marmolita

I've received a few more Goes Wrong questions on Tumblr!


Anonymous: Cornley School au anon here. I worded it terribly, sorry. What I meant to ask was about the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society if they had met as teenagers and grown up in the 2010s but I absolutely garbled the word soup there.

Ah, thank you for clarifying, and I'm sorry for getting confused! It worked out in the end, because I enjoyed the idea of everyone getting trapped in the drama room.

I was an adult by the 2010s myself (I'm pretty much exactly the same age as Lewis/Sayer/Shields) (even the most virulent antis cannot complain about our four-month age gap when Robert Grove and I get married)*, so I don't know how intelligently I could talk about what it would be like for them to grow up in that decade; I imagine smartphones in particular made it a very different experience! (Unless Cornley has no reception, which I could definitely believe.)

* This is assuming that Robert is the same age as his actor, which is admittedly not a given! Chris is canonically two years older than Robert, whereas there are only three months between their actors. I considered using Lewis for this joke instead, but it's not Henry Lewis I'm weird about; it's Robert Grove. Which is unfortunate, because marrying Lewis would be a) more achievable and b) probably a less terrible idea.

If they met as teenagers, I could see them sort of gravitating around Robert. Things often feel uncertain and unstable when you're a teenager, and, at that age, I can imagine that Robert's projected air of absolute confidence might feel magnetic, particularly for the characters who have very little confidence themselves (e.g. Dennis and Vanessa). It's possible I just think that because I find Robert so compelling myself, though!

If Robert does end up the centre of their group, of course, it's only a matter of time before he ropes them into putting on theatre. They are doomed to end up in the drama society in every universe.


Anonymous, continued: Also, I am taking notes on If We Were Villains and I shall explore that... but yes, we do not want Robert killing Chris!

I hope you enjoy If We Were Villains, if you check it out! It's not a perfect book, but I really enjoyed how intense and weird the character dynamics were.

Maybe Robert could instead attempt to murder Chris and then get really huffy that Chris won't let it go. The man's still alive, isn't he? Why is he still complaining over one measly murder attempt? It's been weeks!


Anonymous: I don't know if this counts as a ficlet, but I'd love to see Man-Spider's mishaps with the Goes Wrong crew.

This is such a deep cut, and I’m so curious about who you are! In any case, Man-Spider is thrilled that someone remembers him.


( The Theatrical Adventures of Man-Spider. )


Anonymous: Who would be the worst member of Cornley for Robert to be bodyswapped with? I am imagining shenanigans galore for every possibility!!!

I feel Sandra is simultaneously the worst and the best option!

Robert rather enjoys being in Sandra’s body. Does a lot of strutting and posing, comments that he can see why Sandra’s such a fan of it.

Sandra hates being Robert, right up until she realises that, if she’s in someone else’s body, she can have sex with herself. Robert takes up the suggestion with great enthusiasm. They make very little effort to hide what they’re up to from the rest of the society, who are deeply unhappy about this.

I have written a lot of stupid bullshit for this fandom, but this is the stupidest bullshit yet, and I apologise.


Title: Adaptability
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 15
Pairing: Robert/Chris, Robert/Robert, Robert/Chris/Robert
Wordcount: 2,700
Summary: “In the end,” Robert says, “I concluded that I was also the most qualified person to play Juliet. Therefore, I have decided to summon myself from an alternate universe.”

( Adaptability )

My usual policy is that, if I write fanfiction in the comments of someone else's journal or community, I'll repost it in an entry over here. If I write fanfiction in the comments of my own journal, though, I won't make an entry for it; it already exists on my journal in some capacity, after all.

However! wolfy_writing's prompt in the comments of this entry ('Robert's ideas for seducing every other member of the drama society') launched me into writing eight separate short fics in response, one pairing Robert of The Goes Wrong Show with each other member of the drama society. I think that's an ambitious enough project to warrant its own entry!

Do these fics technically fit the original prompt? Let's... let's not worry about that.


( Much Ado, Robert/Annie, 900 words. )

( With the Camera, Robert/Sandra, 700 words. )

( In Position, Robert/Trevor, 1,100 words. )

( Imparting Wisdom, Robert/Dennis, 1,200 words. )

( Problem-Solving, Robert/Jonathan, 700 words. )

( Hands-On, Robert/Vanessa, 2,200 words. )

( Chemistry Testing, Robert/Max, 1,000 words. )

( Rehearsals, Robert/Chris, 2,300 words. )

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.)

Thank you to wolfy_writing for inspiring the concept of Robert trying to help Chris accept his sexuality! I had a great time writing this.


Title: Breaking the Closet
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: G
Pairing: Robert/Chris
Wordcount: 2,200
Summary: “Left to his own devices,” Robert says, “Chris will simply continue to repress his homosexuality. We have a duty to help.”

( Breaking the Closet )

Taskmaster is back, and I enjoyed the new episode a lot; it looks like it's shaping up to be a fun series! Here, in honour of the occasion, are a couple of Goes Wrong/Taskmaster questions I've been asked on Tumblr.


the-red-thread-that-strangles: If you could pick a lineup of contestants from The Goes Wrong Show to participate in Taskmaster, who would you pick, how would they do, and who do you think would win?

I’d love to see Annie, Chris, Dennis, Robert and Vanessa as a Taskmaster lineup!

I don’t imagine anyone’s surprised that I’ve chosen Robert. He’d throw himself into every task with great determination, but he’d swiftly get frustrated and start complaining. He’d argue passionately against every poor score he receives, no matter how obviously warranted.

Vanessa would approach every task with an air of brisk but slightly nervous competence and fall apart immediately.

Dennis would misunderstand more or less every task and do something completely different. His general air is ‘wandered onto the set by accident, confused and scared, doesn’t entirely know what Taskmaster is and seems to believe that something terrible will happen if he doesn’t complete these tasks’. Greg and Alex are increasingly baffled by him. Over the course of the series, Greg’s responses to Dennis’s task attempts go from making fun of him to 'you okay, mate?’

Annie would be having an incredible time; she’d have a blast with the tasks and would cheer the others on enthusiastically in the studio. She’d probably win the series.

Chris would consider the affair undignified and would sigh deeply after reading every task. He’d start out putting in a half-hearted effort, then get increasingly angry as his efforts fail and end up throwing his entire being into getting the task done.

The teams are Annie/Vanessa/Dennis, who muddle disastrously through tasks together but occasionally manage to do something surprisingly well, and Chris/Robert, who never get anything done because they’re so busy arguing about the correct approach.

Trevor, despite not being a contestant, is inexplicably there, running around in the background of tasks and putting out fires.


Anonymous: ok but who would win in a fight between robert grove and greg davies?

I think both Greg and Robert would shrink from a serious physical fight! If you forced them to battle, however, Robert is strong as hell and it’s hot; he unintentionally knocks Chris flat with a backhand in The Lodge, and he’s able to pick Annie and Dennis up with apparently very little effort. (This five-second clip in particular, where he grabs Dennis and zooms offstage, left me thinking a lot about Robert's capacity to throw people around.)

So my answer is that they’ll both try to run away from the fight. If a battle did take place, Robert would theoretically win. However, because he is a member of the Cornley Drama Society, he’s going to trip over and knock himself out in the first five seconds of the fight, and Greg will be left to claim slightly confused victory.

That or they’d make out, obviously.

Another instalment of Goes Wrong questions I've been asked on Tumblr! I've been having a great time with these.


Anonymous: Do you think Chris would have felt self-conscious about being called 'weak' by Robert? Would Robert like that Chris is 'weak' or want him to be a more even match? (I am imagining a (disastrous) Cornley training montage.)

I think Chris probably hated being called weak by Robert; it bothered him more than he'd like to admit. From anyone else, he'd have been able to shrug it off; his strength isn't usually something he's particularly insecure about! From Robert, though, the accusation of weakness gets under his skin.

For his part, Robert disapproves of Chris's weakness and feels a responsibility to fix it. This might actually be part of why he's constantly pushing against Chris's decisions; in his head, he's helping Chris learn to stand up for himself. They can't have a weak director, either in mind or in body; it puts the whole drama society at risk. What if someone stronger comes along and forces Chris to make the wrong casting decision?

Robert should ideally be the director, of course. But, if he can't be, he can at least make Chris stronger. (Cue the disastrous training montage.)


Anonymous: DO YOU THINK ANY OF CORNLEY WOULD BE TUMBLR USERS? AND IF THEY ALL WERE THEN WHAT WOULD THEIR BLOGS LOOK LIKE?

Chris created a Tumblr in the hope of promoting the drama society, but he gave up on it very quickly. It contains four posts: a photograph of the set for one of their plays, a photograph of the poster for one of their plays, and two photographs of birds he reblogged.

Robert is not really an Internet person and does not have a Tumblr. However, if he did have one, it would be entirely filled with black-and-white photographs of himself in dramatic poses, each captioned with a quotation from a play.

Sandra's Tumblr is all selfies, all the time. She never reblogs anything or communicates with anyone else on the platform. (Chris and Robert might communicate with other Tumblr users, but a) rarely, and b) only to get into arguments.)

Max posts photographs multiple times per day. Pictures of rehearsals, friends, family, animals, landscapes, plants, food. Sometimes he'll post a photograph that leaves people going 'why did you even take this?': a paving slab, the corner of a desk, a blurry close-up of his own sleeve. He follows all the others and likes everything they post, but he never reblogs.

Annie actually uses Tumblr properly! She reblogs pictures she likes and text posts that make her laugh, she keeps up with her mutuals, and she posts a lot of ask memes to encourage people to talk to her. She's definitely at least peripherally aware of fandom and may well be actively in fandom.

Dennis originally just used his Tumblr for liking animal pictures and videos, but then he saw a post scolding people for not reblogging and panicked. He now reblogs everything he sees out of a confused sense of obligation.

Vanessa created a Tumblr at Annie's insistence, spent a long time carefully setting it up and finding the perfect layout, and then got too intimidated to actually use it and left it untouched. If she did use it, she would exclusively reblog, rather than making any posts of her own, and would tag everything meticulously; she and Annie are the only members of the drama society who actually use tags.

Jonathan exclusively makes short text posts about his everyday life like he thinks he's on Twitter.

Trevor's Tumblr has never been used; it has a default icon and no posts. The blog name is 'trevor' and the blog description is 'stop telling me to make one of these annie'.

A couple more questions about The Goes Wrong Show I've been asked on Tumblr!


Anonymous: what sort of (modern) music do you think robert and/or chris enjoy? i find them both hard to pin down music taste wise! i agree that robert seems like a classical music type of guy, but does he have any guilty pleasure pop music when nobody is looking?

Interesting question! I think they’re both classical music fans, but, thinking about the modern side:

Robert: Bombastic songs, lively songs, anything that tells a story; I’ve got Thin Lizzy’s 'Whiskey in the Jar' stuck in my head right now, and I think he’d enjoy it. He doesn't confine himself to a particular genre and likes some songs you might not expect, but he does have certain prejudices, e.g. not thinking of videogame music as 'real music'. I definitely think he listens to some pop, but not guiltily; he'll blast 'Call Me Maybe' or 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' from his dressing room while the other drama society members go '????' at each other. He broadly favours music from the seventies and earlier, but he does still enjoy later releases. Such as, naturally, 'Stacy's Mom'.

Chris: We already know that Chris's favourite Christmas song is 'White Christmas', and from that I'm inclined to extrapolate that he tends to prefer music on the slow and sedate side. Music from the sixties and earlier; unlike Robert, he's unwilling to give more modern music a chance.


kestrel-wylde: Your thoughts on the robchristrev dynamic? I've been chewing on it an awful lot - in either platonic/romantic/loathful contexts

The interesting thing about Robert and Trevor's dynamic is the fact that Robert doesn't respect Trevor's work - he considers stage management inherently less worthwhile than acting - while simultaneously trusting and relying on Trevor completely. When Robert catches fire in Peter Pan, he calls for Trevor in a panic; when Robert asks for his line in Haversham Manor, he faithfully repeats Trevor's response without considering for a moment that it might not be the line, and he's shocked and outraged to realise it isn't.

Chris also has a bit of a tendency to take Trevor's work for granted, come to think of it, piling tasks on him that aren't in his job description.

So I think an interesting thing you could do with the Robert/Chris/Trevor dynamic is rip Trevor out from under their feet: if he's injured or otherwise out of action somehow, it could force Chris and Robert to realise how much they rely on him. Chris will feel bad for taking him for granted; Robert will go 'that stupid man, getting injured when he knows we need him', because good luck getting Robert to acknowledge he's in the wrong about anything.

Possibly Chris and Robert team up and attempt to nurse Trevor back to health. The experience is extremely stressful for poor Trevor, who, on top of trying to recover, now has to put up with Chris and Robert constantly arguing over the best way to help.

Finally, some thoughts on how each of them would react if the other two were in a relationship:

- If Chris and Trevor started dating, Robert would be furiously jealous and would quite possibly start trying to steal Chris away.

- If Chris and Robert started dating, Trevor's reaction would very much be 'oh, Christ, I'm going to have to clean up the mess when this whole thing explodes, aren't I?'

- If Trevor and Robert started dating, Chris would be confused and upset and wouldn't understand why. He might start trying to argue that it's inappropriate to have romantic relationships within the society.

- If all three of them start dating, God help us all.