I’m not sure what you mean about the Choice and the player’s active/passive alignment? I never detected any difference there.
I read Heirs as passive for the same reason I do Knights, Sylphs, Seers, and so on: They’re more group-oriented and reactive to what others think than their Active counterparts.
John acted passively in success a good number of times. His first time using the Breeze was fundamentally in reaction to WV’s insistence. He takes direction from Rose and Vriska and Terezi at various points, following someone else’s direction for almost the entirety of his quest much like Rose and Dave (Jade is a notable inversion of this). And he exerts his power primarily for the benefit of Others even when he does use it actively. The list goes on.
However, I do hold that John acts actively pretty often, as part of my argument that Seers/Mages/Heirs/Witches are the most flexible classes who have the easiest time veering between Yin and Yang states, as I argued in my Change/Know essay.
Flying through Storytelling 