Web Video / Shipwrecked Comedy

L-R: Sinead Persaud, Mary Kate Wiles, Sean Persaud, and Sarah Grace Hart.

Shipwrecked Comedy is a a YouTube comedy group that creates web series, sketches, and short films. Originally founded in 2013 by Yulin Kuang and siblings Sean and Sinead Persaud, the group now consists of the Persauds, Mary Kate Wiles, and Sarah Grace Hart. The four of them share producing duties on and co-star in every project, which are usually co-written by Sean and Sinead.

Shipwrecked's most notable works revolve around their fictional version of author Edgar Allan Poe, which present Poe (portrayed by Sean Persaud) as a macabre and social awkward recluse sharing his house with Valley Girl ghost bride Lenore (Sinead Persaud) and pining after the Pollyanna Annabel Lee (Wiles). The characters were first introduced in the series A Tell Tale Vlog (also known as Social Awkward Poe), which was later spun off into Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party, which later received its own companion in A Cryptmas Carol. In between they released the meta romance series Kissing in the Rain, and later works include the noir parody The Case of the Gilded Lily, the silent film homage American Whoopee, horror short Little VVomen, and a three-part Crossover Feud Episode with Tin Can Brothers that starts with Shipwrecked's short A Book By Its Cover.

Shipwrecked's work is usually based in well-known literature, history, or a combination of both, combining Genius Bonus with slapstick and dry humor.

Shipwrecked's work includes:

• Tell Tale Poe:
  • A Tell Tale Vlog
  • Emily Dickinson's Guide to Spending the Holidays Alone
  • Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party
  • Edgar Allan Poe's A Cryptmas Carol
• Fig and Ford:
  • The Case of the Gilded Lily
  • The Case of the Greater Gatsby (Podcast)
• Kissing In The Rain
• Bertha's Attic Song
• American Whoopee
• Little VVomen
• The Bookfarters Saga (Crossover with The Tin Can Bros)
• Friends 'Til the End
• Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story
  • Unsolved Babesteries: A Headless Companion Series
• How to Be a Ghost

Shipwrecked Comedy and their work contain examples of:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Kissing in the Rain's Anne of Green Gables episode is a reference to Mary Kate Wiles having played Anne in the stage production three years earlier.
  • Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party makes a meta joke out of reuniting the Bennet sisters from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (though not in the same scene - the actresses are shown together in behind-the-scenes material, while Ashley Clements shares scenes with Mary Kate Wiles and Laura Spencer separately).
• Actually Pretty Funny: At the end of "Bertha's Attic Song," Jane Eyre admits that the picture Bertha did of her is pretty good and subscribes to the channel.
• Affectionate Parody: "American Whoopee" has a lot of fun with the tropes of teen comedies.
• All There in the Manual: Alongside Kissing in the Rain, Shipwrecked ran a contest that allowed fans to write fan fiction that would be included as canon backstory for the characters. Earlier videos created by Shipwrecked and Kuang are also considered KitR canon.
• Artistic License – History: Played for Laughs in "The Arbitration," where the "Judge" claims that Jack and Dean's original sketch is the first video ever uploaded to YouTube, and that after 14 years, there are still only two views and two comments.
• Awful Wedded Life: Vivian Nightingale in The Case of the Gilded Lily implies this about her own marriage. She's having affairs with multiple men, and there's this exchange during The Summation:
  Vivian: Is this going to take very long? My husband is probably wondering where I am.
  Fig: Well, somebody wants this over in a jiffy.
  Vivian: Like most things involving my husband.
• The Bet: "American Whoopee" has the main trio of boys making a bet about losing their virginity before the stock market crashes. This being 1925, one of them says that that will never happen!
• The Big Damn Kiss: Kissing in the Rain is basically built around this trope, and delivers one an episode.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Roger in The Case of the Gilded Lily.
• Black Comedy: "Bertha's Attic Song" is about all the things Bertha Rochester does to kill time in her attic, including setting fires, making voodoo dolls and crying.
• Christmas Special: Shipwrecked tends to take a parodic but heartfelt spin on the trope.
  • "Emily Dickinson's Guide to Spending the Holidays Alone", which came out for Christmas 2014, shows Emily Dickinson in a similar vlog style to Tell-Tale Vlog advising her audience on how to avoid human contact during the holidays because, "If you suffer from seasonal crippling agoraphobia like me, the holidays are the worst time man or God has ever created."
  • "A Cryptmas Carol", released for Christmas 2018, is told in a similar manner to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, showing Poe, Lenore, and Annabel Lee at Christmastime. Poe, in typical Poe fashion, is too involved in tragedy to engage in Christmas cheer and instead seals Santa Claus in a basement crypt as revenge for a petty slight, a la The Cask of Amontillado, before freeing him after Annabel Lee mentions wanting to see Santa.
  • "How to be a Ghost", released for Christmas 2023, is a Prequel to A Christmas Carol where Jacob Marley is taught a lesson by the Christmas Ghosts... in song!
• Cliché Storm: Invoked with "American Whoopee," which is an Affectionate Parody of both silent films and teen movies.
• Colorblind Casting: Shipwrecked never uses historical settings as an excuse for Monochrome Casting. This was taken to its logical extreme in "Little V Vomen," which had the four March sisters played by actresses of three different ethnicities.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: The couple played by Sean and Mary Kate in Season 1 of Kissing in the Rain were very much an example of Belligerent Sexual Tension and Nice Character, Mean Actor, playing up the Black Comedy of their relationship instantly becoming tense and awkward the moment the director yells "Cut!" Season 2 of Kissing in the Rain is a direct contrast to this, being a Played Straight Meet Cute and slow-burn romance between Sinead and Sairus Graham's characters.
• Contrived Coincidence: Played For Laughs in "The Arbitration," which reveals that Shipwrecked and the Tin Can Brothers were the only ones to view and comment on a video which, fourteen years later, they separately decided to steal, pass off as their own, and premiere on the same day, at the same time.
• Courtroom Episode: As mentioned above, "The Arbitration" is basically one, even though it's not in an actual courtroom, because everyone except the arbitrator seems to believe that it's a real trial.
• Crossover:
  • The entire point of The Bookfarters Saga, with the Tin Can Bros.
  • "Bertha's Attic Song" ends with a cameo from Jane Eyre of The Autobiography of Jane Eyre.
  • Kissing in the Rain crosses over indirectly with A Tell-Tale Vlog, with one of the movie projects Audrey and Henry are working on being a Show Within a Show that appears to be the unseen sequel to A Tell-Tale Vlog (the story of Lenore hooking up with the ghost of John Proctor after she abandons Edgar).
  • The Case of the Greater Gatsby features a cameo from Ernest Hemingway, as played by Joey Richter from Poe Party. Truth in Television, since Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the victim in Greater Gatsby, were acquainted rivals in real life.
• Easily Forgiven: In The Case of the Gilded Lily, Roger is revealed to be blackmailing his wife, using the money to pay off a gambling debt, because he was too proud just to ask her for it and risk her divorcing him. She immediately forgives him, but her best friend Fig doesn't, and as they're having their dramatic make-up, she slides by in the background, giving Roger a Death Glare.
• Eating the Eye Candy: "American Whoopee" starts with Teddy and Gil watching Millie walk down the street.
  • When Vivian and Ford first meet in The Case of the Gilded Lily it inspires Ford to launch into a long voiceover about how beautiful she is.
• The End... Or Is It?: The Case of the Gilded Lily ends with the words "The End!" Then the exclamation point becomes a question mark, and we get the Sequel Hook mentioned below.
• Extra-Long Episode: The Bookfarters Saga has the two original sketches, which are about 6 minutes long each, and the finale The Arbitration, which is about 10 minutes. In the middle are two livestreams that were each two hours long.
• Foreign Exchange Student: "American Whoopee" has one hailing from Canada.
• Foreign People Are Sexy: Parodied in "American Whoopee," where two of the characters become enamored with a perfectly normal, if somewhat goofy, Canadian boy.
• Former Child Star: In The Case of the Gilded Lily, Ford admits to being one, and that's why he hates dealing with Hollywood cases. Claudette was his co-star, and seems to have adjusted better.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Team Starkid and Tin Can Brothers; the Bookfarters Saga is one long meta joke about this. Mary Kate Wiles's involvement means they're also an adjacent fandom to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
• Fun with Subtitles: In the last scene of The Case of the Gilded Lily, as the characters are celebrating in Ford's office, whoever wrote the subtitles took a moment to compliment the score:
  *upbeat music plays*
  *Honestly, it's some of Dylan Glatthorn's best work*
  *More utterly delightful and catchy music*
• Gender Flip: Played with in "How to Be a Ghost" with the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Past and Future canonically have Ambiguous Gender (though Past has been portrayed as feminine in many adaptations) while Present is almost always masculine. Here, they are all portrayed by female actors with feminine presentation.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Parodied in "American Whoopee." Sinead's character approaches Sean and Ryan Garcia's characters wearing her glasses, and they're disgusted. Then she takes the glasses off, Ryan's character is instantly attracted, and Sean's is just confused. Then she falls over because she's Blind Without 'Em.
• Historical Domain Character:
  • Tell-Tale Vlog focuses on Edgar Allan Poe.
  • Poe Party is made of this trope, as all but two of the main characters are fictionalized versions of real authors.
  • The Fig & Ford series mentions and features many real-life Golden Age of Hollywood actors and creators, including Buster Keaton, Cole Porter, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
• Hollywood Homely: Also parodied in "American Whoopee," where, as mentioned above, the plain jane character was played by Sinead Persaud◊, looking like her normal beautiful self the entire time.
• Hotter and Sexier: "American Whoopee" contains raunchier comedy than most of Shipwrecked's work but considering it's an homage to 1920s silent films, it's still pretty tame.
  • "Little V Vomen" contains what might be the only implied nudity in Shipwrecked canon, when Jo slips her nightgown off during the ritual.
• Incurable Coughof Death: Poor Beth has one in "Little V Vomen." Somewhat subverted in that she doesn't exactly die by the end of the trailer, but she's not in the greatest condition either.
• Karma Houdini: The Case of the Gilded Lily ends with Lily immediately forgiving her husband, who had been blackmailing her, and it's implied that he didn't face any legal consequences.
• The Makeover: Parodied in "American Whoopee." The popular girl offers to give her "plain jane" friend one. It consists of a cut and a chair spin which reveals her to look exactly the same. They both smile proudly.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The Bookfarters Saga ends up involving Shipwrecked, The Tin Can Bros, mutual friends William Joe Stribling and Lauren Lopez, and fellow YouTube comedians Jack and Dean. There's even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Team Starkid getting involved (with meta commentary about Nick Lang choosing to remain "above the fray").
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The Case of the Gilded Lily revolves around Lily Thomas, who presents herself as Wilhelmina Vanderjetski, an heiress from Fakelandia, with mixed results.
• Public Domain Character:
  • Lenore and Annabel Lee from the poems of Edgar Allan Poe are main characters in Tell-Tale Vlog and Poe Party.
  • "Bertha's Attic Song" parodies Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre.
  • "Little V Vomen" features the March sisters and Laurie from Little Women.
  • "Friends 'Til the End" centers on Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra from Dracula
  • "How to Be a Ghost" stars Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future from A Christmas Carol.
• Present Day: Done somewhat literally with the Bookfarters Saga. Thanks to the meta-narrative, the story does take place in real-time as fans watched along via livestreams and social media. It's also notable that, thanks to Shipwrecked's fondness for historical fiction, it was the first of their projects to take place in Present Day since Kissing in the Rain.
• Prequel:
  • "A Cryptmas Carol" was released in 2018 but takes place before Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party, released in 2016, since Annabel and Emily Dickinson are still alive and the H.G. Wells from the post-Poe Party future makes a cameo in The Stinger, where Lenore doesn't know him yet.
  • "How to Be a Ghost" essentially acts as one for A Christmas Carol, since it takes place shortly after Jacob Marley's death.
• Real Trailer, Fake Movie: "American Whoopee" is a trailer for the most scandalous film of 1925.
• Reality Subtext: Invoked with the Bookfarters Saga. On its own, A Book By Its Cover is a very odd entry into Shipwrecked canon. It makes a lot more sense in the wider narrative of the Shipwrecked vs. Tin Can feud.
  • The knowledge of Mary Kate Wiles and Sean Persaud's real-life relationship is not required to enjoy Kissing in the Rain, but it does help to explain their noticeable chemistry.
• Reclusive Artist: Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe
• Recursive Canon: The Tell-Tale Vlog series exists in the Kissing in the Rain universe as a work of fiction, whose circumstances of creation are completely different from Real Life — a corporate-funded cash-in on the Actor Shipping between James and Lily that led to two actual feature films, with James and Lily, unlike their Real Life counterparts Sean and Mary Kate, very much in Belligerent Sexual Tension mode while it was being made. Notice that the TTV "franchise" in the Kit R universe is very much Played Straight and is totally different from the Poe Party franchise that sprung from TTV in our world.
• Running Gag:
  • In "American Whoopee," Sean's character keeps getting slapped in the face.
  • In Gilded Lily, Ford is told that Lily's last name is pronounced TH-omas (instead of the more common Tom-as) but refuses to go along with it.
  • Wilhelmina has trouble smoking. At Bixby's she just mimes it without an actual cigarette. In the police station, she "smokes" a pencil. Later, in Ford's office, he has to stop her from lighting the wrong end of a real cigarette.
• Sequel Hook: The Case of the Gilded Lily ends with Vivian bursting into Fig and Ford's office, saying that something terrible has happened.
• Shaped Like Itself: Sinead in "The Arbitration:"
  "We will not rest until justice is served ice-cold like gazpacho or ice."
• Show Within a Show: The whole concept of Kissing in the Rain is that every video we see is a brief snippet of a different Show Within a Show (a film or an episode of a TV series), showing us only the Big Damn Kiss moment with very little other context, as a way to follow the "Real Life" relationship of two actors who've been typecast as a couple.
• Shown Their Work: Edgar's Draw My Life video was literally improvised from his Wikipedia article.
  • The beginning of The Case of the Gilded Lily includes a shot of the Hollywood Sign saying Hollywoodland, which it actually did up until 1949.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: At the end of The Case of the Gilded Lily:
  Wilhelmina: "To finding out the blackmailer was just my kind, loving husband who'd never do anything to hurt me."
  Ford: [beat] Okay.
• Synchronous Episodes: The Bookfarters Saga. The competing sketches premiered at the exact same time, and the groups' competing livestreams happened at the same time and included them switching locations so they ended up on each other's channels. They finally confronted each other face-to-face in the finale.
• Toilet Humour: "A Book By Its Cover" is full of it, which is very unusual for Shipwrecked, a fact that the Brothers Tin use against them in "The Arbitration."
• True Companions: Fig and Wilhelmina in The Case of the Gilded Lily. Wilhelmina and Cliff, as well. Although they seem incapable of keeping their own secrets, they never betray each other's confidence.
  • The girls in "American Whoopee," who band together to retrieve a "scandalous" photograph and end up in jail together.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Fig and Ford. She takes to him right away and wants to be crime-solving partners, which he rejects the entire time, only for The Stinger to reveal that that's exactly what happens.
• Vocal Dissonance: "Little V Vomen" ends with the arrival of Black Phillip, who looks like a satanic rock star and sounds like Ed Wynn.

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