#slashy answers

[the-slasher-files]

Has or has Andrei not canonically danced to Rasputin by Boney M while drunk?

...... oh he absolutely has at least once lol

[ashyjashyslashy-askblog]

❤️

"Aww, well aren't you sweet"

[rallamajoop]

Hi! I was reading up your meta and I saw you mention you'll talk about "did Dracula feed on Jonathan?" but I can't find it! Has it been posted? Thank you!

Ah, yeah ‒ I did promise that back in my How Gay was Bram Stoker? post, but you can file that one under the general category of "stuff I totally meant to write, but then never got around to." But what the hell: let's do this!

Ahem.

Did Dracula ever feed on Jonathan?

The short answer, based on what Jonathan overhears Dracula saying to his wives in a short passage everyone following Dracula Daily would have read on June 29, is: yes, and perhaps even, well, obviously?

"Back, back, to your own place! Your time is not yet come. Wait! Have patience! To-night is mine. To-morrow night is yours!" There was a low, sweet ripple of laughter, and in a rage I threw open the door, and saw without the three terrible women licking their lips. As I appeared they all joined in a horrible laugh, and ran away. [emphasis mine]

In other words: the brides get to feed on Jonathan tomorrow. It’s Dracula’s turn tonight. If the dialogue doesn’t make this clear enough, the ‘three terrible women licking their lips’ is pretty unambiguous. And we know Dracula did feed that night, because the morning after, Jonathan finds him asleep in his coffin, looking suddenly much younger, with blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. Jonathan never puts together that it was himself Dracula fed on (or at least never mentions it in his diary) – but then, Lucy and Mina never had any idea they’d been fed on either. So the implications remain technically subtext, but there for anyone paying attention.

Except there’s another version of that paragraph quoted above. The Dracula Daily text is evidently drawing from the American version of Dracula, published in 1899 (and pictured above). The original UK publication came out two years previously, and there, Dracula’s speech is oh-so-significantly different.  

"Back, back, to your own place! Your time is not yet come. Wait! Have patience! To-morrow night, to-morrow night is yours!" [emphasis again mine]

‘To-night is mine!’ never appeared in Dracula’s original publication, and any subtext that Dracula may have fed on Jonathan is that much subtler without it. Stranger still, this seems to be the only notable difference between the two versions of Dracula: Stoker certainly hasn’t made significant rewrites, nor is there any other evidence some US editor had it sloppily transcribed. So was this change Stoker’s? Was it a deliberate change at all, or just an accident of editing?

Now, I want ‘To-night is mine!’ to be the definitive version – not just because I’m always here for slashy vampire shenanigans, but because it makes so much more sense. Why force the brides to wait for tomorrow, if not so Dracula could have first dibs? For which matter, why keep Jonathan alive and (physically) unharmed in the castle for so long at all, if not as Dracula’s convenient, pre-journey snack? It even ties right back to Jonathan’s first encounter with the brides, and Dracula’s iconic line, This man belongs to me!

It’s admittedly a little questionable that Jonathan himself never acknowledges such definitive evidence Dracula has fed on him (in either version) – but then, panic and denial can do a number on the faculties of a man far faster on the uptake than our dear Jonathan. ‘Tonight is mine, tomorrow is yours!’ doesn’t just read better, it all adds up.

Before I get too bogged down in conspiracy-theories though, I’d like to share one suspiciously similar bit of trivia from the first (authorised) Dracula film adaptation, the Universal picture from 1932. Here, it’s nominally Renfield rather than Jonathan who goes to the castle, and the ‘brides’ have only two scenes and no dialogue, but the climax of the castle section still plays some familiar notes. Drugged at dinner, our Jonathan/Renfield amalgam collapses, and we watch the brides advance on him with clear intent – only for Dracula to sweep in, turn them aside, and lean down over our hapless hero himself.

But this wasn’t supposed to be the version that made it to screen. Supposedly, studio execs had insisted that it would be the women who fall upon their victim, not Dracula himself – and that’s what was in the shooting script. In fact, you can see this version shot as intended in the Spanish-language version of the film (shot at night with a whole second cast and crew, using the same sets and script). But the director for the English-version, Tod Browning, had the sense to ignore the official mandate and let the film's titular villain be the one to bite Renfield. He’s the real threat – he’s the one who Renfield will spend the rest of the film obsessed with. Why undercut that in your very first act?

The answer, of course, is the dreaded h-word: homoeroticism. A vampire bite is far too sexy to be allowed to happen between two men. The boundaries on that one fascinate me a little: neither the novel nor any film adaptation has ever balked at vampire!Lucy preying on children or the brides eating a literal baby because they’re seeing paedophilic overtones all of a sudden. These are horrifying acts, certainly, but here we take them at face value.

By and large though, Dracula is not the text you want to come at with the ‘rational’ notion that there’s nothing inherently sexy about a vampire bite: this is a book where even mundane, life-preserving blood-transfusions have become a very significant metaphor by the time of Lucy’s death. And who goes to a Dracula movie wanting to see Dracula biting men? (Yes, yes, I know. Please form an orderly queue to the left.)

My point in all this is that it’s not like we don’t know that nervous producers are perfectly willing to cut some corners off the integrity of their own product for fear of getting The Gay in their good, wholesome, gothic vampire film. And if producers from the 1930’s could do it… why not publishers from the 1890’s?

This is why it’s so hard not to find layers of meaning in that critical little addition of To-night is mine! Was there some earlier draft of Stoker’s manuscript (much like whichever theoretical earlier draft of the screenplay those execs had objected to) which contained that line? Was it Stoker himself who got nervous, and cut it from the British manuscript before publication? Keep in mind, this was only a couple of years after the Oscar Wilde trial, an incident which brought homosexuality under more scrutiny than it had suffered in an age. Stoker was already a known Wilde-associate, who’d take chances in that environment?

Or was it his publishers who made the change? Anything's possible. Either way, how the ‘original’ version found its way back into the US version is still in question: maybe Stoker found his nerve again, or maybe he just accidentally included a page from the wrong draft ‒ but it's easy to miss these things when the result is an ocean away. Don’t tell me it doesn't sound plausible!

Alas, I am guilty of building this one up mostly just to knock it down again: what little real evidence we have all points the other way. When Stoker re-edited a (slightly) abridged version of Dracula in 1901 (two years after the American one), the original ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow!’ line is dutifully reproduced. When he threw together a stage version (very rough, and which would be “performed” exactly once for copyright reasons alone), there was no ‘To-night is mine!’ in that one either. And the single, surviving full-but-unfinished draft of Dracula that anyone has ever found contained the 'To-morrow' version too. There are some fascinating differences between that one draft and either published version and I could talk about it all day – but if Very Rough Draft Outlines of Dracula is to be believed, then ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’ was part of the novel long before it reached publication. There’s nothing about this scene in any of Stoker’s earlier very-rough-draft-outlines for Dracula either.

All that said, I still want ‘To-night is mine!’ to have been Stoker’s original plan for that scene. It just works so much better on so many levels!

It also adds rather fascinating little wrinkle to another favourite Dracula-debate topic of mine: does anyone bitten by a vampire become one, or do you have to drink that vampire’s blood in turn?

In these modern, rational times (filled with tales of complex, even sympathetic vampires), we’re much more comfortable with the vampire's-blood version. It just doesn’t track that everyone bitten by a vampire becomes one ‒ not without one vampire turning into a major zombie outbreak within a matter of weeks. And it's so widespread now that few realise the idea didn’t even exist before Dracula. Traditional vampire folklore has a thousand variations and as many different ways someone can join the undead (including being bitten by one), but drinking vampire blood is one I have never found a remotely credible source for. If anything, drinking a vampire’s blood often works to protect you from that vampire (smearing it on your body or eating some of the grave soil may also do the trick).

And even in Dracula, debate remains as to why Dracula forces Mina to drink his blood. Many assert that the true point is to create the psychic connection he uses to spy on her friends later (and his own dialogue in that scene could certainly be taken that way). Meanwhile, Van Helsing does say that anyone bitten can become a vampire. He doesn’t seem at all concerned this will happen to the children Lucy has fed on, but then, destroying the parent vampire before the potential vampires have turned is exactly how Mina is saved too. Whether or not you buy it, it still holds together.

The one-bite version is an interpretation you can still see in lots of post-Dracula media too. Hammer’s Dracula films of the 50s-70s, for example, certainly seem to think that being bitten is plenty (how long the transformation takes post-bite is… less consistent). Not until after Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire comes out in the 1970’s does the idea that you need to drink the vampire’s blood in turn really seem to start taking hold.

But it’s not as though no-one reading Stoker’s novel ever came away with the idea that he'd added a new element to the process of becoming a vampire. Universal’s 1931 film doesn’t even show the iconic blood-drinking scene, leaving Mina simply to recount those events in dialogue after the fact – but Dracula spells out his own purpose to Van Helsing very clearly: "You are too late. My blood now flows through her veins. She will live through the centuries to come...as I have lived."

In fact, there’s an even earlier script from 1927, from a failed attempt to create a new stage version commissioned by Stoker’s own widow, that takes the same angle: “Come, drink of my blood, that you may become even as I.” (Thank you to Skal's Hollywood Gothic for that interesting tidbit!) It’s unlikely that honouring her late-husband’s artistic intent was foremost in Widow Florence's concerns (far more about securing a higher cut of the profits than she was getting from the existing stage versions), but the fact Mrs. Stoker herself was down with that interpretation isn’t nothing.

Looping all the way back to the original point, though, if Jonathan really was supposed to have been bitten by Dracula way back in the early chapters of the novel, then we can pretty much throw the one-bite theory out the window. It doesn’t neaten everything up: we’ve still got the weird implication that Lucy could have been saved by enough blood-transfusions, whereas Mina slowly deteriorates over the journey back to the castle and only Dracula’s death will save her, and so on – because as much as I love this novel, Stoker’s vampire mythology is an inconsistent mess with more holes in it than a parade of slowly-turning vampire victims (and it really is such a tribute to the overall atmosphere that it still draws you in, and can even keep you from noticing the inconsistencies). But damn, could one little bite-mark on Jonathan’s neck recontextualise so much of the rest of the story.

Tl;dr: I will never know for sure whether Stoker’s original plans for Dracula involved Jonathan being bitten by the titular vampire himself, or how that one line came to differ between the UK and US publications. But I really want the US version to be the ‘true’ one. And maybe now you do too.

(Photos of Dracula & Jonathan come from Michael Pink's ballet adaptation of Dracula ‒ the slashiest ballet version I've seen and my second-favourite overall, because I am entirely the kind of Dracula-nerd with a second-favourite ballet version, what can I tell you.)

[greenygal]

Due South s1 recs, part 2

Pizzas and Promises

Two for Ray coming up with Those Outfits:

I am Not Like You, by dS_Tiff

Going Undercover, by nomave

A smidge of post-drowning trauma:

Thank God for Frannie, by wneleh

New Trunk Smell, by orphan_account

Promises and Pizza, by Tallihensia (Fraser/Ray V)--Rework of the episode to bring a slashy moment just a little closer.

***

Chinatown

Three backstory pieces with some connection to Fraser’s grandparents and China:

Home Schooling & Open the World, by Luzula

Bind Off in Pattern, by NienteZero

He Said Always. He Said Never, by Amparo Bertram--A crossover with Kung Fu: the Legend Continues. One of KFTLC’s recurring villains pops up in Chicago’s Chinatown, and the rest of the cast gives chase to stop him.

***

Chicago Holiday, Part 1

No Matter How Much Leather They Wear, by gracicah (Fraser/Ray V)--Ray is surprised by how casually Fraser took the kink club, and he has some questions; Fraser offers some demonstrations in answer.

Right Church, Wrong Pew, by preetkiran1016 (Fraser/Ray K)--Two pieces telling Fraser and Ray K's POVs of an AU where they had a sexy encounter at that club, sometime late in s2.

three evenings, two Rays, by ifreet (Stella/Ray K, Stella/Ray V)--A short piece postulating that Stella Kowalski is in fact the secret owner of the club!

***

Chicago Holiday, Part 2

A Gold Mine, A Boomerang, A Tank of Gasoline. And You, by Mary (Fraser/Julie Frobisher)--Sixteen-year-old Benton Fraser becomes a man, in more ways than one.

***

A Cop, a Mountie and a Baby

Sans Souci, by Julien (Fraser/Ray V)--Fraser asserts that people do find Ray attractive, and Ray wants to know how the Mountie can be so sure.

***

The Gift of the Wheelman

Haunted, by ButterflyGhost--In which Ray contemplates the ghosts of their fathers.

Angels, by ButterflyGhost--In which Ray sees those ghosts from a very different angle. The last line of this kills me.

***

You Must Remember This

Two pieces about the events at Fortitude Pass:

Could I Revive Within Me, by pqlaertes (Fraser/Victoria)

Things You Said Under the Stars, and in the Grass, by ExpatGirl (Fraser/Victoria)

The Stakeout, by Rachael (Fraser/Ray V, unrequited)--Ray wasn't asleep when Fraser was talking.

Love and Glory, by brooklinegirl (Ray V/Suzanne Chapin)--On Ray’s last night before Vegas, Suzanne Chapin makes an appearance.

Five Years by Kernezelda (Ray V/Suzanne Chapin)--Five years was a long time. It wasn't nearly long enough to forget her.

[psychologicalwarclaire]

Important question, which side did Viper cut Leo's face markings on? I think you explained it pretty well, but my brain is twisting it around and now I'm not sure anymore.

The red is where Viper did her slashy thing. The inner part of his face, but the outer arc of the bananas.

You're all good, Anon. I've gotten a lot of questions about it and I'm a little frustrated that I haven't found an absolutely clear way to explain it so everyone understands. Oh well...

(Anon I need you to know that I couldn't find a single good, high-res picture of maskless Leo so I had to spend an entire hour learning how to draw Leo and various facial expressions JUST so I could answer this XD )

[calllay]

Very excited to start reading the Raffles and Bunny stories via @lettersfrombunny! I have zero background beyond being told it was slashy, and from the first section of the first story, can definitely confirm. (And so dramatic!!)

I had already gotten the (correct) impression that Bunny is extremely smitten with Raffles ("I see his indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp, clean-shaven features; his curly black hair; his strong, unscrupulous mouth." But who's looking?) but consider me extremely intrigued by how Raffles treats Bunny.

Raffles is so familiar and dismissive in how he refers to Bunny - starting with calling him Bunny, for one. And he's a "a literary little cuss", "a plucky little devil". "You were the right sort of little beggar then, Bunny; you didn’t talk and you didn’t flinch." Whew!

I'm so curious to see how things develop - if Raffles just keeps leading Bunny around by the nose, I will eat that up with a spoon just like Bunny himself, but I will also be happy to read some affection there. Despite their hierarchical relationship at school, Raffles answered Bunny's "Is there any chance you remember me from school (I was in love with you)" with fond commentary about what he was like and what they did. Just how much is actual fondness vs being happy to take advantage of Bunny's submissiveness agreeableness remains to be seen. I'll be happy either way!

[augustusaugustus]

14.1 Square Peg, Round Hole

MEADOWS: So why aren’t you at home? BOULTON: What was I going to do there on my own? Sit and watch cookery programs? I’m on my own time, Guv. I find this therapeutic.

BOULTON: Guv—when I joined the job, I did know there were going to be risks. It’s just what nobody warned me about was there was going to be all these people trying to understand what I’m going through. How I feel. (pause) How can they understand what I’m going through? (pause) When a doctor does it, or when Rafferty does it, or when Tosh Lines does it, I can just walk away. (pause) But when you do it, I’ve got to listen, because you’re my senior officer and I’m on an obbo. (pause) So, I’d really appreciate it if we could just restrict the conversation to operational matters. Because that would make me feel so much better. Sir. (long pause) MEADOWS: What you scared of? (pause) BOULTON: I’m not scared of anything. MEADOWS: Yes, you are. You’re scared that they might be able to help you. And that could mean that you’re not in control.

Such a good bit of dialogue, made even better by the director allowing the silence needed to make it hit so hard.

An excellent episode to start off 1998. John’s stuck by a needle and doesn’t cope well with the threat of HIV or hepatitis. Jack’s soft spot for John is in full view here, and he’s exactly what John needs—letting him back on the case when staying at home alone will be hard for him, forcing him to admit that he’s not invulnerable, and eventually roughing up a suspect a little to get John some answers. A great ep for both of them (and from Boulter & Rouse). Slashy as heck, too.

John’s comment about the work being therapeutic is so true, as well. It’s not just about the loss of control—it’s about the potential loss of the job that’s his entire reason for existing.

[slasheru]

first time meeting Juno : y....your eyes are on fire...

first time meeting Sawyer: Your eyes are on fire too!!

first time go to coffee shop: Fire eyes can make coffee taste better? Why do you always have that when you look at me?

I actually have LORE ANSWERS FOR YOU, lol

Juno = definitely a poltergeist/ghost thing

Sawyer = artistic/stylistic choice, but I like to think Sawyer's so slashy he emits a sort of. violent sexy aura

Archibald: SECRET PLOT/LORE REASONS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE REVEALED IN ACT 2/3 (I think I have VAGUELY hinted at this maybe???? or at least vaguely hinted that Archibald has Something Going On Shh)

[askagamedev]

RE: item design. I'd be interested in what kinds of situations result from design and art teams working in parallel but getting "some wires crossed at the end". I can easily imagine things like flavor text or certain stat types not matching actual appearance of available assets like speccing something with high slashing damage but mostly having clubs and other non-slashy style weapons.

Do you have any examples of other ways the wires can cross?

You've basically got the gist of it for item/design getting wires crossed. Sometimes the visual just doesn't match the effect, flavor text, or both. Sometimes there are scheduling conflicts and models, skinning, or VFX aren't ready so we need to use placeholder art temporarily. In those situations, sometimes the placeholder art actually goes live and gets patched later. Sometimes the art and the effects are weird if you squint, but not that bad and the producer overrules the complaints - like a sword having a slashing effect but the blade looks like a big bird's claw because it's from a themed dungeon. Sometimes we also get the art assets for items switched or shuffled by accident. Since the assets are being created in parallel as the items' stats and gameplay effects, there's often little coordination between the item design and art teams.

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[variablejabberwocky]

i am fascinated by this

like there is just so much going on

like here:

i get the "?" are for the riddler and the large "HA"s are for the joker but like what are the slashy bits for. is there a batman villain i don't know about called The Counter or something???

and just how rich is this franchise or is this the "good" batburger since the whole family is there as the waynes? because the seats in the booths match the colors of the window coverings (kind of) and usually you don't see that unless its a NEW location and its the 'fancy' one at that

and then you add in the price of the costumes:

which are apparently for EVERY employee and not just the ones at the front. AND include costumes for more than just the batfam.

like how are they assigned costumes? is it sized based so they don't have to have like...a 'batman' in extra small and a 'robin' in xxl to fit employees of all general sizes. are they assigned costumes or just sent a shipment of 'one of each' and told to find the best fit for each employee? if there's a wonder woman is there a superman too?

...does...does bruce secretly fund this for shits and giggles? are these like super well paid "burger-flippers" or something? DOES HE USE IT TO LAUNDER MONEY TO/FROM BATMAN SHIT???

like there is something sus going on here and im not sure what's funnier

don't even get me started on the "jokerized" fries

...but at least the question of what their equivalent to a "happy meal" is got answered

*edit* asdfksahflk please please tell me the bathrooms are two-faced themed. that would be fucking hilarious. no 'mens' or 'womens' just coin-with-slash or coin-without-slash. just like "idk man figure it out" to all the customers

[kuwdora]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💕💗

(Sending this back your way because I didn't see if you already answered! 💖)

hellooo to this ancient ask from months ago! Which I'm pinging @she-who-drank-vodka-with-cats who also sent me this ask recently. Anyway most of this is Witcher fic but not all!

Ouroboros - Vilgefortz/Geralt but mostly Vilgefortz. 20k. TWN but blended the fuck into everything else. What else can I say that I haven’t nattered about in my tag already. It has art history and porn, dark shit, unnecessary Vilgefortz backstory, lots and metaphor and symbolism. Illusions and inverting moments from book scenes and going on tangents might have actually come together by the end of the fic.

Stories we tell, memories we share and the words we hold dear - TWN. Geralt/Jaskier, post canon, 28k. Aka the story I rewrote 3 times and is soft old men in love and probably the thing I'm most proud of in addition to it being my favorite. Romance and acts of service, disabled characters. With too much worldbuilding. Poetry and storytelling and lots and lots more nostalgia, softness, and puns. Geralt loves Jaskier and Jaskier loves Geralt.

Heart Tap - TWN, Leshen Eskel/Geralt. More a character study but still quite slashy. I really really love this story and need to write more of this series. I’m still obsessed with the idea of a witcher turned into a monster and losing his mind and trying to figure out who he is now and how he fits in at Kaer Morhen and if he can still even be a witcher. And Eskel likely being able to see between different worlds/canons. Just really exploring his memory issues and identity. Also tree sex with Geralt, okay. I started it for the tree nonsense and everything else just happened. Non-witcher fic: Dawn of the Dithyramb, Greek Mythology. Apollo/Dionysus. Humor/crack/porn. ~4k words. It’s been a billion years since I wrote this but I’m still quite fond of this silly horniness with Greek gods, playing with structure and it’s very fun and smutty and silly.

rejocing in virility, Satan/Beezlebub. John Milton’s Paradise Lost. 458 words. Poetry. A handjob in mid-air and me running with Milton's way of using catalog for pornographic effect. This was in fact for a class assignment and my professor read it aloud to my class and no one really listened closely enough to understand their professor was reciting a santanic handjob to them. Truly a pinnacle classroom experience for me.

[the-slasher-files]

Hi there! Big fan especially of Andrei!

I was wondering if you had recently seen Bill Skarsgard as Eric in the new The Crow?

For some reason, if Bill was built thicker/buffer, I feel like he kind of would be a good reference as Andrei in his feral state?!

Keep up your amazing work and have a wonderful day! -🖤🖤🖤 anon

Before I answer... Thank you so so much for the support and love 🤍 love yoooou! I hope to make more Andrei content soon but no promises because as you all know, life is crazy. However, I'm always down to talk about him haha

——

With this message you've made me literally want to cancel my life and RUN to the theater to see this movie now hahahaha. Because holy shit you are SOOO correct in this!!! This is probably the most similar body to Andrei that I've really noticed, although, yes, Andrei is thicker with more muscle/fat but he is still pretty damn lean with his insane stamina. But absolutely you are so right and thank you for sharing because I'm now foaming at the mouth with this knowledge 😂😭

[popculturebuffet]

Evil Dead Rise: Mommy's with the Maggots Now (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hail to the king baby! It's halloween, it's this blog and that mean's it's time for me to pull out my volume of the Necronimcon Demento and review another chapter of the evil dead.

So for those new here

I'm Jake, I review stuff and things, and two years ago I did an evil dead retrospective, covering all 4 films. From that stupid bitch scotty to ash laughing madly, to the film of a thousand catchphrases to that one that had Jane Levy, some good gore and little else, it was a fun ride.

So naturally with a new evil dead film out, it's only natural that I returned to review the latest film in the franchise: Evil Dead Rise. It's also a special review as it's my belated reviewversry with friend of the blog and over time of the me, WeirdKev27.

Kevin was my first client and the one who made me able to make a living doing this, and while he has zero interest in ever seeing Evil Dead Rise, he's more an horror-action and horror-comedy kind of guy, this gives him a chance to see what it has. Plus really after covering the last 4 even if he didn't agree to sponsor it, I'd be doing this anyway as I both love this film and hate not having the complete set. It's thanks to kev I have all I do now, so thanks man.

Evil Dead Rise is the franchises second attempt at a soft reboot after Evil Dead 2013. The plan after that one was to do two sequels: Evil Dead 2, which would follow Mia, Jane Levy's final girl from the requel and the only character who wasn't huffing paint thinner the whole film, and Army of Darkness 2. This ended up falling through, with Alvarez moving on to other projects and AOD2 being retooled into Ash Vs the Evil Dead, a three season tv series on stars that sadly got cancelled but from all accounts fucking rocked and I definitely want to cover at some point.

From there Ash's story was seemingly done on screen. While Dynamite will likely publish army of darkness comics till the end of time, Bruce Campbell had decided he was aging out of the part and wanted to pass the chainsaw on. That said while Campbell was seemingly done playing Ashy Slashy, he wasn't done with the franchise, staying on as a producer alongside Sam Rami and Robert Tapert. Rami and Campbell were done MAKING the films, but still wanted the franchise to live on.

So in 2019 a new film got the greenlight, with Rami handpicking rookie director Lee Cronin for the part, having impressed rami while working on the short lived quibi series 50 States of Fright. Cronin easily took to the cast and once filming COULD kick off in 2021, he hit the ground running. The result is a fresh take on the franchise that was so well done that WBD decided it was too good to just pop on streaming and much like Blue Beetle, bumped it up to theaters. The result was a 19 million dollar film.. scoring nearly 150 million in the box office, a huge success that , unlike most films only GREW it's audience as the weeks went on, always a great sign.

As a result the franchise's future seems secure, with Cronin not only already having 4 ideas for a sequel, which i'll get to later, but the results were so Groovy Bruce decided he wasn't finished yet, meaning an ash film is also in the cards.

So the question is how groovy is this film and how does the franchise fair without it's iconic cabin setting or iconic catchphrase spewing chainsaw man? The answers to all of this is under the cut. So turn the page, wash your hands, and prepare for 1717 Gallons of Bloodshed as I look at Evil Dead Rise.

Evil Dead Rise starts off a day after the main plot, with three 20 somethings having gone to a cabin in the woods woooooooooooooo not realizing what franchise their in. They are Jessica, Teresa, Jessica's cousin and Caleb, Jessica's douchey boyfriend. Caleb annoys Teresa with a drone, nearly clipping her with it and mansplaning after she says it nearly clipped her head off that it would've ground her face up instead.

Teresa proves to be just as obnoxious as Caleb, berating Jessica for leaving her alone with him, fair.. but then also being mad at her for being sick, laid up in bed and thus unable to give her the keys.

Thankfully this is an evil dead movie so Jessica quickly ends our suffering as she wants to swallow souls, taking off Teressa's scalp in a gory, horrifying and awesome practical effect before putting the drone to her own face and jumping into the lake. Caleb proves he's both not a COMPLETE asshole but still a complete idiot by diving in after her and we get the films awesome opening shot: Jessica rising from the lake, drenched in water and blood as the title rises behind her.

While I do like that TITLE CARRRD and scalping, overall i'm not a big fan of this opening. While it's well shot like the rest of the film, it's too short to really make me care and feels like it was thrown in there because the main plot ran a tad short and was too tightly paced to add to. It's a how we got here sort of thing that dosen't really work and feels like i'ts just there so we can have a sequel.. depsite the film having MULTIPLE other valuable sequel hooks dangling around. It's unnecessary in a film that otherwise really dosen't DO unnecessary. It also feels tonally off, feeling like a 2000's era "Kill the douchebags" sort of film than the tightly paced well characterized film we get after.

Thankfully we soon meet our actual protagnist, Beth. Beth, played by Australian Actor Alyssa Sulivan, gets a great introduction that does a lot of nice exposition without actually saying any: we quickly find out from her being sick in a stall and having some douche she works with who can't do his job himself and just let her go to the bathroom for five minutes knock on it that sh'es a roadie, her hiding it tells us she's pregnant and doesn't want anyone else to know, and Suilivan's awesome facial acting tells us she has no idea how to process this.

We soon cut to LA in a high rise, a setting change I utterly love. Before this most evil dead works were in a rural setting: a cabin in the woods for the first, second and fourth films, artuhrian times for the third, and some small towns for ash vs the evil dead. We haven't seen the deadites in an urban setting before this and LA was a great set.

The choice of setting within is also great: an old crumbling high rise in the middle of a busy city no one would give two shits about or really investigate in the middle of the night. It keeps the isolation of the cabin but puts a new spin on it that allows for new set pieces.

The main one of these is Ellie's Apartment. Ellie is played by the stunning and talented Alyssa Sutherland, previously known for Vikings, which I haven't seen. Sutherland is the easy breakout of the film, the center of most of it's marketing and the most terrifying part about it... eventually.

Part of that terror is we see her first as a fun, responsible mom and tattoo artist dealing with three children, all creatives themselves in some way: Bridget (Gabrille Echoles) is an activist, her brother Danny (Morgan Davies) is a dj and their young sister Cassie cuts up her dolls to create staves to body check her sister with.

This family, which doesn't have a last name, is the core of the film and the first 20 minutes are really just setting them up as people: Beth is a tad snarky but clearly loves her kids and is tough but fair with them, Bridget is sarcastic to just about everyone but her aunt, Danny is a bit of a reckless fuckwit but has a good heart, more on the former later, and Cassie is a sweetie pie. Their not super deep characterizations, but the talented actors give them a lot of character simply by action, and one of the films best asset is how great these people are at facial acting.

Beth flies in and after scaring the shit out of Ellie. The two actresses have great chemistry and you can feel the tension as the two clearly haven't talked.. and Beth missed a lot as Ellie's ex husband abandoned the family and this high rise is condemned, with the family only having a month. So naturally Ellie isn't that excited to see Beth, both for Beth dodging her calls, despite getting her messages, and showing up at the worst possible time.

That said the film also does a really good job with the sibling dynamic: like me with my own brother Ellie may be annoyed with Beth.. but she's there for her, getting this visit wasn't just out of the blue and her sister really needs her and waits till the kids have left to pick up pizza to ask, but does so gently yet firmly. These characters feel like family and building up this empathy and character is key to everything being as horrifying as it is. It's something many horror films, including this very film in it's opening and the previous film fail to grasp: just because

Dosen't mean we should WANT them too. It's fine to throw in a few assholes to kill so not EVERY death is a downer, depending on the film, but when you can't empathize with most of your cast it makes the wait for the bloodshed tedious. It's why the previous film REALLY didn't work for me: outside of mia NONE of these idiots were likeable and as such having to spend a film with them being stupid and waiting for them to die while the only likeable one was turned into a deadite wasn't fun. Here by making everyone we encounter likeable, grounded, and interesting.. it makes the horrifying slaughter we're about to witness that much more tragic. It makes us WANT these characters not to be dead by dawn.

Anyways we're soon reminded this is LA as we get an EARTHQUAKKKEEEE, with the bathroom set our sisters are in having been rigged to shake really well. The kids thankfulyl weren't driving at the time and instead are trying to take the pizza back up when it hits. They drop it, but do live.

Sadly for them and everyone else on their floor Danny suffers from a terminal case of dumbass and upon seeing a giant crack in the ground leading to a mysterious old bank vault just HAS to investigate in the dark. He finds some old records, which.. fair enough, it's some neat historical stuff, could be fun to paly with soundwise and could help them fincally. Him taking stuff romt he hole is mildly stupid.. but I get it and I probably would. What I wouldn't do is upon finding a room guarded by a bunch of hanging crucafixes and seeing a book with teeth and bound in human flesh, take it with me. And I mean teeth as this Necronomicon has a nasty but awesome set of chompers. I praise the set design here on this, it's iconic as the original, still recognizable as being it's sibling, but the teeth give it it's own flair.

Anyways the kids get back to the apartment and Danny decides the best thing he can do during a dark night with quakes a poppin.. is to pry open his new book. Which granted is what i'd do, but my recent book is about a trans woman's first year post transition and is damn good...

Highly recommend it and it's sequel, which I got first. Also guarnateed not to summon the evil dead.. which I understand is a dealbreaker for some of you. Good news i'm pretty sure that manga about Joker raising a baby batman does, so have at it if that's what your after.

Sadly Danny is not taking my book recommendations and opens the things finding a bunch of spooky pictures and... being genuinely horrified. He's a LITTLE fascinated but it's clear his reaction is "shit this thing isn't good is it. Not hleped is that when he pricks his finger on the books mighty jaws, it drinks some blood Audrey II styles. Bridget sees this and has the right reaction.

Or rather chuck it back down the hole they got it from. Danny can't because their mom won't let them out of the apartment after the quake which is fair.. what's less fair is that he dosen't wrap the book in something or hide it. Keep it from trying to nible on some face. You have 4 other people in the house Dan be considerate!

That said Dan still takes the darwin award winning step of playing the wax records he got. NOw on paper Danny being this dumb shoudln't work.. but in practice Rise does an excellent job showing why Danny would be like this: we've seen he's an audophile, that he's reckless as he went down a crevice in an earthquake, and that he's curious to a fault, willing to take the book in a first place. So he's being stupid.. but it's in a way where it's a character flaw and not just bad writing.

It also helps that while playing the records is risky.. you can kinda see why. He found a creepy vampiric book in the basement. He probably gets he might not be able to just chuck it in a hole and have it not come back or have already infected them or something. it didn't, but he can't know that. So knowing what the FUCK this thing is might be a good idea.

As it turns out we get some exposition from a preist long ago: he found the book and proposed to his fellow preists to explore it. His Fellow preists didn't want to die today and loudly decired it as blasphemous.

So he decided to take it and study it because that's never gone horribly wrong and lead to about a dozen deaths in this franchise, along with cameo Bruce Campbell and some other guy. He also decides to read it and to Danny's credit, he tries to stop the record there... only for it to keep playing. The Evil Dead have come baby.

Before we move on I need to talk about the danny thing a bit more, mostly because not only was this whole inciting incident well done, being rooted in character stupidity instead of just bad writing.. but it also feels like a direct response to the last film. For those who either haven't seen it, you blessed people you, or need a refresher, in Evil Dead 2013 the Necronomicon was found in a basement full of rotting corpses and next to a shot gun. it was packed in a garbage back, covered with barb wire, and had bright red writing implicitly from ash telling you NOT TO FUCKING READ IT OUTLOUD.

So enter Eric, full time teacher part time fuckwit who hears about the corpses, sees all of this and not only cuts the barbed wire but READS THE BOOK.

So it's nice the followup decided to use the same plot device.. but actually use it instead of making a character brain dead.

So with that the evil dead has risen and the nightmare time has arrived. And the first victim of the Evil Dead is Ellie, whose experincing some ELEVATED horror while taking the elevated when some cables grab her.

The sequence is quick horrifying and also has her trying in vain to fight off the possesion before the evil dead kills her, and she returns as a deadite.. and as the real breakout of the piece. While Beth is the lead and Lily Sullivan does greath, it's Sutherland whose the main attraction.. and not just because a good half of the audience's reactoin to Deadite Ellie was

Which isn't me, but I entirely get. It's also intresting to have a horror film where the deadite is the real hammy star instead of our hero. Sutherland is iconic in this roll, from the creepy smiles to how unsettling she plays possesed elly: the pitched down voice HELPS.. but it's the unceasing smile, creepy grins and offputting behavior that make Deadite Elly so awesome and so electric to watch. There's good reason her possesion was spoiled int he marketing: She's the center of this film's horror. She's not the only deadite, we'll get a few more, but she's the main threat, the main focus and the main thing fucking with our heroes heads, starting with the brilliant egg sequence where Cronin and Sutherland make simply making eggs fucking unerving.

She's also the main source of black comedy in the film, from calling her children titty sucking parasites, to her game of eeny meeny miney you, to later making her daughter repeat the eyeball gag from 2, her haminess is well played: enough to keep the film from getting TOO bleak but not so overplayed it takes you out of how horrifying thigns are.

Deadite ellie is the biggest symbol of the films tone: Cronin keeps it pitch black like the requel, but unlike that film Cronin realizes that too MUCH bleakness overrides everything else. But giving us characters to root for and want to live through the night and some dark humor, it helps contrast the utterly bleak situation. It gives us something to go what the fuck at with the humor and something to cling on to. I hate that I keep making this review "Whyt his one works and why the remake didn't" as Fede Alvarez seems like a genuinely nice person. This film is good on it's own, not just because I like it more than the other... but it's also impossible to not bring up the two as they tried to do the same thing: bring back the franchise without ash, without contiuing the original story. I don't WANT to keep using the 2013 film as a punching bag... but it's hard not to when this feels like the better version of it, making an evil dead that's closer to straight horror.. but still gets what the franchise is. It keeps the frantic pacing of 2, it just makes it less of an over the top comedy and more an over the top nightmare our heroes can't escape. it's frantic out of urgency rather than out of throwing weird, hilaroius or horrifying shit at y ou constantly. Well except the last part.

Anyways at first everyone just assumes Deadite elly is sick, and they turn to their neighbors, Gabriel (Jayden Daniels) and his father Mr. Fonda (Mick Michelson). Gabe is a kind man implied to have a thing for elly while his father is very mildly crotchety but a kind cat owner , both helping: Gabe tries to treat Elly while his pop pop tries to figure out HOW to get her to help. As it did with the bridge, the Evil has taken out the stairs and already trashed the elvator, leaving a fire escape through a conedemed apartment as thier only escape.

So while gabe and his dad plan to run through, everyone else is left with Elly. We also get a really nice use of modren tech: in most films they usually have to do the "cellphones out" dance, which I understand but got old. Here... what we know about the evil dead from other films provides a nice way... they get no signal.. because it can control that because it can control anything in it's radius. If it can posses a moose head working the wifi shoudln't be that hard.And it thus has Ellie, trapped inside her deadite counterprat clal her sister for help before convulsing.... and whne put inj a tub crawwling out of it

Mayhem ensues as the family has to ward off Deadite Ellie, and we get a lot of nice iconic bits of violence: Ellie's now iconic line of "mommy's with the maggots now", going "eeneie meanie miney you" and using a CHEESE GRATER on her daughter while attacking her in the kitchen. Which while Cronin overhyped it before release, it's a nasty wound but in a film caked in blood, it's still a very creative gore moment in a film packed with them. The gallons of blood I listed before the cut were how many it actually took to make this film. It's another way the film works: it keeps the over the top nature of the series, it just emphasises the horror more, a way to keep the series fredsh but not ignore what made it good.

Our heroes are barely able to lock Ellie out and we get one of the best sequence sin the film: our heroes look in the peep hole.. and we see bits and pieces as Ellie masacres Mr. Fonda, gabriel and two local teens I didn't mention because they literally just hit on Bridget once and then die horribly here. Even Mr. F having a boomstick dosne't save him. And it's stuff like this that works: the high rise on paper is safter, less isolated... but in practice our heroes are nwo trapped in a cramped space, no way out with a bloodthirsty monster wearing their loved one's face. It's a brilliant take.

Naturally as is Evil Dead tradition, the group falls apart a bit: Danny is in tears taking the blame for this and it's again why I like him: he may be stupid.. but while eric just kinda hid we see the toll casuing this put on Danny. Bridget rips him apart for it and normally you'd think one would go outside and die.. but in a nice twist on the old formula Beth stops them: Danny MAY of caused this but they CANNOT turn on each other. It's what's out there that they need to fight.

Speaking of which Deadite Ellie prays on her youngest, gaslighting cassie by pretending to be "all better now"

Though i'll give them points for style. This force Beth and Danny to save her.. and thus leaving them open for Bridget as in a horrifying sequence we see the dead slowly flow thorugh her before she startsb leading black blood out her nose... and becomes the dead.

Another horrifying scuffle insues with her targeting danny and barfing blood on him and nearly killing him before cassie FUCKING IMPALES HER. God damn kid.

They tie bridget up in a sack and Beth finally gets Danny to spill about the book and comes up with a plan: since playing the record got them into this, playing the record will get them out of this.

It's a desperation move.. but like Danny's earlier shenanigans that lead to this blood party.. it makes some sense: they can't read the book, and frankly trying to may just make MORE deadites, and if the guy actually survived long enough to make a third album, it means they MIGHT have a way out. We also get a nice ash style montage of her getting the DJ equipment to work as at this point the power is out. It also nicely makes her music career into a hell of a chekovs gun.

Tragically.. they don't. HIs album simply outlines the horrors idiot priest man faced, what he's lost and how only complete and total dismemberment works. Granted we knew from the intro they probably wouldn't' make it but by this point, the film's got us too invested to care. I still dont' LIKE the intro making it clear this doesn't work from the get go, but at least the films well paced enough to compensate.

Things then get somehow worse as Bridget rises and stabs danny to death, coughing up blood and everything. It's brutal as it is amazingly designed. He does manage to fire her out of the impartment... with fire, while Ellie sneaks in through the vents, something set up by the old man's lost cast earlier.

Ellie attacks Beth and in a VERY unerving moment detects she has a baby inside her, mocks her as deadites do then tries to rip it out.

But before she can get that fetus, kill that feetus and before I can go to hell for that joke, Bridget saves her. And props to Gabrille Echoles for her excellent child acting, an alex vincent level performance.

With our party down to 2 1/3, our heroes ventur eotuside and now EVERYONE'S a deadite. Highlights include Mr Fonda grabbing Ellie's leg as she grabs his boomstick

And my favorite bit.. the two deadite children hovering over a seemingly prone deadite ellie, seemingly crying for thie rmom.. before it turns into dark.. piercing laughter. It's one of the most effective scares in the film and all the deaddites joining in is just chilling. It's a scaled back but effective version of the entire cabin laughing from evil Dead 2

The final girls hide in the elevator as what's left of their family fuses into The Marauder, our final deadite for the evening and a grotesque combination of their family, a grim reminder of what's happened and just a gross thing to look at. As is standard for this film, it's awesome and I love it.

SPeaking of awesome and I love it we then get another destined to be iconic bit: the elevator fills with BLOOD. What's more impressive is they got the scene in one: had they failed they would've had to clean up and start again, which given this scene involves a GIANT pool of pracitcal blood and leaves both characters drenched in it for the rest of the film, is a LOT to as and is a LOT of moving parts to nail on your first try. But they did and the result is a horrifying sequence as the elevator fills, our heroines barely survive..a nd then get tosse dinto the parking garage drenched.

The good news: now they can escape. The bad news is Deadites love final boss fights, so The Marauder is there to oand stalking them. The final fight is a tense sequence as Elly ducks it but thankfully noticces some landscaping equipment. You know what that means... CHAINSAW BLOOD MOTHERFUCKERS

So Elly takeas a fucking chainsaw to it, which gives her an edge, and later uses her fucking boom stick and tells it to "come get some". I like these little nods, obvious enough to notice btu not distracting enough if you haven't seen the other films.

What finally does it in is fucking aawesome though: a goddamn woodchipper. look is a woodchipper being here convient? yes. is the fact the deadites only sent one convient? yes. is Ellie putting a deadite through a goodamn woodchipper with her niece and now adopted daughter turning it on fucking glorious and goryious?

It's a great finale and with that Ellie, her unborn child and her niece head off into the sunset.. while our opening deadite comes into being.

Evil Dead Rise is a glorious new chapter in the franchise: still very much evil dead, but with a darker and somehow even bloodier spin on things. It's a worhty sucessor and very worthy of being the highest grossing film in the franchise, and with that acolade a sequel is hopefully inevitble.

LIke I said Cronin had four ideas, all of them brillian 1. Returning to the Cabin: While admitely I dont' care about those characters, a new cabin in the woods would be neat. This is my least faviorite as the NEXT one.. but I woudln't mind it eventually. 2. Focusing on Ellie: Seeing where she goes next, which I badly want. 3. A prequeL: focusing on the preist. another solid idea. And my faviorite 4. The cleanup crew: returning to the high rise to ask "how the hell would people react to the leftovers of the carnage we just saw".

their all great and with Bruce wanting to return now after this entry, the future is bright and this will likely not be the last time we read from the book of the dead. But it was a great return of it and I can't wait to read the next chapter. Until then hail to the king baby.. and thanks for reading

[sallysavestheday]

May I ask 1, 9, and 14 for the chaotic ask game?

Thank you for the ask!

1. What's your favorite color? If you change your answer, a knight pushes you off a bridge.

Brown! Eyes, hair, skin, bark, earth, spice, sweetness, warmth, comfort. So overlooked and underappreciated. Brown!

9. You discover a close family member is obsessed with your favorite fandom. What does this unholy alliance do at your next family gathering?

Pranks and puns and terrible inside jokes, undoubtedly. Possibly some costumes (subtle or not, depending on the gathering). Very likely some themed food.

14. What creation that you are working on do you most wish people would discover?

I'm currently wrestling with a new pairing for first-time participation in My Slashy Valentine. It remains to be seen whether or not I will wish it to be discovered. Otherwise...I've recced a lot of things recently but not my long-term comfort series The Flower and the Fountain. It's classic Glorthelion, and much better than its terrible name would imply.

Asks are from this great list by fishing4stars. Ask away!

[brigdh]

i want to ask so many :D 15, 21, 27, 35?

Thank you, I love having so many to answer! :D

15. Which genre(s) are your favorite?

Ahhh, hard to choose! Probably horror, if I had to choose only one, but I'm also very big on historical nonfiction, fantasy/sci-fi (with a slightly preference for fantasy), and in the last few years I've gotten really into mysteries.

21. The book(s) on your school reading list you actually enjoyed.

I (obviously) did not have a school reading list this year, but back in the day one of my high school teachers had us read Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and I was, as is only appropriate for a teenager in fandom, completely obsessed. If you haven't read it, it's a Tom Stoppard play that's literally fanfic of Hamlet, all about what the characters do when they're not "on stage", and how they deal with being fictional, and questions of fate and randomness and art. It's extremely meta and slashy and sad and also hilarious. It also contains this quote, which is from the acting troupe within the play, but comments on the nature of fiction in general:

We’re more of the blood, love, and rhetoric school. [...] I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, or I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory — they’re all blood, you see.

Which (again, as is appropriate for angsty 17 year olds) I definitely used as a blog header for a few years. Also, I just read a OFMD fic that used the same quote as a thematic point and I need to find the time to write the author a long comment because it was SO GOOD.

27. What was the first book you remember reading as a kid?

I have a terrible memory and have no idea what the first book I read was. But I do remember being fairly young and obsessed with an edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales I somehow had. It had been read often enough that the cover had fallen off, so I must have gotten it second-hand, but I don't know if someone gave it to me or what. It was mostly unexpurgated and had creepy Arthur Rackham illustrations, and I remember being young enough to have this sense that I wasn't really supposed to be reading it, that no one knew I had this gory book full of child murders and torture and talking heads, so I only read it in secret. The drawing of the witch all wrapped up in the thorn bush (under "Sweetheart Roland" at the link above) still haunts my dreams.

35. Least favorite trope in your most favorite book genre.

I haaaaaate the Chosen One trope, and it is in so many fantasy novels. Particularly I hate the variety of it that goes "many people have tried to do X (where X = pull the sword out of the stone, kill the evil king, etc, whatever grand deed needs doing in this story), and they have all failed, but here comes the Chosen One, and they will immediately succeed, because they're just so much more ~special~ than anyone else, or because they really ~believe in themselves~, and I guess all the people who failed before and therefore died tragically and/or had to learn to live in the wake of their failure and ruined dreams can just fuck themselves, shoulda had more hope, I guess".

(Weirdly, the place this trope hit me the hardest recently was not a book, but Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. And I do! get! that there is important significance to having the One Who Finally Succeeds be a Black boy! But it's still a trope I dislike.)

Book meme!

[madrigaljail]

Seda's Encanto Fic List

The Madrigal In-Laws Series, aka the one with all of the OCs, lore, and el brujo loco. Info-dump post for that is here.

First Impressions of a Miracle - Agustín and his hapless parents - Philipe and Helena - stumble into a miracle, and are absolutely not prepared.

Better Tomorrows - Forty-ish years of a miracle through the eyes of Félix's uncle Roberto, aka the Encanto's emotional cornerstone.

(Mis)calculations - Doña Mercedes Guzmán, Mariano's abuela, has so many judgey opinions about so, so many people. Especially those absurd, pretentious Madrigals.

Final Reflections On A Miracle - On her deathbed, Agustín's mother thinks back on her life since arriving in the Encanto, and wonders exactly who the miracle is for.

A Prophet In His Own Land - The Big Bruno Fic, in which he keeps trying and mostly failing to find his place within both his family and his community.

Talk of the Town - WIP. Pepa's nerves are shot while she's pregnant with Antonio. This gives the rest of the kids a reason to make themselves scarce from Casita, spend time with their other families, and dig up dirt on their parents, Abuela, and that guy they can't talk about. Shenanigans ensue.

Damage Control - When the miracle's twentieth anniversary ends in violence, Félix does his best to smooth things over and make sense of it all. A visit with an old friend leaves him with the usual "more questions than answers". A Félix POV one-shot.

Apocrypha - post-canon stories also set in the In-Laws 'verse; so far the theme for these is ✨GAY✨

the same boy you've always known - WIP. Thirty years after leaving the Encanto, Padre José Guzmán returns with a new batch of refugees, a ton of emotional baggage, and a rekindled attraction to Bruno. Meanwhile, Bruno has a midlife crisis. The slashy romcom no one asked for but everyone needs.

Pollination - Isabela has a meet-cute Roberta "Bubo" Marquez, aka me spreading genderflip Bubo/Isa propaganda.

Fruition - Isabela and Bubo have A Moment among the lilypads.

Other Stuff - one-shots, collections, and other AUs

a slip of the mask - After the death of the Miracle, Julieta realizes she is angry. Her brother makes an easy - but also very complicated - target for that emotion.

A Star Is (Re)Born - Modern Celebrity AU. Everyone in the Madrigal family is famous, but historically Bruno has been notorious for all the wrong reasons. When a chance to revitalize his career presents itself, Mirabel encourages him to take it.

A Butterfly Flaps its Wings - WIP? My Encantober drabbles and ficlets.

Gently - Five times Bruno got squeezed too hard...and one time he didn't mind it.