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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 print editions.

The story revolves around the life (mostly the love life) of Mackenzie "Mack" Blaise, a self-hating half-demon freshman student at Magisterius University, a college of enchantment in an alternate universe where Dungeons And 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 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.

The series has a well-developed cast of recurring characters, but the "core" cast is roughly as follows:

• Mack, of course. We eventually learn that her hang-ups are due to the fact that her mother died when she was nine, leaving Mack to be raised by her demon-hunter grandmother. There are suggestions that some of granny's decisions were justified, but she also made some clear cock-ups, including death threats to get Mack to behave.
• Amaranth, a nymph with an excessive need to see the good in everyone. In spite of this flaw, on the whole she turns out to be an extraordinarily good influence on Mack. Eventually revealed that her personality is a result of a socially-awkward twelve year old interfering with her creation process. He wanted Amaranth basically to be a savior-of-nerds, then was too afraid to have any contact with her, leaving her in the dark about the whole thing.
• Steff, a transgendered half-elf necromancy student. She is dating a half-ogre prince and plans on becoming his Torture Technician after college. Steff's characterization uses a number of villain tropes in a hard-to-quantify way, as we never see her in the ogre kingdom, and her time in college is the main story as opposed to a flashback, prequel, etc. See various villain origin tropes like Start Of Darkness and Freudian Excuse. Sympathetic POV is also important here.
• 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 initally 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.
• Ian, the most prominent full 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, which proves to be helpful when Mack is possessed. 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. Her reign as a serious antagonist comes to an end pretty quickly in-story, though in terms of publishing/writing time this takes much longer. She all but disappeared from the story for a long while. Word Of God is that the author didn't feel the original situation was sustainable.
• Sooni, fox-girl from the series' Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Japan. Her characterization follows a similar path to Puddy: she starts out as The Libby, 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.) Unlike Puddy, she hasn't fallen off the radar: Current characterization veers from comic to terrifying, as she tyrannizes her "friends," especially the sympathetically-portrayed Kai.
• Mur-Si, owner of Tender Mercy's, a shop that specialises in preparing human flesh for consumption. Of indeterminate race—she 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 either enslave Mack, or breed her to one of her male pets so she can have a female.
• A full blooded demon known only as Mack Daddy. He's been seen in bonus stories with Mack's mother, and has so far appeared to Mack once in a dream. Immediately after the dream, all Mack's toiletries were spiked with something designed to bring out her evil side. His exact motivations are unknown, but they probably ain't good.

The story can be found here. (Definitely NSFW! Unless, ya know, nobody at your work reads English? Actually what the heck are you doing HERE if you're at work anyway? Get back to your slave labours, corporate grunt!)

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Provides examples of:

• Alternate Character Interpretation (According to the author this is by design.)
• Anything That Moves (or nearly so, for the nymphs; justified by the fact that they live on sexual energy)
• Artificial Human (Two)
• Artifact Of Doom ( the pitchfork)
• Author Appeal (Pretty much everyone in the story's universe seems to be 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 transsexual is really like, drawn mostly from the author's own childhood experiences.)
• Battle Butler (Maliko and Suzi - both secretly detest most of Sooni's antics but will fight for her in an instant; also, Maliko is more genuinely malicious than Sooni)
• Big Bad: Mercy has only appeared once, but she could quite possibly end up being this, as she apparently wants to acquire the main character to breed an army of demonspawn to take over the world.
• Blessed With Suck: Mack can only be harmed by magic...in a setting where magic items are more common than concluded plot threads.
• 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.)
• Butt Monkey (Mackenzie, Two to a degree in the early chapters)
• Cat Girl (Maliko, Suzi, and Kai have a decidedly feline appearance, unlike Sooni who is mostly human except for her tail)
• 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")
• 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: (Viktor is described as better looking than Belinda.)
• Defeat Means Friendship: (Subverted with Sooni's relationship to Mack)
• 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.)
• Dungeon Punk
• Dysfunction Junction: Apparently the main criteria for being assigned to Harlowe Dorm is being monumentally screwed up, by human standards at least. If they're not hung up about sex in some obscure way or violently racist then they've likely got even worse problems.
• 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.
• Epiphany Therapy: Mackenzie goes from being ultra shy and sexually hung up to obnoxious and promiscuous in the course of three to four weeks.
• Expospeak (Lots. And lots. And lots of it. Especially whenever Mackenzie makes it to class, in which parts the reader is treated to many many paragraphs of world-building, or the author's pet theories.)
• Fan Fic (Subject of a story-within-a-story parody. The author used to "forbid" people to write fanfiction for the series. Now, Fan Fic 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, as Harlowe Dorm is where most of the non-human students are housed and is generally looked down upon by the rest of the campus).
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture
• Filler/Filler Strips (Since the series is updated roughly daily, some parts seem written just to make the deadline, with one entire part being devoted to Amaranth and Mack walking a few streets, getting on a subway-equivalent, getting out, and walking into a building.)
  • The author's actually admitted in the comments section that she does deliberately pad the text if it doesn't meet an arbitrary 1500 word minimum.
• Filleritis (The leadup to just what would happen if Mack didn't feed.)
• Flanderization (Mack and her submissiveness/love of abuse. Also, Steff's long series of excessively boneheaded moves and general idiocy. Also, Sooni went from being eccentric to a total fruit loop)
• Flat Earth Atheist (The Arkhanites - more like Flat Earth Solipsists, but close enough)
• Friend (With Benefits) To All Living Things (Amaranth, and initially Barley)
• Half Human Hybrid (Mack and others)
• Horrible Judge Of Character (Amaranth)
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today (Yes, Mack, you have. Every other chapter, and to all of your girlfriends.)
  • To be fair, while this is still a recurring theme, it is toned down a bit in the latter half of the published stories.
    • The baton has been passed to Feejee.
• 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.)
• 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.)
• I Feel Angry (Two)
• I Just Want To Be Normal (Mack)
• If Its You Its Okay (Sooni to Mack)
• Im A Humanitarian (Mermaids, ogres, and a temptation for Mack. The 'gray' elf Mercy also runs a shop catering specifically to races who feed on humans.)
• In The Blood (Mack is convinced that she's irredeemably evil, despite having no way to back up the belief other than her father being a demon.)
  • Well...that and her tendency to enter a state of cannibalistic frenzy if she doesn't drink the blood of virgins often enough.
  • That, plus the decidedly bad ends that have met all of the previous half-demon students have been heavily implied to be because they eventually gave in to or embraced their infernal natures.
  • And that she is so vulnerable to divine energy that a random person invoking the name or symbol of the god she has been taught from birth is the arbiter of all that is just and good causes her severe pain at the least and could kill her at the worst. Even trying to pray to him puts her in extreme pain. That sort of thing can giva a kid a complex.
• In Which A Trope Is Described, a subversion in that the descriptions are misleading.
• Jerk Jock (Mack hates Skirmish players, though Amaranth of course is more understanding.)
• Jerkass (The Leighton twins. Mackenzie borders on being one whenever she gets into an argument...which is frequently.)
• Knight Templar Parent (It's debatable whether Mackenzie's grandmother is this, or was simply doing what was necessary to keep her granddaughter from growing up to be a rampaging demon.)
• Kryptonite Factor (Mack and holy symbols, Mack and abuse)
• Lolcats (A Running Gag in the series is that Suzi is only marginally fluent in Pax, and usually ends up speaking in Lolcat phrases)
• Lolicon (Implied to be a motive for Two's creator designing her to be completely hairless except for her head)
• Magical Computer (played with: students use crystal balls to "gaze the ethernet")
• Magitek (the aforementioned crystal balls, as well as pretty much all the technology you'd expect in a modern university, only powered by magic)
• 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)
• Misaimed Fandom (Despite Puddy several times approaching Moral Event Horizon moments and it being made pretty clear she's a 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)
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much
• Nerds Are Sexy (Taken to an extreme: the "nerd" character is a gorgeous nymph, naked except for her nerd-glasses.)
• No Periods Period (averted with a vengeance)
• 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 (Ian usually comes off as this)
• 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 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. 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.
  • Brutally subverted with Steff, who's a half-elf, and so considers her own almost lifelike drawing to be crude doodles and her boyfriend's skillful harpsichord playing to be terrible. This is besides Steff's many, many crippling psychological problems, many of which have to do with her feeling inadequate compared to her elven relatives.
  • Also brutally 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 Ax Crazy. This troper's personal favorite is 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 M Universe, Our Elves are More Fucked Up
• Power Perversion Potential (healing magic, Mack's invulnerability)
• Psycho Lesbian (Puddy)
• Rape As Drama (multiple occurrences, played with frightening realism)
• Rape Is Love
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old - (Subverted by Dee, an elven character who looks about the same age as any other normal college student... because she is about the same age. Elves live longer than humans, but they don't also grow and mature more slowly like traditional fantasy elves.)
• 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. But the evidence continues to mount...)
• Romantic Two Girl Friendship (It's briefly suggested that Sooni—local representative of the story's Japan Fantasy Counterpart Culture—has this as part of her cultural psyche. Needless to say, the actual story goes far, far beyond this.)
• Schoolgirl Lesbians
• 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.)
• Shout Out (Lots of them)
• Small Name Big Ego (Alexandra Erin's reply to criticisms of the Mack character included instructions to either "get off her back" or stop reading; those adding unflattering tropes to this page have been banned from her forums)
  • (And don't even try to mention how the United States is outgrowing its racism-laced past these days. The response is likely to be a profanity-laced torrent of insults culminating in an instant ban.)
• Smug Snake: Vice-Chancellor Embries, nearly literally.
• So Bad Its Horrible (Not the series itself, but the gaiden seriesMore Tales of MU, which is nowhere near as popular with the fans for various reasons: a much less interesting protagonist, a smaller (and much less interesting) supporting cast, and the prominence of Iason, a character who shows all the attributes of a certifiable sociopath except the tendency towards physical violence. But the author sure seems to like Iason, for some reason...)
  • To be fair, Iason's faults have been pointed out by characters in the story, Jamie just chooses to ignore them. Of course, the series does seem to offer many situations where Jamie's sensible reaction to Iason being controlling, misogynistic, or an asshole are reinterpreted by Iason to be completely irrational, with little to no consequences for either character.
  • And for some, the main series.
• Spock Speak (Dee)
• 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 will occasionally order her to date and/or fuck somebody.)
• Time Dissonance (Averted for long-lived races, used for the Fragile Speedster sylphs. Meriel makes a reference to "that time of the week.)
• The Stoic (Dee)
• The Woobie (Two)
• This Is Reality (for example, in the "Mask" chapter)
• Troll Bridge
• 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.)
  • Not to mention when Barley tells her version of her most evil moment. That one takes a hard left turn at "unreliable" and heads straight on into Delusionalville.
  • Although the Barley example is interesting, as she told it to a character who is an incredibly gifted psychic-therefore Barley clearly believes her version of the story utterly.
• Wall Banger (The extent of the characters' flaws has royally pissed off many readers at one point or another.)
  • (Mackenzie is a serious lightweight, and becomes very plastered very quickly—literally falling-down drunk—when she drinks. But when the plot requires it, she's completely capable of perfectly clear-headed logical and moral reasoning, reaching the correct conclusion only moments before passing out. I wish I could do that!)
• Webcomic Time (Hundreds of chapters and more than five books equal up to something under or around two months 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 The Hell Hero (Dee's pretty good at this, when necessary.)
  • (She's also been on the receiving end at least once.)
• Wholesome Crossdresser (At least, Steff appears to be one when we first meet her. Then later on we find out that she's got multiple severe psychological issues, plus a nasty drug potion habit.) Of course, nobody at MU stays "wholesome" for more than a few minutes after we start learning their backstory, with the possible exception of Ian.
• Wizarding School
• Wouldnt Hit A Girl (Played with in a rather twisted way with Ian - see Power Perversion Potential, above.)
• Wrong Genre Savvy (Sooni)
• Yum Yum (Mackenzie's first taste of honey.)

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