Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
|
|
 
|
"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
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. Is dating a half-ogre prince. She plans on going to be 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. Was designed to want to do what she's told, then set free when her creator's wife was creeped out. Has to be given specific instructions on how to act like a normal person. Replaces Puddy (see below) as Mack's roommate.
- Ian, the most prominent full human in the story. Acts as the representative of normallacy.
The story also has a couple major antagonists:
- 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. Eventually all but disappears from the story. 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. Characterization follows a similar path to Puddy: starts out as The Libby, but her actual social skills turn out to be quite limited, her entourage is actually composed of slaves. (This is kept secret, as legally slaves wouldn't be allowed to attend college.) Unlike Puddy, hasn't fallen off the radar: Current characterization veers from comic to terrifying, as she tyrannizes her "friends," especially the sympathetically-portrayed Kai.
The story can be found here. (Definitely NSFW!)
Provides examples of:
- Alternate Character Interpretation (According to the author this is by design.)
- Artificial Human (Two)
- Artifact Of Doom
- Author Appeal
- 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.)
- Butt Monkey (Mackenzie, despite being the main character)
- Cat Girl
- 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.)
- 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.
- Harlowe is the non-human dorm, hang-ups are typically species-specific.
- 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.
- 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)
- Fantastic Racism as a recurring theme.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture
- Filler/Filler Strips (Since the series is updated daily, some parts seem written just to make the deadline, recently 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.)
- 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.)
- 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)
- I Feel Angry (Two)
- I Just Want To Be Normal (Mack)
- If Its You Its Okay (Sooni to Mack)
- Im A Humanitarian (Ogres, and a temptation for Mack)
- 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 tendancy to enter a state of cannibalistic frenzy if she doesn't drink the blood of virgins often enough.
- In Which A Trope Is Described, a subversion in that the descriptions are misleading.
- Jerk Jock (Mack hates Skrimish players, though Amaranth of course is more understanding.)
- 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)
- 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)
- Misaimed Fandom (Despite Puddy several times approaching Rape The Dog 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 extreme: (the "nerd" character is a gorgeous nymph, naked except for her nerd-glasses.)
- 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.
- Power Perversion Potential (healing magic, Mack's invulnerability)
- Psycho Lesbian (Puddy)
- Rape As Drama (multiple occurrences, played with frightening realism)
- Rape Is Love
- 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)
- So Bad Its Horrible (Not the series itself, but the gaiden series More 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...)
- Spock Speak (Dee)
- Time Dissonance (Averted)
- The Stoic (Dee)
- The Woobie (Two)
- This Is Reality (for example, in the "Mask" chapter)
- 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.)
- Wall Banger (The extent of the characters' flaws has royally pissed off many readers at one point or another.)
- Webcomic Time
- 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
- Wrong Genre Savvy (Sooni)
|
|
