How it works
A self-assessment built to surface why a kink works for you — which is what a "type" actually is — rather than just cataloguing what you like.
The four layers
Orientation places you on power: a lead ↔ follow axis, an independent "switch-pull" measure, and how much control actually changes hands. Domains are ~20 activity axes — sensation, restriction, roleplay, service, exposure — with giving and receiving kept separate. Drivers are eleven psychological needs the kink can meet (authority, surrender, intensity, transcendence, catharsis, devotion, ritual, transgression, play, intimacy, exposure). Modifiers are the practical conditions: experience, context-dependence, edge tolerance, how you warm up, what aftercare you need, and an attachment read.
The familiar archetypes — rope bunny, brat tamer, primal, caregiver — are still shown, but as a derived match between your profile and a set of hand-built prototypes, clearly marked as a shorthand.
Answering twice
Every question takes a rating and a tag: curious, want to try, have done, or a hard limit. That separates what draws you from what you've actually done — the single most useful thing most kink tests leave out. A neutral answer is treated as "this doesn't register", not "lukewarm".
Honesty about the evidence
The model is informed by the published literature on BDSM — practitioner motivation studies, altered-states research, sensation-seeking and attachment work, large representative prevalence surveys. It is not itself validated yet. A confidence figure per layer reflects how much you answered and how consistent your answers were. Once enough people have taken it, a factor analysis on the anonymous data will prune and reweight the questions. Full detail, including the evidence-grading scheme behind every Library entry: Methodology.
Who can take it
Resonance is invite-only: taking the test requires logging in with Discord and being a current member of the Resonance server — not just an account, active membership. That's what keeps every take tied to a real, verified person instead of an anonymous visitor or a scraper.
Privacy
Once you're in, in-progress answers still live in your browser only, and a finished result is encoded entirely into its own shareable link — if you don't share the link, nobody sees it, and nothing is stored anywhere. Logging in additionally lets you save a result to a private history on your profile, with per-result visibility you control; see Privacy for exactly what that involves.