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What are your most hated sci-fi/fantasy tropes? (hexbear.net)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I remember a short story where a robot meets the last human. When the human complains about some problem or other the robot, very innocently, turns them off and then can't understand why the human doesn't reboot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

The human must've been a Linux