The twelve archetypes

Rates on craft and structure.

What you love

You fall for how a thing is made. A cut, a sentence, a mix, a level layout: when the execution is exact you will follow it anywhere, plot or no plot.

What you avoid

Sloppiness, even in service of a big heart. A moving story told without care leaves you cold, and you feel slightly guilty about that.

How you rate

Your stars track craft more than feeling. You are one of the few who will give five to something you did not enjoy.

Good company

You get on with Prestige Hunters and Archivists, who share your respect for the made thing, and you argue happily with Empaths.

Against the crowd

You part ways with the crowd on crowd-pleasers that are built carelessly, and you rescue chilly, precise work the audience found cold.

Where it goes wrong: You can mistake polish for meaning, and miss the rough thing that is actually alive.

Not for people whose loved works are well-crafted but who mainly react to story or feeling.

Signature: craft attention (raw to meticulous), formal experimentation (classical in form to formally daring)

Feeling and character predict everything.

What you love

You want to feel it. Character, interiority, a face holding something back: if the work makes you care about a person, you are all in.

What you avoid

Detachment. Clever, cool, mechanical work reads to you as a closed door, however admired it is.

How you rate

Your stars are a record of how much you felt. Reviews describe what it did to you, not what it is.

Good company

You pair well with the Sincere and the Comfort Seeker; the Ironist finds you earnest, and you find them evasive.

Against the crowd

You are kinder than the crowd to small, tender work and harsher on spectacle that forgot to have a heart.

Where it goes wrong: A work can move you without being good, and you will defend it anyway.

Not for people who like intense works mainly for their spectacle or darkness rather than their feeling.

Signature: emotional intensity (cool to overwhelming), character vs. plot (character-led to plot-driven)

World-building is king.

What you love

A world with its own rules, history, and weather. You read the appendix. You want to know what is over the next hill.

What you avoid

Thin settings and stories that could happen anywhere. If the place is a backdrop, you drift.

How you rate

You reward density and scale. A middling story in a rich world gets a pass; a sharp story in a cardboard one does not.

Good company

Genre Devotees and Thrill Chasers share your appetite for the big; Formalists share your patience for detail.

Against the crowd

You are generous with sprawling, uneven epics the crowd found long, and impatient with tidy chamber pieces the crowd loved.

Where it goes wrong: Lore is not story. You can spend a hundred hours somewhere and not notice nothing happened.

Not for people who like epic scale but do not care about lore or world detail.

Signature: world-building (spare to richly built), scale (intimate to epic)

Suspicious of comfort.

What you love

Work that unsettles: bleak, open, demanding. You trust discomfort more than reassurance and rate the thing that made you argue.

What you avoid

Comfort, closure, and being told how to feel. Warmth on its own reads as a sales pitch.

How you rate

Your five stars go to the difficult. Your one star goes to the smooth. The middle is where you are bored.

Good company

The Formalist respects you, the Ironist enjoys you, and the Comfort Seeker is your most productive opposite.

Against the crowd

You are the reliable hot take: harsher than the crowd on beloved warmth, kinder to the punishing and the strange.

Where it goes wrong: Difficulty is not depth. Sometimes the cold thing is just cold, and you rated it up for the chill.

Not for people who tolerate darkness but do not prefer it.

Signature: tonal darkness (warm to bleak), ambiguity (resolved to open-ended), challenge (effortless to demanding)

Warmth, resolution, rewatchability.

What you love

Warmth, resolution, a place you can return to. The rewatch is the point; the third time is the best time.

What you avoid

Cruelty for its own sake, endings that withhold, homework. You do not need to be tested by an evening in.

How you rate

You rate on how something leaves you. Reliability earns stars; ambition without kindness does not.

Good company

The Empath and the Sincere feel like home. Provocateurs baffle you, and you are the one they most need to hear from.

Against the crowd

You are kinder than the crowd to gentle, unfashionable work and cooler on acclaimed bleakness.

Where it goes wrong: Comfort can be a wall. The work that would have changed your mind never gets past the first ten minutes.

Not for people who enjoy light works but also rate dark or difficult ones highly.

Signature: tonal darkness (warm to bleak), challenge (effortless to demanding), humor (grave to comic)

Pulp over prestige, judged on genre terms.

What you love

Pulp done right. You judge a heist film as a heist film and a doom metal record as doom metal, and you know the rules well enough to know when they are bent well.

What you avoid

Prestige for its own sake, and anything that apologises for its genre. A thriller ashamed to thrill is dead to you.

How you rate

Your stars are relative to the form. A great B-movie gets five; a respectable drama that does its job gets three.

Good company

Thrill Chasers and Cartographers are your people. Prestige Hunters disagree with you at every turn, usefully.

Against the crowd

You are kinder than the crowd to the disreputable and harsher on the well-behaved.

Where it goes wrong: Loyalty to a form can become loyalty to its clichés.

Not for people who like genre work but rate prestige work just as highly.

Signature: prestige vs. pulp (unpretentious to prestige), pacing (contemplative to relentless)

Follows acclaim and the canon.

What you love

The canon, the acclaimed, the made-to-last. You want the thing that will still matter, and you are usually right about which one that is.

What you avoid

Disposable pleasure. If it will not be talked about in ten years, it is hard for you to care now.

How you rate

You rate close to the critics and a little above them for craft. Your surprises are rare and worth reading.

Good company

Formalists and Archivists share your shelves. Genre Devotees think you are missing the fun, and sometimes you are.

Against the crowd

You are harsher than the crowd on populist hits and kinder to the austere and the slow.

Where it goes wrong: Reputation can rate the work before you have. Watch for stars you gave to the name.

Not for people who like acclaimed work but also champion disreputable genre pieces.

Signature: prestige vs. pulp (unpretentious to prestige), craft attention (raw to meticulous)

Sincerity reads as naive.

What you love

Wit, distance, a raised eyebrow. You like work that knows what it is doing and lets you in on the joke.

What you avoid

Unguarded sincerity. Earnestness makes you reach for the exits, even when it is earned.

How you rate

You reward cleverness and dock the heartfelt. Your reviews are the funniest on the site, and you know it.

Good company

Provocateurs and Formalists are good company. The Sincere is your mirror image; you two should compare notes more often.

Against the crowd

You are kinder than the crowd to the arch and the dry, and harder on tearjerkers that worked on everyone else.

Where it goes wrong: Irony is a defence. The thing you are protecting yourself from is often the thing worth feeling.

Not for people who enjoy comedy but respond most to sincere work.

Signature: sincerity vs. irony (earnest to ironic), humor (grave to comic)

Earnestness moves them.

What you love

Earnestness that lands. A straight face, a real feeling, a work that means it. You are moved by the attempt as much as the result.

What you avoid

Smirking. Work that hedges its own emotion reads as cowardice to you.

How you rate

You rate the heart. A flawed, honest thing beats a slick, guarded one every time.

Good company

Empaths and Comfort Seekers stand beside you. The Ironist is your opposite, and the argument is the good kind.

Against the crowd

You are kinder than the crowd to unfashionable feeling and harsher on the knowing and the cool.

Where it goes wrong: Meaning it is not enough. You can forgive too much for a good heart.

Not for people who like sincere work but also enjoy irony.

Signature: sincerity vs. irony (earnest to ironic), emotional intensity (cool to overwhelming)

Pacing and spectacle first.

What you love

Momentum. Set pieces, stakes, a story that grabs you by the collar and does not let go until the credits.

What you avoid

Drift. Contemplation without event feels like a waiting room, whatever the critics say.

How you rate

Your stars follow your pulse. Pacing and spectacle earn them; interiority has to bring an engine.

Good company

Genre Devotees and Cartographers ride along. Formalists find you impatient; you find them slow.

Against the crowd

You are close to the crowd on blockbusters and much harsher than it on the acclaimed and unhurried.

Where it goes wrong: Speed can hide emptiness. Some of your five stars are adrenaline, not admiration.

Not for people who like fast works but also rate slow cinema or quiet novels highly.

Signature: pacing (contemplative to relentless), scale (intimate to epic), character vs. plot (character-led to plot-driven)

The past rates higher.

What you love

The past. Older forms, older voices, the thing that has already lasted. You are happiest twenty years behind and see no reason to catch up.

What you avoid

The merely new. Novelty on its own is not an argument, and you are suspicious of this year's consensus.

How you rate

You rate the old above the new, more than most, and your reviews place things in a lineage.

Good company

Prestige Hunters and Formalists share your shelves. Thrill Chasers think you are in a museum; you think they are in a mall.

Against the crowd

You are kinder than the crowd to the dated and harsher on the current.

Where it goes wrong: Nostalgia rates the memory, not the work. Some of the old things are not as good as you remember.

Not for people who like some classics but whose ratings do not favor the past.

Signature: nostalgia (contemporary to nostalgic), prestige vs. pulp (unpretentious to prestige)

No strong lean, high variance.

What you love

Almost everything, on its own terms. You move between forms without a grudge and your favourites do not resemble each other.

What you avoid

Very little, which is the point. You lack the strong lean that would tell you no in advance.

How you rate

Your stars are hard to predict, and that is a compliment: they are about the work, not the category.

Good company

You get on with everyone and are the useful tie-breaker in any argument between two strong leans.

Against the crowd

You track the crowd more closely than most, with surprises scattered rather than patterned.

Where it goes wrong: Range can be a way of never committing. Your best reviews are the ones where you finally take a side.

Not for people with even one strong, consistent lean.

Signature: none. No single lean stands out; the spread across all fourteen is the signature.