Quiz: Survive These Increasingly Dramatic Soap Opera Plots, I’ll Tell You Which Shondaland Gay You Are

There is a very specific kind of gay that is what we shall call a “Shondaland gay” — someone who’s prone to talking in monologues, a workaholic with a messy personal life, a lover of wine or tequila and talking over annoying white men. But more than anything, a keen sense of survival skill.

If there is one thing that Broader Shonda Rhimes Universe is gonna do, it’s throw someone through a plane. Or maybe blow up a hospital. A fire in a corn maze right before Halloween. A little shootout on the courthouse steps for funsies.

Before we get into this quiz, a few rules:

1. First, in the interest of greater Shondaland diversity, we are going to be combining shows here: Grey’s Anatomy, Station 19, and How To Get Away with Murder
2. However, with respect to Cyrus Beene and my once upon a time fantasy wife Olivia Pope — we are sticking to the sapphic Shondaland shows, so no Scandal, Inventing Anna, or Bridgerton.
3. And that said, off the quick top of my head, even if we limit it to only lesbian, bisexual, and queer women characters, there are still roughly 16 sapphics in the Shondaland universe, which is quite simply too many to fit into one singular quiz. (Imagine having to scroll through 16 options for every answer!!) Therefore, some beloveds did not make the cut. Goodbye to Perfect Penny and Former Intern Leah, for example. I wish them well on their journey.

And now… without any further ado… survive these increasingly frenetic, overly dramatic, soap opera plots — and I’ll tell you which Shondaland Gay you are! May Calliope Iphegenia Torres ever be in your favor!

It’s bright and early the first day of your new job, how did you wake up this morning?(Required)

I’ve been up since 6am, I’ve already done yoga and wrote in my manifestation journal. Now I’m brewing a cup of coffee in my kitchen while listening to Spotify.

On the floor, half naked, with a stranger I picked up at the bar last night.

I’m awake, but in bed doing the Autostraddle crossword before I get started.

A little purposeful mediation with my Headspace App.

After my third panic attack, I squeezed in a last minute FaceTime with my therapist bestie.

Hungover, but here we go babyyyyyy!

The morning of? I sleep in. I’m so prepared already, I can afford the extra hour.

Ever heard of a good luck orgasm before you open your eyes?

I overslept, so I’m grabbing a Starbucks breaky while I finish getting dressed in the car.

A quick two-mile sprint never hurts.

Did I forget to mention that you’re an intern at a hospital? Great! What’s your first case?(Required)

A guy swallowed ten doll heads.

A man sawed off his own foot.

A baby’s heart has grown outside of its little baby body.

Every time this girl blinks, she can hear her own internal organs

Some dude swallowed seeds by mistake and now he’s growing a tree inside his lung! INSIDE HIS LUNG!

A woman keeps having spontaneous orgasms, and crashes her car.

A woman has toxic blood (No. Literally, we can’t operate. Because of the exposure).

A fish crawled up a man’s penis.

A child in a foster home shows up with three broken ribs due to a medical condition where she can’t feel pain.

Two exes were having secret sex, and their piercings stuck together.

Because it’s your first case, you of course mess it up! What’d you do?(Required)

You don’t work well in teams, so you attempted to put in a ventilation tube down someone’s throat on your own.

You cried into the body cavity because you miss your ex.

You maaaaybe followed the rules too closely and rejected someone who needed a transplant over a typo.

You didn’t read up on the case and brought in a patient scheduled for a simple appendectomy into an OR room for open-heart surgery.

You get queasy at the sight of blood and pass out on the OR floor.

Your mom called with some high-key family drama back home, so you dropped everything and missed the surgery completely.

Someone asked you to finish the sutures, and even though you didn’t know how to sew flesh back together, you didn’t ask for help.

You didn’t take the time to write clear notes, and now no one can tell if that’s 2 or a 5 in the prescription charts.

You drank too many fluids in preparation for the long surgery, and now in the middle of a critical procedure you had to run out of the room before you peed.

You dropped the organs on the floor.

Whew! That was stressful! Time for a quick mid-morning snack! What are you eating?(Required)

Don’t you know there’s no breaks in Shondaland! While you’re outside eating, an ambulance crashes into the side of the hospital. What do you do?(Required)

Run to get your attending surgeon.

Fresh blood on your scrubs? You throw down your snack, it’s time to party!

Take a methodical intake of all the injuries present.

Fight off the other interns for first dibs.

Hold the hand of the EMT who’s trapped upside down while someone else goes to get backup.

You tried to stop the ambulance before it crashed and now you’ve broken your foot.

All the other interns are running around in circles, so you immediately get everyone organized and tell them what to do.

Talk calmly to soothe the panicked EMTs in the ambulance while you assess what’s most urgent — their broken arm or the gaping wound in their head.

That ambulance could explode any moment, I’m pulling bodies out of there.

Use your basic CPR and Girl Scout skills to attend to those most in need until more help arrives.

You saved the day! And it’s barely noon! How do you celebrate?(Required)

You immediately call your girlfriend and tell them everything, in detail.

Sex with a fellow intern in an on-call room

Sneak a little fan-fiction on my phone.

Dance party in the on-call room

Take an extra long break, in silence, where nobody can find you.

That hot attending who keeps making eyes at you when no one’s looking? Yeah, it’s time to go for it.

Treat yo’ self (to that iconic handbag you’ve been admiring, two iPhone taps later and it’s yours)

A threesome in the on-call room

Make plans with my besties for an epic bar crawl after work.

Do you gloat a little over my fellow interns? I mean yeah, you do.

Well now there’s a bomb — a live, actual, ticking bomb — in someone’s stomach. The fire department and special police forces have been called. In the meantime, you’ve been assigned to the case. What do you do?(Required)

You’ve already established yourself as a whiz kid, so the attendings ask you to scrub in on the surgery. You’ll hold the scalpel, but you’re in there.

Immediately get the patent into an x-ray to measure the bomb, so you have information ready when the fire department comes.

Hit those google streets and research all the ways to safely remove… a bomb from someone’s body? Ok, sure.

Let’s be real, someone has to take photos. That’s a bomb! In a person! You’ll want to remember this day.

Immediately get assigned to another case, the fuck.

Stick your hand into the body, and put your squarely hand on the bomb. Now you’re stuck with the bomb and can’t move.

Bribe another intern to take this case for you, in exchange you’ll do all their charting for two weeks.

Call 911 and stay on the phone with the operator as you talk the other doctors through what comes next.

Before you can think, you pull the bomb out. Now you’re running with the bomb.

Another intern pulled the bomb out, your role is to help them run away from the crowd and into safety.

The fire department has arrived! You need to help them clear out the area before the bomb blows. How do you accomplish this task:(Required)

Improvise with your fellow doctors, there is no preparing for an emergency but we can figure it out together.

Instead of causing even more of a panic, calmly tell everyone that there’s free ice cream in the parking lot. Hey it’s basic, but it works!

You’ve already read the hospital emergency manual cover-to-cover and know exactly what to do.

Go up everyone, one at a time to keep the peace, and calmly direct them towards the stairwell.

Do a quick headcount of how many people there are x how many available exits, and help group people towards their safest route accordingly.

Find all the small and most vulnerable children first, after they are safe you can come back for everyone else.

Take charge and tell everyone to follow you, in an organized single file line.

Coordinate with the nursing staff. They’ll know every nook and cranny of the hospital.

Have you ever heard not to scream FIRE in a crowded place? Well if there was ever a time.

Find the hospital intercom system, an announcement through the loudspeaker is the most efficient way to get an urgent message out, quickly.

Everyone’s safe and the fire captain can’t believe what a great job you did! They wonder, have you ever considered a career change?(Required)

The loyalty of firefighters definitely aligns with your values.

When you were a little kid, you’d dream about going down the fire pole

Only if becoming a first responder means the government will cover my student loan debt.

Now that they mention it, the adrenaline rush of running into a burning building has always called to you.

Absolutely TF not.

That level of responsibility would make you crack, and you know your limits.

Firefighters are hot. You’re hot. There’s a match to be made there.

Actually? A lot of good community work that can be done with a fire house.

YES. All the time.

It’s true that you keep calm in emergencies, but you’ve always seen yourself more as a leader than a team player.

The fire department leaves, but just then the hospital’s electrical system gets hacked! There’s no way to access the locked-away meds or keep track of a patient's symptoms. Everyone’s freaking out and you can’t believe it’s only mid-afternoon of your first day. What do you do?(Required)

Start rationing the few resources you have left in an organized manner. Let’s not panic.

So you actually know some people, who know some people. If need be, you have the hook up to get this fixed.

Truly, this is not a big deal. Everyone get out a pen and paper, we’re going old school!

Shhhh! You know how to pick locks.

You’re a bit of a computer geek yourself, maybe you can override what the hackers did if you could get a few minutes alone.

Call the FBI. Can a regular person just call the FBI? Well guess what! You’re calling the FBI! And you’re not getting off this damn phone until they get their asses down here.

Call a nearby hospital. They can deliver meds via a cold transport for you, and you can read them patient vitals over the phone for them to keep track in their own system.

The first priority is keeping people calm. So you move right into patient care.

The meds are first priority, so we need something heavy to smash open these locked cases.

You’ve been disaster trained, so you know how to keep track of vitals using a sharpie marker on skin.

Fancy lawyers have shown up with the FBI (because of the hackers) and they want to talk with you. What happens next:(Required)

Immediately you snitch on that one intern who stole the passcodes earlier in the morning. Yes, there’s honor in keeping with your own. But this person messed with kid’s meds, they have to go.

The concept of talking with authority figures makes you nervous, even if you did nothing wrong. Honestly? You’re gonna puke in the bathroom. And cry.

You stay out of the drama, because you have strong boundaries. You’ll talk to the lawyers, you have nothing helpful to say.

Ok that lawyer is cute, so you are going to flirt.

Remember your therapist bestie? A new panic! Time to call them again.

Answer every question that they ask, with another, smarter, question. Everyone knows those are the rules.

You’re able to recall, in exact and precise detail, everything that they need.

You smile and answer every question politely, but give no details.

You respect authority so you’ll answer their questions. But you’re skeptical, so you’ll also bring a lawyer of your own. Just in case.

You don’t have time to think about any of these people because you’re still busy helping clean up the aftermath of the crisis.

The lawyers are gone! Your day at work is over! It’s happy hour! What are you drinking?(Required)

White wine

A cocktail with fruit in it

Red wine

Coca cola

Whiskey neat

Seltzer in a glass (but if anyone asks, it’s vodka soda)

Rum and coke

Rosé

A beer

A craft beer

After happy hour, you head home to change for a date. But you get a text message! What went wrong:(Required)

You accidentally set up a date with two women at once. It happens.

The dry cleaners ruined your expensive short black dress, the one that hugs every curve.

Your date is canceling. You ask, but they won’t tell you why. Which is worse.

A long lost friend is blowing back into town. They’re in trouble with the law, and need a place to crash.

Whew! False alarm! Actually it was just your DoorDash order. It’s on the way.

The nursing home where your mom lives needs you to come and get her.

Someone has found out your deepest, darkest secret, and if you don’t pay them cash, they are going to tell everyone you know.

The person you had sex with last night found your underwear stuffed underneath their couch. Would you like them back?

The person you had sex with last night sent a nude, and you notice a very suspicious mole, so now you gotta tell them it’s Cancer.

You have to drop everything and immediately leave to buy a plane ticket or the fact that you were the hospital hacker (plot twist!) will come out.

Hahahaaaaa well you’re going to be ignoring THAT emergency! What are you doing tonight instead?(Required)

Having sex with the first stranger I meet.

Dancing it out in a dark, hot bar.

Drinking directly out of the most expensive bottle of red wine I can find.

Dancing it out, but at home in my pajamas.

Practicing my guitar and eating my DoorDash in peace.

Making an itemized list of every secret my blackmailer might know, if I tell it first, then they have nothing on me.

Confessing my undying love at the most inappropriate time.

Having sex, but with the person I had sex with last night.

Pounding it out with a midnight run and Spotify in my AirPods.

Having sex, but with an ex.

You’ve survived until morning somehow! Congratulations! Here’s your tie breaker! In case of emergency only, which Shondaland character do YOU think you’re most like?(Required)

Arizona Robbins

Callie Torres

Erica Hahn

Amelia Shepherd

Kai Bartley

Annalise Keating

Tegan Price

Carina DeLuca

Maya Bishop

Teddy Altman

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