A machinima series created by Rémi Marocelli using The Sims 3. Each of the stories is based upon or inspired by various fairy tales, though they tend to be a lot Darker and Edgier (which is saying something considering the content of the original tales). The protagonists of the videos all find themselves trapped in fairy tale stories that reflect their own troubled lives, though why exactly this is happening is less clear.
The four episodes are:
- Fascination
(based upon Little Red Riding Hood) - Repulsion (based upon Hansel and Gretel)
- Obsession (based upon Snow White)
- Rejection (based upon Beauty and the Beast)
Although the stories are relatively self-contained, they are all interconnected. Namely, 'Aura', the protagonist of Fascination, is intentionally pushing the others into these nightmarish worlds following her own experience, but her motives for doing so remain a mystery.
Tropes found in Evil Tales include:
- Adaptation Species Change: In Fascination, the Wolf is actually an Ambiguously Human man rather than an anthropomorphic wolf (at least in the fairy tale world; in the real world he appears to be completely human).
- Adapted Out: The seven dwarfs don't show up in Obsession, although in the attic of the abandoned house Elizabeth shelters in there are seven beds.
- Age Lift: Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel are usually depicted as young children, but are teenagers here.
- All There in the Manual: Marocelli provides some extra context and information, such as the names of the characters, in the description for the videos (all of which have no dialogue).
- Ambiguous Situation:
- At the beginning of Repulsion, Hansel and Gretel are seen standing over the burning corpses of their parents and Hansel is covered in blood, but it's not entirely clear what happened.
- Given the intentional vagueness and heavy use of symbolism in each of the videos, there's generally quite a bit of ambiguity and different interpretations as to what precisely is happening.
- Angsty Surviving Twin: Gretel after Hansel is murdered.
- Art Evolution: From Obsession onwards, the creator alters the appearance of Aura and the Wolf, though the basic designs are the same.
- The Bad Guy Wins: A few examples.
- In Fascination, the Wolf kills Aura's grandmother and successfully captures her. In the real world, she's been confined to a mental hospital, though we know she gets out eventually and begins a quest of vengeance.
- In Repulsion, poor Hansel gets chopped up and eaten by the Witch, who then smashes down the door to the room where Gretel is trying to hide. In the real world, Gretel is stuck in a mental hospital, kept constantly sedated by a nurse who resembles the Witch.
- Aura herself always succeeds in tormenting the girls with her fairy tale spells, even seemingly manipulating Elizabeth into killing herself. However, it's left rather ambiguous as to whether Aura is really evil and what her motives are, beyond revenge. She also seems a bit troubled after completing her revenge on Luna and her true target is the Wolf.
- Battleaxe Nurse: A nurse who works in the mental hospital is rather cruel to one of her patients and is actually the real world counterpart of the wicked Witch from Hansel and Gretel.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: For someone who shot herself in the head, Elizabeth's corpse looks pretty good.
- Beauty to Beast: It's revealed this happened to Luna, in a case of 'Beauty' actually being 'the Beast' all along.
- Big Fancy House: The mansion Elizabeth and her family live in is very spacious and luxurious-looking.
- Body Horror: The Queen's transformation into an old woman looks very unpleasant.
- Boom, Headshot!: How Elizabeth kills the Queen/her father's mistress. And herself.
- Break the Cutie: All the girls wind up very broken. Potentially overlaps with Corrupt the Cutie in Aura's case, seeing as she goes on to pursue vengeance against the others for unclear reasons.
- Broken Bird: All the main protagonists are deeply troubled teenagers with messed up backstories.
- Cast Full of Crazy: Aura, Gretel, Elizabeth and Luna all have serious emotional/psychological issues due to trauma and almost all of them have been in a mental institute at some point save for Elizabeth, who ends up committing suicide instead.
- Catapult Nightmare: Gretel wakes up like this after having a nightmare about the Witch killing Hansel. Unfortunately, when she goes to find him, she discovers it wasn't a nightmare.
- Color Motif: Red, white and black pop up frequently, either in décor, the environment or clothing.
- Connected All Along: Luna/the 'Beauty' character is the daughter of the man Aura views as the Wolf, the villain of Fascination.
- Damsel out of Distress: In the fairy tale world, Elizabeth manages to fight back when the Queen comes for her and shoots her dead.
- Death by Adaptation:
- Hansel and Gretel's parents were apparently killed at the beginning of the story in this version.
- In Hansel and Gretel, the siblings kill the witch and escape. Here, Hansel is gruesomely killed and eaten by the witch and Gretel's own fate is grim looking.
- Beauty and the Beast certainly didn't end with Beauty being stabbed by the Beast.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Elizabeth was clearly close to her late mother, while her relationship with her father appears more strained due to him cheating on her mother.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Nothing good ever happens in the woods in this series.
- Doppelgänger: In her fairy tale world, Luna glimpses a duplicate of herself running through the streets and tries to follow her. The Beast ends up transforming into a doppelganger of her, symbolising how she feels about herself.
- Downer Ending: None of the stories have particularly cheerful endings.
- Fascination: In the fairy tale world, Aura's grandmother is murdered by the Wolf, he captures her and apparently forces himself on her. In the real world, she is in a hospital of some kind, watched over by a man who looks an awful lot like the Wolf, implying that something similar happened to her in real life.
- Repulsion: Hansel gets killed and eaten by the witch and Gretel is unable to escape. In the real world, Gretel is a patient in a hospital and is abused and kept sedated by the 'witch', who is actually a nurse. It's unclear what happened to her brother, but either way she's stuck there for now.
- Obsession, combined with Ambiguous Ending: Upon returning to her senses (more or less), Elizabeth realises she killed her father's mistress in front of everyone and proceeds to turn the gun upon herself. Her spirit then wakes up back in the fairy tale world, though it's not clear if this is a good or bad thing.
- Rejection is potentially this, though it's left a little ambiguous: Luna is forced to face the fact her former beauty is gone and she's clearly distressed by it, though on the other hand she's not living in a delusion anymore.
- Dramatic Drop: Aura drops her picnic basket in horror when she sees the body of her murdered grandmother.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Aura, particularly in the sequels to Fascination.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: The protagonists as they appear in the fairy tale world wear this style of clothing.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Wolf is seen leaving flowers for his daughter at the mental hospital where she's staying; according to
Word of God they're "an obvious sign of guilt and remorse". - Evil Redhead: The Witch/ the nurse in Repulsion.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: In Repulsion, Aura has white streaks in her hair as she did in the fairy tale world. From Obsession onwards, her hair is also much shorter and in Rejection she's gone back to all-black hair.
- Facial Horror: It's revealed that one half of Luna's face has been disfigured. She's not taking it well.
- Fan Disservice:
- In Fascination, there's a brief close-up focusing on Aura's chest in her strapless dress, which is apparently from the viewpoint of the creepy Wolf guy stalking her.
- One of the first things we see in Obsession is Elizabeth's naked body...on a mortician's slab.
- Flower Motif: Luna is associated with roses, specifically red ones.
- Foreshadowing: The Reveal in Rejection gets quite a bit of this; we only see one half of Luna's face at the start, the portraits of her have red paint splattered along one side and the Beast changes into a duplicate of herself.
- Gangsta Style: The Queen holds her gun like this. Averted by Elizabeth, who holds it properly.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Wolf has a single glowing eye. His real world counterpart has more normal looking, but still unsettling, Icy Grey Eyes.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: In Elizabeth's fairy tale world, she envisions her stepmother as a Sorcerous Overlord who plots to kill her.
- Gory Discretion Shot:
- When Aura's grandmother is murdered, all we see is the killer brandishing a knife and the victim falling to the floor. We do see their corpse afterwards though, with the knife still sticking out of their back.
- When Hansel is killed, we just see the killer raising and bringing down the knife.
- Grimmification: All the stories are based upon fairy tales and have a rather dark, gothic tone and aesthetic. Unlike the originals, they most certainly don’t end with a Happily Ever After.
- Half-Identical Twins: Hansel and Gretel, who look quite physically similar save for the fact Hansel's a boy and Gretel's a girl.
- Hallucinations: Near the end of Obsession, Elizabeth sees her dead mother standing at the top of the staircase, reaching out to her.
- Hospital Hottie: The nurse in Repulsion is rather attractive; however, she's also a Battleaxe Nurse.
- Hot Witch: The Witch in Repulsion (when she's maintaining her youth at any rate) and the Queen in Obsession.
- How We Got Here: Obsession opens with Elizabeth’s body in a morgue. The story then flashes back a few hours to reveal what happened.
- I Am a Monster: Luna feels this way on account of her disfigurement; this is symbolised in the fairy tale world by the Beast turning into a duplicate of herself.
- It Always Rains at Funerals: During the funeral of Elizabeth's mother, it's raining and thundering.
- Jump Scare: A minor one in Rejection, in which Luna puts her hand against a wall, only to be startled by bugs crawling all over her arm.
- Kill the Cutie: Poor Hansel and Elizabeth.
- Left Hanging: Marocelli had plans to release a final episode which would conclude the series and answer some of the questions, though this has yet to materialise.
- Little Dead Riding Hood: Aura wears a red dress and is stalked through the forest by a 'Wolf' who means her harm, which is enforced by the fact it's based upon Little Red Riding Hood. Luna also wears a red outfit and gets into danger in the abandoned town she's exploring.
- Little Red Fighting Hood: Played with. In Fascination itself, Aura is relatively helpless against the Wolf. However, in subsequent appearances she's on a quest for vengeance using a magical library, with the Wolf as her ultimate target.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Elizabeth, especially since the recent death of her mother. She's also well aware that her father has been cheating on her mother and resents both him and his lover.
- Noodle Incident:
- What exactly happened to Gretel's family?
- How did Luna become disfigured? Word of God suggests her father may have been involved, but doesn't elaborate.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: According to the creator, 'Aura' is not the Little Red Riding Hood character's real name.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Elizabeth's father experiences this. On the day his deceased wife is buried, his troubled teenage daughter seemingly loses her mind and kills his mistress, before turning the gun on herself. He desperately tries to stop her, only to be left cradling her body.
- Pretty Butterflies: In Fascination, Aura is seen admiring some butterflies as she walks through the woods. The end credits also have butterflies fluttering across the screen.
- Pretty Little Headshots: When Elizabeth shoots the Queen/her father's mistress in the head, all that's visible is a bullet hole. This is likely due to the limitations of the medium and there's still a copious amount of blood present.
- Proud Beauty: The Queen spends half her scenes in Obsession admiring herself in the mirror.
- Rape as Backstory: Implied to be the case with Aura.
- Rape as Drama: In Fascination, it's strongly implied that Aura is raped by the Wolf, which may mean she was raped by his real world counterpart too. In the fairy tale world, we see him leering over her as she lies on a bed, looking terrified, but we don't see what happens next. Either way, it was nothing good.
- Rape Leads to Insanity: Played with. It's implied that Aura was raped and she subsequently ended up in a mental hospital for some time, but the exact circumstances are unclear.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin:
- Elizabeth has very pale skin and black hair, which makes sense given she's based on Snow White.
- This also applies to the Queen/Elizabeth's stepmother.
- Real Is Brown: The scenes taking place in the real world tend to have much duller and desaturated colour palettes.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Huntsman has red eyes and is sent to kill Elizabeth, though as in the original tale, he takes pity on her and instead helps her.
- The Reveal:
- Gretel is a patient in a mental hospital and the Witch is the nurse in charge of her care.
- Elizabeth's death is revealed to be a suicide; after killing her father's mistress, she begins hallucinating her dead mother and takes her own life.
- Luna was in some kind of accident that left her face badly scarred.
- The Wolf is actually Luna's father.
- Revenge: According to Word of God, Aura's motivation for trapping the other girls in nightmarish fairy tales is a personal vendetta she has against them, though what they did to bring her wrath down upon them is unclear.
- Room Full of Crazy: Aura's room in the mental hospital has writing and drawings, mostly concerning eyes, scrawled across the walls. One of the scrawlings reads: The monsters came back again last night with glowing eyes and such sharp teeth.
- Scenery Censor: Part of Elizabeth's naked corpse is concealed by a tap in the morgue.
- Screw Yourself: A G-rated version. In Rejection, Luna is kissed by the Beast, who then transforms into a doppelganger of her.
- Shout-Out: At the beginning of Rejection, the security guard's television set is playing a clip from the 1946 version of Beauty and the Beast.
- Slain in Their Sleep: The Witch stabs Hansel to death in his sleep.
- Slipping a Mickey: The Witch knocks out Hansel and Gretel by putting something in their water.
- Snow Means Death: The fairy tale world in Obsession is set in winter and there’s certainly deaths/attempted murders involved.
- Sound-Only Death: Elizabeth's death is depicted as such; right before she pulls the trigger, the scene cuts to outside the house, a gunshot is heard, and then it cuts back to her father holding her body.
- Stalker with a Crush: The Wolf to Aura/Little Red Riding Hood is implied to be this.
- Stalker without a Crush: Aura towards the other girls, in particular following Elizabeth from her mother's funeral to her house.
- Through the Eyes of Madness:
- Implied to be the case in Fascination; Aura seems to be recalling the traumatic event that landed her in a mental hospital through the lens of a fairy tale.
- In Obsession, it's revealed that when Elizabeth killed the Queen in self-defence in the fairy tale world, in the real world she actually killed her stepmother. She then begins hallucinating her dead mother.
- Time Skip: The second video, Repulsion, takes place three years after Fascination.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: Aura finds a whole library of them and uses the books to plunge the other girls into twisted fairy tales that reflect traumatic incidents in their own lives.
- Vain Sorceress: The Witch in Repulsion, who uses human body parts to restore her youth and beauty.
- Wham Shot: Throughout Fascination, we see in the real world that Aura has a visitor, sitting near her on a couch engrossed in a newspaper. At the end of the video, they lower the newspaper revealing himself to be the real world counterpart of the Wolf who terrorised her in the fairy tale world.
- Wicked Stepmother: In the fairy tale world, Elizabeth's stepmother, the Queen, tries to murder her. It's less clear if her real world counterpart is abusive towards Elizabeth, but they're certainly not fond of each other.
- World of Symbolism: The plot of the fairy tale world in Rejection, loosely based upon Beauty and the Beast, is easily the most surreal and incoherent of all the stories. Although the ending makes it clear that much of it symbolises Luna's feelings of grief and self-hatred following her disfigurement.
- Would Harm a Senior: The Wolf goes after Aura's elderly grandmother and stabs the poor woman to death.
- You Have Failed Me: The Queen shoots the Huntmans dead after he cannot bring himself to kill her stepdaughter.
