#team starkid theory

[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.

[rockrosethistle]

I'm thinking about the implications again.

The numbers that the hive mind performs aren't random. Both the lyrics and the choreography will often boil down to to one purpose: to cause pain. (Pokey is ruthless.)

Sometimes it's physical, and that's easy to spot. The cops spend half of their song just kicking and pushing people to the ground. Join Us And Die literally ends with Ted getting beat up.

And when the choreography doesn't allow for it, the lyrics are specifically trying to elicit an emotional response. The hive uses Alice to torment Bill. He's watching someone he loves die in front of him. It does the same for Charlotte.

Okay, the hive gets a kick out watching people suffer. That's not new information. But the implications...

Look at Inevitable. It's a pretty significant shift from the rest of the numbers. Whereas those seem tailored for pain and fear, Inevitable seems to be comforting? Just look.

Paul walks out, and the first thing he does is hug Emma. Which doesn't seem significant at first, but think: Did Bill get that same courtesy?

Alice's first line is meant to taunt Bill. Paul's is almost consolatory; " Emma / I'm sorry / you lost." I won't dissect this completely, the theory is that this first line is genuine. Paul is actually sorry that their plan failed.

And when you take a look at the choreography, it becomes clear that it's a lot kinder than the other songs.

We see Paul waltzing with Emma and kissing her hands. And even though he's not letting her get away, he's not trying to hurt her. He's not even trying to intimidate her. He's shown more than once bending down--getting on her level, like you would to a child--as opposed to towering over her.

The lyrics aren't messing with her either. Whereas Sam is manipulative and Alice is spiteful, Paul's lyrics are reassuring.

"I'm still the man you trust," is a lot different than "Don't you twust me?" when you get right down to it. It carries with it a connotation of 'I'm okay, and you will be too.'

"What if I told you I made it?" actively contradicts the 'I killed your loved one' narrative that Alice used with Bill.

It's not like Emma is buying any of it. She's still terrified. Paul doesn't need to hurt her or taunt her in order to scare her, just singing was enough. But it's clear that he's not trying to.

The hive mind gets a kick out of watching people suffer. Emma is the leading lady. You'd think that she's the one who should have the most brutal song. But she just doesn't. It seems like her song is trying to be the kindest.

We know it's implied that once they get infected, people are still conscious inside their musical doppelgängers (source: the line "your own body is your front row seat" as well as Sam breaking through its control long enough to say "Charlotte" before falling back under).

I think Paul was conscious during Inevitable. I think he knew that they weren't escaping this. I think he knew he was eventually going to kill Emma, and there was nothing he could do about it. But I think he didn't want her to suffer.

Instead, I think he resolved to give her as kind a death as he could. He would lie. He'd tell her he was happy and that she was safe. He'd be as gentle as the hive mind allowed. She was running out of time, so he'd love her with every second they had left.

(but that's just a theory...a musical theory... and cut)

[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.

[hatchetfieldtheories]

Will We Ever Be Free of the Implications?

No, no I don't think so. And neither will Paul by the looks of it.

Ooof, its been a while since something has gotten my theory brain working, and Starkid are very good at peppering in just enough clues for us to all get excited. And for me to start trying to cobble together some theories.

I think I made the gif in about 2021, so its nice to know I'm making just as much sense 4 years later.

Its safe to say the main take away from the new TGWDLM Remount trailer is that Paul and Emma are aware they're living the same day again. Paul in particular knows what his colleagues are going to ask of him before they say anything and he very quickly becomes concerned with the implications.

Now. Do I think this is going to be as explicitly obvious in the remount. Not at all. The show is still the show at the end of the day, but as Paul exclaims, let's think about where the implications of what the trailer is telling us leads.

No Exits From the Broadway Venue

This remount is being described as a bigger and longer run, which is very exciting. It also leads me to believe there will be a bit more filling out of story and connections to the greater Hatchetfield lore.

As @ashtxeman has pointed out here, we're already getting this in this trailer. The Black Book, the reference to the Nighthawks and... well... the big flying Pokey rock in the sky, are all very explicit links. So I think its reasonable that they're going to use this as an opportunity to bring TGWDLM a bit more in line with the other Hatchetfield stories and make the link to the Tellytubbies of Terror more obvious.

Based on all these clues, we can presume for now that all the references to this being "done before" is true to the story they're intending to tell, and not just an easter egg referring to this being a second run of the show.

Ok, that's great Tazzy, but this isn't really a theory so far, I can hear you yelling at me. Well to that I firstly say, please yell a bit louder, all I can hear is Paul and Emma screaming into the blue void, and secondly, I say, this actually gives us the basis for a very interesting theory. For which we need to revisit some other parts of Hatchetfield lore, and our old friend, Tinky.

Time is a Precious Thread...

Since the dawn of time, otherwise known as around the time of the release of Black Friday, there has been quite a bit of discussion regarding whether the shows in the Hatchetfield Series are parallel universes, or if Hatchetfield is going through a time loop of some kind.

Then Time Bastard and Nightmare Time happened, and we learnt a few things. Firstly, that 2005 was a catalyst for the timelines of Hatchetfield splitting, and from that point on each of the shows we have watched have been in a different timeline. In Time Bastard, Ted travels back to before 2005, and this act is the reason why Ted as the Homeless Guy is de facto in every universe. Because it happened pre-split. If you would like to see the split timelines in a handy dandy diagram, @abiimaryy created a great one here.

And so, we rested, accepting the timeline theory.

And then the implications arrived.

Because now we are in a situation where both theories can exist simultaneously. Yes Hatchetfield has split, parallel timelines, but it seems that in this one - there is a time loop.

So how does Tinky come into this? Well he doesn't really. But the way he works, and affects Ted's life makes me look at this loop in a very specific way.

It's a Musical

I dont know about you, but when I go to the theatre and see an amazing show, I get so excited about it. So excited in fact that I wish I could go back and watch it again each night.

Well, I think Pokey has found a way to do just that.

Tinky traps Ted in his Bastard Box, which allows him to mess with Ted and affect his reality. Allows him to observe him.

Now let's look back to the Remount trailer.

We're told straight away, History doesn't repeat, it is - reprised.

We're watching old clips of the original run on a tv screen surrounded by black nothingness.

Look at Paul, sat there, in his little.. blue... box.. of a cubicle. Pokey doesn't have Paul and Emma trapped in a Box, but he does have them trapped. This is Pokey's equivalent. He gets to sit, and watch his favourite musical happen over and over and over.

Its a certainly a longer run.

And maybe, if that's the case. If Paul and Emma are acting this out every day, maybe the 2018 show, wasn't the first loop.

This would put the opening scene of TGWDLM 2018 into a more obvious context, especially in regards to the likes of Emma being involved with the opening song. That song takes place at the end of the previous loop, and is what brings the musical back into the new loop. It's Pokey's I Got You Babe.

[monstrousaffections1]

Gary Goldstein gives Paul a discount on account that he's his younger stepbrother. Imagine this, Gary marching into C.C.R.P with a Anxiety stricken Paul rushing after him trying to stop him. “Do you have any idea that my client, that is, my younger stepbrother, Paul Matthews, has autism? It involves misophonia, which is sensitivity to sounds…”

[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

[marvelmaniac715]

Sort of crack, sort of genuine fan theory:

The Lords in Black really, really like Paul. Think about it, he’s in most timelines, and in most timelines we see he ends up with the woman he loves (I know that’s just a constant in all timelines) but this man’s survival rate is just insane. Pokey makes him the star of the show in TGWDLM, he’s free of Wiggly’s influence in Black Friday, and Paul-23 leads a successful uprising in Forever and Always (RIP Human Paul). Even in Hey Melissa he’s never seriously hurt (as far as I can recall) and even that crazy situation is devoid of eldritch involvement, that was just Melissa being crazy. The Lords in Black almost seem to spare him, he’s seemingly leading the Hive in Inevitable at the end of TGWDLM, I genuinely believe he’s the Lords in Black’s favourite human. There’s two reasons why I think so - either he’s a descendant of the Waylons who got everything started for the Lords (far-fetched but we know nothing about Paul’s family) or, and this is more likely - the Lords in Black are beings of sheer chaos, watching a boring, ordinary man descend into chaos in every timeline must be so different and refreshing for them to watch. Thoughts?

[the-mystical-aquatic-gay]

i don’t think i’m the only one thinking this (at least not if the youtube comments are anything to go by) but i don’t think the new staging of tgwdlm is just gonna be the same show again

calling it right now, this is gonna be an alternate universe, or a time loop or something. ain’t no way it’s just gonna be the exact same show again

[thepunkmuppet]

ok but man in a hurry is definitely a victim of the bastards box right?? cursed by tinky to be forever in a hurry but never knowing where he’s going?? we’re all agreed on this right??

[isogenderskitty]

i’ve been thinking about this edit idea all day so i had to make it before i went to bed or i’d go goddamn bananas

anyway in case you haven’t heard, lumber axe & max jägerman are the same guy and this theory is my roman empire

[artyfartyliz]

like father, like son

[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!

[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—

[justarandombrit]

Wrote all this down ages ago but forgot to post it anywhere, so here you go:

I was just thinking about how cool it'd be if every main character in TGWDLM was linked to one of the Lords In Black, and then I started properly considering it.

Pokey, Blinky and Tinky are all obvious. Paul, Bill and Ted. If you know anything about Hatchetfield lore you'll get this.

Then, I thought, “Well Nibbly doesn't really have any sort of ‘special guy’ like the others, since he just eats whoever becomes Honey Queen, without having any real attachment. I guess there's Roman Murray, but he's just a member of The Church Of The Starry Children, he's not specifically linked to Nibbly, and anyway, we're talking about TGWDLM characters.

So. Which main character of TGWDLM is most linked to Nibbly? Oh, I don't know, maybe THE ONE LITERALLY CALLED SWEETLY?!?!?!?

Yeah, I settled on Charlotte. It was mainly because of her last name, but I do think she fits Nibbly’s whole cutesy eldritch horror thing he has going on. Also pink.

That, of course, leaves one main character left for TGWDLM. Emma Perkins.

Even though this is only because I decided all the others first, I think it works pretty well. Emma, as we know, absolutely fucking despises capitalism. So, her being linked to the literal embodiment of capitalism actually makes a lot of sense.

Think how goddamn climactic it would be if Emma was the one to defeat Wiggly. Realistically speaking for the future of the series, if the Lords In Black ever do truly get defeated, it's either going to be by General MacNamara, Lex or Hannah, or, most likely, Miss Holloway or Webby, but imagine if it was Emma. Emma Perkins, who once described her business model for selling pot as “Raging against the capitalist patriarchy… in, like, a chill way. While still making tons of money”. So for Emma to ditch the “chill” part and LITERALLY FUCKING SHOOT CAPITALISM IN THE TENTACLES?!?!?!?!? That would fuck so hard

[monstrousaffections1]

Ted is the Nymph to Tinky's Satyr. Here me out, Ted is sex addicted right? Pretty much. He's essentially a Nymphomaniac but a man. Tinky is a goat creature, sometimes drawn in fanart as a Satyr. Well, Satyrs chase Nymphs. Tinky is chasing Ted, he's always pursuing Ted, he's always trying to Catch Ted in his never-ending time-loop.

[stratfordsandthestars]

there's such a theme of WANTING in all the hatchetfield verse stuff, particularly in all three main musicals - 'what do you want, paul', 'what tim wants', 'what do you want, steph?' and if i really put some thought into it i could write an entire essay about it all.

it's mainly a major theme in tgwdlm - the aliens need to know what paul's true desires/wants are and are only able to get close enough to infect him once he admits he wants there to be something more with emma. i can't think of a particular scene in black friday aside from 'what tim wants', lmk if y'all can think of smth. npmd, you have the lords in black with their 'whatever we want we get' chant, they want steph to lose what she wants the most, 'what do you want, steph?', and i'm sure there's an example in nightmare time too...

idk it's just such a running theme and i wanna pick at the lang brothers brains so badly bc it fascinates me so much.