Oh Holy CRAP THIS IS SOOO GREAT !!!!! I Knew Something Like This Was Happening But This Was A Perfect

oh holy CRAP THIS IS SOOO GREAT !!!!! i knew something like this was happening but this was a perfect way of actually putting it into words. first i thought thaat the audience clapping at emma at the end of TGWDLM was just haha another funny joke (with dark 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴) but it puts it into a whole new perspective. holy.

Hatchetfield, Continuity, and Eldritch Horror

So, Nerdy Prudes Must Die just came out and it reminded me how much I love the Hatchetfield series and I want to talk about one aspect that makes it so unique and interesting. Continuity.

If you don't know Hatchetfield is a series of stories by Starkid that has three stage musicals and a series called Nightmare Time and a short film. It is a horror anthology series where in every story some different supernatural or other horrible event occurs where characters die or the world ends in different ways. But that is kinda of not true because anthology isn't quite the right word.

The characters stay the same as the inhabitants of the small town of Hatchetfield but each story focuses on different characters at different times and the interesting part is that while certain individuals will act differently because of something related to the horror or supernatural elements mostly they always stick to canonical personalities and histories, and it is heavily implied that the events all actually happen and there is some wider story where there are multiple timelines.

This creates two really cool effects.

One is that you slowly start to learn more about the characters as you encounter them in various stories, and different things come about depending on how the current threat affects them. It also gives more information than any length single timeline would because we get to see what pushes them to different points. From NPMD for example, the story takes place two years after The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals in which the world ends and Paul and Emma fall in love, but we see in NPMD that Paul for the first time gives Emma his number perhaps hinting at what the timeline would be for Paul and Emma's relationship to mature without the intervention of a world ending disaster.

The other thing is about Eldritch Horror. Hatchetfield's core story revolves around the Lords in Black a group of Elder Gods who orchestrate most of the events. In most cases Eldritch Horror has difficulty truly selling the concept of creatures outside of our dimension who are not bound by time and space, and even if they demonstrate their power to the characters, as an audience it doesn't have a huge effect. But with Hatchetfield, because as an audience we are aware of the multiple timelines, we take on the role of the eldritch beings and see the stories from their perspective. In NPMD they make references to other stories implying that it is the same Lords in Black everytime with Tinky talking about having "another Spankofski" for his collection(an episode of Nightmare Time.) They also play with having the audience being the perspective of these Eldritch beings with the stagecraft like in Black Friday where entering the Black and White has the president move in from the audience, or in TGWDLM the ending has the audience clap for the end of the show with Emma screaming for help and unsure why the audience won't help her.

Its a really cool format that I personally have never encountered before and really sells the horror and makes you more invested in the characters.