Just a bunch of randomly assorted headcanons from a fella who, somehow, HAD NO IDEA THE WIKI EXISTED ALL THESE YEARS. So, these headcanons only really include Janice, Percy, the Laughingstock, Horace, and the Skintaker lol. So these are some of my thoughts during the last 12 years of only having the original Creepypasta and the Channel Zero show to work with.
TW: Skintaker doing his skinning thing, Paranoia, Good ol' Betrayal, Children in Distress
• Some people remember a pilot or prototype of a pilot, where instead of Janice, there was a unnamed boy. He was taller than basically every puppet, since it seemed like whatever studio or being that was making the show hadn't figured out perspective illusions to make him look shorter than them. The only puppet that was different was the Skintaker, since he was a life-sized Halloween skeleton prop tied to strings, in order to make him taller than the boy. The main storyline of that episode was Percy being frightened, thinking that due to the boy's size, he was in some way related to the Skintaker. During the episode, there'd be times where they'd stop acting and try to calm the boy down, because he kept breaking down from distress, scared that the people watching would think he's related to the Skintaker.
• Percy's voice is actually a bit deeper to medium in pitch. The creators tried a higher pitched tone, but found it too grating to listen to, and were scared kids or their parents would find the protagonist insufferable. So, they gave the high pitch tone to Horace the Horrible, because he's a villain, and gave Percy a more soothing voice to listen to. The Skintaker has a very, very deep voice to try to indicate that he's a villain, which was made by using some voice effects on top of an already naturally deep voice actor. Janice just uses actress's her normal voice, since she's already a child and probably wouldn't be good at keeping a fake voice on for long.
• The Laughingstock crew consists of Percy, the Laughingstock, and Janice. After the first three episodes, however, there's always a "guest" on the ship that only appears during that episode and leaves at the end. Percy does often talk about "his previous crew", claiming they betrayed him, so he started his line pirating career. However, whenever Janice tries to ask more about them, he refuses to answer.
• The Skintaker is after Percy, specifically. Sure, if he can get somebody else and knows he can't get Percy, he'll go after them. However, if he thinks he can get to Percy, he'll ignore everyone else and go after him. Percy is well aware of this, and that's a large part of why he's so cowardly.
• The Studio making Candle Cove had tried to make an excuse for Percy being made of multiple different, clearly not meant to be put together, doll parts. They did so by saying Percy is made of different parts of different people. They also said this is why the Skintaker goes after him so often, since the Skintaker sees it as being like skinning multiple people at once. This was never clarified, so the audience just has to live with the knowledge that, for whatever reason, Percy is made of multiple people. It's also why some people mistake him for being the villain, as the Skintaker skinning people could be mistaken for Percy's... Whatever Percy has going on.
• Janice tends to stay safe from actual sword fighting in the show. Usually, Percy fights for her because she's very young and is still learning how to fight. However, she's always present during sword fights, and does get involved in other types of fighting, like fist fights and whatever else the show can come up with. The only person in the show she's never fought is the Skintaker, since he doesn't want to skin her at the moment.
• The Laughingstock only talks to Percy. Janice doesn't seem to hear it talking. Neither does Horace, or the Skintaker. The other characters even show confusion whenever Percy starts talking to the Laughingstock. There was even a gag where Percy would even break the fourth wall and ask the audience if they could hear it, and when he'd turn and tell the others we hear the Laughingstock talking, they'd just look even more confused and ask who he's talking to. This is in spite of the fact every character breaks the fourth wall at least once during the show.
• The Skintaker doesn't want to skin Janice. This isn't out of the kindness of his nonexistent heart. He just wants to wait until she's older and has thicker skin so it'd be easier to grind, which seems to be a nod to the fact that the skin of children is actually a bit thinner than adults.
• Horace shows up more often than the Skintaker in the show. He also never calls Percy or Janice by their real names, besides his last ever time talking to Percy, when he finally does. He calls Janice "Brat" and Percy "Coward".
• Percy, Horace, and the Skintaker are shown to drink root beer often. However, Percy is always shown to drink to most root beer, with Horace even commenting that he might have a problem. The Skintaker claims that he has technically never drank root beer, because it goes right through him, but he likes the taste.
• Throughout the show, Percy grows more and more cowardly, to the point his fear just turns into a full-blown paranoia. This is another reason why some people remember Percy being the villain, since in the last episode, he grows so paranoid that Janice might betray him that he turns on her by attacking her at a cave.
• That was also the episode where Horace finally refers to Percy by his name, with most people who do remember this episode remembering Horace confronting Percy by saying "Again, Percy? Really?" The line seemingly implies that Percy has done such a thing before, possibly to his last crew. Horace then went to tell the Skintaker that the Coward had done it again, only for the Skintaker to laugh for a minute straight.
• The show ended on a cliffhanger. We don't know if Janice survived or not, but considering the episode ended with a "To be continued...?" screen, she was most likely intended to. That, or the studio chose to leave it up to interpretation in case they were not renewed, which ended up being the case, as no more episodes of Candle Cove aired.
• The Screaming Episode randomly aired off and on again. Nobody knows where it would've gone in the timeline, if anywhere at all.
• The episodes always ended with Percy and Janice going to sleep. Percy would call asleep at his desk, in the Captain's Quarters, and Janice would like down in a hammock below the deck. During episodes that included Horace or the Skintaker, it'd show them going to bed, where Horace would curl up in a sleeping bag and the Skintaker would just kind of... stare at the screen for a minute or two. Then, after everybody went to bed, there was footage of a live action candle being blown out. The only episodes that didn't end this way were The Screaming Episode, which cut off abruptly, and the final episode, which has Percy sitting on the Laughingstock alone before the "To be continued...?" screen popped up.
- he has a passion for baking , even though he cannot physically eat them . The most common little pastries he makes are muffins and cinnamon rolls . He feeds them to his pet cat or the Rubberfishes .
- he and Janice wear outfits that parallel each other throughout the show
- at the start of the series he wears more cartoonish / exaggerated clothing ( like a typical cartoon villain ) but somewhere in the middle and end of the series he wears more formal / clothing that is similar to the time era Janice lives in . It's a way of telling her that he's close to her home world and will get her and Melrose so he can sew their skins onto his cape . Meanwhile Janice will have breakdowns on what is reality and what isn't . It's his way of messing with her , but with STYLE 😼
- he wears zoot suits sometimes
- Skin-Taker as a classical / symphony music fan is great but hear me out . he also is an avid enjoyer of blues / jazz music with a hint of gospel into it . The type of gospel music that's usually sad and used to portray sad emotions about death usually played in funerals .
- this one was taken from @emerson-grimes-apologist , he has long Spidey leg fingers , like the other mother from Coraline . He even prepares his sewing just like her at the start of the movie .
- he has a collection of eyeballs that he just likes to swap around with his own eyes , free eye contacts basically .
- Mrs . Skin-Taker isn't her own person , she's more of a different alias / dragsona to Skin-Taker . Like he sometimes pulls it out for disguise like Bugs bunny style and fails miserably at it for comedic effect, but he also uses it just for the fun of it . ( I was thinking that she can be her own separate person in an au but idk )
- he views the Rubberfishes as a parallel to the Tarantula crew , he can see the similarities to them so clearly that he breaks down sometimes over it .
- yea a few scenes involving him will have him just stare at the camera while someone's talking to him or when he's witnessing a memory flashback . He just stares at the screen for a few seconds standing still until he gains consciousness again . It's never discussed by him or the crew and it's brushed off as nothing .
- he sometimes flicks his ribs up and down like what people do with combs just for the fun of it .
- he has a little chest full of trinkets , most of it are shells and crystals like a Rose quartz for example , which is commonly used to mourn the death of a loved one .
- idk if I said this before but he has a bunch of taxidermy in a room right next to the room of ceramic cats . Both human and animal .
- imma say it again but he prefers using body language than speaking , he uses gentle glances and whatnot
- in one certain scene in an episode he and Horace have manipulated Poppy into thinking he'd murdered his own crew . Shit goes on from there and the episode was never mentioned again .
Slight mention of PTSD warning :
- he is terrified of Red Mary , he has really awful memories of her and would scream at the slightest mention of her .
- surprisingly , when he joined alliances with Horace , the Rubberfishes started getting better and living in better conditions . Even black teeth has developed better cooking skills due to Skin-Taker teaching him .
- he takes his fashion skills very seriously , like full on MIRANDA style from " The devil wears Prada " . Where he can go on full rants about a crew member wearing clothes that do not match . These skills are first introduced and put to skill in an episode where he took over on decorations and dresses for Sunny's quinceanera .
- I've got so many voice claims for the guy but I'm only settling on either Michael from TMA or Will Wood's "Dr . Sunshine is dead" song . Idk I Invision him as a funky but menacing guy .
- at the back of his cave theres a greenhouse where there are butterflies and exotic plants he's planted . It turned into the Rubberfishes hangout .
- people will suddenly run into the cave and will vandalize it for fun . Like y'know kids throwing eggs and toilet paper at an old man's house for funsies ?
- he's like the scary villain character that has so many random moments where it becomes funny at certain times . He's like Jim Carrey in "The Mask " at certain times or Mike Myers in Cat in the Hat live action .
- he loves poetry and singing .
- he has kidnapped Melrose once when she first went to candle cove but then soon dropped her off on a shore because of how annoying she was .
- he loves admiring himself and his clothing , despite other's negative response to it . He's not egotistical , he just finds beauty in death and he is an embodiment of that in the world of CC . He's got some self love for some apparent reason .
- he's kept some pet tarantulas and spiders and rescues them , it's supposed to be a symbol ( Or whatever it is idk ) to Lillian . Like an Ode or whatever , he started doing this in the middle of the series when he starts gaining flashbacks of his previous crew .
I've remember reading this candle cove NSFW one shot where the skin-taker was making out with happy appy 😭😭😭😭LIKE WHO DECIDED IT WAS OK TO SHIP A LITERAL APPLE WHO PREDICTED 9/11 WITH A CHEAP LOOKING GOOFY AHH PAPYRUS KNOCKOFF BUFFALO BILL CRUELLA FAN CHILD???? THE FACT THAT APPY WAS RIDING A WHITE HORSE IN THE WOODS IN SHINING ARMOR 😭😭 IDK WHAT WAS THAT CREATOR/REQUESTER PERSON SMOKING BUT IDK IF THAT ONE SHOT ACTUALLY EXISTED😭😭😭
