…or, The Prologue’s Last Gleaming
Even with my coaching, Marlot still beat Missy handily, but it was a good game all the same.
Well, I had fun, anyway. It seemed like Missy did, too.
We all went back and forth about whether we wanted to just go to the food court that evening, or give the dining hall another try. In the end, we decided to stick with the plan of seeing how each meal was at least once.
There was a larger group from Harlowe there for dinner. The golem, the loudmouthed dwarfblood, the snake man, and the dark-haired girl were all still there. The nymphs were gone, but now a half-cyclops, a sylph, a girl who had to be at least half ogre, a kobold, and a chubby girl with horns on her head were also there. I couldn’t tell what sex the kobold was. I knew it had something to do with the way they wore their vests, but I could never remember how that went.
I couldn’t help noticing that the sylph and the half-cyclops were giving the dark-haired girl dirty looks when she wasn’t looking. I also couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t seem to have any food. She looked pretty uncomfortable. She’d cleaned herself up a bit, though, which was good.
Well, it wasn’t any of my business, anyway, but it made me feel better for her. She’d apparently just taken a little more time to unwind from the trip. It turned out that she did know how to use makeup, after all.
I think my eye kept catching on her because of the underlying ugliness of the scene I’d witnessed when she first arrived. At the time, I’d just thought the freckly guy was a dick. I still did. But, I was starting to think of the incident itself as the first in a growing list of little warning signs.
I wasn’t naive. I knew that casual racism could be found everywhere. That didn’t mean I had to like it, though. It definitely didn’t mean I was comfortable with it.
“Ooh, look at the pretty sylph,” Marlot said, with no self-consciousness or awareness that other people might be self-conscious, when the sylph went up to get her third set of servings.
She wasn’t wrong by much, though; the sylph was beautiful. Apart from being by far and away the thinnest girl at the table, her blue-tinged skin and double set of arms gave her an exotic touch. Her hair was silvery blue, with darker blue highlights and a jeweled tiara setting the whole thing off.
“Oh, why hello there, exposed cooter,” Missy said. “Could that dress be any shorter? I’ve seen dowsers with less ass-crack showing than that.”
“Maybe she couldn’t afford any more fabric?” Marlot said. “It looks pretty fancy.”
“Hey, guys,” Juliana said, approaching our table. “Mind if I sit here? I don’t recognize anybody else, and I don’t want to eat alone.”
“Sure,” Missy said.
“Thanks,” Juliana said, putting down a tray with a salad and a cup of soup. “You guys talking about the sylph? Her hair is a total glam job. Look at it out of the corner of your eye and you’ll see. I bet it’s not even that long. I saw a dog girl earlier, though, that had really beautiful hair, up in these elaborate braids. I can guarantee you it was all real, too. I saw it up close.”
“Canids don’t really have hair,” I said. “They have fur.”
“Well, this one didn’t have fur,” Juliana said. “She had hair.” She cupped her hands over her head. “Up here. Gorgeous skin everywhere else. I asked her who did her hair, and she said she does it herself. So, I asked her if she was in the glamour and design program, but she’s apparently majoring in applied enchantments. Such a waste of talent.”
“Y’know, when I was here for early orientation, the tour guy told my parents the non-humans had their own eating arrangements,” Missy said.
I hadn’t heard anything about that. Everything I’d gotten had only mentioned the dining hall, the food court, the nexus store, and a sandwich and coffee shop by the towers.
“They were probably talking about the elves and dwarves,” I said. “It doesn’t bother you that they’re eating here, does it?”
“Well, no,” she said. “Not really. It’s just a little weird. I don’t even know what half of those people are.”
“Legs and hips,” Marlot said.
“What?” Missy asked.
“Well, the bottom half of them, anyway,” Marlot said. Missy and Juliana just stared at her. Being used to her weirdness, I hid my smirk. “The top half of them would be torsos, arms, and heads. And boobs, on some of them.”
“Huh?” Juliana asked.
“Forget about it,” I said. “Hey, do any of you know that girl Kira at all?”
“The Pelagian?” Juliana said.
“I’m pretty sure the term they prefer is Argenti,” Missy said. “And is she? I didn’t want to assume.”
I had my own thoughts about her coloration, but I kept them to myself.
“She’s in a single room, I think,” Marlot said. “Did you notice she doesn’t carry a weapon?”
“I didn’t see one at the meeting,” I said. “But a lot of people didn’t bring their weapons downstairs.”
“Didn’t she say she’s Anankan?” Juliana asked. “I thought they couldn’t carry weapons.”
“Well, that’s a bunch of shit,” Missy said. “If they don’t like the rules, they shouldn’t come here.”
“I think anybody can apply for an exemption, but it’s not automatic,” I said.
“I applied for one, before I realized my staff counted,” Marlot said.
I looked at her in surprise.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“It was no big thing,” she said. “It’s just… I was already taking my staff everywhere. I didn’t see the point to getting a sword or something.”
“Oh,” I said. “Anyway, do you guys really think that Kira’s an Anankhan?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what she said,” Juliana said.
“I wasn’t really paying attention,” Missy said. “So, are you a glamour major, Jules?”
“Double major,” she said. “G&D and illusion.”
“I never really figured out the difference,” Missy said.
“Nobody does,” Juliana said. “I don’t know why. It’s pretty simple. Illusion is creating unreal or quasi-real constructs, and glamour is just messing with the appearance characteristics of an existing object. They really don’t have much to do with each other, but people always link them together and so most people who are in one or the other are kinda anal about which one’s better.” She shrugged. “The way I see it, knowing both will make me more versatile and give me more options, with anything I want to do. And let’s face it, neither one of them’s exactly high sorcery.”
For the first time, Juliana was impressing me a little bit as a person. Then, I didn’t know her that well, but her first impression hadn’t been great. Anyway, she wouldn’t be the last person to throw an elven dick joke at me.
“So, Bowman,” she said, with a look on her face that just told me I was going to regret my moment of mental charity. “When you see a tree, can you just feel what it is?”
“Shut your racist mouth, you whore,” Marlot said, before I’d formulated an answer. “I can’t believe you just said that. Doesn’t this college have some kind of policy on hate speech?”
Juliana just sat there with her mouth opening and closing like a fish. Missy looked almost as stunned. After about ten seconds, Juliana picked up her tray and moved to another table.
“I thought you said he could,” Missy said to Marlot.
“Oh, he can,” Marlot said. “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t a racist whore for saying it.”
“That’s a bit hypocritical,” Missy said.
“What, just because nobody else is allowed to be a hypocrite, I can’t be one, too?” Marlot asked.
“You kind of have to get to know Marlot,” I told Missy. “Though, on that subject, Mar, it would be nice if you let people get to know you before you pulled that shit on them. Unless your goal all of a sudden isn’t to meet new people and make new friends.”
“Trick people into liking me,” Marlot said. “Check!”
I sighed.
After dinner, we watched TV in my room for a while. I had a pretty sweet set-up: my mom had built a loft for the bed, and I had an old couch underneath it. The rooms in Pelinor all came with cubby shelving in one of the walls, and I’d put the TV in there. It worked out well.
With a warmer box, a fridge, and a sink, I could have holed up there for most of the school year, but that would have defeated the purpose of getting such a great room to begin with.
Because the shelves were freshly stocked with everything my mother had thought I might want or need, we made pop corn and hot chocolate. Marlot being a caffeine junkie, we went down to the corner store twice before they closed so she could get herself another sixty-four ounce pop.
It was a good time. We tried to teach Missy a couple of card games, but you can’t really learn how to play one except by playing it and she was nervous about joining in before she knew how to play.
I didn’t try to raise the subject of Kira again. I had my suspicions about her, but that’s all they were, and I didn’t even know what it would mean if I was right.
There weren’t any laws against drow in the Imperium, as far as I knew, and even if there were, she’d be accorded full rights even with far less human ancestry than she had. The Khersian insistence on a strict interpretation of “human blood, human soul” resulted in a huge outcry any time any type of creature with discernable human ancestry was classed as a monster.
“So, what do you want to do tomorrow?” Missy asked as the evening wore on. I took it as a good sign that she still wanted to hang with us, and possibly that she was a little insecure. She wanted to make sure she was included.
I kind of wished that the dance I’d agreed to go to with her wasn’t a whole week away. That would make things awkward with all the girls I totally expected to throw themselves at me. No, but seriously, even just having a date between friends might complicate things if I did run into another prospect. It would probably be best to focus on her until I was sure where we’d end up.
“Hmm?” Missy said, when neither of us had answered after a while. I’d been thinking; Marlot looked like she was falling asleep.
“I don’t know about either of you, but I am totally sleeping in,” she said. “And actually, I do know about you, Missy, because if you wake me up before eleven I’m going to pelt you with shoes.”
“Yeah, I probably will, too,” Missy said.
“We can see if anybody wants to get in on a card game,” I said. “Or go explore campus some.”
“We could check out the woods,” Marlot said.
“You could teach me trees!” Missy said.
“How about we just take it easy?” I said. “Play some cards. If we attract anybody else, we can move over to the game room and get some darts games going. Or bowling. Whatever.”
As it happened, “whatever” pretty much summed it up. Except for the later start, Sunday was a lot like Saturday. We did hang out in the lounge for a bit, and got enough interest to play a few games of cups. Missy actually joined in for one. Mostly, though, people seemed to be doing their own thing or hanging out in the little groups they’d already formed themselves.
It wasn’t an exciting weekend, but then, it was only the first one. It did have one effect, though: by the end of it, the dorm, union, and grounds around them no longer felt like unfamiliar territory. The room I’d worked so hard to put together with my parents felt like it was mine. I felt like I belonged.
In just a single weekend, I had become a college student.
Just in time for class, too.
FIRST!!!
Ha ha, I love Marlot’s retort to Juliana. And they’ve already noticed Mariel and Trina’s dislike of Mack too.
Mook!
I like Marlot’s personality in general, but her faux-racism is starting to bother me. I know it’s just supposed to be a “between friends” sort of thing, but yeesh. Especially since she’s spreading it around so blatantly. And I don’t think I like Missy too much… Racism is teh ghey.
I have a feeling Jamie is way hotter than he thinks he is.
@Celia
Um, yeah- you really need to think a little more about what you’re commenting. Calling something gay (no matter how you spell it) to indicate that it is bad is just as insensitive as anything the characters you were dissing were saying.
Ok, Marlot wasn’t really bothering much before, but here comment to Juliana was kinda of rude considering she gives James a hard time about the same stereotype. Well she should have pointed out it was a stereotype she could have been politer about it.
Ooops- I meant Calia.
I can’t wait to see James’ reaction to the dance and Ian screaming.
Wow, top ten on my first MU comment and I totaly left out an ook or an arf;)
- “Trick people into liking me,” Marlot said. “Check!” –
That’s what we all do, Marlot. That’s what we all do.
“Well, it wasn’t any of my business, anyway, but it made me feel better for her. She’d apparently just taken a little more time to unwind from the trip. It turned out that she did know how to use makeup, after all.”
Oh Jamie, no you didn’t. Seriously, buddy, women are allowed to not wear make up. Superficiality for the win…?
Anyway, I’m loving MOARMU just as much as regular MU! (But I’ve noticed that MOARMU doesn’t always make the update list in the sidebar.) Really though, I just want to say that I really love both stories and really look forward to updates. Also, this was totally my first comment on either.
Do SO Want to smack Marlot right now. “Oh it’s okay for me to be an annoying twit with my quasi-racist teasing, but anyone else slips over their own ignorance just a scosh they’re irredeemably racist and deserving the harshest of rebukes.”
“There weren’t any laws against drow in the Imperium, as far as I knew, and even if there were, she’d be accorded full rights even with far less human ancestry than she had. The Khersian insistence on a strict interpretation of “human blood, human soul” resulted in a huge outcry any time any type of creature with discernable human ancestry was classed as a monster.”
First off: isn’t it discernible? (Along that line: isn’t it caffeine junkie, not junky?)
Second: Now that’s interesting. I know there’s some enmity between the dark and light elves, so Jamie’s unthinking racism there, especially considering his general tolerance in everything else, makes me think that his view is a lot more typical of elves than, say, Steff’s. It could just be human bigotry, though. Either way, I’m curious to see how this will develop.
Discrimination—
“Human blood, human soul” may
Not always apply
When it comes to cards
Jamie may have more than a
Few tricks up his sleeve
Regarding woodcraft
Jamie is out of his tree—
How ’bout elf bowling?
@All who commented on Marlot:
It is one thing to joke about race between friends, and quite another to blatantly pull out a racist streotype with someone you don’t know.
I used to be in the Army (still am, sorta: Nat Guard is fringe territory), and that type of situation cropped up all the time. The armed forces are about as mixed a group as you can get, and sure, you joke around saying someone in the group should go do the yardwork or what-not; but to have some schmuck in a bar come up and say the exact same thing is enough to send chairs flying.
I love More Tales of MU…I just really want to slap Missy. I’m having a hard time keeping some of the characters straight, but I think she’s in Mack’s History class, and is the one who is a more than a little racist. I get so frustrated with people like her….both in MU-world and in RL.
Keep it up, AE! Love it!
<3
Oh man, that “drow” comment made me want to throw something at him. I wonder if he’ll ever run into Dee (excuse me, Delia Daella)?
OOK!
I don’t like Missy. While I get the feeling she mostly made that comment about Mariel because she noticed Jamie was kind of checking her out, she’s still racist.
And Juliana deserved to be talked to like that. I was hoping that not all humans were so racist… I mean, Mack was raised among humans by a Khersian grandmother and still seemed to know that nudity (or partial nudity) was more acceptable in other cultures, as well as other things.
Granted Juliana’s comment was a bit bone-headed, but a simple, “Dude, not cool.” would’ve been sufficient. Not blurting out, “Racist Whore!” Especially given that Marlot’s own behavior, while tolerated, still annoys James.
The reaction to the trees comment was a bit more harsh than I figured that sort of comment was deserving of, but I think it’s understandable given some of the things I’ve seen come up over time. Not too long ago I had a coworker from the Philippines who decided to say his nickname was “Charlie” when we went to a “sensitivity training” thing. The folks that worked with him giggled like mad and started calling him Charlie too from time to time, but some random joe-schmoe calling him charlie probably wouldn’t have gone over so well.
Maybe we can get the whole tree naming thing explained a bit better sometime though? It doesn’t seem to be very degrading/insulting on the grand scale of things, more like “hey I hear black guys have big dicks, is it true?” than “shouldn’t you be doing yardwork/picking cotton/insert actual insulting slur that would warrant that sort of reaction”.
I understand marlot. She’s over-compensating. She realizes that, now that they are at MU, she and Jamie are no longer in the same social strata, and so she’s trying to do her best to position herself higher up so that she doesn’t feel that Jamie is slumming by being with her. So, in an effort to defend her position as Jamie’s best friend, she jumped at an opportunity to criticize Juliana as a way to show to Jamie, and to those around her, that she was higher in the social strata than Juliana. It’s a dominance thing. When you suddenly realize that you’re a lot lower in the social standings than you thought, you tend to get defensive, and sometimes, that becomes offensive.
I’ve been there, I’m been the social outcast trying to fit in, but instead of forcing my way up the social ladder by pulling people down below me, I decided to change where my social ladder went. Instead of competing against a who bunch of jocks and other more socially adjusted people, I went with the social misfits, first the Agricultural engineering club (even though I was a engineering science: space concentration major), where I moved to about middle of the pack because of my computer skills and ease at talking to people, and then to the RPG club, where I moved even higher because I DMed. I was never the top of the social ladder, mainly because I wasn’t and underclassman, but I was above middle, and still higher in that smaller group than in the larger group of my floor-mates.
I just hope that Marlot can realize that she doesn’t need to force other people down the social ladder to keep her place near Jamie, she just needs to be herself (and not Puddy).
Mook!!
Another great chapter. Missy was showing some claws here, but I think that paradigm has it right – she’s feeling a bit jealous.
To be fair to Marlot, that was the second bit of elf-related racism Juliana has busted out in two days toward Jamie. And we know that Marlot is overprotective.
Okay – now I need to get my own chapter up.
Is it only me who thinks that Marlot was doing what she always does? Yanking someone’s chain? She simply has an obnoxious sense of humour.
Marlot is an instigator…And not a subtle one either.
(everyone needs a hobby, I like her)
However, Jamie does need her to keep him outta trouble I think.
I noticed the whole bit about “human blood, human soul,” too. Makes me possibly able to see why the strict Khersians don’t like Mackenzie. She should be considered a human, but allowing a partial demon to be a full member of society just chaps their hindquarters a bit too much. But then, if they call her a monster outright, they’re technically in the wrong.
So then how does Gloria not consider Mackenzie human? She’s got the blood, therefore presumably she’s got the soul as well. Odd.
From ToMU we know The Khersian insistence on a strict interpretation of “human blood, human soul” resulted in a huge outcry any time any type of creature with discernible human ancestry was classed as a monster. does not apply to Mack. Presumably because the Khersian hierarchy finds part demons a convenient scapegoat.
Sorry about te apearence of that. My blockquote didn’t take.
@25, Sara
I think we can figure that Gloria is quite atypical. Probably going to stray off the path any minute.
It’s not exactly far fetched to say there are different interpretations. One saying you just need a drop of human blood, and the opposite being, well, the opposite – even a drop of other blood makes you an abomination. You know, a human whose greatgrandfather was a dog wouldn’t be human, but a beast, abomination, atrocity, sin against nature, yadayada. Octorones and hextarones were considered as “black” as fresh import by quite a few Southerners in the USA, after all.
Okay, I’ve just revised my opinions of all characters in here: Jamie is just about as shallow as the worst of them (and apparently slightly racist about dark elves, though that isn’t very surprising in an elfblood), Marlot is a lot less secure about herself than she portrays an image to be (and gives a similar feeling to what Puddy does in ToMU), and Missy gives me the creeps.
Ouch. While I understand Marlot’s anger at Juliana’s racism, I find her reaction overly harsh for someone’s first verbal stumble with a new friend. Unfortunately it’s my guess Juliana didn’t learn a thing from that rather brutal reaction — except perhaps realizing Marlot can be a real jerk.
Lunakitten:
I’ll only make one comment on this, and then I’m done.
You know how blacks often use racial slurs amongst themselves? Well, have you ever heard a homosexual or bisexual use the word “gay” in a bad or joking way? If not, you have now. Get over yourself, please.
Calia: that presupposes that everyone finds it acceptable when black people do it.
Also, as a point of note (sorry for not putting this in the last one but I didn’t think of it in time), it’s completely different to use a slur for your own group as a term for your own group without negative connotations (e.g. gay people referring to themselves and other gay people as “Queers”)than it is to use a term for your group as a negative comment towards other things (a gay person using gay as an insult). Then again, this is me always overthinking everything…
Hm. Went back (based on someone’s comment above) and re-read Juliana’s first appearance. Ouch again. I’d like to correct my comment above — this was not a “first verbal stumble,” and I can much better understand Marlot’s (rather unpleasant) reaction. However, I still feel Marlot is simply driving Juliana off, rather than making any real progress at eliminating racism through education. I far more admire Dee’s calm explanation to Mackenzie as to what terms she does and does not care for regarding her people — and I think there was some real enlightenment there as well.
@”drow” comments
I would have said “drow” or “dark elf” before I was introduced to Dee. For me, it would have just been a classification. There are cultural differences between “dark elves” and “faint elves”. It’s not just a skin color thing. There are real differences in how they live. The term “drow” may be ignorant, but that doesn’t automatically make it racist. Jamie doesn’t seem disgusted by the possibility that one of his dormmates might be part-drow; he seems more curious about it. And he’s sensitive enough about it to not directly ask if the others think she might be.
i like how this story is going so much faster then macks story, though i have a feeling where about to hit some major issues with his classes.
this whole speil ““Nobody does,” Juliana said. “I don’t know why. It’s pretty simple. Illusion is creating unreal or quasi-real constructs, and glamour is just messing with the appearance characteristics of an existing object. They really don’t have much to do with each other, but people always link them together and so most people who are in one or the other are kinda anal about which one’s better.” She shrugged. “The way I see it, knowing both will make me more versatile and give me more options, with anything I want to do. And let’s face it, neither one of them’s exactly high sorcery.””
made me warm and fuzzy because i often have to do the same thing when i explain to people im doing CADD- Computer Aided Drawing and Design they think i do web pages :/. instead of schmetics of things.
I disliked Marlow’s outburst, while it could be considered racist, which does not mean that it was the intention of the comment. Juliana, for all we know could have been brought up hearing such things being both true and false and wanted to know for sure, or she could have known someone with enough elf-blood in them to actually do so and wondered if Jamie was the same.
Also after this outburst Marlow shows what type of person she really is, by telling Missy that Jamie could actually tell the difference between trees when it has been established that it is untrue (read chapter 1). She is keeping the stereotype alive, bless her heart. ;P
About Jamie being shallow, he said that his aesthetic judgment comes from the summers he spent with his elven family.
But he knows it and he still looks for something else/more in people.
And I don’t think Marlot (or Missy) really is an elven beauty.
“Just in time for class, too.”
lol
@Calia:
Please understand, I almost deleted your “ghey” comment in moderation.
Yes, I could tell it was a joke from the context, since the subject was intolerance and since you’ve commented before enough that I sort of knew you, but… the world doesn’t know you, and that kind of erosive language wears people down when they’re exposed to it constantly. Joking around among friends can take the sting out of the word for one person, but bandying it about in public can still do a lot of damage.
The bottom line is I didn’t moderate it because I felt you were being rather innocuous here. I’d like to remind everybody that they’re not in charge of moderating the board here, but you should also realize their criticisms is valid.
“I can say it because I’m gay.” doesn’t really cut it here. To somebody who doesn’t know you, whose self-esteem has already been worn down by attacks from all sides, all your post says is “I’m a forward-thinking person who believes in tolerance and I still think ‘gay’ is the perfect synonym for ‘most awful thing ever.’”
I love this side of MU! Especially that the characters are more…like us, human, speak more like us…
“Oh, why hello there exposed cooter”
My favorite example
Missy must be terrible at cards, if she couldnt even win at her first game of cups!
beginners luck and all that. 
It seems plumbers, or at least plumber jokes, are the same regardless of universe.
10 I’m not inclined to think that he is being quite as shallow as you seem to think. Remember from what we’ve learned about Mack that she doesn’t give off the vibe of ‘confident enough to not feel the need for makeup’ but instead gives off the vibe of ‘doesn’t care about herself at all.’ He commented on her cleaning herself up and the use of make-up seperately, suggesting to me that the first part was a reference to her not bothering to clean off all the road grime or bother wearing clothes that looked like they didn’t belong in a dumpster. If we didn’t already know Mack, I would be with you on the shallowness claim, because nothing in this story excuses that attitude, but with that knowledge and the extra description it carries I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t consider noticing someone wearing make-up or knowing what you are physically attracted to make you shallow; that being all you are concerned about does.
@38 Actually, he has shown that he can. Even when he didn’t tell Margot what it was, the subsequent text shows that he knew. He just doesn’t like to act like a dog performing tricks on command. Knowing that a stereotype is true in your case doesn’t mean you like perpetuating it. Now if Margot had just allowed him to explain why he asked Steff, we might have some idea how widespread elf-bloods actually having this ability is.
Hmm, I wonder what will happen when MOARMU’s timeline passes MU’s timeline. I guess nothing, because they’re both tellings of the same world. Should be interesting to see what little hints we get of Mackenzie’s tale from the outside.
I am going to try and keep an open mind about things when Jamie first sees Dee, because I know that ugliness will ensue.
@ 44
Actually, he cannot “feel” which type of tree it is from just looking (which is the elven stereotype). He does however, have an understanding of different types of trees and how to spot the difference of ones he has seen before. (Kind of like some people can tell what type of animals are round by looking at their dropping). However, this is a case of him knowing what to look for to identify a tree rather then the stereotype of elves knowing what a tree is by “feeling” it. If he never seen a tree like it before he wouldn’t be able to find out unless he asked someone else.
It may not sound like much of a difference but it’s the difference of saying he can do something because he’s born of a certain race and that he learned how to do it.
AE:
Heh, I guess you’re right. I’m sorry. I tend to forget that I’m not as well known on the whole internet as I am in real life and on my own little internet homes. I was also not having a good night last night, so I guess I probably got a little snippy. I’ll try not to do it again.
Thanks for the warning.
I don’t think Jamie’s racist so much as curious about why Kira’s trying to pass for human. He knows they have Harlowe for non-humans (and doesn’t seem to know it sucks), and I think she’s way more elf than he is, so it probably just makes him wonder. Sort of a “Why didn’t she choose to live there, and why does she try to pass?” Presumably because if he can tell, other people can tell, so lying’s kind of a waste. He said “drow,” but we’ve seen it used before without any malicious intent; it seems like the people from smaller or more homogeneous human towns think of it as a simple descriptor.
Also, regarding the comment about makeup: Mack went from dirty and travel-stained to glammed-up courtesy of Mariel. That could only be a change worth noticing, and her first appearance did make her out to be (correctly) the kind of person who wouldn’t know which end of an eyeshadow brush to use.
Really enjoying the story so far, but I’m hoping as time progresses we get less focus on Jamie seeing Mack in the background- almost half this chapter was essentially Mack-watching, or reactions based on the ToMU story, and I’d much prefer to see these characters doing their own thing.
@45: I believe AE stated in her introductory post about MOARMU that it will go faster at first (since it has a year of catch-up to play), but when it meets the MU storyline, the two will go at the same pace. So, MOAR won’t end up getting ahead of MU by any significant amount.