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.
Severe overuse of magic circles. Why not be more sparing about when these are drawn? They don’t have to be used around every little itty-bitty minor use of magic --that’s just annoying and well… kinda makes the artwork embarrassing to look at.
Also, aliens that seem too dumb to own spacecraft. They just grunt and roar and crawl around like zombies with laserbeams and have seemingly no plan or motive whatsoever. There needs to be more “OH mY god tHey talk!”. My favorite is when they are portrayed as having gentlemanly eloquent speech because I find that more intimidating in a villain.