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Tales of MU: Difference between revisions
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* Mur-Si (also "Mercy"), owner of Tender Mercy's, a shop that specializes in [[I'm a Humanitarian|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 [[Chekhov MIA|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 [[Literal Minded|took it literally]] and dreamed up a creature that looks like [[Exactly What It Says
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.
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* [[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 [[Dungeons and Dragons
* [[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.
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* [[Big Bad]] -- It's not entirely certain that the overall story will have one, but so far, {{spoiler|Mercy, Mack Daddy, and Chancellor Embries}} have been the most likely candidates for various reasons, with {{spoiler|Mercy's plans to enslave Mack and use her to breed an army of demonspawn}} as the most obvious plan.
* [[Big Eater]] -- The hobbit-like burrow gnomes.
* [[Blessed
* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]:
** {{spoiler|Feejee}}.
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* [[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
* [[Cute Monster Girl]] -- Several. Subverted with the half-ogres, as Victor is described as better looking than Belinda.
* [[Deadpan Snarker]] -- Dee.
{{quote| '''Amaranth:''' One of [[Anything That Moves|[Steff's]]] friends is a virgin! What are the odds?<br />
'''Dee:''' I would say abysmal. But apparently they were high enough. }}
* [[Defeat Means Friendship]] -- Subverted with Sooni's relationship to Mack...[[Zig
* [[Devil in Disguise]]: {{spoiler|The Man}}
* [[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 [[Flanderization|Flanderized]] in the mind of the teacher that she and Mackenzie have together, to the point where he's almost verbally abusive to her.
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* [[Everybody Has Lots of Sex]] -- Starting with the [[Extreme Omnisexual|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. {{spoiler|When put to the test, she doesn't react remotely how she expects.}}
* [[Exactly What It Says
* [[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]]:
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* [[In Which a Trope Is Described]] -- A subversion in that the descriptions are misleading...[[Double Subversion|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, {{spoiler|or at least something unfortunate she's trying to move beyond, when we see her later}}.
* [[Jerk
* [[Jerk
* [[Jerkass]]:
** The Leighton twins, especially Tara.
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* [[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
* [[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.
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** A transgender half-elf named Steff Johnson.
** The chapter titles and subtitles often go this route.
* [[Rape
* [[Rape Is Love]]:
** Puddy, frequently.
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** 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 {{spoiler|Gillian Gottmörder}} and she received an imperial pardon for {{spoiler|three counts of attempted deicide (one of which succeeded, but they don't have a law to cover that), two counts of genocide, five counts of high treason against the Imperial Republic (which normally merits summary execution), and her various "petty" murders and property destructions. She also apparently stopped at least two attempts by the giants to retake the world.}} Callahan takes [[Badass]] [[Up to Eleven]].
* [[Ridiculously Human Robot]] -- [[Playing
* [[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 [[Played for Laughs|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]] -- [http://www.alexandraerin.com/?page_id=586 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 "[[Duke Nukem Forever
* [[Rules Lawyer|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...
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* [[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 ''[[
*** In a more direct fashion, MU's health facility is named the Gygax Memorial Healing Center.
** See [[Leeroy Jenkins]] above.
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** 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
* [[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]]:
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