What are your most hated sci-fi/fantasy tropes?
What are your most hated sci-fi/fantasy tropes?
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.
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Our intrepid hero has joined the plucky rebellion! The rebels are a ragtag group of the downtrodden and the oppressed, fighting against the tyranny of the current leadership (but don't you dare give them any actual political ideology as a basis, they need to be generally "Rebels"). They don't seem to have concrete plans, but they talk a lot about change and fighting for the people
Uh oh! Our intrepid hero just watched as a group of rebels executed some of the tyrannical leader's soldiers. They're shocked! How could they do this? Don't they know that killing is what the tyrant does? The rebels laugh it off. It had to be done, they would've done the same to them
Oh no! Our intrepid hero was there for the deposing of the tyrant. The tyrant was executed by the rebel leader and assumes control, then immediately turns into the McCarthyist nightmare of Stalin. Now our hero has to save the kingdom from the rebels, who have turned evil by their taste of power!
Basically fucking hate how rebellion and rebels are portrayed in media. It's almost like a psy op how often rebellions are thinly veiled anticommunist propaganda, and how rebels are often portrayed as being as bad or worse as the current tyrant, they just hide it better
Just off the dome I can think of the Avatar series multiple times, Bioshock Infinite, and the Hunger Games series but I know it's basically ubiquitous
Our intrepid hero just watched as a group of rebels executed some of the tyrannical leader's soldiers. They're shocked! How could they do this? Don't they know that killing is what the tyrant does? The rebels laugh it off. It had to be done, they would've done the same to them
A More Civilized Age discussed this exact point recently; There’s a very valid reason for resistance fighters to not take prisoners. One, keeping prisoners requires resources you may not have. But more importantly, the goals of a resistance group and the goals of the occupier are not the same.
As a resistance group your goal is not total military victory and occupation, your goal is to make continuing the occupation as painful and expensive as possible, to convince the occupying force that continued occupation isn’t worth it. Taking prisoners directly goes against this goal, unless you plan on using those prisoners as some sort of bargaining chip. Especially in a sci-fi setting where wounds can be healed quite quickly and thoroughly and so the wounded can be back in action very quickly.
And YES! They would have done the same to you! Without hesitation! And they still might try if you don’t kill them!
Absolutely fantastic pod, devoured the entire back catalogue recently. Their Andor episodes rocked