Tales of MU



""The way I heard it, the founders felt that being forced to kill random monsters would somehow give the students a valuable experience...you know, help us build character? How getting into fights is supposed to make somebody a better sorcerer or bard is beyond me...""

- Steff

Tales of MU is an online erotic fiction series. Originally described by the author as an experiment in using LiveJournal to promote her stories, it has since taken on a life of its own. The first four plotlines have been collected into self-published print editions.

The story revolves around the life of Mackenzie "Mack" Blaise, a self-hating half-demon student at Magisterius University, a college of enchantment in an alternate universe where Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy and magic exist in place of modern technology. While not quite a Deconstruction, it makes frequent joking allusions to common tropes of fantasy gaming.

The story, at least for the first half or so of the first year's chapters, frequently veers off into sexual territory, arguably at the expense of the plot, but usually by offering a different take on a difficult or sensitive topic. For instance, the second book offered Mackenzie's attempt to describe in first-person narrative her first orgasm, without her realizing that's what she was having. Overall, the sexual content has become much less frequent, but when it does show up, it does so with gusto.

The series has a well-developed cast of recurring characters, but the "core" cast is roughly as follows:
 * Mack, of course. We soon learn that her hang-ups are due to being raised by a fanatically religious (and rather scary) grandmother.
 * Amaranth, a kind-hearted nymph with an excessive need to see the good in everyone. Despite this sometimes dangerous blind spot, she becomes an extraordinarily good influence on Mack after they start a relationship.
 * Steff, a transgender half-elf necromancy student with a gleeful "evil" bent. She dates a half-ogre prince polyamorously (being also involved with Amaranth and Mack) and plans on becoming his Torture Technician after college. Steff's characterization uses a number of villain tropes in a way that's hard to quantify.
 * Two, a golem. She was designed to want to do what she's told, then set free when her creator's wife was creeped out. She initially has to be given specific instructions on how to act like a normal person, but has slowly become more self-sufficient and independent. She replaces Puddy (see below) as Mack's roommate for a time.
 * Ian, the most prominent and sympathetic plain-old-human in the story. He acts as the representative of normalcy, although he has his own demons, most involving his relationship with his father.
 * Dee, a dark elf, although her people call themselves simply "elves" and call the other kind of elves faint elves. She is a good friend of Two's, and is growing to be a good friend of Mack's. She veers between friendship and irritation with Steff, with whom she has serious disagreements on pretty much everything. She is a priestess of Arakhis, the dark elf goddess, and is studying to be a Subtle Arts (telepathy) major. She is usually the most serious-minded and level-headed of the central characters, and has a rather dry wit.

The major antagonists (to date):
 * Puddy, Psycho Lesbian and, at first appearance, Manipulative Bastard. Although still a recurring character, her reign as a serious antagonist comes to an end pretty quickly; Word of God is that the author didn't feel the original situation was sustainable. She all but disappeared from the story for a long while, but reappeared in the gladiatorial ring, and her success there is one of the series' mysteries.
 * Sooni, fox-girl from the series' Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Japan. Her characterization follows a similar path to Puddy: she starts out as the Alpha Bitch, but her actual social skills turn out to be quite limited, and her entourage of nekoyokai "friends" is actually composed of slaves. (This is kept secret, as legally slaves wouldn't be allowed to attend college.) When she last had a prominent role in the story, her characterization veered from comic to terrifying, as she tyrannizes her "friends," especially the sympathetically-portrayed Kai.
 * Mur-Si (also "Mercy"), owner of Tender Mercy's, a shop that specializes in preparing people-meat for consumption. She is of indeterminate race and claims to be half dark elf and half faint elf, but Steff and Dee both claim this is too disgusting a possibility to be true. She's obscenely wealthy, keeps half-demons as pets, and wants to increase her collection...
 * An unnamed full-blooded demon that Mack calls "the man" and some fans call (the) Mack Daddy. He's been seen in bonus flashback stories with Mack's mother and has appeared to Mack in her dreams. Immediately after the first dream, all Mack's toiletries were spiked with a potion to make people express their innermost feelings - presumably to bring out her evil side, though it didn't quite work out that way. His exact motivations are unknown, but they probably ain't good.
 * Some Sort Of Ridiculous Owl-Turtle Thing: Not exactly a villain, but snarky and annoying (to the characters) and mildly antagonistic. The ROTT was something that Two dreamed up after being told that dreams contain a lot of things that are sort of muddled and part one thing and part another. She took it literally and dreamed up a creature that looks like a ridiculous cross between an owl and a turtle. It was mostly just there as comic relief at first, but ever since it escaped Two's mind by hitching a ride with, and then started showing up in other people's dreams as well, it's been becoming gradually more and more sinister...

Chapter 496, plus a number of side stories, concluded Mack's first year at MU. The second year has reset the chapter numbering; so far, 89 chapters of the second year have been released, along with more side stories, so almost all the tropes below and on the YMMV page are contained in the first year's stories. Specific chapters will be referred to with the Y__-__ format; first blank is the year, second is the chapter number.

The story can be found here. Definitely Not Safe for Work!

""What will you do if Mack is found guilty of the murder she didn't commit?" "The same thing I'd do if she were found guilty of a murder she did commit.""
 * A God Am I -- Invoked by Mack Daddy in his "rebel theology" lesson: a god is anyone who can say this and then back it up by having the power to smite/kill anyone who disagrees with the claim.
 * Actual Pacifist -- Amaranth and other nymphs.
 * Aerith and Bob -- Justified Trope given the setting of multiple D&D species of intelligent beings with wildly different cultures mashing up.
 * Alternate Character Interpretation -- Invoked by the author.
 * Alpha Bitch -- Sooni has elements of this (the haughtiness, the harem of loyal followers) but also subverts it by her followers actually being her slaves, and her self-important, self-absorbed attitude being a symptom of serious delusions.
 * Anthropomorphic Personification -- Cereal nymphs like Amaranth and Barley are this for their fields.
 * Anticlimax -- The story spent a few years in real time (a few months in-story) using backstory snippets to set up Mackenzie's grandmother as a very complex character who genuinely loves Mack even though she sometimes has an odd way of expressing it. When we finally actually meet her in-story, however, she's an obnoxious one-dimensional obstructionist combining all the worst traits of a Straw Conservative and a Beloved Grandsmother, who gives the audience (and the characters!) absolutely no reason to sympathize with her viewpoint.
 * Anti-Hero -- Callahan, an amoral murderer who was pardoned for her crimes because the Empire needed her skills that badly.
 * Anything That Moves -- Or nearly so, for the nymphs; justified by the fact that they live on sexual energy, which in turn fertilizes their fields.
 * Artificial Human -- Two.
 * Artifact of Doom --.
 * Asexuality -- Two, which made having Mack as a roommate a trying experience at times.
 * Author Appeal -- Pretty much every major character is turned on by one aspect or another of BDSM.
 * Author Filibuster -- When Mackenzie finally learns Steff's "secret", the readers are suddenly subjected to a long and jarring explanation about what being a trans woman is really like, drawn mostly from the author's own childhood experiences.
 * An explanation that is much closer to what's known as "transtrender" than anything else. Steff enthuses that "she" likes "her" male body, and experiences no sense of dysphoria towards being thus or having a penis. In other words, by any legitimate diagnosis he's just a really really feminine gay man.
 * Axes At School -- Justified; the grounds around the school are sometimes anything but safe.
 * Badass Normal -- Callahan is an dwarf/elf/ogre/orc mongrel, which probably gives her an edge relative to humans, but she's still normal relative to the dragons and demons in the world. And we never see her using magic. But, among other feats of badassery, she . This makes her a good foil for Mack, who as a half-demon has a host of racial advantages (strength, partial invulnerability, flamethrowing) but is a woefully incompetent fighter.
 * Battle Butler -- Both Maliko and Suzi to Sooni.
 * Berserk Button -- A number of characters - it's a tense bunch.
 * Don't insult a gnome's parents; that gnome will jack you right up.
 * Similarly, don't say or write the Dark Elf nicknamed Dee's real name and forget to include her mother's name - even when quoting her in a newspaper.
 * Threatening Mack in any fashion is a good way to bring out the Manipulative Bastard in Amaranth, with only one major exception to date.
 * This may or may not also be a good way to bring out the wrath of . In an "ask the characters" bonus feature:

"Amaranth: One of [Steff's] friends is a virgin! What are the odds? Dee: I would say abysmal. But apparently they were high enough."
 * Big Bad -- It's not entirely certain that the overall story will have one, but so far, have been the most likely candidates for various reasons, with  as the most obvious plan.
 * Big Eater -- The hobbit-like burrow gnomes.
 * Blessed with Suck -- Mack can only be harmed by magic...in a setting where magic items are more common than concluded plot threads. She's also very vulnerable to divine energy, especially if it's Khersis-based. By which we mean, any lay worshipper can make the Arms of Khersis, a simple hand sign, and floor her.
 * Blue and Orange Morality:
 * Invoked by in Y1-488.
 * Brainwashed -- Mack, to a degree, as a result of what happened between her and.
 * Broken Aesop -- A few times characters stop to Author Filibuster about how important it is to follow certain rules, methodology, and so on in a dom/sub relationship. These same characters, and others, then go on to bend or break nearly all those rules, with no apparent backlash from the story or other characters.
 * The author did point out in the FAQ that the excessive-harm aspect of this is countered by various characters being invulnerable, possessed of regeneration powers, or just having easy access to magical healing.
 * Which might be relevant if most of the rules being broken weren't the ones for mental wellbeing, safety, and healthy consent.
 * The Bully:
 * Puddy, to just about everyone but especially Mack and Mariel.
 * Tara Leighton, especially before being fused with her twin.
 * But I Can't Be Pregnant -- went through some severe denial, even claiming that it was impossible because she was on top.
 * Butt Monkey:
 * Mackenzie, although this has backed off a lot as the story's progressed.
 * Two, to a degree, in the early chapters.
 * Call Back: In an early chapter, . In Y2-85,.
 * Character Development:
 * Several characters, gradually over the course of the series, with Mack being the most prominent.
 * Several chapters feature Mack noting this in-story about other characters.
 * Cloudcuckoolander -- Sooni. It's not Played for Laughs, but it can sometimes be pretty funny.
 * Continuity Overlap -- When Mackenzie's clothes, hospital bed, and knife disappeared in a botched teleportation spell, they all appeared in other stories by the author. Her bra is still missing in action.
 * Crystal Dragon Jesus -- Khersis, "Kherstianity", "Mechans". (With bonus actual crystal dragon in the Kherstian mythology.)
 * Cursed with Awesome -- Mack, though when she goes without "food" for too long the curse becomes somewhat more clear...
 * Cute Monster Girl -- Several. Subverted with the half-ogres, as Victor is described as better looking than Belinda.
 * Deadpan Snarker -- Dee.
 * Deadpan Snarker -- Dee.

"Two: has a penis. And she is a girl. Ian: Wait, what?"
 * Defeat Means Friendship -- Subverted with Sooni's relationship to Mack...except when it isn't.
 * Devil in Disguise:
 * The Ditz -- Keri LaBelle. While she does have the occasional insightful or worthwhile question, most of the time she's a complete moron. Problem is, her (well-deserved) reputation for ditziness gets a bit Flanderized in the mind of the teacher that she and Mackenzie have together, to the point where he's almost verbally abusive to her.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything? -- Once a month, Mack turns into a murderous psychopath, and the only cure is bleeding. The difference being that it's somebody else's blood, not hers. It doesn't save her from having to do the real thing, either. Also, see Fantastic Racism below.
 * Domestic Abuse:
 * Puddy and Mariel
 * Puddy and Mack, while roommates and "friends"
 * Ian's parents.
 * Some of Ian's encounters with Mack, despite her loving every minute of it, strike him as uncomfortably close.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me! -- Kai hates how Sooni treats her, but she doesn't take efforts by Mack and friends to assist her very well.
 * Double Entendre:
 * Steff loves these.
 * The chapter titles and subtitles sometimes are these.
 * Drill Sergeant Nasty -- Callahan as a teacher.
 * Dungeon Punk -- Advanced magic and historical resemblances makes life in the Imperial Republic seem to resemble contemporary America...except when it doesn't.
 * Dysfunction Junction -- Harlowe Dorm, full stop.
 * Easy Sex Change -- Played with. Dee gives Steff a transformative potion to help resolve some of her body issues. The potion knocks Steff out for several chapters worth of story time, and the eventual result is that.
 * Eldritch Abomination -- The Eyeless Fish-Beast is a mild version. It doesn't drive anyone to madness, but it looks really creepy, hovers through the air without wings or any visible means of support, has odd telepathic/psychic abilities, and is explicitly described as "something that’s not supported by the laws of this reality, so it carries its own laws around with it." And it's not even an antagonist; more like one of the characters' extraplanar guard dog.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors -- Played with; as a fire-aligned half-demon, Mack is weak to ice and cold, but instead of being hurt more by ice attacks, this manifests as a complete intolerance for temperatures below 60 degrees or so, and having to read the fine print on any medical Magitek that might use cold.
 * Ephebophile --
 * Epiphany Therapy -- Mackenzie goes from being very socially distant and sexually hung up to obnoxious and promiscuous in the course of three to four weeks.
 * Erotic Eating:
 * Mackenzie's first taste of honey.
 * first taste of.
 * Everybody Has Lots of Sex -- Starting with the nymphs and working one's way down the cast sheet. The list of characters to whom this trope does not apply is very short.
 * Evil Is Cool -- Invoked. Steff is deeply fond of this idea.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin -- After Two was created, she became used to seeing labels on everything in her creator's lab, and thus has a tendency to name things in the same fashion. This explains her own name (the runes on her forehead resemble the word "TWO") and Hand Wash, her teddy bear.
 * Expospeak -- Lots...and lots...and lots of it whenever Mackenzie makes it to class. In those parts the reader is treated to many paragraphs of world-building.
 * Fanfic:
 * Subject of a story-within-a-story parody.
 * The author used to "forbid" people to write fanfiction for the series. Now, Fanfic is allowed, but proper credit must be given to the author for the world and characters and the author does not want to know about it under any circumstances.
 * Fantastic Racism --A recurring theme:
 * Mack does this both ways -- she's had to deal with this all her life since she's a half-demon, and her upbringing led her to be rather racist herself, at least at the start.
 * Harlowe Dorm is where most of the non-human students are housed and is generally looked down upon by the rest of the campus.
 * Several races have analogues to real ethnic groups, like the Dark Elves to Middle Easterners, complete with corresponding ethnic slurs like "cowlhead" and "spider jockey".
 * The half-naga Celia never misses a chance to snark about the more mammalian members of the cast.
 * "Halfling" is a subtly racist nickname for gnomes.
 * Fantasy Counterpart Culture -- Every society (even non-human ones) seems to match up with a real counterpart, and the history of the Imperial Republic often resembles the USA's. Pointedly, the "European" cultures don't seem to have colonized nearly as much of the world at any point.
 * Filler/Filler Strips -- The series attempts to present a close-to-real-time story, which makes some parts seem written just to make the deadline. For example: one of the early chapters was devoted to Amaranth and Mack walking a few streets, getting on a subway-equivalent, getting out, and walking into a building.
 * Flanderization:
 * Mack and her submissiveness/love of abuse.
 * Steff's general cluelessness.
 * Sooni's spoiled and increasingly bizarre antics.
 * Flat Earth Atheist:
 * The Arkhanites - more like Flat Earth Solipsists, but close enough.
 * The Mechans.
 * Flat What

""I couldn’t help but notice that he did things like use “fight” twice in the same sentence… and “underprivileged underclass?” It also seemed like he just dropped commas in wherever he felt like it… like there was no actual rules regarding their use… like he was just in love with them as a punctuation mark, or something." (Note that Mack, at another point, remarked in passing that she had once been marked down on an essay for using too many ellipses.)"
 * Friend to All Living Things (With Benefits) -- Amaranth,.
 * Genre Savvy:
 * Mack is smart enough to realize that "we have to solve this by ourselves" isn't by far the smartest thing to say when dealing with a powerful demonic artifact.
 * During Mack's fight with Belinda, she comments how well the half-ogre girl fits a number of high school jock clichés.
 * Gladiator Games -- Due to wound-simulating weapons and cheap healing magic to cover actual injuries, straight-out combat takes the place of tamer sports. "Skirmish" is the team sport in the Imperial Republic. One-on-one gladiatorial bouts are a runner-up in popularity.
 * God-Emperor -- The rulers of the counterparts to Japan and Britain, the Emperor of the Imperial Republic of Magisterion is constitutionally limited so that he can't be one.
 * Gone Horribly Wrong -- It's eventually revealed that . "Horribly" is an overstatement, but it's definitely caused problems.
 * Good Girls Avoid Abortion --
 * Green-Eyed Monster -- 's envy of 's popularity caused her to leave home and go to college. Too bad decided college sounded like fun once she heard  was going. Eventually, 's envy causes her to Face Heel Turn, join a fraternity, and.
 * Half-Human Hybrid -- Mack and others.
 * Hammerspace -- Amaranth. Especially overt in her case, as unlike most Hammerspace users, Amaranth doesn't even have clothing as a supposed hiding place for items she puts "away". Also, Lampshaded early in the series when Mack keeps trying to catch her bringing something Out or putting it Away.
 * Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today? -- Mack did this a lot in the early chapters when she was trying to sort out her sexuality.
 * Hold Your Hippogriffs -- Many, many examples.
 * Horrible Judge of Character -- Amaranth is often too optimistic, while Mack is paranoid at times.
 * Huge Schoolgirl -- Amaranth is over six feet tall.
 * Hypocritical Humor: Quoth Mack:

"Sooni: When I was younger, my father told me that he could ask his valet for the smallest pinfeather of a bird sitting on a certain branch of a certain tree on the other side of the world, and it would be on his desk by the afternoon. Can your father do that? Mack: My father is a soulless killer abomination, Sooni. Sooni: But could he do that?"
 * I Do Not Drink... Wine -- Several of the characters cannot or will not eat certain types of food. Some, including Mack, have no need for (ordinary) food at all, although Mack enjoys eating and starts to fill out like a normal human being would once she starts eating regularly.
 * I Feel Angry -- Two.
 * I Just Want to Be Normal -- Mack.
 * I Should Write a Book About This -- Subverted. In the final chapter of Volume I, Mack's therapist suggests that she write about her experiences at MU in order to help work out her issues. The final paragraph of that chapter mentions that she got 17 pages into said autobiographic writing, and then got bored and gave up.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: This shows up frequently:
 * Several races, including mermaids and ogres.
 * This is a temptation for Mack, especially during her period.
 * The "gray" elf Mercy runs a shop catering specifically to races who feed on humans and other intelligent races.
 * Mack Daddy.
 * is strongly implied to have eaten
 * If It's You It's Okay -- Sooni to Mack.
 * A literal quote, even; the yokai tend to speak in Trope, as much as "Yokanese".
 * Idiot Ball:
 * People are generally referred to on this wiki as holding or carrying one. That wouldn't do Steff justice. She seems to have had one surgically implanted.
 * Mack seizes it and runs for the end zone by risking slavery to finance some magic jewelry. Intense emotional context to it or not, everyone calls her on the incredible stupidity of that, even Amaranth.
 * The Immodest Orgasm: Mack has a couple of these, in Y1-412 and Y1-496.
 * Innocent Fanservice Girl:
 * Amaranth is a Deconstruction. She's nude practically 24x7, and functions as a fanservice character, but in-story she has legitimate social and spiritual reasons for doing so. As a nymph, her body is considered a gift, and thus covering it is the taboo -- an Inverse of the standard nudity taboo.
 * For someone as uninterested in sex as Two is, her lingerie is very racy, and she has no qualms about wearing it around Ian, which makes him uncomfortable.
 * Insane Troll Logic -- Sooni's mind runs on this.
 * In the Blood:
 * Mack is convinced that she's irredeemably evil, despite several people close to her firmly disagreeing. It doesn't help that all of the previous half-demon students at the university have come to bad ends, and in the setting, half-demons are usually institutionalized. There's also her extreme vulnerability to divine energy; even someone invoking Khersis near her can harm her. Her grandmother really doesn't help things when she tells Mack in Y1-420 that because of her demon blood, Mack is (probably) inescapably damned, and the best she can do is to live as long as she can suppressing her infernal nature as much as possible.
 * Hilariously, The Man himself, the only full-blooded demon to have appeared in the series as of yet, is the practical living example that half-demons do NOT behave like demons; he said so himself. He is anything but beastly.
 * In Which a Trope Is Described -- A subversion in that the descriptions are misleading...except a few times when they're not, and you spend the whole chapter looking for the twist...
 * Jerk Jock -- Mack hates Skirmish players, though Amaranth of course is more understanding. Belinda is one, though this seems more tragic in her case,.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold -- One of the more charitable interpretations of Steff, especially in regards to her relationship with Mack.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Jerk -- Callahan appears to belong in this category. You start to like her once she shows genuine interest in helping Mack learn to fight, . Also, her commitment to teaching is arguably ego-driven: "If I can make this wimp a good fighter, how awesome would that make me?"
 * Jerkass:
 * The Leighton twins, especially Tara.
 * Mackenzie borders on being one whenever she gets into an argument...which is frequently.
 * Celia, partly because of her generally surly attitude and partly because of her contempt for anything mammalian.
 * The delving students who Mack encounters after the botched teleport spell (see Continuity Overlap above); one wants to kill her for XP, another (Seth) is ambivalent about whether she lives or dies, and another (Lacey) half-heartedly argues to let her live. This gets reinforced even more by petulant attitude when  in a second-year side story.
 * Karma Houdini -- Amaranth feels that hasn't been appropriately handled by  for what amounts to blasphemy for a nymph.
 * Knight Templar Parent -- It's debatable whether Mackenzie's grandmother is this, was simply doing what was necessary to keep her granddaughter from growing up to be a rampaging demon, or a little of both.
 * Kryptonite Factor -- Both holy symbols and abuse for Mack.
 * Laser-Guided Karma -- are polymorphed into mice by magic wards as a punishment for . Shortly afterwards,  is eaten by a cat.  catches  before he can suffer the same fate.
 * Leeroy Jenkins -- Subverted. Mackenzie's lawyer is named Lee Jenkins, an obvious Shout-Out, but he's a calm, competent Good Lawyers, Good Clients.
 * Little Bit Beastly -- Sooni: human body and face but with prominent fox ears and a tail.
 * LOLcats -- A Running Gag in the series is that Suzi is only marginally fluent in Pax, and usually ends up speaking in Lolcat phrases. When she speaks her own language...she's a self-centered bitch who considers anyone unable or unwilling to speak her own language to be barbarians. Of course.
 * Lolicon:
 * Implied to be a motive for
 * Played with by, who feeds on innocence.
 * Love You and Everybody -- Both used and averted. It's the well-known nymph belief system, so the first time Amaranth tells Mack that she loves her, Mack objects that Amy loves everyone - which Amy readily admits before telling Mack that she loves her specifically and deeply. That being said, Amaranth does at times find it hard to love everybody, especially those who mean ill towards Mack, and seems to have thrown this idea to the wind.
 * Luminescent Blush -- Mack gets the text equivalent from a suggestive comment from Steff in Y2-2.
 * Magical Computer -- Played with: students use crystal balls to "gaze the ethernet".
 * Magic A Is Magic A -- Explicitly averted. The laws of magic don't like it when mortals start poking around. Kinda conflicts with the next trope.
 * Magitek -- The aforementioned crystal balls, as well as pretty much all the technology you'd expect in a modern university, only powered by magic.
 * Magic Versus Science -- While magic works and is commonplace, belief in the power of scientific thinking is generally regarded as either dangerously deluded or childish fantasy. The Mechans are treated as the counterpart to Wiccans in our universe. See also Science Cannot Comprehend Phlebotinum below.
 * Mama Bear -- Kinky relationship and hippie pacifism notwithstanding, Amaranth is very protective of Mack, which becomes very clear several times over the course of the first year of the story.
 * Manic Pixie Dream Girl -- Both played straight and subverted by Sooni, who is seemingly convinced that she's the main character in a Magical Girl anime, and reacts poorly when things don't conform to her take on reality.
 * Manipulative Bastard -- Mack Daddy takes this even further than normal, as he'll manipulate both your emotions and your logic to get what he wants.
 * Men Are the Expendable Gender -- Official policy of the subterranean elves.
 * A Million Is a Statistic -- In the "Veil murder" arc, several students died that night, but is the only one who gets much attention, specifically because she was foreign royalty.
 * Missing Episode -- Y1-489. It would cover the time in office where he deals with the matter of, magically forcing Mack to bear witness, while preventing her from passing on the experience to anyone else, including those who are viewing the world through her thoughts and perceptions (i.e. the readers). Accordingly, the entire narrative (including chapter heading and link) cannot be seen.
 * Mood Swinger -- Sooni. Someone needs to get that girl on some mood-stabilizers, stat.
 * Multi-Armed and Dangerous -- Used in an odd fashion with Mariel. She has four arms, and.
 * Multiple Head Case -- The Leighton twins, as a result of a teleportation accident.
 * My Beloved Smother -- Sooni's Cosplay with Kai is all over this....
 * My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad: Here.

"While it had led to my pleasant morning with Ian, having classes with people who knew me seemed fraught with complications, and it didn’t seem to matter if they were friends, enemies, lovers, or Sooni."
 * My Friends and Zoidberg -- Quoth Mack:

"Mack: Wait, your strategy is to hide most of your army and just move them around until your opponent gives up? Hazel: It’s an acceptable military strategy! It’s called ‘going ape’, I think."
 * My Species Doth Protest Too Much
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast -- While most of the more intimidating characters have innocuous names, "Mercy" has been known to terrify some of the (fully-grown) readers.
 * Nerds Are Sexy -- Taken to an extreme: the "nerd" character is a gorgeous nymph, naked except for her nerd-glasses. The protagonist is also an introverted geek strongly hinted to be better-looking than she considers herself to be (even Belinda calls her "cute", and she's got serious issues with Mack).
 * No Periods, Period -- Inverted Trope; what happens to Mack during her cycle is one of the curses of her half-demon nature and a minor plot point.
 * Not Quite Dead --, as revealed in a handful of side stories.
 * Odd Friendship -- Many would qualify, but the most eyebrow-lifting so far is between.
 * One Degree of Separation -- Not everyone's been connected yet, but a lot of the backstory chapters seem to be pointing in this direction.
 * Only Sane Man:
 * Dee and Ian often come off as this, so long as their own issues are under control.
 * Iason, of all people, seems like this compared to other young elves.
 * Our Better Is Different -- The dark elves use "lower" as a synonym for "better" where humans would use "higher", which can lead to some very convoluted metaphors.
 * Our Dragons Are Different -- Vice-Chancellor Edmund Embries. A silver-scaled classical Western dragon capable of taking on human form, he is sexy, charming, and very creepy.
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same -- One-sixty-fourth dwarf Puddy has a special license to booze it up on the normally dry campus of MU.
 * Our Elves Are Better:
 * The professor of Pre-Republic History sums it up very succinctly. Evidently they can um... make love for 15 hours straight. That's right, fifteen hours. This also has elements of a deconstruction, as the perfection of the elves takes a toll on their ability to enjoy life, and most end their lives by suicide.
 * Shown the downside of with Steff the half-elf, who considers her own lifelike drawings to be crude doodles and her boyfriend's skillful harpsichord playing to be terrible. This is besides Steff's many crippling psychological problems, many of which have to do with her feeling inadequate compared to her elven relatives.
 * Subverted in the spinoff More Tales of MU, when the main character and his elven boyfriend Iason visit Treehome, the place where the elven "middlings" (essentially the elven equivalents of twenty somethings) live. Every single middling is a creep and/or violent pervert (like the elven woman who seduces Jamie, then tries to castrate him to spite Iason). There's also the fact that every single elf, upon learning that Jamie has put on a magical bracelet that lets Iason turn him into a stag any time he wants to, up to and including Jamie's own elven grandfather, have stopped treating Jamie like a separate being and instead seem to view him as a sort of extension of Iason. Truly, in the MUniverse, Our Elves are More Fucked Up.
 * Also possibly deconstructed with the revelation that Elves don't even need to breathe, and do so only rarely; this is played for as much sheer creepiness factor as possible.
 * People Puppets -- One of many talents.
 * Perception Filter -- This is implied to be a natural ability of gnomes.
 * Petting Zoo People -- Maliko, Suzi, and Kai.
 * Power Perversion Potential -- Healing magic, Mack's invulnerability - and how.
 * Property of Love:
 * Steff for Victor.
 * Mack for Amaranth.
 * Psycho Lesbian -- Puddy.
 * Punny Name:
 * Mack's name is a double pun - she's a fire-emitting half-demon with the last name of Blaise, and depending on the translation, "Mackenzie" can mean either "born of fire" or "child of the fair one", or rather, "child of the hottie".
 * A mermaid named Feejee.
 * A swan princess named Leda.
 * A transgender half-elf named Steff Johnson.
 * The chapter titles and subtitles often go this route.
 * Rape as Drama -- Multiple occurrences, played with frightening realism.
 * Rape Is Love:
 * Puddy, frequently.
 * Hazel.
 * Leda plays into this, though it's more a rape as compliment thing.
 * Reality Ensues -- Sooni acts like a classic Tsundere, but later discovers that.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old : It's D&D, immortal beings abound.
 * Subverted by Amaranth, who's an ageless, immortal divine being...and 17.
 * Dee semi-subverts this, by looking college age at 30.
 * Retired Badass:
 * It's hinted early on that Mackenzie's grandmother might have once been a famous demon-slaying paladin. Mackenzie, of course, has never heard of any of it and finds the whole thing ridiculous, even as the evidence continues to mount, until it's finally confirmed in Y1-422.
 * Coach Jillian "Jilly" Callahan has retired from being a mercenary and a successful dragon-slayer to teaching in the combat-athletics department of MU, but has not in any way retired from being Badass.
 * Callahan gets even more ridiculous when you find out more of her past. She is also known as and she received an imperial pardon for  Callahan takes Badass Up to Eleven.
 * Ridiculously Human Robot -- Played with. While not true robots, golems tend to be the magical equivalent, complete with all the associated Magical Computer tropes.
 * Romantic Two-Girl Friendship -- It's briefly suggested that Sooni, the local representative of the story's Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Japan, has this as part of her cultural psyche.
 * RPG Mechanics Verse -- Done very subtly, but played completely straight and not for laughs. Specifically, it's a Tabletop RPG Mechanics Verse, with gods and other extremely powerful entities in the role of Game Master. For example, Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies is a known and well-understood phenomenon in adventuring circles, and No Fair Cheating is a codified fundamental principle of magic, on par with the Laws of Thermodynamics.
 * Schedule Slip -- The weekly schedule (not updated since 2009) claims that MU updates 3x a week, whereas actual updates come more like 3x a month. The author apologized for it at the end of an incentive story.
 * To elaborate, the entire schedule slip saga went like this: Started out daily. Then the author missed a Sunday or two. Then the author decided to take weekends off and made it M-F. Then three times a week. Then to the "it updates when it updates" schedule. It's now on an "updates every 4th day"-schedule.
 * Rules Lawyering -- Hazel does this to justify her wargaming strategy and gets called on it.
 * Science Cannot Comprehend Phlebotinum -- Want to scientifically analyse the world of Tales Of MU? "Well, this is where a lot of the unique undead, cursed artifacts, and tainted lands come from. This is how magical abominations are created." Plus, space isn't always orthogonal: distances can shift between points, and some areas are bigger inside than when measured without. The faery realm exists alongside the mundane world, the realm of giants exists "above" it, and there are gods aplenty. Elves don't need to breathe. And the world itself may be sitting in a magical pocket universe rather than orbiting a star...
 * Set Swords to Stun -- Justified Trope in Callahan's classes, as the roster would be drastically reduced after each class if they used their real weapons instead of the nonlethal "mocked" versions they use.
 * She Is Not My Girlfriend -- Mack even protests that the nymph she's having sex with isn't her girlfriend, she's her owner. Apparently that's better...somehow. This does set the stage for someone else to become her acknowledged girlfriend once she's less terrified of the term.
 * Shout-Out -- Lots of them.
 * The most pervasive and obvious is to Dungeons & Dragons, as the story takes place in "the future" of a D&D-esque medieval fantasy setting, with many of its tropes used, subverted, or played with in the contemporary, multi-racial setting. Nonhuman races are somewhat-recognizable versions of various D&D creatures, with standard D&D premises about them often treated as humans' stereotypes of those races. Vancian Magic is not used, but magical weapons and such are quite similar to D&D magical items...except when they aren't what they sound like. For example, Rings of Protection are contraceptive items.
 * In a more direct fashion, MU's health facility is named the Gygax Memorial Healing Center.
 * See Leeroy Jenkins above.
 * Smug Snake -- Vice-Chancellor Embries,.
 * Soul Jar -- A rare non-sinister variety: if a nymph is killed, she reappears in the field she's bound to. To truly kill her would require destroying her field first.
 * Spock Speak -- Dee.
 * Squick: Invoked on a few occasions:
 * Viktor and Steff's rougher play, to the others.
 * People who know her cringe whenever Amaranth starts discussing animal cognition research.
 * Mack has a deeply-ingrained dislike of violence, which has been one of her major handicaps in Callahan's class.
 * Standard Female Grab Area -- Subverted in Y1-473, when.
 * Stealth Pun -- These show up every now and then, such as a comment from Hazel in Y2-82 about her wargaming strategy:


 * The Stoic -- Dee.
 * Straight Man:
 * Despite being neither, the humor-impaired Mack (especially with Amaranth).
 * More literally, Ian.
 * Strawman Political -- Generally averted. Plenty of characters with different viewpoints on any number of topics are portrayed quite realistically:
 * Mackenzie, a sheltered girl who spent most of her life living with a very parochial Knight Templar grandmother, gets the "fun" of being both a victim of discrimination and bigotry and occasionally making ignorant remarks that offend and horrify her friends. That being said, she will allow herself to be proven wrong, unlike your garden-variety bigot.
 * Played straighter in a non-canon filler story by a guest author, with anthropology students treated as patronizing jackasses who need killin' because they're just so darn annoying that even all-loving pacifists will countenance their murder.
 * Played comedically straight by the newspaper editor and the unnamed feminist who objected to a bake sale by the school's equivalent of a Gay/Straight Alliance.
 * Stupid Good -- Early on, Maliko seems to assume this about Mack.
 * Sympathy for the Devil -- At then end of Y2-85, Two gives a two-star review to the shop because it was very clean.
 * Sure Why Not -- A few world-building chapters have been constructed from questions submitted by readers through the story's discussion threads.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial:
 * Mack does not want to worship at Sooni's feet...or kiss her ass...or
 * A simultaneous use and inversion: For the first year and part of the second, whenever anyone asked about her mother's death, all Mack would say is "It wasn't my fault." Not very specific, but no one called her on how suspicious that sounded....
 * Take That -- Sums up approximately 68% of the Q&A responses quite accurately.
 * Talking Is a Free Action -- Subverted. Multiple paragraphs are often devoted to Mack's thoughts and observations to what's going on around her, but she is constantly being called out by those around her for "spacing out" when she does this.
 * This Is Reality -- For example, in the "Mask" chapter.
 * Transgender -- Steff. Played with in that, while Steff can "pass" just fine in human society, she looks like a Drag Queen among elves or those who've spent a lot of time with elves. This is made all the more tragic by the Culture Clash between the two culture's views on gender: human culture is dangerously transphobic, elvish culture not so much, but Steff has no hope of passing among elves, and they have little patience for her efforts anyway.
 * Time Dissonance -- Averted for long-lived races, used for the Fragile Speedster sylphs. Meriel makes a reference to "that time of the week".
 * Took a Level in Badass --, in small but definite increments as
 * Transparent Closet -- Mack, at first.
 * Trickster Mentor -- to Mack in the second year.
 * Troll Bridge -- Played entirely straight.
 * Tsundere -- Sooni
 * Uncanny Valley -- Elves can induce this in others, especially with the whole "not needing to breathe" thing.
 * Unreliable Narrator:
 * The story is told from Mack's first-person perspective, and she's often clearly less than honest with herself, let alone the reader. Subjectivity creeps in even when it's not obvious.
 * telling her version of her most evil moment takes a hard left turn at "unreliable" and heads straight on into Delusionalville. What makes this example even more interesting is that she told it to a character who is a mind-reader; therefore clearly believes her version of the story.
 * Any time Puddy opens her mouth.
 * The Q&A session, in which the author invited readers to post questions for certain characters, who then answered them, takes this trope to extremes. Some characters are more unreliable than others, of course...
 * Webcomic Time -- Hundreds of chapters and more than five books equal up to something under or around five weeks of the first year of school.
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy -- Ian wants to learn to use fire magic, not because he has any personal interest in it, but because his father is a big fire wizard.
 * What Could Possibly Go Wrong? / Tempting Fate -- Lampshaded in "Brimstone?".
 * What the Hell, Hero? -- Dee's pretty good at this, when necessary, but has also been on the receiving end.
 * Wicked Cultured -- Mack Daddy.
 * Wizarding School -- One of the best in the country!
 * Wouldn't Hit a Girl -- Played with in a rather twisted way with
 * Wrong Genre Savvy -- Sooni is convinced that she's the protagonist of a Shojo manga.
 * You Keep Telling Yourself That -- Mack does this a lot to in Y1-472 and 473,.