Codex Alera/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain: Twice. Lord Acquitaine dies a slow, lingering death, having executed the duties of his office with great dignity and relatively conscientious, selfless regard; partially because Ehren all but set him up to die so he wouldn't consider threatening Octavian. And the second time is more surprising: the final Vord Queen herself, having shown an increasing fascination with human customs and mockingly called Tavi and Kitai her parents, admits before her certain death that she learned much from humans, that they were stronger than the Vord, and that her battle against them was never personal; she was just trying to do what she was supposed to do as a queen. She also asks if Tavi will make her suffer; he says no.
• Complete Monster: Generally one of these per book. Starting off with Kord, who tries to kidnap Isana and rape and enslave her after she foils his plans to kill a number of people in the Calderon Valley, Brencis, who constantly bullies Tavi and eventually attempts to murder him after becoming a member of the aristocracy, and Lady Antillus, who comes along with the First Aleran specifically to try to organize Max's death and cause a little treason along the way. But the prize has to go to Lord Kalarus, who kidnaps a High Lord's daughter and another's wife and makes them his slaves, pulls four illegal legions out of his ass, holds a woman's daughter hostage in order to make her obey his orders as his assassin, creates an underground league of assassins built to systematically execute the Cursors, make treaties with the greatest enemies of Alera for them to help him in his coup, tries to kill Tavi and Max after his son gets whupped by them so his reputation isn't marred by his son being beat by a Heroic Bastard and a "furyless freak", strips the wealth from his nation to make his palace more extravagant, creates a group of elite soldiers by torturing young boys for years until the sensation of pain is orgasmic to them, and binding himself to the fury of a dormant volcano so if he dies he can take some of the realm with him. And honestly, that's just the top of the list.
  • • Just to make things a bit worse, that girl he holds hostage to make her mother serve as his spy and assassin? He also used the same girl as hostage against a prisoner's good behavior - a High Lady is too powerful to be credibly threatened by soldiers or gargoyles, so instead, if the High Lady made any escape attempt, the little girl would be the gargoyles' primary target. But anyway, that's not the part a bit worse. The part a bit worse is, the girl is Kalarus's granddaughter through rape.
  • It would probably not be unfair to speculate that Kalarus considers the day wasted if he hasn't found at least three dogs to kick or otherwise violate before lunch. It's up to the reader to decide where he finally crosses the Moral Event Horizon, but he's undeniably beyond it by the time all is said and done.
  • And [[spoiler: Arnos, who orders Tavi to kill an entire defenseless village in order to remove him, and then tries to take a woman hostage when the juris macto fails. And Invidia, who came up with said idea to kill the entire village with Fidelias's help, as well as threatening to kill a High Lord, a defenseless young woman, and a little girl (and this is all before she got taken by the Vord). Oh, and she organized Septimus' assassination. And Navaris, who tries to kill Tavi the minute he doesn't comply with her orders, and seems to get orgasmic pleasure from killing people.
  • Brencis Minoris. For the first 4 books, he does quite a few sinister things, but we didn't know how much of it was his father's influence and violent temper exerting control over him. Then in Princeps' Fury we find out that he's responsible for enslaving hundreds of Alerans with discipline collars. When his former fiancee Flora begs him to let her out, he gleefully tells her how she's about to be turned into a mindless husk that will gleefully entertain new recruits for the rest of her life. What. A. Bastard.
• Crazy Awesome: Tavi. I mean, good lord. He stops in the middle of a battle to sit in front of the gates and play chess with the enemy commander.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Many over the course of the series.
  • Any and all of Tavi's tactics as captain in the third book, take your pick from filling the city with sawdust and then setting it on fire when the invading army took it, dumping blood from the slaughterhouses into the river to attract sharks and the like from the sea, or having his Knights Aeris fly up and focus the air itself into a giant magnifying glass and proceeding to roast the enemies like ants.
    • Most of Tavi's actions in books three and four count, actually. Particularly when he finally declares himself in front of his friends and enemies and challenges Arnos (and by extension Navaris) to a duel.
      • When he declared his true name, the earth shook and the sky turned red. The reader knows that's because a powerful furycrafter hundreds of miles away just made a volcano erupt, but as far as the characters know it's because he's just that awesome.
      • He thinks something like, "I have no idea what that is, but there's no point letting it go to waste, is there?"
        • It did add something to the delivery, after all.
  • Amara outmaneuvering and then leaving the scheming noblewoman Invidia and her retainers stranded, in the middle of the wilderness... sans clothing.
    • Bernard shooting down High Lord Kalarus from atop a moving air coach. Kalarus then proceeded to fall into the forest below at a speed probably upwards of 100 miles an hour. No wonder he doesn't show up in person after that.
  • Book 6: Lots of them: Starting with when Tavi successfully has several of the Vord Queen's prisoners rescued from right under her nose, and progressing to Tavi tearing down the walls of Riva, Amara killing Invidia, and the final battle with the Vord Queen.
  • A mortally wounded Attis Aquitaine serving Invidia her divorce papers in the middle of an intense duel.
  • Or how about this scene in the climax of book five. Tavi needs boats. He doesn't have any boats. So instead, he carves entire glaciers into boats, and sails them into the Shuaran harbor.
  • Isana is not exactly a fighter. Which makes her slaughtering 6 vord warriors at once when cornered in the sixth book that much more awesome.
  • Bernard taking down a vordbulk that had been shrugging off the concerted efforts of the entire Herdbane Clan with one (slightly modified) arrow.

Bernard: "Anyone could have done it."

• • • And then High Lord Cereus tops Bernard by doing the same thing. Except instead of using an arrow, he uses himself - literally hurling himself down the maw of the vordbulk and triggering a furycrafting that destroyed its entire head, taking himself along with it, to protect his daughter and grandchildren. Manly Tears.
  • One word: Catapults.
  • On a Meta level, Jim Butcher for writing a series based on the concept of Pokémon and making it awesome. (And on a bet no less.)
• Crowning Moment of Funny - Has its own page.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming - Has its own page.
• Evil Is Sexy:
  • Brencis. When the person who you've kidnapped and are about to rape notices how handsome you are, I believe you fufill this trope (though the mind control collar helped).
  • The Vord Queen, considering she looks like a green Kitai.
• Fan Nickname: The Vord Queen is HIB-- short for 'Her Imperial Bugginess'. Lady Aquitaine is TEBI-- short for 'That Evil Bitch Invidia.' Ehren is often referred to as "the crowbegotten Batman."
• Magnificent Bastard: Gaius (who's basically Dumbledore without the facade of eccentric senility) and Lord Aquitaine are both solid examples.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Brencis, son of High Lord Kalarus crosses this when it turns out he's using his father's brainwashing technique (already Nightmare Fuel) to turn humans into slaves for the Vord.
  • Kalarus pole-vaults over it and keeps running. No second crossing.
• Nightmare Fuel
  • The Vord, especially in the second book, before we know much about them. Also the discipline collars and Lord Kalarus's Immortals.
  • The Canim are pretty creepy when they're introduced in Academ's Fury, though they become significantly less so as Tavi (and by extension the reader) becomes more familiar with them. The Ritualists are still fairly disturbing, though, even the decent ones- Blood Magic and all.
  • In First Lord's Fury, Amara serves us up this gem, noting that she seems to be in shock:

"I saw an earth fury that looked like a gargant bull knock down a building being used to shelter orphaned children. I saw a pregnant woman burned to black bones by a fire fury. I saw an old woman dragged down into a well by a water fury, her husband holding her wrists the whole way. He went with her." She paused, musing over the placid, inflectionless calm of her own voice, and added, "The second minute was worse."

• HSQ: Trends steadily upward over the course of the series, until it takes up the majority of the entire final book.
• Nightmare Retardant - Intentional. At the end of First Lord's Fury, Ehren reads Tavi a series of reports saying that unrest has arisen between steadholders who surrendered to the Vord and the army. The farmers keep complaining that the soldiers are killing "their" Vord-- spiders and other creatures that they are using to tend their crops and livestock. Painted in different colors so that no one confuses whose is whose.
• Stoic Woobie: Araris seems to get injured a lot, and that's not even counting his motivations behind his alternate, Obfuscating Stupidity persona. But he really doesn't show his emotions to anyone but Isana, and that's after some serious empathic prodding.
  • Even as Fade, he can't catch a break; he tends to get picked on a lot, despite the fact that he seems to be pretty helpful around the house. Even Bernard is pretty curt with him.
• Tear Jerker: "I know how a Vord Queen dies. I am ready." Damn you, Jim Butcher, for making us go all sniffly over the omnicidal leader of a Horde of Alien Locusts.
• Too Cool to Live: Pirellus of the Black Blade in book 1, and Gaius Sextus himself in book 5.
• Uncanny Valley: Most of the Vord Queen's attempts at acting human in the final book fall squarely into this, particularly her little "dinner parties" with Invidia.
• The Woobie: Rook gains a lot of sympathy points once we find out her motivation and past.