Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-04-17 10:41 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2026-04-17 10:41 am
Jonathan Suffers Surprisingly Frequent Stage Injuries For Someone Who Barely Makes It On Stage.
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!
Chris:
- mother issues, obviously
- lies awake worrying about things on a regular basis
- not always great at taking care of himself, will skip meals or put off sleep because he's focusing on other things
Robert:
- mother issues, obviously
- lonely and quietly longing for company
- struggles with occasional insecurity in the midst of his self-obsession
- also lies awake worrying sometimes, actually. If he were the director, it would happen every night. (Robert's mental health would collapse so hard and so fast if he became the director instead of Chris; we get a sense of this in Summer Once Again.)
Sandra:
- has issues with her family (she says in her Christmas Carol programme bio that she performs with the drama society 'to avoid spending time with her family'), although the fact that she's willing to publish that fact in the programme makes me feel it's more 'doesn't really enjoy their company' than 'something is terribly wrong'.
Max:
- insecure (and consequently seeking validation from the audience). He's aware that his fellow actors don't think much of his acting ability; sometimes he can shake it off, but sometimes it hurts.
Dennis:
- struggles with socialising
- zero self-confidence
- not great at remembering to eat, or at preparing food, but he's been eating better since Robert moved in; Robert enjoys cooking and takes mealtimes seriously
Annie:
- some insecurity and anxiety, but she's gained confidence through performing with the drama society
Jonathan:
- has lost confidence through performing with the drama society and struggles with feelings of worthlessness
Vanessa:
- struggles severely with anxiety, I STEP FORWARD TO RECEIVE MY CHARACTER ANALYSIS TROPHY
Trevor:
- Trevor's main personal issue is somehow ending up chained to a doomed theatre company for ten-plus years when he's not even into theatre
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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.)
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!
Chris:
- mother issues, obviously
- lies awake worrying about things on a regular basis
- not always great at taking care of himself, will skip meals or put off sleep because he's focusing on other things
Robert:
- mother issues, obviously
- lonely and quietly longing for company
- struggles with occasional insecurity in the midst of his self-obsession
- also lies awake worrying sometimes, actually. If he were the director, it would happen every night. (Robert's mental health would collapse so hard and so fast if he became the director instead of Chris; we get a sense of this in Summer Once Again.)
Sandra:
- has issues with her family (she says in her Christmas Carol programme bio that she performs with the drama society 'to avoid spending time with her family'), although the fact that she's willing to publish that fact in the programme makes me feel it's more 'doesn't really enjoy their company' than 'something is terribly wrong'.
Max:
- insecure (and consequently seeking validation from the audience). He's aware that his fellow actors don't think much of his acting ability; sometimes he can shake it off, but sometimes it hurts.
Dennis:
- struggles with socialising
- zero self-confidence
- not great at remembering to eat, or at preparing food, but he's been eating better since Robert moved in; Robert enjoys cooking and takes mealtimes seriously
Annie:
- some insecurity and anxiety, but she's gained confidence through performing with the drama society
Jonathan:
- has lost confidence through performing with the drama society and struggles with feelings of worthlessness
Vanessa:
- struggles severely with anxiety, I STEP FORWARD TO RECEIVE MY CHARACTER ANALYSIS TROPHY
Trevor:
- Trevor's main personal issue is somehow ending up chained to a doomed theatre company for ten-plus years when he's not even into theatre
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 :3Robert 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.)
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Aw, poor Jonathan! There was a time when doorknobs didn't trigger anxiety and "Do you think you can make it onto stage?" would have struck him as a weird question.
I'm sorry, I just don't get why people get into these random out-of-nowhere headcanons.
They think Annie has been murdered, but Robert staged the whole thing as an opportunity to demonstrate a point about the nature of drama to Chris, Robert, and Vanessa. Annie was fully on board with pretending to be a murder victim and letting her classmates think there is an actual murderer in their group to make Robert's plan work.
YES!
That immediately made me think of His Dark Materials and the idea of James not having a daemon. It feels oddly appropriate.
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I felt so bad for Jonathan in their Christmas radio special! He kept missing every Christmas event he was supposed to report on, and by the end he was audibly nearly in tears. 'I'm sorry, everyone back at home listening to this, wanting to hear the lovely joyous Christmas songs which only come round once a year. I've let you down. I've let myself down. This was meant to be a great career opportunity for me, and I'm just clearly not up to the task.'
I'm sorry, I just don't get why people get into these random out-of-nowhere headcanons.
I'm here to present my bold new take on the characters, and I don't care if the fandom ostracises me for it.
Robert staged the whole thing as an opportunity to demonstrate a point about the nature of drama to Chris, Robert, and Vanessa.
I really enjoy the idea of Robert staging this to demonstrate a point to himself.
Annie was fully on board with pretending to be a murder victim and letting her classmates think there is an actual murderer in their group to make Robert's plan work.
She would be. She's perfect.
The idea of James not having a daemon is a fascinating one! And, yes, I can definitely see it. I suppose he's a normal person before Mary's illness, so maybe he loses his daemon somehow?
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Maybe it doesn't follow him into Silent Hill, it seems like it can't, which is confusing to James, every other person in town seems to have one, but he's not going to fail Mary
againso he goes and tells himself it's still there, still waiting for him on the edge of town, even though something in him knows better and knows why the people he meets give him such a horrified stare.no subject
Oh, this is absolutely perfect. The best possible way to do a Silent Hill daemon AU.
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Also, who would take over as director when Robert gave up?
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'Oh, no, how could this possibly have happened?' Robert asks, extremely convincingly.
Good question! I think Chris's level of sympathy would be directly inversely proportional to the level of Robert's involvement in his absence. If Robert staged a coup or shipped Chris off in a crate, Chris's reaction is pure smugness, with perhaps a little concern starting to peek through if Robert doesn't bounce back to his usual self within a couple of days. If Robert was just looking after the society in Chris's unrelated absence, I think Chris is more likely to be sympathetic, with perhaps a touch of 'see, it's not an easy job, is it?' in the hope Robert will cut him more slack in future.
Also, who would take over as director when Robert gave up?
There's actually a scene in Christmas Carol Goes Wrong (the stage version) where the drama society members conclude Chris has abandoned them and gather in a little circle to discuss who'll be the director:
Dennis: So, if Chris is gone, who's our new Prime Minister?
Robert: I'll take over. We'll do Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. But nude!
Sandra: No, Robert. Someone else has to be in charge.
Annie: Maybe you?
Sandra: God, no. I don't want to have to deal with all of you.
Robert: (proudly) I am a handful.
Jonathan: Well, I don't want the job.
(Everyone looks at Annie, who shakes her head. Everyone then looks at Trevor, who is equally unenthused. The attention then turns to Max.)
Max: (laughing) I'm definitely not leadership material.
(Dennis steps forward.)
All: No.
So apparently the only members who are willing to be the director are Robert and, alarmingly, Dennis. (Vanessa isn't a member at this point, but I doubt she'd take the role!)
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Ooh, Dennis once directed an entire sketch where nothing went wrong! What if he directs nothing but short, simultaneously weird and boring, disaster-free scenes where nothing falls over or catches fire or otherwise goes unexpectedly wrong? And Chris comes back to find out that no one in the cast has been injured for over a week?
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