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"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 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 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 transgendered 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 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 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 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 (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 some fans call (the) Mack Daddy. He's been seen in bonus flashback stories with Mack's mother and has appeared to Mack twice in 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.
The story can be found here. (Definitely Not Safe For Work! 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 labors, corporate grunt!)
This story provides examples of:
- Actual Pacifist — Amaranth and other nymphs.
- Alternate Character Interpretation — According to the author this is by design.
- Anti Climax — 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. But when we finally actually meet her in-story, 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.
- Anything That Moves — Or nearly so, for the nymphs; justified by the fact that they live on sexual energy.
- Archive Binge — Over 400 chapters at the time of this edit.
- Artificial Human — Two.
- Artifact Of Doom — The pitchfork.
- 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 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.
- Berserk Button — A number of characters - it's a tense bunch.
- Big Bad — Mercy has only appeared twice, but she could quite possibly end up being this, as she apparently wants to use Mack to breed an army of demonspawn to take over the world.
- Mack Daddy is also a good candidate.
- 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.
- 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.
- But I Can't Be Pregnant! — Hazel is in severe denial, even claiming that it's impossible because she was on top.
- Butt Monkey — Mackenzie, Two to a degree in the early chapters.
- Cat Girl — Maliko, Suzi, and Kai have a decidedly feline appearance. Sooni, although technically a foxgirl, fits the stereotypical "catgirl" image (human but with prominent fox ears and a 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". (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.
- Defeat Means Friendship — Subverted with Sooni's relationship to Mack. Except when it isn't.
- 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.
- A lot of the handling of Fantastic Racism involves analogues to real groups, like the Dark Elves to Middle Easterners, complete with corresponding ethnic slurs like "cowlhead" and "spider jockey".
- Domestic Abuse — Puddy and Mariel. Puddy and Mack, while roommates and "friends". Ian's father and mother. 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.
- Dungeons And Dragons — Apparently this a D&D setting's future, with some quirks; this is pretty much confirmed when one character comments that magical items used to be very expensive and only adventurers and the rich could have them, but not any more.
- 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.
- 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 very socially distant and sexually hung up to obnoxious and promiscuous in the course of three to four weeks, when in reality improvements are incremental and slowly advance over a long period.
- Evil Is Cool — Steff is deeply fond of this idea. When put to the test, she doesn't react remotely how she expects.
- Expospeak — Lots...and lots...and lots of it whenever Mackenzie makes it to class. In those parts the reader is treated to many many paragraphs of world-building.
- 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.
- 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")
- 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 — 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 is updated very frequently; 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 admitted in the comments section that she does deliberately pad the text if it doesn't meet an arbitrary 1500 word minimum.
- 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. Arguably due to the viewpoint character getting to know herself and them better.
- Flat Earth Atheist — The Arkhanites - more like Flat Earth Solipsists, but close enough.
- Friend (With Benefits) To All Living Things — Amaranth, and initially Barley.
- 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.
- Gone Horribly Wrong — It's eventually revealed that Amaranth's 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. Not "horribly" wrong, but it's definitely caused problems.
- Half Human Hybrid — Mack and others.
- Hammer Space — Amaranth. Especially overt in her case, as unlike most Hammer Space users, Amaranth doesn't even have clothing as a supposed hiding place for items she puts "away".
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today — Yes, Mack, you have. Every other chapter early on, especially to the woman you're hopelessly in love with.
- Horrible Judge Of Character — Amaranth is often too optimistic, while Mack is paranoid at times.
- 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.
- 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 It's You, It's Okay — Sooni to Mack.
- I'm 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 and other intelligent races.
- The Mack Daddy invokes this trope almost word for word.
- The Immodest Orgasm — Inventively and humorously played with in ch. 412. At the conclusion of Mack and Amaranth's spanking session in the S&M club, Mack orgasms so intensely that she sets herself on fire...which trips the club's sprinkler system: a magical thunderstorm over the stage.
- In The Blood — Mack is convinced that she's irredeemably evil, despite several people close to her firmly disagreeing.
- Notably, all of the previous half-demon students at the university have come to bad ends; in the setting, half-demons are usually institutionalized.
- 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 Khersis puts her in extreme pain. That sort of thing can give a kid a complex.
- Her grandmother doesn't help things when she tells Mack in ch. 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. Cheery, neh?
- Her father is a metaphysical embodiment of evil, if it works like D&D. So she might be "evil" in the sense that she is partially made of it.
- 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.
- Belinda, though this seems more tragic in her case. Or at least something unfortunate she's trying to move beyond, when we see her later.
- Jerkass — The Leighton twins. Mackenzie borders on being one whenever she gets into an argument...which is frequently.
- Karma Houdini — Possibly averted by Leda. In a side story, she rapes Steff in a fountain. During Veil, she is murdered, her body found in the very same fountain. It remains to be seen whether Steff or Victor will become suspects.
- 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 — Mack and holy symbols, Mack and abuse.
- Lawful Evil — Mercy's a very scary example of this trope.
- Leeroy Jenkins — Subverted. Mackenzie's lawyer is named Lee Jenkins, an obvious Shout Out, but he's a calm, competent good lawyer.
- 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 Two's creator designing her to be completely hairless except for her head. Two does later deny that her owner used her sexually.
- Love You And Everybody — Used straight and played with.
- 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.
- Amaranth does at times find it hard to love everybody, especially those who mean ill towards Mack.
- Barley seems to have thrown this idea to the wind.
- 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.
- Mama Bear — Kinky relationship and hippie pacifism notwithstanding, Amaranth is very protective of Mack. Chapters 409 and on have carved that fact in stone.
- 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.
- 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 the only one who gets much attention gets it specifically because she was foreign royalty.
- 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.
- Mood Swinger — Sooni. Someone needs to get that girl on some mood-stabilizers, stat.
- Moral Event Horizon — Mercy waves to everyone else from deep inside it.
- My Beloved Smother — Sooni's cosplay with Kai is all over this...until she nearly kills Kai.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much
- Names To Run Away From Really Fast — While most of the more intimidating characters have innocuous names, this is inverted with a vengeance in the case of "Mercy"; her scenes have 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 — Averted with a vengeance.
- Odd Friendship — Many would qualify, but the most eyebrow-lifting so far is Caron and Nae, a dwarf and kobold who are lovers, although their races are blood enemies.
- 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 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. 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Power Perversion Potential — Healing magic, Mack's invulnerability - and how.
- Psycho Lesbian — Puddy.
- Punny Name — A fire-emitting half-demon named Blaise; a mermaid named Feejee; a hermaphrodite half-elf named Steff Johnson.
- Ralph Wiggum — Keri LaBelle. Chocolate misconceptions, anyone?
- Rape As Drama — Multiple occurrences, played with frightening realism.
- Rape Is Love — Puddy and Hazel
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old — 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 chapter 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. Her real name is Gillian Gottmörder and she received an imperial pardon for 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.
- Romantic Two Girl Friendship — It's briefly suggested that Sooni, the local representative of the story's Japan Fantasy Counterpart Culture, has this as part of her cultural psyche.
- Schedule Slip — Despite not having a set schedule, this has happened quite a bit recently. The author apologized for it at the end of an incentive story.
- 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.
- 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; supposedly, some adding "unflattering" tropes to this page have been banned from her forums.
- Smug Snake — Vice-Chancellor Embries, nearly literally.
- Spock Speak — Dee.
- Squick — Some readers will be uncomfortable with one or another depicted lesbian, gay, BDSM, or other sex act, not to mention off-screen things like Victor and Steff's rougher play. In-story, many characters appear to share some of these reactions.
- Also in-story, people who know her cringe whenever Amaranth starts discussing animal cognition research. She's forbidden from "working" with unintelligent animals.
- Others will be squicked by the mechanisms of goblin reproduction in a side-arc. They chew their way out, and the mother apparently feeds them by cutting off bits of her own flesh.
- My impression was that the Goblin spawn chewed at their mother's flesh post-natally too, there was no mention of cutting.
- Straight Man — Despite being neither, the humor-impaired Mack (especially with Amaranth).
- 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.
- Strawman Political — 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.
- To be fair, 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 idiots who need killin' because they're just so darn annoying that even all-loving pacifists will countenance their murder.
- The Stoic — Dee.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial — Mack does not want to worship at Sooni's feet...or kiss her ass...or lick her pussy while being called filth...
- A simultaneous use and inversion: Whenever anyone asks about her mother's death, all Mack will say is "It wasn't my fault." Not very specific, but no one's yet called her on how suspicious that sounds.
- Take That — Sums up approximately 68% of the Q&A responses quite accurately.
- The Woobie — Two.
- This Is Reality — For example, in the "Mask" chapter.
- Transsexual — Steff, played-with in that while Steff is pretty enough to pass as a girl without any help in human society, she looks like a hilariously un-convincing 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 human and elven ideals of sexuality and gender. Contemporary human culture is very homophobic, so much so that a Glamour Failure off-campus can be dangerous. Elvish culture is very open and accepting of homosexuality, but Steff has no hope of passing among elves, and they have little patience for her efforts anyway.
- Dee's people are more accepting of transsexuals, at least at first blush. Among the subterranean elves is a 'third gender', called the "Halfkind". Halfkind are revered in deep-elf culture as "ornamental persons" who have no responsibilities, and as a result precious few real rights. Dee attempts to justify this by explaining that Halfkind are simply not competent to look after themselves. For the most part she's right; every Halfkind seen thus far has been decidedly bent mentally, but neither Dee nor anyone else among her people bothers to examine whether or not this is an innate trait of Halfkindness or a byproduct of the kind of lives they are forced to live.
- Not to mention Mercy, who was recently revealed to be a halfkind as well, and is insane in that special way that only the most sinister of villains can be...
- Time Dissonance — Averted for long-lived races, used for the Fragile Speedster sylphs. Meriel makes a reference to "that time of the week".
- Troll Bridge — Played entirely straight.
- 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.
- 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. What makes this example even more interesting is that she told it to a character who is a mind-reader; therefore Barley clearly believes her version of the story.
- 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...
- Wall Banger — 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 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. She's also been on the receiving end, recently.
- Wholesome Crossdresser — Steff appears to be one when we first meet her. Later on we find out that she's got multiple severe psychological issues, plus a nasty
drug potion habit.) Of course, even the good-hearted characters in MU fail to stay completely "wholesome" for more than a few minutes after we start learning their backstory, with the possible exception of Two.
- Wizarding School — One of the best in the country!
- Wouldn't Hit A Girl — Played with in a rather twisted way with Ian - see Power Perversion Potential, above.
- Wrong Genre Savvy — Sooni is convinced that she's the protagonist of a Shojo manga.
- Your Mileage May Vary — Considered by some to be awful, by others to be awesome.
- Yum Yum — Mackenzie's first taste of honey.
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