About

Welcome to The Overly Self-Righteous Critic, an opinion, critic and commentary website, where we analyse entertainment pieces and judge whether they are actually any good.

This is not an entertainment website, in the sense that we don’t post the latest news, nor write near-empty of substances posts that recycle already available information about a show. We assume you’re already familiar with the content itself, since I post reviews and analysis (which require previous exposure to the work), and won’t bombard you with generic things. While we do loosely follow trends, and post reviews of the latest stuff (when I care to do it), I also publish content of whatever work I feel like delving into, even if it was released twenty years ago, and has been forgotten by the public eye.

Instead, this is a meta discussion website. We discuss behind the scenes decisions, and authorial intent, and how that influences the direction of the characters and the story. We explain how in-universe explanations are to serve specific authorial intentions, and how specific story narratives reveal information about the author/writers. Fiction is always a witness to the mind of the author at the time they wrote their work. We analyse their mind, through their work, and back up the trail of their plot points, structures, and their characters’ actions to figure this all out.

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On quality ? most people do not like to hear that they are mediocre. That they are limited, and so are their creation. They’ll screw up their face at the criticism, with the dawning understanding floating somewhere in the ether of their subconscious, not ready or willing to confront that fact or admit to it publicly. After all, we all want to know we have worth, and that what we produce is valuable. Most people will harshly reject criticism, and put the blame on the messenger, for daring to tell them they are average.

And yet there are so many behind-the-scenes parameters that make or break a story. Lack of professionalism, personal intentions getting in the way, having to bend to production legality, etc. All these things impact the story, in the same way that, back in the days of theatre, male actors were picked to play female parts.

What TOSRC is about, is calling out mediocrity, while also praising quality, and pointing at what went wrong due to these behind-the-scenes misdecisions. We harshly scrutinise every work we analyse, and answer the questions “Is this worth watching?” and “Is this media worth consuming?”

We look at a plethora of mediums, from movies, to series and books, across video games, comics, and whatever else there is to comment on. If it’s fiction, it’s fine by me.

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Why such harsh judgement? You may ask. Because the content mass-produced by the entertainment industry is crammed down everybody’s throat on a constant, regular basis. Consumers have no choice or say in what’s presented in front of them. And the best we can do is either create our own content, to bring forth more of what we want to see, or speak up about what’s already there.

Critiquing is ultimately about judging the quality of something, and so most importantly, the merit of someone. Because art is always a reflection of its creator. Every time we dive into a work of fiction, we get the privilege to see the machinations of the author’s mind, at the time the work was created. These machinations are the patterns that, in fiction, we like to call Trope and Character Archetypes, which are also another thing we explore in length on TOSRC.

But seeing what’s inside a person’s mind can end up looking like the collective experience we all had of Twilight, where the majority of the world absolutely loathed it for what it revealed of its author & how her mind was. For a different case scenario, and on a larger scale, there are also authors or companies that like to release half-baked products, hope audiences won’t notice, and expect to turn a huge profit over it. Not just amateurish work, or that could do with just a little improvement, but genuinely non-quality content at its core. Or, another case, authors who know well that what they do is trash, but who don’t care, and insist you be as delusional as they are and enjoy their content as much as they do, and on a large scale.

So while everyone wants what they create to be good, it’s often a long and arduous road of constantly honing one’s skills to get there. There’s always a lot to unpack. And, through wording as precise and clear as possible of what is wrong, I aim to course correct towards something better.

You may reply with something like “But when something is bad, it shows.” And to an extent, that’s true. We can all tell the difference between a quality blockbuster like Inception vs a startup movie like The Twin (2017). But when it comes to the in-between, people aren’t always able to word the subtleties between the lines, to understand for instance the use of artificial tropes like the obligatory romance, or identify flaws in something that’s otherwise good. And because these films always try to present themselves in a good light, people are sometimes fooled into thinking that thing is good anyway. It’s the difference between a massively successful film, and something that just does well: the unspoken undertone.

Why the name the “The Overly Self-Righteous Critic”? Because a self-deprecating sense of humour is fun.

Finally, and probably unexpectedly off-topic, TOSRC is also home to writings on the subject of futurology, mankind’s expansion as a conscious and awakened race, its relationship with space and with the universe, as it is helped along with technology to achieve that vision of oneness.

I value everybody’s thoughts on these subjects, so feel free to debate any take on the platform and to contribute your own insight. I also invite you to follow the blog and subscribe to the newsletter to stay up to date with the latest articles. You can also find me on my main blog to learn more about me. Happy criticizing ;).

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