If everything's a dream,

A couple more answers to Goes Wrong Show questions I've received on Tumblr!


Anonymous: In the CCGW intermission, we get a glimpse of Robert’s CV—apparently, in Romeo and Juliet he played both Romeo and Juliet at the same time, while Chris was listed as the director (later usurped). Do you have any thoughts or ideas about the story behind that?

Robert playing both Romeo and Juliet in the same production is one of my favourite details from Robert's CV; it's such a Robert thing to do. I love him. He should play every part in every play.

I'm actually working on a fic about the dual-Roberts Romeo and Juliet right now [I received this question while I was writing Adaptability], but the concept there is 'there are literally two Roberts', which seems unlikely to be the canonical way it played out! It might instead have been something like this:

- Chris casts himself as Romeo.
- Robert uses every tool at his disposal - complaining, attempting to ensure none of the society's actresses will be available on the night, arguing that casting two men as the lovers will show the progressiveness of the drama society - to get himself cast as Juliet.
- Perfect; Robert is now Juliet! He's in a lead role! He's satisfied.
- ...
- Is he satisfied?
- Now that he sits down and counts, Romeo does have slightly more lines than Juliet. There's a difference of seventy-five lines! That's almost fourteen percent of Juliet's lines! Surely Robert should be playing Romeo?
- Robert attempts to persuade Chris to switch roles. Chris, incredulous, refuses.
- Robert continues to complain. Chris threatens to take Juliet away from him.
- Fine. Robert will have to take matters into his own hands. If he drugs Chris before the performance, just a little innocuous drugging, he can step into the role of Romeo, where he belongs.
- One small downside: nobody else has rehearsed the role of Juliet, so Robert is going to have to play her as well.
- Actually, that's not a downside at all. This is going to be the greatest performance of Romeo and Juliet ever seen.

There is one detail from Robert's CV that this concept doesn't account for: he lists the venue for his Romeo and Juliet production as 'France?', question mark and all. How does Robert end up putting on this play while uncertain of what country he's in? Unless he accidentally drugs himself slightly in the process of knocking Chris out, and then Chris regains consciousness before the play and, furious, chases Robert onto the Eurostar.


Anonymous: do you think robert would enjoy being a vampire?

Robert Grove would have a great time hamming it up as a vampire. He’d wear a cape. He’d hiss. He’d insist on the Cornley Drama Society putting on more vampire-centric plays, largely because he’s now the obvious choice to play vampiric characters.

There is not a chance Robert is nobly going to abstain from drinking human blood. He would attack strangers if he had to, but he’s a coward who wants to avoid serious physical conflict, so he’d try to persuade people to let him drink their blood voluntarily.

This works out fine at first; Sandra is happy to be a sexy vampiric victim! But then Sandra decides she’d prefer to be a sexy vampire, and Robert immediately agrees to turn her. After all, if they’re going to be putting on more vampire plays, it’ll be good to have someone who can play female vampires as well.

So now there are two vampires in the Cornley Drama Society, and Robert’s main source of blood is no longer an option.

Max and Annie agree to let Sandra feed from them: Max a little nervously, and Annie with surprising enthusiasm. Vanessa, very nervously, lets Robert feed from her; she’d really prefer not to have her blood drunk, but she’s worried about Robert not having enough sustenance and she doesn’t entirely know how to say no. Chris, having repeatedly insisted there’s not a chance that Robert will get any of his blood, eventually gives in because he’s worried about Vanessa and wants to ease the burden on her. (This leads to a very confusing sexual awakening for Chris, naturally.)


Also, hey, while I'm posting things from Tumblr, here's a video I took of the hopeful little meerkat I mentioned in this post! If you turn the sound on, you can hear the meerkat's tiny curious chirps and my charmed laughter.

Robert Grove of The Goes Wrong Show sank his teeth into my throat at the turn of the year and has spent the four months since then shaking me violently, but I think he's starting to relax his grip a little!

I'm still deeply fond of the Cornley Drama Society, of course! But I'm no longer constantly thinking about the Goes Wrong universe, or feeling the non-stop drive to write fanfiction. I can think of other works of fiction again at last, without resenting them for having the temerity not to feature Robert Grove!

In short, I find myself stumbling back into the real world at last, squinting in the sunlight, with 60,000 words of fanfiction scattered around me. This has been one of the wildest, most intense fandom experiences I've ever had. I lost twenty AO3 subscribers. I don't regret a thing.

Does this mean I'm going to start posting entries about other things again? No promises, but it just might happen.

Actually, here's an entry that's at least partly about other things right now! Rather an overdue entry, to be honest.


Towards the end of last year, I wanted to make an entry reflecting on the three canons of 2025 (specifically, canons I'd first experienced in 2025) that had had the biggest impact on me. I was struggling a little to come up with three, though! I knew Clair Obscur would be one, and the Silent Hill 2 remake would be another, but I just couldn't think of a third.

And then The Goes Wrong Show slammed into me, absolutely obliterating me, and I'm now making this post four months late because I've only just regained the ability to talk about anything else.

Of all the canons I first experienced in 2025, here are the three that had the largest impact on me:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leapt with impressive speed from 'huh, I've never heard of this' to being one of my favourite games of all time! Loved the gameplay, loved the concept, loved the characters. The art direction is stunning, as is the music; I actually bought the OST, approximately twenty years after my last purchase of a videogame soundtrack. I replayed the game immediately after beating it; I just wasn't ready to put it down. It's not a perfect game - I have severe frustrations with the ending - but it comes so, so close, and even the aspects I dislike are still interesting to think and talk about. I also really enjoy the way it is unapologetically Frencher than France.

I was nervous about playing the Silent Hill 2 remake! The original Silent Hill 2 was so formative for me; it was hard to imagine that a remake would get it right. But it got it so right. I'm absolutely awed by how well this remake captures and expands on the game, and how clearly it's built on deep foundations of love for the original. It was a pleasure to spend time with James Sunderland again. Well, it was horrible, obviously, but I still had a great time.

And, finally, The Goes Wrong Show, which I absolutely lost my mind about for four solid months, going from 'wow, this is some really impressive stagecraft and comic timing and Robert is hot' to 'I kind of want to dig into these characters' to 'wait, where did these theatre tickets come from' to 'somehow this is now my fourth-most-written fandom of all time?'

On a canon level, I enjoy The Goes Wrong Show because it's very funny and well-crafted! On a fandom level... honestly, I think it woke up a side of me that's been dormant since I was a teenager in Top Gear fandom. I heard 'a group of people, everything they do is a disaster, one of them is a big blustery attention-grabbing man who blithely causes problems for everyone', and the part of me that wrote 90,000 words of fanfiction about Jeremy Clarkson at the age of eighteen immediately shouldered her way to my computer and opened up a Word document.

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.