#listen i see a sad angry stupid jock & i go NOM NOM NOM and he's mine.

[madefate]

i have some thoughts about max's character & the story of NPMD as a whole -- & while these thoughts will absolutely evolve over time, i really want to play with some of the story and dive a little deeper! so, some headcanon thoughts about my portrayal of max & how i imagine things working behind the scenes in the black & white.

this is not meant to bash the show. i'm a huge starkid fan & i love the hatchetfield universe! i've been writing it since 2020, after all. but i found myself a little disappointed with NPMD in terms of its tone & pacing. for me, there's something a little incongruous about the lighter comedy-horror / teen slasher parody tone and the stakes of the lore. especially when compared to the two previous shows & so much of nightmare time. & in general, i feel like the show missed a lot of GREAT opportunities to use the lore it already has to create a larger undercurrent of plot, both for the lords in black storyline & the storyline of hatchetfield high.

personally, i cannot BELIEVE they colored everything in blue, had a bunch of teenagers mask themselves behind facades because being a teenager in high school is hell, had songs about being a literal monster, lyrics about people being "too weak to enslave," the appearance of the black book, the fact that there are five alters and five lords - and pokey wasn't the main villain. yes, i know that this might conflict a little with some nightmare time lore, but i think it would be SO MUCH COOLER (& make more sense) if everything happening with the humans in hatchetfield was the byproduct of a war between the lords in black in a vie for power.

why does hatchetfield in particular suck so much ?? because the church of the starry children started breaking down the barrier between our world & the black and white, so it's CONSTANTLY feeling the influence of the lords in black. and the lords are best at exaggerating everyone's worst instincts. &, of course, all the death & destruction & murder & whatnot. so of course hatchetfield high, as an alter, literally feels like hell.

personally, i think the through line of all three musicals (especially TGWDLM and BF) is the corruption of the humans to act out the will of the lords. so, personally, i believe that the lords are recruiting humans to their side in all of these different realities in order to raise an army and claim the black & white for themselves.

it just makes sense to me! & it's why i feel the pacing and plot falls apart after richie's death. because immediately following that (the best, scariest, most impactful death in the show), we have hatchet town, where everyone turns on each other - and then that plot line goes absolutely nowhere. no one turns on each other! not to mention it's a just a vehicle for callbacks and cameos which is a shame bc it's one of the best songs in the show.

truth be told, these kind of specifics that i headcanon are way more likely to come up when writing webby, but i do think it influence's max's character in a really meaningful way! so, yeah -- a lot of backstory for portrayal notes but that's fundamentally who i am as a person.

i'm not the business of woobifying characters -- i just feel like the one note, shithead bully characterization is both boring, and fundamentally untrue in the show itself, and by the end of the show he's basically just a walking beetlejuice / freddy impression. max has so many lines that indicate that he's not meant to be a flat, irredeemable character - he thinks the nerdy prude gang hates him, he's grateful for their kindness, he paid attention during the harassment assembly, he's clearly the more affectionate & needy part of whatever the gloriously fucked up situationship with grace is. he also has a few lines that indicate something else going on: "the jock you demonize," "you think i seek revenge? ... [the world] needs to be saved and you're too weak to be enslaved," "expose the bloody lie," "who will pray for me when i'm gone? or is this the eternal dark without a dawn?"

i headcanon that max has been succumbing to the influence of pokey for years now. he was a great target - he's angry. as a kid, he went unheard and unhelped from the danger of his father, he had to fight for some form of control, for his voice to be heard. and there's a part of him that knows it's the school, its very location, that gives him so much power. that's his domain, now, for as long as he can hold onto it.

he started to change around the end of his freshman year. he wasn't ever the nicest person, of course -- he's angry, he's traumatized, he's a product of that small town toxicity in a bad way. but he's also been fun, protective, kind of goofy. by the time he's into his sophomore year, the quarterback for the team, all of those good qualities are overshadowed by his need for control, his rage, his cruelty.

i think a neat mechanic is that genuine connections, genuine love and joy, is the only way to fight back against the lords' influence, which is why we see max at his happiest when he believes that he's experiencing a genuine moment of friendship with the nerd crew. -- and his angriest when he dies.

after his death, he grows more inhuman, not less -- scarier, not funnier. the longer he's a puppet of pokey, the more humanity he loses. it's harder & harder to have a conversation with him, to reason with him.

ironically, that's why grace's intervention works. because he's still a teenage guy who thinks he's in love and that simple, genuine emotion is the perfect counter to the lords' influence.

i think his future can go either way - he can be consumed by the black & white, or he can be redeemed and fight to find his humanity again. it all depends on how he grows the relationships with the people around them, & all that power of friendship nonsense!