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YMMV Tropes in this Fanfiction include:
- Complete Monster: Empress Tyrania stands in stark contrast to the relatively sympathetic Deadlock. Tyrania carried out three genocides, one of which was of her own species, so that she could re create her race and make herself empress. Tyrania kills her own minions just for fun, captures people to use as slaves, and has a torture chamber with a window for her viewing pleasures. When confronted, she slowly kills Ember's father while Ember is Forced to Watch, and then prepares to kill Spyro, Cynder, and Ember. Her endgame is to enslave the dragon race and kill any that are too weak to be used. A cruel gargoyle with the laugh of a lunatic who loved the sound of screaming, Tyrania stood to show just how much of a monster Deadlock was not.
- Cry for the Devil: Most reviewers have admitted feeling very sorry for Deadlock due to her tragic past.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Ember has been quite well liked by reviewers for being a kindhearted version of the character as opposed to the normal Ron the Death Eater treatment.
- Fridge Horror: Empress Tyrania tells one of her Gargoyle troops to clean the skeletons out of her torture chamber. While that's bad on its own, it gets worse when you realize that Gargoyles don't leave skeletons behind, meaning she's not torturing Gargoyles to death there...
- Jerkass Woobie: Though Deadlock is definitely a villain, it's hard not to feel sorry for Deadlock considering the hardships that she had to endure, in part due to the fact that she's considered to be a freak among her race, including her own parents.
- Cyros. She abuses her brother, is plotting to become queen of the Naga by any means, and is willing to do anything to get the power to do so...because she thinks Pyrus betrayed her after promising her to let her be the crown princess only to take it himself (though she only knows her side of the story and not his). Because of this, she no longer trusts anyone and just wants to get enough power that no one will ever be able hurt her like that again.
- Moral Event Horizon:
- The Warden brutally beating up a Cheetah slave for stealing food from him. The Cheetah says he didn't and the Warden replies by telling him it doesn't matter because the Warden said he stole from him. He then describes it as "unwinding" when Ember confronts him about it.
- Boss Kaze crosses this by threatening to "have his way with" Delilah after she's captured.
- Empress Tyrania probably crossed this eons ago when she committed genocide three times just to make herself the self proclaimed goddess of the Gargoyles. Onscreen, she crosses this by killing Ember's father Blaze slowly and painfully right in front of her...then laughs!
- General Grendel's coldblooded murder of Commander Gaia after she had is no longer of use to him. He outright tells her that she meant nothing to him and he was only twisting her love to get her help.
- Nightmare Fuel: Cynder's description of how she got her metal tail and wing blades. She had the bone ones torn out and the metal ones slowly forged into her bones while she was completely awake!
- Once Original, Now Common: This fic is often credited as the first major adventure fic of the Spyro the Dragon franchise, be it classic, legend, or otherwise. When it was posted, it was often considered one of the best fics in the archive, trying a lot of things that have never been done before in it. However, in this day and age where "post-DotD template" fics are so common to the point of being generally hated by most people in the fandom, A New Dawn tends to be viewed as yet another sub-par "post DotD template" fic at best, or the cause of post DotD template fics in the first place at worse. (Despite the fact that, other than being an adventure set after DotD, it doesn't actually use a lot of the clichés that plague post DotD template fics and many are outright opposites of how A New Dawn did it.)
- The Woobie: Cynder, big time. In addition to the stuff that already happened to her, she has to deal with having her child kidnapped, a psychotic dragoness tormenting her in her dreams, and discovering that while she was Brainwashed and Crazy, she killed her own mother! And then there's in "New Allies", where we discover just how she got her metal blades and the other, related parts of her past that are explored...
- Ember after Cyros is through Breaking The Cutie on her.
