The Fionavar Tapestry/YMMV

• Cliché Storm: Every standard high fantasy trope you can name, most played straight. Kay has said he wrote the books as a thrown gauntlet to those who he felt were bastardizing Tolkien's work by misusing the tropes.
• Complete Monster: Maugrim, Metran, Uathach, and more.
• Crazy Awesome: Diarmuid.
• Ho Yay: Sure feels like Loren Silvercloak and Matt had a Meet Cute some point.
• Moral Event Horizon: Raping and torturing Jennifer for Rakoth Maugrim.
• One True Threesome: Jennifer Lowe with Arthur and Lancelot
• Moment of Awesome:
  • So many, let's start with the top one. In the third book Lancelot battles one of the oldest creatures in the world for a whole night and never wavers during the battle! Surely he couldn't win but when he somehow wields the beast's own hammer he finally kills it! God damn it's hard to top that!
  • Diarmund comes close near the end.
  • Coll commanding his ship in a very violent storm.
  • Gereint sending his spirit out to help forge a link between Paul, the earth, and Liranan god of the sea at a critical moment.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Many, both for readers and in The Verse. (Characters will often weep when it would be the normal human response, unlike many works of the genre.) The Go Mad from the Revelation aversion is one notable example; learning the reason Paul wants to die is another.
  • The death of Kevin Laine
  • The scene that reveals what happened to Paul Schafer's fiancee, Rachel: they were driving home when she told him she was in love with someone else. Then their car crashed. She died, and he blames himself, feeling that he subconsciously rolled the car as an act of revenge.
  • Rakoth raping and trying to break Jennifer Lowe as well as the fate of her being Gwen and Arthur and Lancelot being her great loves
  • Dave Martinjuk learns that he has to leave Fionavar despite feeling like he belongs there. However he's learned a lot about himself and finds the courage to ask Kim out in the end.
  • Diarmuid's death.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Little is made of the age difference between Sharra and Diarmuid (17-24/25) however in such times that was quite common age for women to marry. For the most part the two do love each other dearly.
  • Somewhat more troubling is having the captain of the guard garroted as part of a temper tantrum.
• Villain Ball: When you're an Eldritch Abomination with Complete Immortality because your "name isn't written into the tapestry", and siring a child will serve to write your name into the tapestry, the one crime you shouldn't commit is rape.