Well, I personally suggest Draug as a Space Marine, for obvious reasons. Please insert mapleleaf for like a sentence or two, where he promptly gets killed. Base commanders - jmo and zultar?

As for sci-fi cliche's, there's tvtropes, of course. Plenty of stuff to mock there. The very concept of violence evolving towards hand-to-hand combat instead of turning into shooting the other person from across the galaxy is one.

Sci-Fi cliches?

Murderous robots. Getting sucked into black holes. Meteor showers.

Anything from Fallout.

Never played fallout. But yes -- murderous robots. Check. (Terminator...)

Draug as a Space Marine - Fuck yeah!

Damn....when are the mods going to come to their senses and invite that good man back?

Phil - yes, the very idea of "powered armor" is the abandonment of push-button combat, and the return to a more ridiculous and blood-thirsty era of combat.

JMO - Zultar...Zultar is almost too obvious a sci-fi name....which make is PERFECT. Lord Ruler Zultar...commanding his minions....JMO, General, Blind (literally!) follower of the faith...who's senses are wired into his armor - the perfect blend of man and machine...

Mapleleaf, the gun-fearing Canadian who escaped to the US, only to be drafted into the marines...killed during an unfortunate potato-peeling incident after refusing to fires arms on the training grounds....

Fuck it....I'm going to writer erotica instead...

Porque no los dos?

Mapleleaf needs to be private of toilet duty, fitting actually.

Come on you rat bastards! This is war, god-damnit! I need ideas! I need fodder and meat! Not a bunch of punk-ass whiny liberals crying about this and that in the forums when there are *important things* for you to discuss right here.

Now get off your whiny pansy asses and feed me your worthless, pathetic, half-assed ideas, you sniveling tit-sucking toads.

That is all....

With a few small changes, that post can fit into the story.

I didn't read the prior thread, but here's some cliches:

Who are they fighting? Gotta be giant bugs (Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, Edge of Tomorrow). When you kill the Queen, the rest all drop inert.

And if it's a cross-species conflict, you need a human traitor.

A young hero needs to be pressed into leadership sooner than he is ready.

At some point, hero needs to make a hard decision that is logically right but sentimentally wrong, like leaving a friend behind to die (who is toast anyway) or closing an airlock on someone to save the group.

The military can be progressively gender-integrated, but if so the most bad-ass fighter has to be female.

The military can be progressively gender-integrated, but if so the most bad-ass fighter has to be female.


.....whom he falls in love with


.....who happens to be his ....daughter? Because he was unconscious for year, buried under rubble in armor suit HyperSleep until discovered by a crazy old monk/qizard who unleashes his psychic abilities.......

Or his mother, who he thought was dead (HTTYD2).

Or his father, who had a transgender operation after being badly burned.

What you REALLY need is the rude american colonist, visiting a planet inhabited by the civilized and united alien race.

Also, make sure all aliens are upright, walk on two legs, have mouths, eyes and noses, and speak fluent english.

Also, alien chicks with multiple breasts are absolutely crucial, to the story.

The protagonist has to be the only intelligent person, aside from a single mentor sergeant who is practically perfect in the protagonist's eyes.

The protagonist has to be the first to realize some crucial weakness in the alien's biology that (in retrospect) is quite simple.

I'm guessing you want to incorporate tropes from things like Scalzi's OMW or Heinlein especially, so I'd also suggest tossing in something along the lines of having military service be either mandatory (and the protagonist volunteers once his term is up) or very strictly voluntary, but once you sign the dotted line you whole existence belongs to the corps.

Make sure to have the protagonist seriously doubt the value of protecting the worst of humanity but have him keep fighting the good fight because of his oaths, or only for his brothers/sisters in the corps and fuck the rest of humanity.

The alien foes must have a homogeneous easily defined culture, united in a single purpose and leadership.

If human/alien sex is possible, the phrase "What is the thing you call .... love?" must be uttered

The generals will have attitudes akin to WW1 stereotypes - sending waves of expendable grunts in to certain death, gaining a few meters, while sitting safe behind their desks

Ahh, now that you mentioned Heinled WD, Krellin needs to add an overreaching tyrannical Earth government suppressing it's colonies. In this world, the protagonist, residing on some Earth colony, living an "everyday normal life" suddenly becomes pulled into a scheme to overthrow the tyrannical earth government. This forces him to leave his family. Meanwhile, the government catches wind of the revolutionaries plans and tries to apprehend the protagonist (which flees), and end up killing his family. This motivated the protagonist to never give up the cause blah blah etc.