Tales of MU/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Archive Binge -- Mack's first year at MU ends with ch. 496; the second year is up to ch. 85. Also: 117 chapters in Jamie's Tale, 12 chapters of As The Underworld Turns, and 77 chapters of Other Tales (assorted side stories).
  • Ethnic Scrappy -- Shiel the kobold started out this way, with frequent race-baiting and Straw Feminist arguments that bordered on Insane Troll Logic. She seems to be growing out of it lately, though, which is making her into a more interesting and likable character.
  • Fan Nickname -- "Mack Daddy", for Mack's absent demon father (he's never given a proper name, though in the chapters where he eventually appeared, Mackenzie's mum and the character tags referred to him as "The Man")
  • Mary Sue: Dan Harris, (AKA Aidan), for no apparent reason other than to provide a way for the author to heavy-handedly discredit Martha Blaise's half-demon-child-rearing skills.
  • Misaimed Fandom
    • Despite Puddy several times approaching Moral Event Horizon moments, and being a generally vile person, she has an extremely loyal fan-following on the forums, even in the face of hostility to and attacks on other fan favorites.
    • The Man. As outright evil and literally demonic as he is portrayed, his Wicked Cultured is often mistaken for Affably Evil.
  • Moral Event Horizon -- Mercy waves to everyone else from deep inside it.
  • Strangled by the Red String -- A very odd version of it, in that Mack is not going to be allowed to be straight, or celibate, or monogamous by turns. Not only does the story conspire to get her into sexual situations, Amaranth even ordered her to perform a specific sex act with Ian on demand, at any time he wanted, after Mack admitted wanting to do so. Ian balked. He got over it.
  • Unfortunate Implications
    • Some note that Mack's aversion to ever having children seems to imply that if you have "bad" genes, it's a moral imperative not to have children and pass them on.
    • The proper reaction to being horribly abused is to fetishize the abuse.
    • The "accurate" portrayal of being trans is completely lacking in dysphoria... the thing that, in legitimate circles, defines being trans. Steff even enthuses "I like my penis!", a sentence that would make anyone who actually identified as female but was trapped in a male body wince.
  • The Woobie -- Two.