Black Library Cliches

[grailkeeper]

We've all read a lot of Black Library novels novels, and without a doubt there's a lot of scenes and ideas that are starting to become cliched- wet leopard growls for example. Doubtless many of them have a good reason, thats why they are so common. On the other hand you could make a drinking game or bingo score sheet out of some of them. What do you think are some common Black Library cliches? I'm looking for BL specific cliche rather than general sci-f cliches like:

* Types of soldiers being super warriors when they are protaganists but disposable chaff as antagonists,

* Protaganists always winning,

* Sci-Fi Authors being bad with numbers.

 

Common Black Library cliches I've spotted:

* Any dialogue between marines taking place in the training cages for some reason,

* Any space ship battle being portrayed from the people on the bridge.

 

and one that doesnt bother me but makes me chuckle

*Writings from ancient texts from M1 to M2 but none from M3-M29.

 

Any other Black Library specific cliches you love/hate?

Edited September 1 by grailkeeper

[lansalt]

Thunderhawks/shuttle crashes. You know, when the protagonists are escaping from a ship or trying to get down to a planet, but the writer feels like it requires a little drama and removing an easy way to leave or to add firepower, so the Thunderhawk has a bad landing/crash but almost everyone survives to continue the story.

 

I roll my eyes at the forced faux danger everytime I find this in a story.  It's such an overdone sci-fi trope since Star Trek.

[DarkChaplain]

I don't see how the command crew on the bridge being used for PoV of space battles makes for a cliche. They're simply the people with the widest view of what's going on, who actually have an active influence on the battle (aside from crewmen just loading guns over and over). They're the ones making the call on maneuvers, keeping an eye on battle damages, locating the opposing force and what not. The bridge crew is the informational nexus in any such battle, and if you don't decide to either a) show the entire battle from a top-down omniscient narrator perspective or in-universe hindsight or b) not show the battle actually taking place and instead deliberately depict it as outside of the PoV character's control as they fulfill their personal quest or act as a cog in the machine, there's little else to do but navigate the scene through the bridge crew. Heck, they're usually the only ones with an actual viewport into space, if it isn't sealed.

Plenty of books also split those battles into active participants and somebody somewhere navigating the halls trying to go do something in a hurry, or a boarding action going on, so it's rarely just that one perspective.

 

 

[Lord Marshal]

"X made a sound. He realised it was laughter."

[byrd9999]

Yes, I totally agree with the Space Marine/Ad Mech/etc... who produces a low rumble from his vox speaker, only for it to turn out to be laughter.

 

Another one that gets me is the phrases along the lines of something being "a twisted parody of" something else, or "an obscene mockery". These occur in (imo) nearly every early HH book. It occurs so many times that it seemed to me it was an injoke among the authors.

 

If anyone else remembers, I think it was either Euro 1996 or World Cup 1998, where it turned out the England football squad had a competition to see who could get the most song titles into their interviews without being caught.

 

I think the HH authors had something similar with that phrase.

 

And if you drink a shot every time Graham McNeill's bad guys "snap" at each other, you'd be blotto by the end of the first chapter.

[The Scorpion]

 

"X made a sound. He realised it was laughter."

You'd think the 40k galaxy was filled with creepy Fromsoft NPCs by how often this happens

[LemartestheLost]

 

Yes, I totally agree with the Space Marine/Ad Mech/etc... who produces a low rumble from his vox speaker, only for it to turn out to be laughter.

 

Another one that gets me is the phrases along the lines of something being "a twisted parody of" something else, or "an obscene mockery". These occur in (imo) nearly every early HH book. It occurs so many times that it seemed to me it was an injoke among the authors.

 

These two instances take the cake for me as well. Even without the HH, it feels that these pop up in every other 40k book.

[TheArtilleryman]

 

"X made a sound. He realised it was laughter."

Haha I’m gonna think of this every time now. Currently reading “Ragnar’s Claw” and:

 

“It took Ragnar a moment to realise that the strange barking sound which filled the room was the orks laughter.”

 

[DukeLeto69]

 

Writings from ancient texts from M1 to M2 but none from M3-M29.

This is actually a real bugbear of mine

[TheArtilleryman]

Some others that come to mind:

 

”the biggest gun/club/building etc he had ever seen”

 

”she was <insert crude and generic description of attractiveness, usually in a mildly misogynistic way>”

 

“she was naked, for literally no reason”

 

 

 

This is actually a real bugbear of mine

See I actually love the references to pre-M3 history. I always assumed when there was a reference I didn’t get, that it was a later, made up reference. Would be nice to have more snippets of intervening lore, definitely.

[LemartestheLost]

This might be not quite BL specific, but we sure do "plunge into darkness" quite often around these parts!

[DukeLeto69]

 

Some others that come to mind:

 

”the biggest gun/club/building etc he had ever seen”

 

”she was <insert crude and generic description of attractiveness, usually in a mildly misogynistic way>”

 

“she was naked, for literally no reason”

See I actually love the references to pre-M3 history. I always assumed when there was a reference I didn’t get, that it was a later, made up reference. Would be nice to have more snippets of intervening lore, definitely.

It isn’t the inclusion if pre-M3 writings/poems etc, it is the lack of anything covering the next 27,976 years.

[LameBeard]

“He was tall, even for a space marine”

 

because 7’ 6” super warrior just isn’t enough, I need something else to distinguish my sidekick character!

 

To be fair to Mr Abnett, I believe he made up some M4 - M29 quotes / texts.

[grailkeeper]

Word bearers getting dunked on.

[TheArtilleryman]

 

Word bearers getting dunked on.

To be fair, they pretty much dunked on the whole galaxy, so they probably deserve it 

[grailkeeper]

Chaos Space Marines always seem to hate each other. They're always stabbing each other in the back, sometimes literally. I know they're supposed to be evil, ruthless and ambitious. But they've been around each other a lot longer than regular marines. You see far fewer depictions where they respect or even like each other. 

 

It might be interesting  to see loyal marines who are just as Machiavellian.

[Sothalor]

There was that one Marine in Kyme's Salamander series. I think his name was Iago or something fairly on-the-nose.

 

Actually assassinated his company captain so his buddy would get promoted.

 

As for cliches, I think the "atypical Astartes with a semi-reluctant bond/friendship to specific mundane human" is kind of a Black Library staple at this point.

[SvenIronhand]

 

Chaos Space Marines always seem to hate each other. They're always stabbing each other in the back, sometimes literally. I know they're supposed to be evil, ruthless and ambitious. But they've been around each other a lot longer than regular marines. You see far fewer depictions where they respect or even like each other. 

 

It might be interesting  to see loyal marines who are just as Machiavellian.

I remember the CSM guys in Gate of Bones being genuine friends of each other.

[TheArtilleryman]

 

There was that one Marine in Kyme's Salamander series. I think his name was Iago or something fairly on-the-nose.

 

Actually assassinated his company captain so his buddy would get promoted.

 

As for cliches, I think the "atypical Astartes with a semi-reluctant bond/friendship to specific mundane human" is kind of a Black Library staple at this point.

Iagon - yeah, they do like their shameless theft of - I mean references to other stories :p

[Ganders]

I've said this before but the regular decapitation of marines in Black Library books bothers me every time. 

 

There's always a melee and at least one poor marine gets his head cleanly chopped off. This always takes me out of the moment as I have to think of the logistics of a marine in full armour getting decapitated. It would take a weapon in the shape of a large sharp spoon to chop a marines head off without taking the top of the shoulder pads, the front gorget, and probably half the backpack.

But in the books the head always comes clean off with a swipe of a power sword and rolls around on the ground.

 

Drives me mad.

[TheArtilleryman]

4 hours ago, Ganders said:

I've said this before but the regular decapitation of marines in Black Library books bothers me every time. 

 

There's always a melee and at least one poor marine gets his head cleanly chopped off. This always takes me out of the moment as I have to think of the logistics of a marine in full armour getting decapitated. It would take a weapon in the shape of a large sharp spoon to chop a marines head off without taking the top of the shoulder pads, the front gorget, and probably half the backpack.

But in the books the head always comes clean off with a swipe of a power sword and rolls around on the ground.

 

Drives me mad.

Have you not heard of the Power Spoon?

 

[Evil Eye]

On 9/1/2024 at 7:15 PM, Lord Marshal said:

"X made a sound. He realised it was laughter."

The one case of this that got a genuine chuckle out of me was in Soul Hunter(?) when Talos is talking to the Dreadnought and he makes a mechanical clunking noise (which is him laughing) and we get this hilarious exchange.

 

"What was that?" asked Talos.

"My auto-loader cycling" the Dreadnought lied.

[darkhorse0607]

6 hours ago, Ganders said:

I've said this before but the regular decapitation of marines in Black Library books bothers me every time. 

 

There's always a melee and at least one poor marine gets his head cleanly chopped off. This always takes me out of the moment as I have to think of the logistics of a marine in full armour getting decapitated. It would take a weapon in the shape of a large sharp spoon to chop a marines head off without taking the top of the shoulder pads, the front gorget, and probably half the backpack.

But in the books the head always comes clean off with a swipe of a power sword and rolls around on the ground.

 

Drives me mad.

 

 

As funny as it is, this one gets me too. Sometimes if it's an Astartes vs Astartes I can forgive it, but times when regular humans behead a Chaos Space Marine for example always make me think

 

So you're telling me, that human x,y,z, reached up mid-fight, and managed to jam their sword in at an angle on a target that's very small and is about 2 feet higher than they are?

 

I feel like neck wounds on Astartes are the generic "we need this thing to die but want to try to make it convincing because of armor" excuse

 

And then you have when it happens to Primaris. GW made a big deal about almost all of them getting bigger gorgets just to PREVENT this. Nope. Power Spoon wins every time

[Felix Antipodes]

Another variant of the ‘we need to end this fight quick’ is the knife to the armour’s soft spots.  We are up to what, 10 marks of power armour, and no one has thought to fix this?  It’s especially laughable when the victim being beheaded/soft point stabbed is wearing Terminator armour.

[Sothalor]

That's a practical reality with any kind of armor that has to be worn and moved by the human body. Solid sheets of armor do not combine with points of articulation.

 

A truism of combat throughout history is the understanding and targeting of vulnerabilities in any target's defenses. One might as well complain about people dying when receiving major trauma to vital organs.