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.
  • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    That can be expanded to any “the hero nobly denies doing something ‘unethical’ to get what they want/decides to sacrifice their own desires for the sake of someone else, only for reality itself to turn around and reward them with exactly what they wanted/were going to sacrifice as a special good boy treat for doing the right thing” situation, I think.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      A lot of YA fiction seems to take that route. Then the kids who read it grow up and turn into adults who cry about the unfairness of Marie Antoinette getting owned.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        One of the reasons i liked Enders Game as a weird outsider kid was that Ender, the weird outsider kid, just straight up killed his bullies and then they never bullied him again and I thought that was a very sensible way to handle matters compared to the saccharine bullshit in the other kids books i was reading.

            • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
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              4 months ago

              Man that almost sounds like philosophy from the trenches; break bread with the real ones, get it back in blood from the opps

        • D61 [any]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          There’s literally people who interpreted the “shower scene” as him just beating the kid up and them being kicked out of battle school.

          I think the most recent movie adaptation takes this route (though it might still be vague enough to be interpreted as the adult trying to keep Ender from knowing he murdered a kid.)