#nerdy prudes must die theory

[musicalobsessed-spacialanomaly]

NPMD Theory

Felt the need to publicize my Nerdy Prudes Must Die theory, so here it is:

You know how much is sucks that Ruth and Richie aren't acknowledged or even mourned after "The Summoning"? You know how people headcanon that Ruth and Pete met at tap class, but he clearly stated "Mom said it'd help me make friends. Boy, was she wrong!"?

My theory is that Grace had good intentions. She didn't like seeing her friends so sad, so in the time between the banishment of Max and Homecoming, she uses the Black Book. She finds some kind of memory modification spell and completely erases the fact that Ruth and Richie even existed - or at least the fact that they were friends (seeing as Miss Mulberry mentions they've lost classmates, plural) - from their memories. But she's also really fucked up and doesn't realize how shitty a thing that is to do.

We know the Lords in Black are capable of all that, considering their magic is what causes Miss Holloway to be forgotten every time she's declared dead.

I dunno. I just got mad like everyone else about there hardly even being a line about their deaths and figured this made some amount of sense.

[epitome-of-an-openbook]

No, because people keep acting like Grace Chastity being consumed with a lust for the power that Lords in Black provided her doesn't count as a world ending Cataclysm - but it very much does. Not only has she shown little to no empathy for others throughout the entire show and only ever felt bad for lying to authority figures and being horny - but the final song of the Musical is essentially a reprise of Max's Murder Song/Manifesto which places her as a parallel to Max. Max sings about how he's going to kill ALL the Nerdy Prudes and not once but twice tells the audience that it doesn't matter if someone is actually a Nerdy Prude because he makes the rules and gets to decide who is or isn't a nerd etc etc. Grace's take is that she is going to kill all the Dirty Dudes but she's literally singing it to a guy who has, throughout the entire musical, done nothing to indicate he's a pervy/dirty dude and only kissed her after she asked him too. Like Max, Grace Chastity doesn't actually care if someone genuinely fits the framework of her stated victimology, because she has the power so she gets to make the rules.

Honestly it's like some people didn't think about the implications.

[nobodysdaydreams]

One of the funniest things about “Hatchet Town” is that over the course of three musicals and Nightmare Time, most, if not a significant number Hatchetfield residents HAVE committed murder or been accomplices/accessories to murder in at least one timeline. To the point where if you randomly accused pretty much anyone in town of being a murderer, there’s a good chance you’d be right.

[mind-lost-in-the-stars]

fun Richie headcanon is that he gets easily overstimulated by noise. it’s noticeable when he seems to put his hands over his ears in stressful situations (bury the bully and workin’ boys being my two main examples), but he also wears headphones when he goes to see workin’ girls

he doesn’t have this costume detail in npmd but I like to believe that the headphones are noise canceling, so he can put them on if he’s feeling overwhelmed which he would need if he’s in a loud environment such as a musical <3

wow, another guy who gets uncomfortable when people sing, wonder if him and Paul have bonded over that (I will die on the hill that Paul is Richie’s uncle)

[rockrosethistle]

No but it's not just that Mariah and Joey do a perfect job at selling this scene

It's that literally everything is lining up to make us the audience think there's a very real chance Peter might die.

It's that a Hatchetfield musical has literally never let their happy couple survive the end of the show. Why should these two be any different?

It's that the Lords in Black are deadly. Linda was killed in two different timelines after becoming one's ambassador. They absolutely have the power to make this happen. This wouldn't event be the first time they got someone shot in the head.

It's that the "I'm not a loser" leitmotif has been played directly before Richie dies (sung) and Ruth dies (in the accompaniment). And then they sing it right before this scene!!

It's that the "I'm not a loser" motif itself is just an exaggerated Dies Irae, AKA the musical representation of death, and Pete is the one who first introduced the motif.

(and once again, they sing it right before this scene!)

It's that you don't even consider Max saving him as a possibility because why would he want to stop this? He wants Pete dead. In the chaos of the moment, you don't stop to think about how letting Pete die would kill him too.

It's that everything lines up so perfectly and then as a cherry on top Joey and Mariah are delivering these lines like their lives depend on it.

It's just so fucking devastating.

[l0st-marblezz]

Ngl I would love it if Film Theory covered the Hatchetfield series lore. They’ve covered other YouTube series before so it could be possible.

[pinazee]

Has this theory circulated before?

Richie actually wasn’t a nerdy prude- well, not exactly. He used to be part of the cool crowd because he was on the swim team. Thats why Kyle asked if he wanted to join and not try out; he already knew he could swim. Then Max discovered what a huge anime nerd he was and his ass was kicked off the team and demoted to nerdy prude.

It’s also why Jason and Kyle only apologize to him (because he used to be their friend), and why Max had such a grip on them- Richie’s social exile was the example of Max’s power.

[starleska]

the way Max Jägerman is so perfectly 50% Jerma and 50% MatPat is absolutely killing me 🙈🙈🙈

[thelesbiandeli]

So it was said in TGWDLM that Paul used to babysit Alice for Bill. But in Black Friday, Paul forgets Tim's name, and calls him Pete. What are the chances that at some point, he babysat Pete for Ted?

This has probably been pointed out already, but I thought it was a fun detail, and it makes sense!

[musicalslugs]

Grace and the Lords in Black: an analysis.

Okay, so, this may be obvious; although I haven’t seen anyone mention this as of yet. The link between Grace Chastity and the Lords in Black is clear, I mean we’ve all agreed that she seems to be like that, and Dirty Dudes must Die highlights her “corruption” plainly.

That being said! I think there may be more.

Firstly, the Lords in Black mention/talk to Grace first, before Peter and Stephanie (the arguable proper protagonists of this story).

Sure, Blinky’s motif is obvious, it’s of eyes, of watching and of observation. But to speak to Grace first, even if it seems (on the surface level) that it’s just to flex their omniscience and make her uncomfortable, is a little strange. Especially since they then speak mostly (only) to Steph for the rest of the song [The Summoning].

Secondly, because if that were all this wouldn’t be a very good analysis, we have her (Grace) and Nibbly being echoes of eachother.

“Swallow” and “devour” are synonymous. Both fit into Nibbly’s motif of consumption. Now, Grace could’ve said anything. Absorb, harness, control etc. I think the wording here is particular. Not exactly the same, but clearly within the same ball park.

What is exactly the same though, is Grace Chastity and Wiggly.

This may seem a bit out of left field at first, but hear me out.

In The Summoning, it is said that “Wiggly wants his Wrath”, Wrath is a vice, a sin. It may not be the exact opposite of Chastity, however Chastity is to do with restraint, whereas Wrath is very much, not so. Moreover, Wrath can be defined as ‘a great anger that expresses itself in a desire to punish someone’. Now… who else could be described as wrathful? Obviously Max. And Grace. I mean, her song is called Dirty Dudes must Die. As well as being a direct reflection of Max, it implies that she wants to harm someone. Punish someone though? Well, yes. Grace says “This is the consequence of what you’ve done!” - she must believe that death is a worthy punishment for their actions (being ‘pervs’). Thus, Wrath.

Lastly, and this is where the exactly comes in, Grace and Wiggly both say the same things. (Again, of course, I could write another analysis on how Grace and Max reflect each other beautifully by also saying the same/extremely similar things) The difference between Grace saying similar things to Max, is that she and Wiggly aren’t similar. It’s the same.

Example A) Stephy / Stephie.

Upon rewatching Nerdy Prudes Must Die and listening to the album on repeat, I noticed that no one bar these two call Stephanie: Stephie. I know Grace calls Ruth, Ruthy and Peter, Petey- so her calling Stephanie, Stephie, makes sense linguistically. That doesn’t take from the fact that Wiggly is the only other ‘person’ to use that particular moniker.

Example B) “bloody bits”

A particularly strange phrase that these two say. However, not really. The point of this analysis is to point out the links between the Lords in Black and Grace Chastity, specifically Wiggly and Grace. By pointing out the parallels in their idiolects, I have come to the conclusion that they are not only linked but INCREDIBLY similar.

Both are characters that use cutesy, almost childish language (“mommy spot” / “belly-well”) to disguise the violence, the wrath that lays beneath the surface. Wiggly (as shown in Black Friday) uses it as a facade. Throughout Black Friday and throughout The Summoning, he expresses himself as non-threatening (“We’re all pally-wals.” etc) before eventually showing what’s beneath the surface (“..deck the fucking halls!” / “We don’t give a shit about your phone!”). Both times are as abrupt as each other, showing that Wiggly has a fairly short temper. Grace doesn’t necessarily have a short temper, instead she has periods of ‘sin’, when stressed: Dirty Girl, calling “God a son of a B-Word”, smoking (after), having sex with Max, the scene of her ordering hot water etc etc. The visage, her carefully constructed facade, slips. Wether it’s because deep down she doesn’t believe in God (possibly shown in her “are you religious?” conversation with Shapiro), or that due to her upbringing she’s being confined, restrained, controlled, and this is when her ‘true self’ begins to peer through the cracks.

Either way, these are two characters who use similar themes (one of childishness, the other of purity/innocence (which can also be linked to childishness)) to cover their violence, their real selves.

Uhhh- anyway, watch Nerdy Prudes must Die on Youtube- it gave me brain worms.

[ender-of-the-sender]

Okay, feel free to tell me I'm looking to hard into things because i probably am

This is Zeke the Nighthawk, Hatchetfield Highs beloved mascot.

And this is Ezekiel, elected leader of the checkered-tailed nighthawks and highly intelligent because of the good stuff

Is it just me or do they have a lot in common

•Nighthawks

•From Hatchetfield

•Anthropomorphic (in a way)

For gods sakes, they're both called Ezekiel

[stephlautersadhd]

something something even through all the change we still stay the same

day 5: change

@lautski-week

[gone-to-oregone]

I’m sorry-

this scene in the YouTube release is called-

S. Lauter House.

Slaughter House.

[nobodysdaydreams]

Hatchetverse Theory: The Parallels Between Paul (TGWDLM) and Grace (NPMD):

More thoughts and parallel screenshots under the keep reading, part of my #hatchetverse theory posts. Sorry these are all awful screen shots, I'm bad at gifs, but I hope I made my point.

The screenshots are pretty self-explanatory, but the parallels between Paul and Grace, especially with what happens to their characters at the end of their respective musicals, has been living in my head rent free, and I want to talk about it.

I've seen a lot of posts that speculate that the reason Grace went crazy at the end of NPMD is because she's just that blood thirsty and willing to kill, and while her character (at least of what I've seen of her in NPMD and what I've seen of nightmare time) is certainly intense, I wouldn't quite go so far to say she's always been that willing to hurt others, even for what she believes.

In fact, after rewatching NPMD, I realized something. When the kids first go to the Waylon Place, the others are the ones suggesting ways they can violently hurt Max. Pete even calls Grace's plan "goofy" and Richie is the one who suggests beating Max up. Grace is the one who tells them that all she wants to do is teach him a lesson and scare him and rejects their more violent ideas.

But after Max dies? That's when Grace's intensity starts taking a darker turn, and it's not as noticeable as it might be in the other kids because "Grace has always been kinda weird and intense" and the show has been playing that up for laughs since the beginning. But when you look at what happens to Grace in terms of her character's choices, she's the one who suddenly pulls a "bury the bully" plan out of nowhere when she was against even beating him up just a few hours ago. She's the one who suggests lying to the cops and trying to cover up what happened. She's the one who has a prophetic nightmare after the incident at the Waylon Place. That's also the moment when she symbolically loses her WWJD bracelet (though others have already pointed that out).

And if the LIB could infect Paul with spores just because he happened to be in close proximity to the meteor, then they could probably do something similar to any of the kids in the Waylon Place (and you cannot convince me that they were not the ones who collapsed the floorboards in the Waylon Place and killed Max).

But why would they target Grace you ask? Why not one of the other kids? That's a good question. I have a few theories.

The first has to do with what I mentioned before about hatchetverse's history of Webby's powers seeming to favor kids, and the LIB powers struggling to work on kids. We don't know how old most of the kids in NPMD are exactly, but the musical makes a point to tell us several times that Grace is "only 18" (Shaprio says she's a legal adult and will be tried as an adult in court). The musical also makes a point to have this be the Homecoming Dance (not Prom), which is in the fall, so most of the senior students wouldn't have turned 18 yet. We can also make an educated guess that Stephanie has turned 18 and Pete hasn't because she sings "wake me up when you turn 18" during their song. You could combat this by asking why the LIB never address Grace during the summoning and targeted Steph instead, which is a fair point. But interestingly, if you watch Grace, Steph, and Pete during the Summoning, Grace is silent most of the song, but looks completely horrified (especially when they tell her that they want what she cherishes most), despite the fact that from our perspective, the LIB aren't talking to her. She also seems to know exactly what the LIB want from her, because the next scene she's in is when she shows up to save Steph and Pete. During the Summoning, Pete, on the other hand, seems to mostly be involved in the conversation the LIB are having with Stephanie, although Grace also seems to understand what the LIB want from Stephanie. It's possible that this was intentional on the LIB's part, since they can see every timeline (in the "Abstinence Camp" episode of Nightmare Time, Grace gets between Steph, Pete, and Lumberaxe, risking her own life so that Lumberaxe doesn't hurt them. Grace might be willing to lose her own life for what she believes, but she might not be willing to lose her friends' lives. If the LIB know this, they'd likely want to make sure Grace understands that Steph or Pete will die unless she's the one who pays the price).

They have a personal reason for wanting her. In TGWDLM, Pokey hates Paul because...well, Paul doesn't like musicals but bigger picture, Paul resists Pokey's hive mind. Why would the LIB hate Grace? Possibly because she hates evil, the devil, and sin to an extreme degree. It could be a point of pride for the LIB: "we got the guy who didn't like musicals to join our musical and brainwash the world, and we got the girl who didn't like sin to devour souls for us." I've also seen a theory that Paul has some sort of resistance to the LIB because he doesn't like musicals and in a way sort of serves as a "prophet" in TGWDLM by warning others that musicals are bad. Grace arguably serves a similar role to Max in NPMD. She suggests Max becomes a better person "before he ends up in hell", which is ironic because then Max goes on to beat up Pete, which turns the nerds against him, setting off the chain of events that eventually lead him to actually being sent to hell (the black) by Grace. I've also seen some other theories suggesting that the LIB getting Paul in TGWDLM was really about getting Emma (since she was the one who starred in a musical before), and following that logic, it's possible that the LIB killing Max at the Waylon Place was really about getting Grace, because she'd still actually be alive. The LIB might have known this would work if they knew Max and Grace liked each other, and as seen in nightmare time, Grace is willing to risk her own life for her friends, and this might be consistent across several timelines.

Speaking of sacrifice, I know I covered this with the gifs, but the fact that Paul's last act was giving up his life, and Grace's was giving up what was essentially her morality and who she was so they could save their friends, only to have themselves turned into the very monsters they tried to destroy? Absolute tragedy.

But what's also interesting to me is how this happens. The way Grace and Paul both seem to lose control of themselves. With Paul it happens in one song and is more noticeable, but with Grace, it's a lot slower, and the more bad and morally questionable stuff she does, the funnier it is, and her character has been intense and over the top from the beginning, so you almost don't notice the difference in her actions until you rewatch the show. But her and Paul asking "Who am I?" has a similar creepy vibe, the screenshots I found for those moments (pictured below) even ended up looking very similar, though with Paul, you can see more of the fight happening during the song, whereas with Grace, it's more drawn out over the course of the show with these little moments of clarity where she has a complete breakdown.

Then of course there's the whole: What do you want thing?

Why do the LIB want what Grace cherishes most? Why do they want Paul to want anything at all?

And why do they phrase it in the creepiest way possible, asking for "a peek at Paul's soul" and telling him to "give up his choice" and telling Grace that they'll get "whatever they want" and that she'll "be forever in their debt?"

Well, probably because that does seem to be what happens. The most obvious screenshot parallels are probably their final numbers in their shows, which I think speak for themselves. The only unknown is what exactly is happening with the LIB and their whole "what do you want" thing. By taking what someone wants, do they replace that "want" in the person with wanting to serve them? How does that work?

At this point, I'm not sure, and I'm too tired to continue the rant, but I'd be happy to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

I hope you enjoy Starkid fandom. Thank you for listening to my rants!

[mind-lost-in-the-stars]

I think I’ve seen a post about it before, but I’ve connected more dots and I feel like it should be talked about more because..

that guy from La Dee Dah Dah Day is totally Max right?

a couple things make me believe this!

- character is a jock played by Jeff, and Jeff was heavily considered for the role of Max before he got involved in other projects

- we see Peter (hot cocoa boy) is also infected during this number which could be a coincidence and they just needed an extra, buuuut….in the “Nerdy Prudes Must Livestream” livestream, Nick mentions how NPMD was the first completed work in the Hatchetfield trilogy

-we do see the same letterman jacket being used later during the working boys segment

however we know this is (very likely) a different character because of how Jeff’s hair is up and how the letterman is now buttoned

-bonus points for the “J” on the letterman possibly standing for “Jägerman”

-the demeanor of the character (even though his is infected) gives a very Max like energy and yes this could be Jeff just being an asshole jock, but NPMD was the first finished Hatchetfield show which means they would have known what Max’s checker was going to be like

I think this is fun to talk about because like….how the hell did max get infected??

I know this is a question that can pertain to many of the first few infected characters we see, but I feel like most of them can be covered by “oh yeah they went to the starlight that night”, but there’s no way max would have. we know he got infected before the rest of hatchetfield high because of the later scene of Alice being trapped in the high school, so that didn’t infect him. that means he was killed and then infected or some how infected unknowingly like the patrons in beanies. the ladder is more likely obviously, but imagine if it was the former and instead of Max coming back as a ghost after he died in the Waylon place, he came back as a part of the Hive.

boy do I love thinking about the implications!!

[rockrosethistle]

Ted being a horny bastard has nothing to do with the way he was raised and he's not just like that. It's a coping mechanism he's using to avoid confronting his feelings about Jenny. So that means Pete being such a horny little fuck in Abstinence Camp strongly suggests that is a behaviour he learned from Ted. Therefore, the Spankoffski brothers have to be closer than they appear. In this essay, I will—