based on which fandom we love most, but on how we actually behave. Whether we're careful, curious, impulsive, loyal, whether we can keep our mouths shut when it matters, and above all whether we have enough self-preservation to leave the room the moment two suspiciously beautiful men start looking at each other in a way that means at least three volumes of trauma.
So just note down the letter of each answer and count which one you have the most of at the end. I tried to write the options so it isn't obvious at first glance which world I'm sending you to, but I know you. If you keep retaking the quiz until you get your favourite fandom, there's nothing I can do about it.
You can click through the quiz right here and it will count your result for you. The classic version with letters is right below it.
1. You arrive in a completely unknown world and quickly realise there are lots of rules you don't know. What do you do?
A) I watch the others first. Who has power, who people go quiet around, who they fear and which name can change the mood of an entire room in three seconds. If I'm going to survive, I mainly need to understand how people relate to each other.
B) I start asking how this world works. What's possible, what isn't, why certain places feel off and whether there are things I really shouldn't touch. The more someone tells me "you don't need to know that", the bigger our problem gets.
C) My first question is whether I've accidentally landed in a story that already has its own plot. If so, I need to find out right away who I am, when I'm supposed to die and what I absolutely must not mess up.
D) First I look for someone I can trust. I'll learn the rules as I go, but alone in a strange world I'd probably get emotionally attached within two days to someone with a tragic backstory and very poor life prospects.
E) First I want to understand the power structure. Who rules, who pretends not to rule, who pulls the strings and what happens to someone who ends up caught between two sides of a conflict.
F) I'll be very polite, very inconspicuous and above all I won't voluntarily enter any secret chambers, family feuds or fateful prophecies. My goal is to become a nameless side character and live to old age.
2. Someone with a truly terrible reputation treats you completely differently from what everyone told you. What now?
A) I'll make up my own mind. The fact that a large group of people agree on something doesn't mean they're right, and a reputation is surprisingly easy to build.
B) I need to know where that reputation comes from. What exactly did he do, who says so, when did it happen and why do I have the feeling someone very conveniently left out part of the story?
C) I stay careful, but mostly I try to work out what role this person plays in the whole story. If he's the supposed villain, I'd really appreciate knowing whether we're at the "he still hates me" stage or the "something has already gone horribly wrong" stage.
D) If he treats me well and I can see there's something else behind that reputation, I give him a chance. Yes, I realise this is exactly how several hundred pages of suffering begin, but evidently that won't stop me.
E) I listen to both sides and keep my distance. People can lie, but sometimes a bad reputation also has a very good reason, and I don't want to be manipulated just because someone seems likeable.
F) I'll be polite, but I won't become his best friend, his confidant or the only person he opens his heart to after a hundred years. I have a plan, and the plan is called survival.
3. At a formal gathering, you realise something is going on between several important people that you don't understand at all. What do you do?
A) I stop talking and start listening. Who sits with whom, who ignores whom, which name makes someone freeze and who looks a little too pleased right now. If a political disaster is brewing, I don't want to be standing in the middle of it.
B) I start noticing the details everyone else ignores. Why someone isn't drinking, why one person arrived late, why an object is in the wrong place and why I feel like a piece of history is missing that nobody mentions out loud.
C) I try to figure out whether this is a scene I should know from the original plot. If so, I'm very interested in whether I've already changed something, because judging by the faces around me, I suspect I have.
D) I mostly notice the people. Who's watching whom, who looks hurt and why two people on opposite ends of the room look like they share several lifetimes of unresolved trauma. Of course I shouldn't get involved, and of course I'm curious.
E) I try to find out who benefits from the whole situation. Big dramas rarely happen just because people dislike each other. Someone wants something, and I want to know what.
F) I smile, eat my food, decline to express any political opinion and slip away at the first opportunity. If there's an explosion behind me ten minutes later, I'll be very pleased with my decision.
4. You find an old object that clearly has something wrong with it. What do you do?
A) I don't touch it until I know who it belongs to and why someone hid it. What scares me most about old objects is that their history often involves people who still hate each other to this day.
B) First I need to find out what "something wrong" actually means. How old it is, where it came from, who had it last and whether there are records of what it does. Of course I'm not touching it yet. Yet.
C) If there's any chance it's an important plot device, I need to know whether to leave it where it is or whether the story expects it to be somewhere else entirely. My life is very complicated right now.
D) If the object is connected to someone I care about, my self-preservation is already gone. I'll want to know what it means, even if everyone else tells me it's a terrible idea.
E) First I ask who would gain an advantage if someone found it. A dangerous object can be dangerous on its own, but even worse is a dangerous object in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.
F) I leave it exactly where it is, turn around and walk away. If the object has survived several centuries without my personal involvement, it can manage one more day.
5. You find out that someone you truly love or trust has been hiding something important from you. How do you react?
A) First I want to know why they didn't tell me. The secret is a problem, but I'm even more interested in whether it was fear, loyalty, pressure from others or something much worse.
B) I need the whole story. What exactly they hid, for how long, who else knows, where it started and what else I'm still missing. Emotions can wait until I have the information.
C) All the possible consequences immediately start running through my head. What has changed, which decisions no longer make sense and whether we've just completely rewritten the future plot. I'll probably start panicking in a very organised way.
D) If they're in danger, I help them first and we can argue later. Yes, maybe that's not the healthiest strategy, and maybe my next life tragedy is just beginning, but I won't leave them alone in a crisis.
E) I take a step back for a while. I can love someone and at the same time need to find out whether they've just dragged me into something with consequences for dozens of other people.
F) I'll hear them out, but if their next sentence starts with "no one can ever find out", my first question will be whether they really need me involved. Quite possibly they don't.
6. Someone offers you a technique, an artifact or some other path to power that could save your life. There's just one small problem. It's forbidden, and no one will properly tell you why. What do you do?
A) First I find out who forbade it and why. If it's just tradition or political interest behind it, that isn't the same as real danger.
B) I need to know the history. Who used it before me, what happened to them and why information about it is so hard to find. The harder someone tries to hide it from me, the more interested I am, of course.
C) If someone is offering me an obviously forbidden way to get around the rules of the world, my first question is whether it's a secret path to survival or a very creative way to kill me a few chapters later.
D) If it's the only way to save someone I care about, my ability to make sensible decisions has just dropped dramatically. I'm not saying I'll use it. I'm just saying you'll have to work very hard to talk me out of it.
E) I want to know who would benefit from it. If someone is just offering me power, I assume they want something in return, even if they claim otherwise for now.
F) No. If something is labelled "forbidden", several people died over it and no one wants to explain the side effects, I don't need to be the first person to find out why.
7. Everything is starting to fall apart. There's fighting somewhere, someone has disappeared, important people are blaming each other and soon nowhere may be safe. What do you do?
A) I try to work out who can be trusted and who is using the chaos for their own gain. At moments like this, the people scare me almost more than the fighting itself.
B) I need to find out what set it all off. If something was going on long before and we're all just watching the last part of the story, I don't want to decide anything without knowing the beginning.
C) I immediately start thinking about where we are in the plot and what's supposed to happen next. If there's a known catastrophe that can still be stopped, now is the last moment to stop improvising and start panicking productively.
D) I find the people I care about. I can deal with politics, rules and consequences later, but I won't leave them alone somewhere just because running would be the smarter strategy.
E) I stay out of it until I understand who is really standing against whom. The worst possible decision is to jump into a conflict and only then find out I'm fighting for someone's very well-sold lie.
F) I grab the essentials and head in the direction where there's no fighting, screaming or dramatic music. If there's a chance to become an anonymous cultivator somewhere on the other side of the country, my time has come.
How to count your result
Now just count which letter you have the most of.
Mostly A means Mo Dao Zu Shi.
Mostly B means Heaven Official's Blessing.
Mostly C means The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System.
Mostly D means The Husky and His White Cat Shizun.
Mostly E means Thousand Autumns.
Mostly F means you miraculously survived.
If you still have a tie after seven questions, I consider that a very danmei result. Clearly one world wasn't enough to destroy you, and you need at least two.
Results
Mostly A: Mo Dao Zu Shi
You probably won't be killed by a monster, but by politics. You're sensible enough not to grab the first cursed object you find, and you can usually tell when it's better to stay quiet. But you also have a very inconvenient trait for the world of Mo Dao Zu Shi. You need to form your own opinion of people.
That sounds great in everyday life. In MDZS, though, it's exactly the kind of thing that one day lands you on the wrong side of public opinion, while everyone around you very convincingly explains why it's perfectly right to ruin someone's life. You'd probably learn the rules quickly, understand the hierarchy, know who to avoid, and still sooner or later hit the moment when you realise that rules, reputation and truth are not the same thing.
And that's exactly where your problem would begin. You'd do something morally right and strategically disastrous, which in Mo Dao Zu Shi is practically a discipline of its own.
Mostly B: Heaven Official's Blessing
Curiosity will kill you, but not the simple "what's behind that door" kind. You need to know why the door is closed, who closed it, what happened there eight hundred years ago and why the person telling you there's nothing there looks slightly too far to the left while answering.
And that's exactly how you get into trouble in Heaven Official's Blessing. TGCF is full of things that have a history, and that history has another history, under which lies yet another tragedy nobody has talked about for two hundred years. Of course you couldn't just accept that something is cursed. You'd need to understand the mechanism, the origin and ideally track down the first known case.
Somewhere between the third archive, an old artifact and a person very calmly explaining that you really don't need to know this, you'd come across information you never needed to have. So your final problem wouldn't be a lack of information, but the exact opposite. You'd have far too much of it and you'd still want one more piece.
And yes, by the way, this is the result I'd most likely get myself.
Mostly C: The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System
The world wouldn't kill you. Your belief that you've already figured it out would. You're pretty good at improvising, and when something goes wrong, you usually don't fall apart. You just make another decision, then another, and one more, because the last one created a brand new problem.
In The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, you'd probably realise on day one that the original plot is a disaster and decide to fix it a little. A hundred chapters later the plot would be completely different, half the cast would be in love with someone else, and you'd still insist you more or less have the situation under control, even though the System would have stopped pretending to believe you long ago.
Your biggest danger is your own ability to rationalise bad decisions. There's always a very good reason to do one more thing that definitely wasn't part of the original plan, and that's exactly why you'd give the System a migraine.
Mostly D: The Husky and His White Cat Shizun
Emotions will kill you, and it won't be quick. You can be a sensible person until someone you truly care about walks into the situation. At that point strategy goes out the window and in come decisions that are perhaps human, perhaps beautiful, and from a long-term survival point of view absolutely catastrophic.
So congratulations, you ended up in 2ha. Here it isn't enough to survive one bad decision, because it can come back two hundred chapters later, bring trauma from a past life with it and then explain that the thing you thought was the problem was really just the prelude to a much bigger problem.
You'd probably get the chance to leave several times, but of course you wouldn't, because you can't just leave that person alone. And somewhere around the third major emotional breakdown, you might remember question five and realise that's exactly where it all went wrong.
Mostly E: Thousand Autumns
What will kill you is the belief that if you're sensible enough, you can make sense of it all. You observe people, try to understand their motives and usually don't rush into things headfirst. That's a great trait almost anywhere else, but in Thousand Autumns you move among people who practise politics, manipulation and philosophical debates about human nature almost like a contact sport.
You'd probably survive very well for a long time, maybe suspiciously well. You'd be able to tell who's lying, who wants something and where the balance of power is shifting, so you'd start thinking you understand it. And at exactly that moment, Yan Wushi would do something to very politely remind you that no, you don't.
Your end would probably be intelligent, politically complicated and, in hindsight, perfectly logical, which is arguably even worse than simply falling off your sword.
Mostly F: You survived
Honestly, I don't know how you pulled it off, but congratulations. While the rest of us are dying of politics, our own curiosity, bad decisions or a person with a tragic backstory, you did something completely unexpected and used your instinct for self-preservation.
When someone told you a certain object had killed its last six owners, you didn't think "interesting" and start turning it over in your hands. When two suspiciously beautiful people began looking at each other in a way that clearly foreshadowed several centuries of unresolved feelings, you didn't try to find out what happened between them. You simply understood the most important rule of every danmei world: sometimes the best decision is not to be there at all.
You'd probably end up somewhere far enough from the main plot. You'd have a little shop, a teahouse, an apothecary or something else safely boring, and every now and then someone too beautiful, too bloody or too dramatic would walk past. You'd glance at them, close the door a little earlier and carry on with your life.
Maybe you wouldn't have your own soundtrack, nobody would write a hundred thousand words of fanfiction about you and you wouldn't appear in the final battle at all. But you'd be alive, which, given the premise of this quiz, is a pretty solid win.
Where did you end up?
Now I'm genuinely curious where you ended up and whether the result fits you. Tell me, and feel free to add the answer where you realised your chances of survival had just dropped dramatically. I'm not only interested in which fandom wins, but also in whether a pattern starts to show. Whether all the curious ones end up in TGCF, whether people convinced they can fix the plot fall into SVSSS, and how many of you discover that your biggest problem isn't a ghost, a war or a curse, but a person you refused to leave alone.
And if you got F, definitely tell me. I need to know whether there really are readers who could land in a danmei world, see a suspiciously beautiful man covered in blood, say "not my business" and walk away. Because I'm most likely not one of them.
Yours, Mimosa
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Mimosa Confiante
By day, I work somewhere between marketing, copy and campaigns; by night, I usually end up somewhere between fanfiction, cosplay and yet another “what if” that refuses to leave me alone. I write mainly in the Harry Potter and Mo Dao Zu Shi fandoms, most often Snarry, Snamione, HarryLu and WangXian. My healthcare background means that anatomy, medicine and far too much research occasionally find their way into my stories. Cosplay is another way for me to play with the characters I love, whether I stay close to canon or turn them into my own fanfiction and AU versions. In Diary of a Slytherin Girl with ADHD, I write openly about life with a brain that usually has far too many tabs open at once.
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