I have a few:

  • Chosen ones, fate, destiny, &c. When you get down to it, a story with these themes is one where a single person or handful of people is ontologically, cosmically better and more important than everyone else. It’s eerily similar to that right-wing meme about how “most people are just NPCs” (though I disliked the trope before that meme ever took off).
  • Way too much importance being given to bloodlines by the narrative (note, this is different from them being given importance by characters or societies in the story).
  • All of the good characters are handsome and beautiful, while all of the evil characters are ugly and disfigured (with the possible exception of a femme fatale or two).
  • Races that are inherently, unchangeably evil down to the last individual regardless of upbringing, society, or material circumstances.
  • D61 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    7 days ago

    I listened to an audio book version of some old sci-fi short story that was sorta like this.

    A human space traveller was captured by aliens, imprisoned, questioned and the aliens were attempting to torture him. The human never really describes who/what the aliens are until the end.

    And it turns out its intelligent machines that are trying to torture him by using water as a threat. It really freaked out the machines that this human was able to drink water or something. It was amusing.