YMMV / Crepuscule

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite having been introduced just in that season, Tepes ranked #1 in the popularity poll at the end of Season 2. Averted otherwise, though: Lark, Bathory, and Setz, aka the three main characters, consecutively took the next positions.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Due to a somewhat rushed conclusion of certain threads, the ending feels a bit like Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending (or specifically, Only Lark and Bathory Get an Ending with Closure):
  • Considering that Setz declared in the finale that Lark is all he has left, it can come off as an outright Downer Ending for him that Lark essentially ditches him without a word in the epilogue—that Setz has a history of loss and abandonment just makes it an even more bitter pill to swallow. The fact that he now has to look after Neal, his most hated enemy, doesn't help either.
  • Neal spends the entire series on a downward spiral with absolutely zero indication that he wanted to get better—and his arc pretty much ends on this note. If he does reform, then it's going to be an incredibly rocky path; if he doesn't, then he's a Karma Houdini who got what he wanted. And regardless, depending on exactly how old he is, he may not have much left longer to live.
• Iron Woobie: After spending most of the series as an Extreme Doormat, Setz graduates into this by the end. He's one of the few characters who not only doesn't become a Jerkass Woobie or Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in response to his trauma (of which he suffers plenty, from beginning to end), but uses his grief to become a better person than everyone who's wronged him.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Neal who is a huge jerk, suffered from Abusive Parents that kept him caged in the basement because he was an illegitimate child who stained the reputation of their "Pure Blooded Family" and when he finally escapes from them he ends up under "the care" of Navarus, Setz's own abusive father, who treats him as his slave.
  • Much later in the story, Lark ends up becoming this after Angela's death. Though he zig-zags between this and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds... Thankfully, in recent chapters, he has finally recovered.
  • Despite being the primary antagonist of Season 2 and having manipulated Sylvia into killing Angela, Gilles's backstory, in which he wrecked his relationship with Tepes, whom he considered his "other half", and how he's evidently a mess in the present who doesn't even know what it is he really wants can invoke some sympathy for the guy.
  • Though responsible for half the problems in Season 2 and not particularly remorseful over it, it's not hard to see why Tepes is so angry at a world she feels has wronged her and her people, and though she also causes a lot of her own problems with her attitude, that she feels abandoned by those around her can come across as pitiful nevertheless.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • What with her being one of the most popular characters whose circumstances were built up over the course of a season, it wasn't too surprising that Tepes's "death" in Season 2 didn't last and that she returned for Season 3.
  • Subverted with regards to Angela's death. That it occurred early on and was a case of Never Found the Body might've led some to suspect there was more to it, but if the rest of the season didn't convince them that she was Killed Off for Real, the series finale confirms it.
• Moe: Lark and Setz as children were precious.
• Moral Event Horizon: Purposely pushing Carne past the Despair Event Horizon serves as this for Neal, particularly in how planned it was and how utterly nasty he is about it.
• The Scrappy: Sylvia received a fair amount of hate after killing Angela.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Who could tell right away that Queeny, even after being unmasked, was a boy?
• The Woobie: Several, several, characters.
  • Lark, at the beginning of the story, as he suffered from All the Other Reindeer and Abusive Parents.
  • Setz who also suffers from Abusive Parents (and has had to put up with Neal), feels really lonely and grows up with next to no friends. The series also has a distressing tendency to kill off those he cares about, not to mention he's the one who struggles the most with Lark's attitude in Season 2.
  • Carne who is orphaned at a young age and feels that Setz doesn't return her feelings for him. Not to mention how she suffers from amnesia regarding what happened to her parents... And all goes downhill when she recalls that she was the one responsible for their deaths, plus her own mother was quite abusive towards her.
  • Bathory, was abandoned by her mother and after spending years searching for at least one living relative... ends up being tortured for her ability by Nergal, and when she does find her aunt, Angela, she ends up being killed after a short while after their meeting.
  • While less tragic than other examples, it's not hard to feel sorry for Sia when you learn about his Friendless Background or, when Seere asks to speak to Lark alone and Sia, actually seeming a bit hurt, asks if he's a bother to them.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Surprisingly, this happens to the deuteragonist, aka Setz. While he has arguably the most Character Development in the series and a powerful personal arc, overall he has little relevance to the overarching story. The mystery behind his latent ability and birth is something of a Captain Obvious Reveal and has zero impact on anything despite the buildup, and though the latter is somewhat lampshaded, the series doesn't compensate by playing him up as The Unchosen One as a Foil to Lark as it could've. In the grand scheme of things, compounded by his Esoteric Happy Ending, it comes off as his only purpose having been to bring Lark to Crepuscule, meaning that his role was over by the end of the prologue.