#starkid analysis

[jesterbabey]

wait I just realised as soon as “fuck you Clivesdale go get fucked” starts, everyone is lit green ??

IS WIGGLY BEHIND THE HATCHETFIELD/CLYVESDALE BEEF

[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.

[lilacthebooklover]

i just realized, the line "and i know it's a singular voice, paul" in "let it out" is a direct reference to pokey, whose title is 'the singular voice'. so that's neat :)

[songsofnoble]

Okay I just saw your post about the importance of want in the hatchetverse and I have many thoughts about that in Black Friday in particular. Like first of all we have 2 classic “I want” songs: “What Tim Wants” which is actually Tom’s “I want” song and “CaliforM.I.A” which is Lex’s. Then there’s Wilbur and Linda’s whole conversation about what she really wants which is to be adored and how that directly leads her to work for/with Wiggly.

This isn’t even mentioning how the entire core of the show is about greed and people, specifically adults, wanting things (like the Wiggly doll) that they don’t need.

oml i'm not sure when this ask was sent, i completely missed it till now i'm so sorry, but just wanted to share this bc it's genuinely such a good analysis.

[blondephenobarbitol]

The real tragedy of TGWDLM is that Paul was minutes away from being carried off the island.

Emma has a pole through her thigh. Even assuming that the pole is helping stop the bleeding, she had like max fifteen minutes to live without medical care. Not to mention the internal bleeding; she is coughing up blood. She's either going to bleed out or drown in her blood, whichever comes first.

The scene after the helicopter crash is about three minutes long already. Emma was likely saved sometime within the next five minutes after Paul left.

Think about that. If he had stuck around for five more minutes, he would've gotten off the island. I can just imagine Emma realizing the PEIP is here, and screaming Paul's name because she knows he's about to go on a suicide mission. But he's too far away. He can't hear her.

[gingerhastoomanyobsessions]

the lords in black are so interesting to me because. they’re so us. we’re watching the citizens of hatchetfield suffer for our own entertainment just as much as they are. we’re their accomplices in all of it

pokotho made hatchetfield into a musical because musicals are entertaining. and we ate that shit up! it’s soooo fun watching a little man scramble as the world around him bursts into song. the musical genre is satirized because pokey knows how the genre conventions work just as well as we do. we like watching musicals so much that black friday and npmd are musicals, too, even though they don’t revolve around pokotho’s plans as much as tgwdlm. we want them to sing. pokotho does too.

bliklotep is the audience and the audience is bliklotep. trail to oregon calls the audience “the watcher with one thousand eyes” and that’s not all, in watcher world blinky seems to be able to see through the eyes of anyone and everyone who loves spectacle. he wants to see the characters go through angst because WE love angst. it’s fun to watch alice and bill express their buried frustrations. blinky wants it to end in bloodshed because he loves tragedy, and let’s face it, so do we. it’s like that one post about how hamlet is aware of the audience and is angry that we don’t do anything to intervene because we want to see how it plays out. personally, I think blinky could have stopped the woodwards if he really wanted (he’s an elder god, after all) but alice shooting him shifted the narrative so that the emotional payoff would be more fulfilling if they escaped. and blinky loves a good story.

t’noy karaxis has blorbos. we joke about it, but that’s really what it is, isn’t it? he’s the fan who watches the movie again and again and again and again to see his favorite character’s dramatic death scene. he’s the guy who writes and reads angst fics by the hundreds because he likes to see his faves cry. he’s the hatchetfield enjoyer who’s on the edge of their seat waiting to see how ted kicks the bucket this time. the bastard’s box is pretty much just an ao3 account filled with whump and hurt no comfort. he’s sadistic AND he genuinely adores ted, because we fans are often cruelest to the characters we love the most. he puts ted through character growth— the realization that his life went the way it did because of his own mistakes, his inability to be vulnerable with jenny before it was too late— and he does that by writing a 56-chapter angst fic that’s still updating to this day

nibblenephim is the fan who voraciously devours every scrap of content that a creator produces and demands more, more, more. let’s face it, the fandom will never let starkid rest until we see this story through to its end. and then someone will demand a sequel series. nibbly is hungry because we will never stop yearning for more stories. he’s simple because that desire itself is simple— as humans, we need creativity like we need air to breathe. nibbly wants more because we want more. and we will never be satiated.

wiggog y’rath is the ruler and the king because he’s the self-inserting writer. I think jon matteson plays paul *and* wiggly for a reason— wiggly is the only lord in black to be played by the same actor in every single show, and that actor also plays the protagonist of tgwdlm. wiggly wants to be the protagonist. he tries to force himself into the human world of hatchetfield because he wants to participate, dammit! he wants to be the bestest ruler that the earth has ever seen! everyone has to love him because he’s going to be their bestest fwiend! when he appears in human form he’s gonna be the prom king! he’s the ebony dark’ness dementia raven way of the hatchetfield multiverse. he wants every human character to bend to his whims and to love him and to put him at the tippy-top of planet earth because he’s the writer and the writer’s main character, you fuckheads, and he can make whatever story he wants, whether the other characters like it or not! if you’ve ever written a self-insert story? congratulations! you’ve been wiggog y’rath.

and the funny thing? I don’t think the lords know that they, too, are as fictional as anyone else in hatchetfield. maybe blinky knows— he sees through the audience’s eyes, after all— but I don’t think the others do. if they did, maybe they’d be a little less tyrannical. a little bit nicer.

but then the starkid writers wouldn’t have much of a story to tell, would they?

[averagecygnet-blog]

emma is the villain of tgwdlm

I need to talk about this oh my god

because it's told from the hive's perspective. paul is the protagonist because he is the one who resists them but must ultimately come to accept that they're right. emma is the one who must be beaten through force.

the difference between the hero and the villain is that the hero must change, while the villain cannot. (I'm not speaking in universals here, just generalizations of how the narrative structures work that tgwdlm uses in parody.) the hero and the villain both hold a belief that represents the thematic evil; by the end of the story, the hero must undergo apotheosis, which is to say, ultimate unity with the thematic good. once this is achieved, he can defeat the villain, who represents the thematic evil completely and is incapable of change.

to the hive, "good" is unquestioning conformity to the group's ideals, specifically, singing and dancing in sync with everybody else. "evil" is refusing to sing and dance along when, clearly, you want to.

paul is the perfect protagonist because he resists song and dance, but largely because it makes him uncomfortable. getting out of your comfort zone is necessary for change! it's a good thing to let yourself go through something uncomfortable in order to come out the other side better and stronger for it. (that much is true; however, sometimes discomfort is a legitimate sign that you should stay away from something.) paul has never really tried singing or dancing, and deep down, is afraid that if he tried it, he might like it. exactly the sort of person who can be converted and used as a shining example of the hive's righteousness.

emma must be the villain because her refusal to fall in line is a choice. she can sing, she can dance, she was in brigadoon in high school and she fuckin killed it, she is even taught a whole ass song with choreography by the hive on their first morning in hatchetfield (emma's comment about how they have to sing "all the time, apparently!" and zoey's implied presence at the theater when the meteor hit - because she was with sam, and sam was there - strongly suggests that nora and zoey were zombified all morning and she had no idea). it's stated by hidgens and suggested by nora and zoey that getting a human to sing/dance along with them is supposed to be a sort of mesmerizing tactic that the hive uses to start synchronizing a person to the hive mind, but emma refuses. she sings and she dances, just like they want, but she chooses to actively hate it the whole time, on principle. she can't be convinced; they have to swarm her, surround her on all sides. let it out is meant to win paul to their side; inevitable is just to gloat.

in the bar scene in hidgens' bunker, emma says that she must be the villain to paul's hero because she was in the musical that got him to hate musicals. on the one hand, she had it backwards; she's the villain because according to the hive, the all-encompassing narrative power, he's not supposed to hate musicals. on the other hand, she's kind of right: paul is the protagonist because he is the guy who didn't like musicals, while emma is the villain because she has the capacity to like musicals as well as experience in them, but has chosen to reject them.

who is the hero and who is the villain all depends on who is telling the story. and the hive is telling this story. don't forget that.

[thejagermeister]

one of the saddest lines in npmd to me is "who will pray for me / when i'm gone / or is this the eternal dark without a dawn"

because i wholeheartedly believe that entire segment is max projecting on richie. richie is a nerd, therefore no one will miss him. except that's verifiably false— what about ruth, peter, the football team who became his friends?

meanwhile, after max died... everyone rejoiced. no one misses him. he is completely forgotten. so he starts his revenge plot, killing the nerds that caused his death.

it's not only that, though. the wording of "eternal dark without a dawn" implies that whatever sort of afterlife max is experiencing as a ghost isn't good. sure, he gets to be powerful and get his revenge, but... without a dawn? without hope? without rest?

even if he did achieve his goal, i don't think max would have ever been happy as a ghost.

[marvelmaniac715]

@shadowbrightshine It’s only really just occurred to me that Nibblenephim has no eyes… HE IS BLIND. He literally cannot see a thing, they talk about it in the Nibbly Ditty. My boy really is just a mouth on legs, and whilst that’s admittedly a funny character design, isn’t it a little sad? He’s never seen his brothers, because they’re villains they probably aren’t interested in helping him or describing what things look like. Webby could’ve helped him but now she’s the disgraced sibling of five evil gods so that won’t happen. All he really has is food - that’s the one thing he understands. He never really says anything overtly evil, he just talks about eating because in his mind that’s the one thing he can do. He rewards the Starry Children for bringing him a meal, he smiles and waves during The Summoning (maybe he can only see in a human form) but nobody ever actually replies to him. Did you notice that? I also theorise that Pokey wrote all of the songs about the Lords in Black, so if you believe that, Pokey called his own brother a pig and a slob for no apparent reason. It’s just sad, I think.

[ambrosykim]

i find it an interesting detail that this is where the thumbnail comes from, specifically the frame where he says "demonized" (from the titular song)

now i've only watched npmd once so idk if there's any like. subtext as to if max was a typical bully in how if he bullied others due to his own background or insecurities or if he was just genuinely just a terrible person, but it seems interesting that starkid chose this specific frame to go on the thumbnail (i get it he does look frightening and cool at once and it conveys the vibe of the musical)

i mean it's obvious that he's a completely deranged person (i think especially after coming back from the dead) but yeah, what i thought was interesting, was that by starkid choosing this specific frame, they're also immediately demonizing him to anyone that stumbles upon the musical, even before starting it so!!!

[ruthflemwad]

grace chasity is the anti-ted: a ramble

so i was rewatching some hatchetfield stuff and i came to. a realization.

grace chasity and ted spankoffski are practically eachother’s exact opposites, and it makes both of their individuals stories so compelling. i wouldn’t exactly say they’re narrative foils, because we never really see them interact in canon, so they’re more almost… parallels.

for example, ted spankoffski proudly accepts the moniker of “horny bastard”, and plays right into it, not hiding his sexual urges. grace chasity’s belief that her sexual urges and fantasies are sinful put her through so much distress that she winds up killing somebody.

on the other hand, ted spankoffski is ultimately very concerned by murder and violence. grace thinks nothing of it, even going as far as to gleefully dismember a body and hide it under floorboards. queen!

grace valued her chastity most of all, but she gave it up to save her friends and ultimately the world. ted, however, thoroughly enjoys sleeping around and being a total sleazeball, but was willing to give it up for another chance with jenny (although he did try to use these sleazeball ways to help him achieve that goal)

the most important comparison is something that isn’t Entirely canon but i feel as though is Implied. i believe that in every timeline, ted spankoffski will die. i also believe that in every timeline, grace chasity will kill. again, directly contrasting eachother, but in a much more drastic way. there are many other parallels between the two i just can’t think of specifics rn

additionally, in the nerdy prudes must die timeline, grace goes on a murderous rampage against all “dirty dudes”, fuelled by the lords in black. and what is theodore spankoffski if not the dirtiest dude of all? there’s no way he’s making it out of that.

i think that the only time grace and ted’s paths will ever notably cross in any timeline is when grace kills ted. this thought is made even More Impactful when you consider grace’s kind-of-friendship with Pete.

ok that’s all thank u guys for coming to my TED talk (hahahahahahaha get it get it get it g)

[jesterbabey]

I am thinking about the term “dirty girl” and how Boy Jerry uses it (Abstinence Camp and Hatchet Town) and then it’s just, a coincidence that Max uses it? And like, it’s kind of important to the plot, like she sets up the prank because of it. Idk, like, it’s awfully convenient that he would just stumble upon a phrase that is already connected to her? I am back on my “Max is associated with Pokotho somehow” theory

[zelda-donovanboat]

The Tragedy of Ruth Flemming <3 <3 <3

"You're splitting me in two!"

Ruth Flemming has only ever wanted to be loved. The only girl in a small friend group of nerds, Ruth is constantly told (and telling herself) that she will never know what it feels like to be wanted. People tell her to die every day. Ruth isn't seen as a girl. She's seen as a nerd. That's her entire identity. She craves to be touched not just because she's unbelievably horny, but because it would mean someone wants to touch her; it would mean someone thinks she's worth that level of intimacy. She would be someone. When you watch coming of age movies and you get to the part where the guy sees the girl for the first time and the world stops and maybe their hands touch as they reach for some fallen items and there's such an intense electricity that they have to pull their hands and flinch away--that's all Ruth Flemming has ever wanted. To be the girl in the movie. In her final moments, Ruth gets her standalone moment. She gets an entire song where she not only gets to sing, but monologue and act and act out being the girl of a movie (even if this girl is now middle-aged and overlooked and unwanted; the latter of which being how Ruth feels about herself). I could say so much about Just For Once, I know many people dislike that song but I think it's genius, especially in conjugation with the rest of the development and twists that NPMD places on different typical 2000's movie tropes, such as Richie's development and death. But I'm veering off track. She has just done something she's wanted to do for a long time. She acted. Even if it was just for herself, it was a start. Much like Richie starting to feel acceptance from the football team, Ruth is starting to feel a small build of confidence. And then Max destroys it. Not only does he mock her performance, but he kills her in the most painful possible way I can imagine Ruth being killed; a fucking wedgie. Obviously this continues the theme of Max killing his victims with extreme bullying methods (though this only happens to his first two victims, Richie and Ruth), but it's more than that. How often do you hear of a girl getting wedgied? I know it sounds ridiculous to read, but really. Think about it. You don't. And this brings me back to my earlier point; Ruth isn't seen as a girl. She's just a nerd. And nerd's get wedgied all the time. In Ruth's final moments, Max destroys everything Ruth had just built up. She's not a girl, she doesn't get her moment, she's a bad actor ("You SUCK, Flemwad!"), and the past five minutes that she had to feel herself and perform are now tarnished by the knowledge that she was being watched and the watcher wasn't a fan of what they saw. Max does more than take away Ruth's life, he takes her spirit. I love you Ruth Flemming. You deserve the world, you deserve the Globe Theatre, you deserve love and you deserve attention and you deserve life.

[lilacthebooklover]

i just finished watching 'daddy' and wow was it unhinged. however, as much as i enjoyed the plot of it itself, i couldn't stop noticing the parallels to 'hey melissa'.

it begins with a character going about their everyday life, interacting with work colleagues. then, the antagonist is introduced, and they want to date the focus character. this quickly spirals into something horrifying. paul is kidnapped and kept locked in melissa's apartment. he's forced to act like something he's not. she tasers and demeans him. he isn't allowed to leave. meanwhile, frank is kidnapped and kept locked in a dungeon after he tries to run away. he's forced to act like something he's not. sheila locks frank out of the house in a storm, then sends marco after him when frank attempts to leave and she tries to kill him. he isn't allowed to leave. paul encounters ted while locked away. ted is murdered during their captivity. frank encounters barry while locked away. barry dies of an untreated wound caused by their captor during their captivity. bill enters melissa's apartment, unknowing of the horrors within, and she tries to kill him. daddy's ted enters sheila's mansion, unknowing of the horrors within, and she does kill him. melissa and sheila are both openly referred to as young and attractive. paul and frank both had pet dogs that died. ted and barry were both the first to get caught up in their respective tormentors' plots and died as a result. even down to the creepy "daddy"/"puss" themes. the ending of hey melissa is paul going back to her due to his stockholm syndrome and continuing to be treated like a cat. the ending of daddy is frank being stuck with sherman, who says he'll be his daddy "for ever and ever and ever-". so on and so forth. now, consider the fact that melissa didn't have any external influences from demons. she wasn't stealing the lives of hundreds with the help of the black book and the lords in black. she wasn't supernaturally old or with any lore-related backstory. melissa was just like that. i'm not sure which one freaks me out more.

[sky-neverending]

Max Jagerman is an analyst's wet dream. He's so black and white until you peak through the curtains type vibe. Everything he says can be taken and observed, jotted down and taken apart until you piece everything together.

That's why villains are the most fun to analyze. Because they can seem one-sided and yet when you flip them over, there's a whole other perspective you get to take apart.

Max is, at a glance, the dumb jock bully. He's rude and hurts people, acts like he owns the joint. I'm not denying that he's a p bad guy. BUT! He's so much more. The Waylon scenes are a really good showcase of that.

He has fears. He faces them. He's got an internal conflict like the rest of us do. Not to mention the part about his dad which I will not go into for a sake of keeping this short.

I have. A lot of points to cover and I have to leave for therapy SO if you want to see me take apart some of the scenes he's in and tell you my opinion, lemme know! But rn my point is this: Max is a fuckin wonder of a nightmare. And his journey shows that. And I know he's a bad guy, but that's why I like him. His dynamics with people, the way he acts and talks, it's all a small piece of a bigger puzzle.

GRRRR MAX JAGERMAN OUGH

ok i gtg lemme know if you want that long post later

[blondephenobarbitol]

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)