#nerdy watches:

[write-nerdy-to-me]

LUCIFATHER??????

[stellarspecter]

@pscentral event 20: antagonists ↳ THE LORDS IN BLACK in NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE

[alilarxy]

Stephanie has got a gun, tra-la-la-la how fun 🎶

[ashdoescomics]

pov: you’re max jagerman after “bully the bully” in nerdy prudes must die 🔪

this was SO fun to make and it took me 7 HOURS WHAT anyway do yourself a favor and watch some starkid >:) they never fail to make my next favorite musical!!

[tacccalb]

📓 Darkness will spare my soul.

unshaded vvv

[nectorbruise]

I have also been sucked into nerdy prudes must die

I LOVED Ruth and Richie and I’m so sad about them being doomed by the narrative and hurt and given false hope. Deserved better honestly. I’ve annoyed my friends via talking about it and here we are!!!! I am not a loser.

Edit because of reblogs; i don’t ship them :D

[rockrosethistle]

fun fact of the day: In this Nerdy Prudes Must Die clip that I turned up the brightness on, you can see Richie doing a Naruto run into the Waylon place. Also, you can see Pete slapping his hands down and telling him to cut it out. And it's just...perfect

[linaisbluepancake]

MAX JAGERMAN GOOO NIGHTHAWKS🧟‍♂️🏈🦅

[lilacthebooklover]

hatchetverse but paul accidentally becomes everyone's parental figure. lex & hannah's? sure, they deserve a good parent who'll look out for them. stephanie lauter? yeah, why not, her dad highkey sucks. richie? absolutely, could even make them be biologically related for the lols. he meets peter through ted, they're chill (potential for angst if ted disappears in this iteration of the multiverse). he's the guy alice goes to about all of her stresses and worries- the 'cool uncle'. he meets ruth at the coffee shop where he sees emma before they have a concrete relationship, ruth is very vocal about how she wishes she could have a partner too. he could be even max freaking jagerman's unofficial dad (he does not think max has to fight off "one lousy skele'un" to be worth something). he tries to solve grace chasity's religious guilt with "yeah no sex is normal" and she views him as a source for all advice on the matter after that. paulkins but paul is a tired dad and emma doesn't find out he has like 50 kids until they've been dating a couple months and one of them randomly runs into his house. she introduces him to tim and he just rolls with it. it's another nephew, okay, neat. he's not great with kids but he finds himself with loads of them somehow anyway. then they all face off against sadistic eldritch gods and multiple cults together like a family. what more could you want?

[aylacola]

as a surprise to no one i am indeed a starkid fanatic and i love angela giarratana

[fools-catacomb]

I’m thinking about Hatchet Field and cycles, especially in NPMD because holy shit there’s so much of it. Like

Every time we see Hatchet Field the world ends. And then we see it end all over again- it all restarts

Nobody ever dies in Waylon house

When Max dies the school is allowed to move on, to “evolve”- but then he comes back. Things return to how they once were

“People go missing in Hatchet Field every day”

The lyrical motif of “I’m not a loser” is not just an assertion of worth, it’s a claim to safety and power. Peter doesn’t dress like that because he’s a nerd, he dresses like that to avoid attention, to not be a loser.

When Max is destroyed, Grace replaces him.

Suddenly Grace is singing about how the ‘nerds’ will rise up and kill. The threat shifts but is never gone

“I’m not a loser” is absolution, it says “I am not worthy of death” in a very literal sense. Character beg for their lives with it. The final song, where Grace becomes the new apocalypse? The background is still “I’m not a loser”. Because it was never about nerds versus jocks. It was always about escaping death.

But people go missing in Hatchet Field every day

And nobody ever dies in the Waylon house

So we go around and around and around

The same two people flirt at a coffee shop, the same cops run the same dirty beat, the same rich fucks call the same lawyer, over and over and over

What the fuck

[cosmicquill]

I'm always like "Oh yeah the Nightmare Times are some of my favourite content Starkid has ever put out, but they're fun additional stories and not necessarily essential for people to watch if they're into the Hatchetfield musicals." And then I think about CCRP's future or Homeless Man or Pete's brother or Miss Holloway and I'm like OH MY GOD THEY DON'T KNOW. THEY DON'T KNOW. THEY LACK CRITICAL INFORMATION. THEY DON'T--

[schrodingers-hoarding-problem]

starkid did NOT have to go off that hard with "I've never seen darker times and I've covered the protests live at the Hatchetfield kennel. I am Dan Reynolds!"

[yourlegacysnotyourstosee]

Just watched Jons tgwdlm watch party and in the last 5 minutes he was like “yeah I think Pauls probably bi” SIR YOU CANNOT JUST DROP THIS INFORMATION ON ME??????

[keysmashing-bees]

A bit late.. but as promised, a redraw of this post for the Cinderella's Castle kickstarter reaching its goal! Yay

[cutesilyo]

the thing i really like about just for once in nerdy prudes must die is that it's best iteration of the musical within a musical trope that has become characteristic of the hatchetfield musicals

like both show-stopping number and deck the halls (of northville high) are catchy songs from in-universe musicals that were very much written to have plots that suck

and show-stopping number was so well-beloved because it is, frankly, a hilarious scene that robert manion put 100% into

but i argue that only just for once is thematically relevant to its musical and fully emblematic of the wants and desires of the character singing it

because what is just for once, as a scene? it's ruth singing a song because she thinks she's got a chance of doing it better. it's ruth singing a song about a character who looks back on the mundane miseries of her lonely life and — at the last second — remembering who she used to be before the pain set in. it's ruth singing her version of cooler than i think i am and reflecting on how she is perceived and wondering what it takes to break away from it. it's ruth singing right after she says, "in my dreams, i'm the star of the show."

of all the losers that max jagerman victimizes, only ruth says who she'd like to become beyond that. where pete can't even admit to liking steph at gunpoint and richie doesn't ever get the chance to verbalize what he wants, ruth gets on the stage in the few minutes of break time and just for once, the spotlight is on her.

and the really crazy thing about just for once is — it has the "i'm not a loser" motif. possibly the most iconic and important motif of the whole musical, it's the motif that starts the opening number. and here it is, in the silly musical within a musical by the silly character who has — until this song — always served as comic relief.

in the climax of the song, just for once is no longer the song of a character from the barbecue monologues. it's ruth's. in those few seconds, it's her lamentation of the life that max jagerman forced on her.

but that's the thing about the "i'm not a loser" motif. the way it functions in the musical is as a harbinger for max's violence. the police at the beginning ask, "what the hell happened here?" and its the motif that answers. pete is the first character that sings the line and is immediately beaten up by max in the next scene. then richie sings it and max kills him in the same song. when ruth has the motif running as the crescendo to just for once, it sounds absolutely incredible... and it should come as no surprise when max appears shortly after.

(as a quick note: you can also hear the motif after max makes the car crash, then max appears two scenes later. you then hear the motif in the cooler than i think i am reprise and max also appears right after the song. it's like max is instantly summoned by any instance of the losers trying to shake off the role he placed on them — of trying to defy him.)

tl;dr: the inclusion of the "i'm not a loser" motif in just for once makes it the big lipped alligator moment that wasn't. like yeah, it accomplishes its goal in being the funny musical within a musical trope! the character acting makes it a funny song, and its a funny character performing it! but it also furthers our understanding of ruth AND of what the "i'm not a loser" really is: it's the characters trying to develop past being nerdy prudes and max doing everything in his power to prevent that.

and it does all that while being a banging musical tribute to stephen sondheim and, especially, his song the ladies who lunch. which in itself is a massive flex on jeff blim's part. what a brilliant song in a brilliant musical.