Julian, your posts reflect how I would expect a 16-year old guy with sun-Jupiter conjunct in Aries to respond. (Maybe just sit with that one for a while.)
I've been studying astrology since about 1990. Some of the seniors here have been studying it a lot longer than I have. When we just start out learning astrology, we kind of have to go "by the book" as you are doing, or it would be too difficult to find our way through the thousands of data bits and bytes that make up a horoscope. As we mature as people and as chart-readers, however, we begin to get more of an intuitive feel for both people and horoscopes, and to pull in more information.
My preferred type of astrology is western modern astrology. If it is yours, also, I highly recommend: Robert Hand,
Planets in Youth and
Planets in Transit; and Steven Forrest,
The Inner Sky. If you prefer western traditional astrology, a good primer is Avelar and Rebeiro,
On the Heavenly Spheres and there are many tutorial-type articles at the Skyscript website. (The books are available at amazon.com and elsewhere.) Then horary astrology is something else again, but with more in common with traditional than with modern astrology.
Many modern astrologers do count out-of-sign aspects in a natal chart reading without getting concerned about an orb reduction. See, for example, Bil Tierney,
Dynamics of Aspect Analysis, on dissociate aspects. After I learned that a given planet will be 27 degrees different in the sidereal and tropical zodiacs, I couldn't get too fussed about out-of-sign aspects. We wouldn't normally count out-of-sign aspects in horary astrology unless an applying aspect is really close, however. Horary rules are different.
In my experience, if someone has a natal major aspect that looks a little bit wide; but a third planet forms a major aspect to them both (especially if it conjuncts their midpoint,) the two wide-orb planets are more linked than one might think, especially when the middle one is hit by a major transit.
I'd give you a T-square in the fixed signs of Taurus (Saturn at 3o 31'), Scorpio (Mars at 10o 55', say at 11,) and Aquarius. You've got Neptune at just about 4 degrees. This gives us orbs of roughly 30' for Neptune/Saturn; and 7.5 degrees for Neptune/Mars which most modern astrologers would accept but see as wide. Then Uranus would normally be seen as a bit too distant for Uranus square Saturn; but in-orb for Uranus/Mars. So is it part of this configuration or not? I'd say yes, because the Uranus/Neptune midpoint is at roughly 10 degrees Aquarius. In effect, Mars is pulling these two together beyond what one would expect from the Neptune/Uranus midpoint alone. A major transit to 10 degrees Aquarius pulls in 3 planets here.
But wait! There's more!
We could even go further with your Saturn-Venus midpoint at roughly 10 degrees Taurus.....and Scorpio. Every planetary pair actually has 2 midpoints-- the near one and the far one. Your Venus-Saturn far midpoint actually conjuncts Mars, further pulling Saturn into the configuration with Mars.
(Indeed, major transits to 10 or 11 degrees of any sign are going to ping on a lot of your horoscope placements.)
At the end of the day, you know you have an aspect when you feel it. The danger in learning astrology so young, consequently, is that you may begin to define yourself astrologically while your personality is still forming; rather than waiting to learn who you become first without it. In astrology it is too easy to deny personality traits that we don't see in our charts, even though they are there-- just not showing up in ways we expected. And
vice versa. We can define ourselves too rigidly. The advantage is that if astrology is a field that you love, at age 16, you have a huge head start on it.