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.
  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    I sincerely think it's because mosy westnerd writers cannot imagine any form of international relations except violence. Like war and imperialism and genocide is literally their entire conceptual world.

    This is also why libs are so afraid of the rise of China. They know America has treated the world like shit and the only way they can justify it to themselves is to believe that everyone else is just as bad as they are.