Line #18 YMMV/Hatchetfield


1	* ActorShipping:
2	** People who've been squeeing over speculation that Creator/JoeyRichter and Creator/LaurenLopez were dating since the ''Theatre/AVeryPotterMusical'' days were rewarded by Joey and Lauren having their first ever significant scene together in a show since "Granger Danger" in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', with a ''very'' DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything scene with Uncle Wiley "seducing" Linda Monroe into Wiggly's service. (They then had their shipping validated by Lauren and Joey officially announcing their engagement in 2020, followed by them performing their first duet together since "Granger Danger" in Episode Two of ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'', "Peanuts!")
3	** Robert Manion, prior to being booted from the series, was a fan-favorite target for ActorShipping, being the resident younger PrettyBoy and having a large EstrogenBrigade. There was a lot of Mariah/Robert shipping -- ironic, since up until "Forever & Always" they'd never appeared as a couple or even significantly interacted in a show, and is based mostly on social media banter and the two of them doing a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QIM3znzZ7I killer cover]] of "Seventeen" from ''Theatre/{{Heathers}}''. (They ''would'' have played a couple in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' but Mariah had to bow out of playing Lex Foster due to being cast in ''Theatre/MeanGirls'', which led to Robert and Mariah having a tongue-in-cheek "falling out" online.) That said, Robert and Angela had strong enough chemistry in their brief time together as Lex and Ethan in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' that they got shipping goggles directed at them too.
4	** Curt Mega and Kim Whalen have been together since they were teenagers and married since 2010, so the "shipping" is less intense, but a lot of their fans were very excited to see them both officially join the cast of ''Theatre/BlackFriday''. They have played couples twice, as Duke and Miss Holloway in ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'' and Karen and Mark Chasity in ''Theatre/NerdyPrudesMustDie''.
5	** There's a fair amount of HoYay shipping too, mostly tongue-in-cheek jokes about Jon Matteson and Creator/JeffBlim, which they've happily exploited for jokes on Jeff's ''[[https://www.youtube.com/user/Chowda64 Rim Tim Timmy Fun Time Hour]]'' podcast about Jeff's incessant {{Yandere}} bullying and dominating Jon.
6	** People also pointed out HoYay of a more wholesome nature with Robert and Jon's relationship as roommates, especially after the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic quarantine started, with their goofy married-couple bickering and domesticity (especially after they started streaming ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossingNewHorizons'' together). That said, HoYay shipping and jokes about Robert receded a lot, ironically, after he actually did come out as bisexual on social media and did so with an accompanying [[TearJerker emotional story about how being in the closet]] [[TheOneThatGotAway cost him a possible relationship with a dear friend he was secretly in love with in the past]].
7	* AluminumChristmasTrees: The word "sniggle" is a real word, referring to a form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniggle fishing for eels]] (or the hooks used for this kind of fishing), based on the obsolete word "snigs" to mean eels. The Tickle-Me Wiggly jingle refers to Wiggly as a snig, and though he's not especially eel-like, the commercial does present him as having an aquatic theme and Uncle Wiley as a fisherman, so this may well have been fully intentional.
8	* BrokenBase: One that was inevitable with the major change in direction for Creator/TeamStarkid away from goofy pop-culture parody musicals and toward an original HorrorComedy series -- and one that Nick Lang has said may be regrettable but was necessary, since he thinks of the former genre as a fad of TheNewTens that was rapidly running out of steam.
9	* CrackShip: The extremely shipping-happy Starkid fandom has led to some of these in Hatchetfield's history:
10	** Notably, in the early stages of ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals''' Kickstarter campaign, LesYay shippers shipped Emma and Charlotte together just based on their ''character descriptions'' (the spunky {{Tsundere}} barista and the ShrinkingViolet {{Dandere}} office worker), possibly just because of the punny PortmanteauCoupleName "Emmalotte" (i.e. "omelette"). This led to a minor WhyFandomCantHaveNiceThings moment when a minority of fans accused Creator/NickLang of being homophobic for directly rejecting this ship when asked about it -- since the Paul/Emma pairing and Charlotte/Ted/Sam LoveTriangle is central to the plot -- which pretty much completely died down once the actual story of the musical was revealed, including the canon gay ship between Alice/Deb. That said, of course, the Emma/Charlotte ship still exists (because nothing in fandom truly dies), even though it now requires fans to extrapolate a ''lot'' from Emma and Charlotte's minimal interactions in ''TGWDLM''. (They have one conversation, in which Emma has difficulty even remembering Charlotte's name.)
11	** From the same show came the "Tedgens" (Ted/Prof. Hidgens) ship, which is based solely on Creator/JoeyRichter's highly committed acting in the "Showstoppin' Number" scene, where despite the direness of the situation Ted can't seem to help EatingTheEyeCandy and sincerely appreciating the drama of Prof. Hidgens' pitch for ''Workin' Boys''. Hilariously, this one Starkid actually ''followed up on'': [[spoiler: "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man" shows Prof. Hidgens and Ted in an AlternateTimeline as friends and partners-in-crime]], and "Time Bastard" has a significant scene of Ted and Hidgens DrowningTheirSorrows together.
12	** Then there's the tongue-in-cheek CrackShip between two {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, with people deciding that Blinky from "Watcher World" being so similar to Wiggly from ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' meant they had to be "boyfriends". This was, hilariously, instantly sunk with a fandom-wide AbandonShipping announcement once "The Witch in the Web" established that the Lords in Black are all "brothers" to each other. (Metaphorical siblinghood or not, the fandom is against IncestYayShipping.)
13	* FanNickname: The recurring background nerd portrayed by Robert Manion in ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' and ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' was known by the fans as "Hot Chocolate Boy", due to having ordered a hot chocolate at Beanie's and having no other official name (as his name in the script of TGWDLM, "Obnoxious Teen", was later transferred to the character originating in ''Theatre/BlackFriday'' who took over his RecurringExtra role). "Abstinence Camp" revealed the character to be Ted's younger brother, Peter Spankoffski.
14	* {{Fanon}}: There's a lot of it floating around, some of it more serious, some of it less.
15	** On the less-serious side are goofy memes about various {{Unexpected Character}}s being the "real latte hotté", i.e. someone unexpected Ted has a crush on (because Ted is headcanoned as pansexual), which as MemeticMutation has ended up encompassing every Hatchetfield character that exists and every actor in the Creator/TeamStarkid orbit.
16	** There's similar jokes that have really harshly been {{Jossed}} by later canon, like the Homeless Man never actually being possessed by the evil force and "just vibin'" [[spoiler: (with any Homeless Man jokes becoming a HarsherInHindsight after "Time Bastard")]].
17	** Also, there's been a ton of lore that's spun out from the Lords in Black reveal, like trying to associate the five Lords in Black with the five senses (Pokotho = Hearing, Blinky = Sight, Tinky = Smell, Nibbly = Taste, Wiggly = Touch) or with Entities from ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives''.
18	** There's some bits of {{Fanon}} that have been more-or-less confirmed by WordOfGod to be true at this point -- one of which is the GrandfatherParadox of [[spoiler: the Homeless Man continuing to exist in timelines where "Time Bastard" doesn't happen]] being explained by the timelines not splitting until Hannah Foster is born in 2005, another of which being that Pokotho, the blue Lord in Black, is the HiveMind from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' who sent the Meteor. Also, the fandom has pretty much figured out from copious hints on social media that the "Hot Chocolate Boy" from ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', rumored to play a major character in ''Nerdy Prudes Must Die!'', must be Ted Spankoffski's "nerdy younger brother" mentioned in "Watcher World".
19	*** Confirmed with the introduction of Peter Spankoffski, played by Nick Lang in ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'''s "Abstinence Camp" and Joey Richter in ''Nerdy Prudes Must Die''.
20	** One bit of {{Fanon}} that's stuck due to the various paradoxes of ColorblindCasting: We know it's unlikely that someone who looks like Creator/CoreyDorris (who is black) would have a biological daughter who looks like Mariah Rose Faith Casillas (who is white, and very fair-skinned) in RealLife, and since they've only appeared in a stage show or staged readings we're free to imagine them any way we want -- but fans doing FanArt have pretty quickly come to a consensus that the "real" Bill looks just like Corey while the "real" Alice is mixed-race or black (possibly with bleached blonde hair).
21	** Similarly, when it comes to FanArt, fans have had brief interactions with Creator/NickLang on social media talking about how they imagine Creator/LaurenLopez's characters -- the consensus between both {{Fanon}} and WordOfGod is that Emma Perkins looks pretty much exactly like Lauren, while her other characters diverge from her in various ways. Fans, for instance, are pretty likely to imagine Linda Monroe as having blue eyes as opposed to Lauren's brown, in keeping with Linda's [[ThoseWackyNazis weird implied Aryan-supremacist]] gloating over her "four beautiful blond boys".
22	** Re: disability/mental illness representation, it's nearly a universal consensus among fans that Hannah Foster [[DiagnosedByTheAudience is autistic]], and that Paul Matthews shares autistic traits.
23	* GeniusBonus:
24	** "Bliklotep" is a name that, like the Franchise/CthulhuMythos' "Nyarlathotep", is a made-up word attached to the Egyptian suffix "-hotep" meaning "peace", often used in RealLife as the name of a Pharaoh when attached to the name of an Egyptian deity (Rahotep, Amenhotep, Sobekhotep, etc.) The GeniusBonus comes in when you remember that one of the ubiquitous symbols used by the Pharaohs was the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Horus wadjet eye]].
25	** In "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man", Professor Hidgens asks Lucy for $30 million to fund ''Workin' Boys''. While this sounds like a reasonable budget for a film, it would be the third most expensive Broadway show of all time. Add on WordOfGod's confirmation that ''Workin' Boys'' is a RealTime plot in which seven guys mill around on a football field reminiscing for three hours, and it's a pretty brilliant joke about just how delusional Hidgens is about this show.
26	* GrowingTheBeard: Although a lot of older fans may have resisted the new direction Starkid took with ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', there's just as many fans who love the new, more mature Starkid and even say that in comparison to the Hatchetfield shows it's hard to rewatch the old shows in the same light, especially since a lot of the immature humor has aged poorly.
27	* HilariousInHindsight:
28	** In November 2020, a movie called ''Black Friday'' was announced -- a HorrorComedy with very similar plot elements not only to [[Theatre/BlackFriday the Hatchetfield play of the same title]], but with a little bit of ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' thrown in too! [=StarKid=] fans were outraged, but Nick Lang took it rather well, sure it's a coincidence and eager to see the film when it comes out. The end of the "feud" on social media was director Casey Patrick Tebo saying he'd watched Starkid's ''Black Friday'', liked it a lot and would love to [[https://twitter.com/caseyshoots/status/1328856214793555976?s=20 put a Wiggly doll in the movie]] as an EasterEgg. It is currently unclear is this has happened.
29	** Before ''that'', a Christmas movie called ''Jingle Jangle'' was released shortly after ''Black Friday'', seemingly right in the vein of Hatchetfield's Christmas movie parody ''Santa Claus Is Goin' To High School''.
30	* IdiosyncraticShipNaming: Grace/Max gets this a lot, with "Holy Ghost," "Holyghost," and "Ghostsoup" being the most common.
31	* JerkassWoobie:
32	** Ted is an absolute asshole and spends most of his stagetime being utterly insufferable. Then came "Time Bastard," in which we find out [[spoiler:he UsedToBeASweetKid before having his heart broken, and his ultimate fate of being driven to madness before eventually being murdered and having his soul [[AndIMustScream trapped in the Bastard's Box for all eternity]] is so horrible, practically ''no one'' really deserves it.]]
33	** Lex is more a JerkWithAHeartOfGold, but she's still very prickly and deeply cynical. However, given what sort of person her mother is, and the fact that she's been PromotedToParent for her beloved little sister with almost zero help from the adults in their lives, she's kind of earned the right to it.
34	* MemeticMutation: Fuck Clivesdale![[labelnote:Explanation]]Hatchetfield has a SmallTownRivalry with their neighbors Clivesdale-even residents who hate Hatchetfield hate Clivesdale even more. Naturally, the SharePhrase "Fuck Clivesdale!" has caught in in the fandom, almost to the level of a VerbalTic that pops up any time Clivesdale is mentioned, even in passing.[[/labelnote]]
35	* PortmanteauCoupleName:
36	** Paulkins = Paul Matthews / Emma Perkins
37	** Lexthan = Lex Foster / Ethan Green
38	** Barneston = Becky Barnes / Tom Houston
39	** Barnroe = Becky Barnes / Linda Monroe
40	** Perkston = Jane Perkins / Tom Houston
41	** Emmlette = Emma Perkins / Charlotte Sweetly
42	** Charted = Charlotte Sweetly / Ted Spankoffski
43	** Holloduke = Miss Holloway / Duke Keane
44	** Tedgens = Ted Spankoffski / Henry Hidgens
45	** A borderline example, with [[spoiler:"[=Droid23=]" being used for Emma 2 and Paul 23. "Falsekins" has also been used.]]
46	** Stephgrace = Stephanie Lauter / Grace Chasity
47	** Jagertitty or Gracemax = Max Jägerman / Grace Chasity
48	** Lautski = Stephanie Lauter / Peter Spankoffski
49	* SophomoreSlump:
50	** The second installment, ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', is the most polarizing piece of Hatchetfield media. Compared to its smash-hit predecessor ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'', its well-received successor ''Theatre/NerdyPrudesMustDie'', and the welcome and tantalizing lore of ''WebVideo/NightmareTime'', the show that first introduced the concept of this being a series has tended to fade into the background.
51	** To a lesser extent, ''Nightmare Time 2'' seemingly received less hype than the first season, to the point that Nick Lang worries that concluding the story with ''Nightmare Time 3'', as he desires to, won't be worth the trouble.
52	* SpiritualSuccessor: Despite the massive difference in tone and style, the Hatchetfield series has been said to be one for ''Theatre/TheTrailToOregon'' -- the Creator/LangBrothers describe the decision to do ''Theatre/TheGuyWhoDidntLikeMusicals'' as driven by the desire to reunite the same ProductionPosse who did ''TTO'' in 2014, saying it was the most fun and the easiest experience they'd had doing a show in the past and wanted to keep this same team going in the future. The Hatchetfield series has the same songwriter as ''The Trail to Oregon'', Creator/JeffBlim, and a similar MoodWhiplash-based comedic sensibility. There's even a explicit CallBack to a concept from ''TTO'' with Blinky's title "The Watcher with a Thousand Eyes", referencing the "horror" sequence in ''TTO'' leading into the song "Dysentery World".
53	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: There's been some pushback from fans who don't think a DarkerAndEdgier tone and big, complex storytelling is really playing to Creator/TeamStarkid's strengths, especially from many older fans who gave lukewarm reviews to ''Theatre/BlackFriday'', where the Hatchetfield series ''really'' ramped up the CerebusSyndrome.
54	* TheWoobie:
55	** Charlotte Sweetly is a LoveMartyr towards her philandering, dismissive husband Sam. She makes a genuine effort to fix things, attending counselling and trying to spend time with Sam, but he blows her off in favor of screwing around with his younger girlfriend. And while she does have an affair of her own, it's with [[{{Jerkass}} Ted]]... who ''does'' seem to have genuine affection for her, but he CannotSpitItOut, and she won't leave Sam anyway.
56	** Becky Barnes has only just got out of a marriage to an abusive monster and is surrounded by malicious gossip from the townsfolk who blame her for not leaving him, since everyone thinks he ran off with another woman. To make matters worse, Linda gleefully makes it clear that ''everyone'' knew what was happening to Becky, but did any of them try and help? Nope. [[spoiler:She also carries a lot of guilt for stabbing her husband and possibly killing him, and lives in fear of him either coming back for revenge, or his body being discovered.]] It gets worse in the plot of "Jane's a Car", where she gets to witness her new boyfriend Tom go through rapid SanitySlippage [[spoiler:and then, as far as she knows, sees him betray and attempt to murder her.]]
57	** Hannah Foster has an abusive, neglectful mother who couldn't care less about her, and her ambiguous disorder and psychic powers mean she can't really connect with other people. Her older sister Lex adores her, but there's only so much she can do, and in at least one story, they've been seperated, leaving Hannah on her own. To make matters worse, her powers make her ''very'' interesting to the various {{Eldritch Abomination}}s running around.

Context YMMV / Hatchetfield