I'll Be Very Embarrassed If I Follow This With Four More Months Of Incessant Goes Wrong Posting.

[rionaleonhart]

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.

Comments

[solspeak]

An impressive wordcount! Sorry about your -20 subscribers, but the Goes Wrong posting has been fun. I'm imagining Riona locked in a The Goes Wrong Show cellar, forced to watch plays of the most disastrous caliber, rhapsodizing over it all.

Is your Top Gear fanfiction still anywhere to read, if not on AO3?

Clair Obscur sounds really interesting. I liked your fic for it, especially the character dynamics. I'm in the middle of playing three other games right now but I want to try it out next.

[rionaleonhart]

I'm impressed by the tenacity of the subscribers who've stuck around! To be honest, whenever anyone subscribes to me, I want to tell them they're making a mistake. You'll regret following me for any specific fandom; I'll be into something completely different two months later!

Riona locked in a The Goes Wrong Show cellar, forced to watch plays of the most disastrous caliber, rhapsodizing over it all.

Robert probably locked me in there and insisted on the rhapsodising.

Is your Top Gear fanfiction still anywhere to read, if not on AO3?

uh-oh

You can find most of my Top Gear fanfiction on my rionaleonhart AO3 account, over here! Most of them are archive-locked, so you'll need to be logged in to see them. Be aware that these were written when I was in my late teens, almost twenty years ago, so my writing might have some unrefined edges.

Clair Obscur is such an interesting game! I hope you have a good time with it, if you do try it out. What are the games you're currently playing?

[apiphile]

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.

And good, frankly. I missed her ;)

[rionaleonhart]

It's been fun to welcome her back! Fascinating to discover that there's been a bomb hiding inside me all this time, just waiting to be activated by a large and aggravating man.

[proustbot]

I lost twenty AO3 subscribers.

These people are cowards!