Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-02-16 10:50 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-02-16 10:50 am
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I Initially Forgot To Include A Title, Which Is At Least Appropriate For The Fandom.
The 2026 Three-Sentence Ficathon is now at an end! Still open to fills, but there are no new prompts being posted. Here's an eighth and (probably) final roundup of my fills; once again, all of these are for The Goes Wrong Show.
The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Vanessa and Robert/Chris, 350 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'drunken confessions of love'.
The Spirit of Christmas is going extremely poorly, and, given Robert's state of inebriation, Chris doesn't have much hope that it can be salvaged. Still, Robert-as-Santa is at least now on the sofa with Vanessa-as-Belle, which does reduce the risk of Father Christmas falling flat on his face.
"I'm in love with you, you know," Santa informs Belle.
"No!" Chris snaps.
"What do you mean, no?" Robert asks. "You can't tell me what to feel, Chris."
"Father Christmas cannot confess his love to a small child! That is a very different play, and a much less tasteful one."
Robert gestures at Vanessa. "She's a grown woman!"
"Yes, a grown woman playing a small—" Chris cuts himself off, takes a moment to process that statement. "What, are you saying you're actually in love with Vanessa?"
Vanessa, wide-eyed, lets out a very small squeak.
"Of course that's what I'm saying!" Robert exclaims. "Why would I want to portray Father Christmas as some sort of pervert?"
"Why would you want to confess your feelings on stage," Chris growls, "in the middle of a play?"
Robert looks at the audience, suddenly and sharply, as if only just registering they're there.
"Sorry, Belle," he says, turning quickly back to Vanessa. "Didn't mean to look at you when I said that; that was probably confusing. I meant I was in love with him, of course. That... ridiculous snowman." He gestures at Chris.
Not the ideal cover, but Chris supposes it is at least an improvement.
"Oh," Vanessa says, radiating considerably more alarm and uncertainty than appropriate for her character, "that's – that's nice."
"It's not, really," Robert says, reflectively, "but we must make do with the feelings thrust upon us." He swivels to face Chris and drops his voice to an extremely audible whisper. "That declaration was real as well, if you're wondering. We'll sort this out after the show."
Chris meets Vanessa's eyes and sees his own fathomless horror there. He can, at least, take some small comfort in knowing he's not the only one suddenly facing the prospect of being loved by Robert Grove.
The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Sandra, 200 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'almost getting caught having sex somewhere they're not supposed to'.
Chris takes a deep breath, waiting for the play to begin. This one will go better. It's a mantra he repeats in his head before every performance. This one will go better. This one will go better.
The curtain rises, the lights go up, and – what in God's name are Robert and Sandra doing on the set?
"Christ!" Robert exclaims, retracting his hand swiftly from under Sandra's dress. "What the hell are you doing, Trevor? The audience can see us!"
"Raising the curtain, mate," Trevor calls down from the tech box. "It's the start of the play."
"On time?" Sandra demands. "It's always at least twenty minutes late!"
It takes a moment for Chris to dig the power of speech out of his own incredulous outrage. "I'm so deeply sorry for inconveniencing you."
"All right, put it back down," Robert says, waving a hand. "Put the curtain back down. This won't take long."
Trevor gives Chris a your call, boss look.
"Absolutely not," Chris says.
"Sorry," Trevor calls to Robert and Sandra. "Not my choice. I'd let you go at it; it'd probably be more interesting than the actual play."
"More interesting than Macbeth?" Robert demands, instantly furious. "You bite your tongue."
The Goes Wrong Show, Robert, 60 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'all the world's a stage'.
“The world’s a stage, you know,” Robert informs the Tesco cashier, “which is why I will expect payment for your front-row seat at my performance as a supermarket patron.”
“Does that mean I get paid for being your co-star?” the cashier asks, flatly, resting her chin on her palm.
Robert swiftly crumples the invoice in his hand: “Let’s just call it even.”
The Goes Wrong Show, Chris, 700 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'But be careful what you wish for 'cause you just might get it'.
Chris leaves Cornley far behind, abandons the incompetence and insubordination of the Cornley Drama Society, makes his way for less ill-fated theatrical pastures. The first time he directs a play for his new London-based theatre company, it goes perfectly. He almost weeps for joy in the theatre.
The second performance goes just as well. And the third, and the fourth. There’s a small hiccup in the fifth performance – an ornament is knocked off a desk, and Chris’s breath catches – but his actors, ever professionals, don’t draw attention to it, and the rest of the play goes smoothly.
Every evening, they set out to perform Death of a Salesman; every evening, Death of a Salesman is exactly what they get. The same thing, night after night after night.
By the twentieth performance, Chris is sick of the damn thing. The plays he put on with the Cornley Drama Society were terrible, perhaps, but at least they were terrible in a variety of ways. There was always something new to see, some new disaster to tackle; when he was on the stage, he was constantly thinking on his feet. If there aren’t any issues to respond to, he might as well be sleepwalking through the role.
When he pays a visit to Cornley to see his parents, a poster happens to catch his eye: the Cornley Drama Society, putting on a new contemporary play at the Cornley Playhouse. He hesitates for a moment before booking a seat in the front row.
-
“Good evening!” Robert announces, striding out in front of the curtain. “Thank you all for coming to this performance by the Cornley Drama Society. I am Robert Grove, the director, and tonight – ah.” His eyes lock onto Chris’s. “The traitor returns.”
It’s absolutely unprofessional. No actor in Chris’s new troupe would dream of airing a personal grudge in front of the audience. He’s missed this sort of thing so much that his heart twinges.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Robert asks.
Chris gives him a small smile. “Break a leg.”
“Oh,” Robert says, drawing himself up to his full height, “we shall. Believe me, we are doing perfectly well in your absence.”
Three separate members of the drama society do, in fact, break a leg over the course of the play. It makes Chris feel a little guilty for his well-wishes. But at the same time, in a strange way, it warms his heart.
“Shit,” Robert mutters. “We’re out of understudies. Er, Chris? Any chance you could play the role of Percival?”
Chris blinks. “I don’t know the script.”
“That’s fine; you’ll just have to improvise. Come on.” He grabs Chris’s arm and drags him up onto the stage.
Stumbling his embarrassed way through a role he doesn’t know, Chris feels more alive than he has in weeks.
At the end, he takes his castmates’ hands and bows to the few remaining audience members with a sense of genuine pride. The play can’t be said to have gone well, not by any metric, but they got to the final curtain, and they had to fight tooth and nail to reach it. That feels like it means something.
-
“I’m sorry for leaving,” Chris tells the drama society, after the play. “Would you be willing to take me back?”
He’s not quite braced for Annie and Dennis to throw themselves at him immediately, but he just about manages to withstand their embrace. He withstands it better than Dennis, certainly, who has evidently forgotten about his own broken leg and ends up whimpering.
“London chewed you up and spat you out, did it?” Robert asks, with undisguised delight at the thought.
“Not exactly,” Chris says. “But... well, I suppose I missed this.”
Robert folds his arms. “You can’t just step back into the role of director, you know.”
This is, Chris reluctantly has to concede, fair enough. “Fine. Maybe it’ll be good to have someone else take responsibility for the theatrical disasters for a while.”
“Disasters?” Robert asks. “Let’s be clear: tonight was a fluke. The next performance will go perfectly.”
Chris laughs, quietly. “I certainly hope not.”
The Goes Wrong Show, Annie/everyone, 150 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'any pairing with 6+ characters, can you pack the entire polycule into just 3 sentences?'
Annie's fervent confession of love to the entire drama society, while not strictly in the script, is certainly dramatic; in Robert's view, that makes it appropriate for the theatre. Sandra and Max glance at each other, then each kiss Annie in turn; Dennis nervously attempts a kiss of his own and misses; Trevor, chuckling quietly, dims the lights to something more romantic; Vanessa desperately continues reciting her lines, displaying impressive focus but little ability to respond on the fly to the needs of a scene; Jonathan hammers with increasing urgency on the glass-panelled door keeping him from the set.
Robert is happy to join in; he's always thought that two people aren't enough for a relationship, that there should be some sort of inbuilt audience, although of course there is also an actual audience present; "This is not supposed to happen in the play," Chris screams from the wings.
And that's the end of this Three-Sentence Ficathon! It's my favourite fandom event of the year, and this year in particular I've had an incredible time with it. I ended up writing fifty-six fills, totalling just over ten thousand words; fifty-two of those fills were for The Goes Wrong Show, because I have a problem.
Thank you to everyone for your prompts and comments and fills! Thank you in particular to anyone who read my Goes Wrong Show fics without being familiar with the series; a couple of people even checked the show out because of my fills, which absolutely delighted me. My main goals were to have a good time and spread Goes Wrong propaganda, and I think I've succeeded in both.
The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Vanessa and Robert/Chris, 350 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'drunken confessions of love'.
The Spirit of Christmas is going extremely poorly, and, given Robert's state of inebriation, Chris doesn't have much hope that it can be salvaged. Still, Robert-as-Santa is at least now on the sofa with Vanessa-as-Belle, which does reduce the risk of Father Christmas falling flat on his face.
"I'm in love with you, you know," Santa informs Belle.
"No!" Chris snaps.
"What do you mean, no?" Robert asks. "You can't tell me what to feel, Chris."
"Father Christmas cannot confess his love to a small child! That is a very different play, and a much less tasteful one."
Robert gestures at Vanessa. "She's a grown woman!"
"Yes, a grown woman playing a small—" Chris cuts himself off, takes a moment to process that statement. "What, are you saying you're actually in love with Vanessa?"
Vanessa, wide-eyed, lets out a very small squeak.
"Of course that's what I'm saying!" Robert exclaims. "Why would I want to portray Father Christmas as some sort of pervert?"
"Why would you want to confess your feelings on stage," Chris growls, "in the middle of a play?"
Robert looks at the audience, suddenly and sharply, as if only just registering they're there.
"Sorry, Belle," he says, turning quickly back to Vanessa. "Didn't mean to look at you when I said that; that was probably confusing. I meant I was in love with him, of course. That... ridiculous snowman." He gestures at Chris.
Not the ideal cover, but Chris supposes it is at least an improvement.
"Oh," Vanessa says, radiating considerably more alarm and uncertainty than appropriate for her character, "that's – that's nice."
"It's not, really," Robert says, reflectively, "but we must make do with the feelings thrust upon us." He swivels to face Chris and drops his voice to an extremely audible whisper. "That declaration was real as well, if you're wondering. We'll sort this out after the show."
Chris meets Vanessa's eyes and sees his own fathomless horror there. He can, at least, take some small comfort in knowing he's not the only one suddenly facing the prospect of being loved by Robert Grove.
The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Sandra, 200 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'almost getting caught having sex somewhere they're not supposed to'.
Chris takes a deep breath, waiting for the play to begin. This one will go better. It's a mantra he repeats in his head before every performance. This one will go better. This one will go better.
The curtain rises, the lights go up, and – what in God's name are Robert and Sandra doing on the set?
"Christ!" Robert exclaims, retracting his hand swiftly from under Sandra's dress. "What the hell are you doing, Trevor? The audience can see us!"
"Raising the curtain, mate," Trevor calls down from the tech box. "It's the start of the play."
"On time?" Sandra demands. "It's always at least twenty minutes late!"
It takes a moment for Chris to dig the power of speech out of his own incredulous outrage. "I'm so deeply sorry for inconveniencing you."
"All right, put it back down," Robert says, waving a hand. "Put the curtain back down. This won't take long."
Trevor gives Chris a your call, boss look.
"Absolutely not," Chris says.
"Sorry," Trevor calls to Robert and Sandra. "Not my choice. I'd let you go at it; it'd probably be more interesting than the actual play."
"More interesting than Macbeth?" Robert demands, instantly furious. "You bite your tongue."
The Goes Wrong Show, Robert, 60 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'all the world's a stage'.
“The world’s a stage, you know,” Robert informs the Tesco cashier, “which is why I will expect payment for your front-row seat at my performance as a supermarket patron.”
“Does that mean I get paid for being your co-star?” the cashier asks, flatly, resting her chin on her palm.
Robert swiftly crumples the invoice in his hand: “Let’s just call it even.”
The Goes Wrong Show, Chris, 700 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'But be careful what you wish for 'cause you just might get it'.
Chris leaves Cornley far behind, abandons the incompetence and insubordination of the Cornley Drama Society, makes his way for less ill-fated theatrical pastures. The first time he directs a play for his new London-based theatre company, it goes perfectly. He almost weeps for joy in the theatre.
The second performance goes just as well. And the third, and the fourth. There’s a small hiccup in the fifth performance – an ornament is knocked off a desk, and Chris’s breath catches – but his actors, ever professionals, don’t draw attention to it, and the rest of the play goes smoothly.
Every evening, they set out to perform Death of a Salesman; every evening, Death of a Salesman is exactly what they get. The same thing, night after night after night.
By the twentieth performance, Chris is sick of the damn thing. The plays he put on with the Cornley Drama Society were terrible, perhaps, but at least they were terrible in a variety of ways. There was always something new to see, some new disaster to tackle; when he was on the stage, he was constantly thinking on his feet. If there aren’t any issues to respond to, he might as well be sleepwalking through the role.
When he pays a visit to Cornley to see his parents, a poster happens to catch his eye: the Cornley Drama Society, putting on a new contemporary play at the Cornley Playhouse. He hesitates for a moment before booking a seat in the front row.
“Good evening!” Robert announces, striding out in front of the curtain. “Thank you all for coming to this performance by the Cornley Drama Society. I am Robert Grove, the director, and tonight – ah.” His eyes lock onto Chris’s. “The traitor returns.”
It’s absolutely unprofessional. No actor in Chris’s new troupe would dream of airing a personal grudge in front of the audience. He’s missed this sort of thing so much that his heart twinges.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Robert asks.
Chris gives him a small smile. “Break a leg.”
“Oh,” Robert says, drawing himself up to his full height, “we shall. Believe me, we are doing perfectly well in your absence.”
Three separate members of the drama society do, in fact, break a leg over the course of the play. It makes Chris feel a little guilty for his well-wishes. But at the same time, in a strange way, it warms his heart.
“Shit,” Robert mutters. “We’re out of understudies. Er, Chris? Any chance you could play the role of Percival?”
Chris blinks. “I don’t know the script.”
“That’s fine; you’ll just have to improvise. Come on.” He grabs Chris’s arm and drags him up onto the stage.
Stumbling his embarrassed way through a role he doesn’t know, Chris feels more alive than he has in weeks.
At the end, he takes his castmates’ hands and bows to the few remaining audience members with a sense of genuine pride. The play can’t be said to have gone well, not by any metric, but they got to the final curtain, and they had to fight tooth and nail to reach it. That feels like it means something.
“I’m sorry for leaving,” Chris tells the drama society, after the play. “Would you be willing to take me back?”
He’s not quite braced for Annie and Dennis to throw themselves at him immediately, but he just about manages to withstand their embrace. He withstands it better than Dennis, certainly, who has evidently forgotten about his own broken leg and ends up whimpering.
“London chewed you up and spat you out, did it?” Robert asks, with undisguised delight at the thought.
“Not exactly,” Chris says. “But... well, I suppose I missed this.”
Robert folds his arms. “You can’t just step back into the role of director, you know.”
This is, Chris reluctantly has to concede, fair enough. “Fine. Maybe it’ll be good to have someone else take responsibility for the theatrical disasters for a while.”
“Disasters?” Robert asks. “Let’s be clear: tonight was a fluke. The next performance will go perfectly.”
Chris laughs, quietly. “I certainly hope not.”
The Goes Wrong Show, Annie/everyone, 150 words. First posted here, in response to the prompt 'any pairing with 6+ characters, can you pack the entire polycule into just 3 sentences?'
Annie's fervent confession of love to the entire drama society, while not strictly in the script, is certainly dramatic; in Robert's view, that makes it appropriate for the theatre. Sandra and Max glance at each other, then each kiss Annie in turn; Dennis nervously attempts a kiss of his own and misses; Trevor, chuckling quietly, dims the lights to something more romantic; Vanessa desperately continues reciting her lines, displaying impressive focus but little ability to respond on the fly to the needs of a scene; Jonathan hammers with increasing urgency on the glass-panelled door keeping him from the set.
Robert is happy to join in; he's always thought that two people aren't enough for a relationship, that there should be some sort of inbuilt audience, although of course there is also an actual audience present; "This is not supposed to happen in the play," Chris screams from the wings.
And that's the end of this Three-Sentence Ficathon! It's my favourite fandom event of the year, and this year in particular I've had an incredible time with it. I ended up writing fifty-six fills, totalling just over ten thousand words; fifty-two of those fills were for The Goes Wrong Show, because I have a problem.
Thank you to everyone for your prompts and comments and fills! Thank you in particular to anyone who read my Goes Wrong Show fics without being familiar with the series; a couple of people even checked the show out because of my fills, which absolutely delighted me. My main goals were to have a good time and spread Goes Wrong propaganda, and I think I've succeeded in both.
no subject
Amazing!
Yeah, you don't want the show to go wrong in that particular way.
This is so wonderfully weird!
Social skills!
Oh no!
Of course that happens!
Aw!
no subject
Very true! It wouldn't be the first time they've accidentally suggested an unintended relationship, though. When Annie and Robert were playing siblings in The Play That Goes Wrong, Annie (being a last-minute replacement and therefore not knowing the role) accidentally ended up on the wrong page of the script:
Annie: Kiss me a thousand times, I'm yours!
Robert: Of course, Florence, that's what - (realising what's happened and pushing Annie away as she approaches) brothers?? are for???
Poor Jonathan never gets to be part of anything.
Thank you so much!
no subject
Let me guess, the cashier has had to deal with Robert before XD
Vanessa desperately continues reciting her lines, displaying impressive focus but little ability to respond on the fly to the needs of a scene; Jonathan hammers with increasing urgency on the glass-panelled door keeping him from the set.
AHAHA yes, that's exactly how it would go (also Dennis missing with his kiss)
Robert is happy to join in; he's always thought that two people aren't enough for a relationship, that there should be some sort of inbuilt audience, although of course there is also an actual audience present;
LOL, this explanation of why Robert would gravitate towards polycules makes perfect sense, but also, the more audience(s) the better, obviously!
Loved the Trevor cameo in the unexpected-on-time raised curtain, but my favorite was Chris's uncanny Go Right AU from which he returns to the bosom of Cornley Drama Society disasters <33
I ended up writing fifty-six fills, totalling just over ten thousand words; fifty-two of those fills were for The Goes Wrong Show, because I have a problem.
That's genuinely incredible!
And thank you for your propaganda -- I had a lot of fun discovering the show through it :DD
no subject