Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

A final batch of questions from my Tumblr, mainly about The Goes Wrong Show! (Well, final unless more people ask me things; I'd be delighted to receive more questions about this stupid show.)


Anonymous: do you have any headcanons for personal issues that cornley crew might struggle with outside the ones that are presented in canon?

Oh, hmm! Here are some scattered thoughts on the Cornley crew's personal issues. Some of these are veeeery obvious (wow, Chris has mother issues and Dennis struggles with socialising, can't wait to get my character analysis trophy), but I might as well throw all of them together.

I've tried to speak in general terms rather than giving clinical explanations for anything; I certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that, say, Dennis is autistic or Robert has narcissistic personality disorder, but I don't really feel qualified to give diagnoses!

( A handful of Cornley personal issues. )


the-red-thread-that-strangles: Who among the Goes Wrong crew gets injured the most, and who gets injured the most severely?

I feel the answer is probably Trevor in both cases! Vanessa is pretty accident-prone, but, as the one responsible for the set and props, Trevor is actively obliged to throw himself into harm’s way when things go wrong. I think Trevor falling through the roof in Harper’s Locket is the most severe canonical injury I can think of off the top of my head. Wait, second most severe; I just remembered Jonathan’s piano.

(As a follow-up Dreamwidth-exclusive thought, Jonathan also has a serious fall in Peter Pan! He might rival Trevor for the 'most severely' crown.)


Anonymous: Thoughts on a Cornley school/college au but it's set in 2010s/2020s??

Huh, this is a tricky one for me! School or university AUs serve two main functions: a) they put all the characters in the same place if they’re scattered across canon, and b) they let you explore what characters from other worlds would be like in a real-world setting. But the Cornley crew are already in the same place and in the real world, so it’s hard to think of where to take an AU where they’re in education! (I suppose they are in education in early canon, come to think of it, given that it’s a polytechnic drama society to start with.)

Anyway! In a ‘they’re all at university and there’s no drama society’ AU, Chris, Robert, Sandra and Vanessa are all drama students. Annie and Trevor are doing engineering and have been roped in to build a set. Max is not a student, but he likes to sneak into university classes because he thinks it’s funny. Dennis is also there, although nobody quite understands why; he is not doing the drama course and doesn’t seem certain of what he’s actually meant to be studying. Jonathan is an economics student who wanders into the drama room by accident and cannot open the door to leave. They all end up trapped in there overnight and bond extremely weirdly.

I need you to know that I am trying really hard not to take this in the direction of If We Were Villains, a novel about a close-knit group of theatre students who end up murdering one of their own. I don’t want the Cornley crew to murder one of their members! (Who would get murdered, though?) (Robert impulsively murders Chris in order to get the lead role and then goes '...it’s possible that I’ll regret that’?) (I DON’T LIKE THIS CONCEPT)


marysue_thesparkle: Assign your current blorbos an animal pretty please :3

Robert Grove of The Goes Wrong Show is one hundred percent a rhinoceros. He’s large and aggressive and powerful and, much like a rhinoceros, will unintentionally cause a lot of destruction when you put him on a stage.

Thinking about it, a couple of my longstanding blorbos are already assigned animals by their canons: Squall of Final Fantasy VIII is a lion, and Ellie of The Last of Us is a moth. Personally, I think Squall is more of a domestic cat than a lion, but don’t tell him that; he won’t be happy about it.

As for Light Yagami of Death Note... hmm. He’d think of himself as a raven, something winged and impressive and associated with death. In fact, the moth fits him better, for the same reason it fits Ellie; they’re both inescapably drawn to the flame, unable to stop battering themselves against the promise of their own destruction.

(Dreamwidth-exclusive addition: I cannot assign James Sunderland of Silent Hill 2 a non-human animal. I've tried! But he is inescapably a sad man. Human through and through, for better or worse.)

Have a handful of Goes Wrong Show drabbles I've written on Tumblr! And one slightly longer ficlet, also written in response to a Tumblr request (for domestic Grovebean, although I'm not entirely certain I've succeeded in making it either domestic or Grovebean). It's been a long time since I last tried to write something sticking to exactly a hundred words; I'd forgotten how tricky it can be.


( Five drabbles for The Goes Wrong Show, one of which is a Death Note crossover. )

( The Goes Wrong Show, Chris and Robert, 700 words, prompt: domestic Grovebean. )


'Are you feeling all right?' Rei asked me yesterday. 'You haven't posted any Chris/Robert fanfiction in over three days.'

Last night, I took my mum to see The Play That Goes Wrong on stage for her birthday! She really seemed to enjoy herself; she commented that it was lovely to see a play where the audience was so clearly really into it. I'm very pleased.

We had a different Robert and Dennis from the last time I went to see The Play That Goes Wrong, on the eighth of February! What, yes, it's normal to see the same play again nine weeks later, don't give me that look.


( The Play That Goes Wrong on stage, 12 April 2026. )


Before the play, Trevor goes around asking if anyone's seen a dog; in the end, with nothing to play the role of the dog, the actors simply pretend an invisible dog is present. As we left the theatre, Trevor's actor was collecting for charity, so I had the opportunity to speak briefly to Trevor as I donated:

Riona: The dog never turned up?
Trevor: Yeah, well, there's always... not tomorrow, 'cause we've got a day off. There's always Tuesday, isn't there?
Riona: Well, if it's still missing by then, you could ask Robert to play the dog. I'm sure he'd be happy to have more stage time.
Trevor, deadpan: Yeah, he's got basically no lines. I'll just play it myself.

Part two of my responses to questions about The Goes Wrong Show from Tumblr!


solspeak: What elements of Robert's character/voice do you try to keep in mind when you're writing him? Why are you so weird about Robert? Are these two things connected? robert

The main things I bear in mind when writing fanfiction about Robert Grove:

- Robert is always acting. The world's a stage, and he takes that very literally. He's always looking for opportunities to give some sort of performance to some sort of audience, in the theatre or out of it.

- Robert is always correct. Whatever he says, no matter how ridiculous, he says it with perfect confidence. He'll also refuse to take the blame for anything, because that would mean admitting that his actions were wrong, and he is, as mentioned, always correct.

- Robert enjoys giving advice and assistance. His efforts to help will probably make things worse, but he's convinced he knows how to solve your issue, and good luck persuading him otherwise.

- Robert is a very genuine and serious person, but he's not an honest person, which is an interesting combination. He says what he means, he's not in the habit of playing pranks (I'm struggling to think of times he even makes jokes), and, when he lies, it tends to be either because he's panicking or because he believes the lie is necessary for the greater good. (Not everyone will agree with Robert's interpretation of 'the greater good'. For example, he believes that, for the sake of theatre, he should play the lead role at any cost.)

- Following on from that thought, Robert expects other people to be genuine in return; he's a trusting person, I think! He doesn't necessarily expect them to be competent, but he expects them to mean what they say.

- Robert's speech is always a little too grand. He doesn't speak like a person; he speaks like someone acting from a script. His choice of phrasing tends to be on the elaborate or old-fashioned side, and it's rare for him to hesitate or stumble over his words.

- Robert is selfish and has questionable morals, but it's rare for him to act maliciously. When he hurts people, it tends to be because the consequences of his words or actions simply did not occur to him, often because he was too focused on his goal to consider that he'd be hurting someone in the process. The people around him end up just as hurt, of course! But, for characterisation purposes, I think it's important to remember that Robert isn't a cackling villain; he's an inconsiderate friend.

- Although Robert is often rude in his thoughtless bluntness, he thinks of himself as polite, so he’ll follow surface-level rules of politeness like saying 'please’ and 'thank you’.

- Robert is a slightly lonely person, although he may not consciously acknowledge it, and enjoys the company of the drama society.

- Robert is extremely goddamn weird about Chris. Are you writing a Robert/Chris fic? No? Doesn't matter. He is still thinking about Chris two hundred percent of the time.

- Fundamentally, all of Robert's actions proceed logically from the belief that nothing is more important than acting. He's very weird, but he's weird in a way that makes internal sense.

As for why I'm so weird about Robert... well. In part, it's because he's such a fun character! He's dramatic and ridiculous and in-your-face in a way that I find an absolute blast to write, and I have a lot of fun exploring his insane dynamic with Chris.

In part, it's... I'll be honest: it's because Robert Grove, as played by Henry Lewis, is ridiculously hot. I've always had a weakness for a large, imposing man with a loud and aggressive persona, and he's extremely handsome on top of that. The first episode of The Goes Wrong Show I watched was 'The Lodge', which features one of Robert's most attractive roles, and my two main reactions were 'this is very silly and pretty fun' and 'this show contains the hottest man in the world???'

In conclusion, Robert Grove is hot as hell and twice as unbearable, and I find him deeply compelling.


the-red-thread-that-strangles: How is the practice that somehow was scheduled on Valentine's Day going?

It sounds to me like this is a question for the Cornley Drama Society themselves, so I've sent it their way!

Dennis: We've got a question from someone called... the-red-thread-that-strangles? Bit violent. Um, she wants to know how the Valentine's Day rehearsal is going.
Chris: Fine. It's going fine, obviously. We're professionals; I don't know why you'd expect anything else.
Robert: You're being needlessly defensive, Chris; all she asked was how it's going. Thank you for your interest, Ms Strangles. It's going very well.
Chris: We're professionals. It's going very professionally.
Dennis: Annie kissed everyone. And Max.
Chris: In a – in a professional fashion.
Dennis: I liked it. I thought it was nice. And I made everyone Valentine's Day cards.
Robert: Absolutely illegible.
Dennis: But you knew what they meant, right? Because you know what day it is.
Robert: I suppose that's undeniable.
Chris: (very reluctantly) The cards were a nice touch.