I wonder if SotI and Night Witches don’t leap out as “genre cliches” so much in part because the genres that they are part of aren’t well-trodden (at least in the anglosphere). Maybe if in 2017 we have a glut of “women in wartime” movies, Night Witches will seem particularly “tropey.” In an alternate timeline, if the tropes that emerge as the territory gets explored are different than the focal elements of NW, NW might seem to be a strange outlier to people doing analysis of “women in wartime” fiction.