Maximum Ride/YMMV

• Anvilicious: Global warming is bad (book four). So is pollution (book five).
• Big Name Fan: The series has a few. Most notably St. Fang of Boredom and PhoenixFanatic.
• Broken Base: Oh boy. To some the series ended at book three and everything else after is just not even considered by some to be existing.
• Canon Sue: Maximum Ride herself. The two different versions of her somehow manage to be Sueish in entirely different ways, though. The adult novel series, she's weird looking, but far more intelligent, capable, and brave. The young adult series swaps out some of the intelligence for fantastic leadership qualities, much better looks, kung-fu abilities, and super speed. No, really. And both versions of her date Troubled but Cute winged boys.
  • Angel is ridiculously Sue-ish. She has the most extra powers of all of the flock (and will just get them for no apparent reason), she is described as cute and blond and angelic and sweet. Everyone who sees her loves her (except for the evil scientists). Of course, there are the hints that she wants to take Max's place as Flock leader and that she apparently sees no problem in mind-controlling people.
  • By the fifth book, the bird kids as a whole are a Mary Sue, particularly since the fifth book features several chapters showing trained professionals who have spent possibly years of their lives mastering advanced skills in the arts of combat and stealth finding themselves inherently inferior to those great bird kids to a ridiculous degree, all to show that these kids have absolutely nothing to learn from adults who are presumably experts in their field and are clearly wrong to attempt to provide these children with any kind of instruction.
  • Adding to the former, the kids starting to develop even more superpowers and being portrayed without many major flaws is shoving them even further past the border of Mary Sue-land.
• Cliché Storm: From the evil twin and the stereotyped characters to the boy drama, I think it's fair to apply this term to the YA series.
• Creator's Pet: Angel, though widely disliked amongst the fandom, constantly gets a bunch of powers, and is now apparently going to get her own book, Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel.
• Don't Shoot the Message: The fourth book
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Max's Voice in her head (YA series).
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans choose to disregard the 4th book altogether. The 5th book could well end up with this status too.
  • According to most fans, the fifth book (apart from the title) is better than the fourth, but not as good as the first three. It could be the fact that Fang and Max get together. God knows how long it'll last. In the 6th book, it gets put on hold, and in the 7th book, it seems to be permanent. Of course, there's always the last book, though.
• Flanderization: Max and Fang get hit by this, hard. The most recent books have them becoming angstier and angstier over romance (usually over each other), wheras previously it took a back seat to whatever the other current plot thread was.
• Ho Yay: Jeb and Roland. (And how!)
  • Also Fang and Iggy.
• Jerkass: Fang was veering dangerously close to this territory earlier on in the series. He flirted blatantly with several girls other than Max over the course of the series, but when she dated someone else, of course he became ridiculously jealous. Not to mention the fact that when she finally complained to him about it for real, he acted as though nothing had happened and basically disregarded what she said.
• Jumped the Shark: From the fourth book onwards had the series moving from stopping the school and Itex to being centered around global warming. This has costs the books a lot of fans.
  • The series also is putting arguably too much focus on romance and, well, Wangst in a series once about Sci-Fi and action. The character Dylan serves only to fit this purpose, and Fang becomes increasingly emo as the series goes on, even leaving the party at one point. This gets worse; he comes back in the very next book, making his disappearance even less effective. This isn't even touching Max, who was mostly perfectly fine in the earlier books, and complaining only occasionally got excessive. Fast foward to the most recent books and all she does is whine about Fang and Dylan.
• The Scrappy:
  • Max 2, aka Maya.
  • Dylan. That guy has fanfictions about ways for him to die. Some of it is simply because gets in the way of Fang and Max being together, but as as a character he's terribly bland, unnervingly Max-sexual, and a Shallow Love Interest complete with a narmy serenade scene in ANGEL. No, really.
• Unfortunate Implications: For some reason the Chinese characters always seem to be bad guys. Until Kate comes in ANGEL.
  • Kate of Fang's new flock in the most recent book is actually pretty nice. And she has Superman-grade strength.
• Wangst: Max has genuine reasons to be upset, but she seems to make it absolutely clear to the reader that she hates everything. In all fairnesss she is a teenager, and quite a few do go through a "god everything sucks" stage. Gets pretty bad in the later books.
• The Woobie: For some, all the shit Ari's been through can really tugs on one's heartstrings. He's seven years old, for Chrissake's.