Hatchetfield

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Hatchetfield is a franchise from the American theater troupe Team Starkid. It covers strange happenings in a mysterious Midwest town, with alternate timelines, musical numbers and a lot of f-bombs to boot.

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Nothing should happen in Hatchetfield. All it has is the Starlight Theater, a Beanie's Coffee with singing baristas, and a mall with the hottest toys in town. For some reason, however, Hatchetfield attracts several supernatural creatures, and apocalypses. Whether it's a Hive Mind turning people into singing zombies, or a persuasive Eldritch Abomination posing as a plush toy, you can bet that the world will end thanks to what starts in this town. Expect your favorite characters to die. A lot. But that's okay, because a new timeline or continuity starts in each show! And maybe, one day, the characters will find their happy ending or save the multiverse. Both would be ideal, to save everyone regardless of the timeline.

The franchise has several works: stage musicals The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, Black Friday, and the musical web series Nightmare Time. Nerdy Prudes Must Die is a work-in-progress, meant to close out the stage musical trilogy. Thanks to the pandemic, however, it is TBD when Nerdy Prudes will come out depending on theaters reopening.

Tropes used in Hatchetfield include:

• Adult Fear:
  • Bill, no matter the timeline, is shown to be in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife over his teenage daughter Alice. Seventeen-year-old Alice, college-bound in a year, seeks a career in the arts and resents that Bill keeps trying to be a goofy Bumbling Dad when she needs someone to support her wholeheartedly. She also hates that Bill is right that her girlfriend Deb is not good enough for her, as Deb is a stoner who encourages Alice to play hooky and gets her killed by the Hive. Fortunately in "Watcher World," Blinky's brainwashing, once it breaks, makes them realize they were both being unreasonable towards each other. Alice follows her dad on Instagram, and Bill promises to give her space, and his blessing for her to pursue theater after learning she won a schoalrship.
  • Charlotte Sweetly's in a loveless marriage with her husband Sam, who is a Dirty Cop that she knows is cheating on her. Sam refuses to comply with couples counseling and rarely comes home. She's cheating on him in turn, because Ted is the only source of comfort that she can find, and Black Friday hints that Ted really does have feelings for her but is too insecure to admit them. They end the musical holding hands with Hot Chocolate Boy, as the town survivors huddle and wait for midnight to pass; Ted mentioned in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals that he'd want to spend his last moments on Earth "fucking someone else's wife".
  • Black Friday would run on this trope if not for the supernatural threat. A mall riot breaks out on the titular day, because every adult in line at the toy store wants the Tickle-Me-Wiggly.
  • "Honey Queen" has the villainous Linda and Gerald Monroe react this way when Zoey and Sam kidnap their youngest son River in an attempt to blackmail Linda to drop out of the pageant. Gerald gets an instinctive ping that River has been in the bathroom for too long, and realizes he's not in any of the stalls. When Zoey threatens River, Linda for the only time goes Mama Bear and attacks Zoey, while dialing Gerald and asking him to rescue their son. Gerald searches the parking lot in with uncharacteristic panic.
  • "Abstinence Camp" features this: it's basically a little despotism area where Boy-Jerry and Girl-Jerry rule with an iron fist. While Girl-Jerry has reason to panic about the slightest hint of debauchery and is terrified her son will murder yet another camper for wanting to snog, Boy-Jerry actively encourages Lumberaxe to murder "Dirty" girls.
• Asshole Victim: While not everyone in Hatchetfield deserves the multiple times they get killed on or offscreen, quite a few show it's hard to mourn for them:
  • Emma's boss Zoey is a diva actress and Mean Boss to her, while carrying on an affair with the married Sam Sweetly. While Emma is a crappy employee, complete with Flipping the Bird at customers and slacking off at work, Zoey is just as much of a slacker as shown in Nightmare Time. Emma also has a point that singing for tips means it's not really a tip, but earning twenty-five cents per song. "Honey Queen" goes further in showing that she outs her gay brother to their grandmother "Mima" so that he'll be disinherited, all out of spite that her brother stole her boyfriend. When Linda plays dirty tricks to sabotage her, Zoey fights dirty back, outright asking her boyfriend Sam to kidnap River, Linda's innocent son. The show ends with her hung in the rafters, courtesy of one last dirty trick.
  • Sam Sweetly is a Dirty Cop that cheats on his long-suffering wife Charlotte who knows that he's scum and cheating on him as well, but trying to make their marriage work. The Hive gets him early in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, owing to the fact that he was with Zoey at the Starlight Theater when the meteor hit. You're in fact cheering when sleazeball Ted bangs him with a traschan lid as a brainwashed Sam chases around a screaming Charlotte while brandishing a gun.
  • No one likes Linda Monroe or her husband Gerald, regardless of the timeline. She's snotty, controlling of her family, and implied to be a sociopath who buys her influence. Therefore, it's hard to mourn when Becky shoots her dead in Black Friday to save Tom, Lex and Hannah though her cultists do. "Hive Queen" zigzags this when her son River is kidnapped; it's the only time in the franchise that Linda is relatable. Despite that, because Linda wins, she's sacrificed to Nibblenephim after outright murdering Zoey during the competition.
  • It's zigzagged with Paul and Emma in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals. Sure neither of them are nice, per se, but when the singing apocalypse starts happening, Paul's first reaction is to rescue Emma and refuse to abandon her when Ted tells her to skeedaddle. Emma also befriends Paul's coworkers, comforting Charlotte after a brainwashed Sam attacks them and suggests hiding at Professor Hidgens's place. The musical ends with Paul assimilated, and Emma trapped with all the singing zombies.
• Black Widow: It's revealed in "Daddy" that Sheila Young is this, regularly marrying men to emotionally abuse them and kill them when they refuse to play along with his daddy fantasies.
• Chekhov's Gag: Grace Chastity has the unfortunate label of being a "nerdy prude" in every continuity. She uses this fact to rescue Steph and Pete from Lumberaxe and succeeds in taming him, since she is a prude. Lumberaxe makes her the new counselor of Abstinence Camp, and she takes to it happily.
• A Day in the Limelight: Nightmare Time gets to focus on different characters featured in the musical:
  • "Watcher's World" narrows its focus to Bill and Alice as he drags his daughter to a theme park for a father-daughter bonding trip.
  • "Honey Queen" gives more insight into Linda and Gerald Munroe and they're Unholy Matrimony. We also see that Zoey is more than just a Mean Boss to Emma.
  • "Daddy" shows more depth in a timeline where Frank decides to marry Sherman Young's mother, to save his business. We see how Sherman became the way that he is thanks to his mother, and Frank becomes more sympathetic as, much to his shock, he becomes the Only Sane Man in the Young household.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Linda's dad Mr. Murray is not a nice guy who constantly belittles her and turned her into the monster she is, but when he gets wind of the fact that she and Gerald have been sabotaging the competition to help her win the Honey Queen title. He warns Gerald that he does not want either his daughter or son-in-law to embarrass them. There was also a reason that he didn't want her to win; the Honey Queen is sacrificed to the deity Nibblennephim, and he's regretful about the fact that because Linda won, he has to bring his only daughter. He still does it, however, gleefully.
• Evil vs. Evil: "Honey Queen" pits Emma's Beanies boss Zoey against Linda Monroe as they try to get the namesake title from the Hatchetfield Honey Queen pageant. Both are revealed to fight dirty to get what they want, and at certain points, it's hard to know who to support. Linda wins the title of Honey Queen after hanging Zoey in the rafters, only to find out she's become a Human Sacrifice. Neither of them get what they want in the end.
• Freudian Excuse: "Daddy" reveals that Sherman Young is such a little creep and a Manchild because his mother spoils him rotten, treating him like a baby despite him being in his forties.
• Gold Digger: A more sympathetic case; Frank Pricely is very open about the fact that he's marrying Sheila Young for her money, not to give her forty-one-year-old son a father, to save his toy shop where Sherman is a frequent customer. Sheila is emotionally abusive, and it's revealed that she has trapdoors in the house because every man who has married her for her money has failed to meet her standards.
• In Spite of a Nail: The timelines have some constant events that happen regardless of the different supernatural or human cruelty:
  • Bill's wife leaves him for another man and gets main custody of Alice. This backstory informs many of Bill's insecurities and guilt that he can't provide his daughter with a better life.
  • Professor Hidgens is obsessed with getting funding for his show Workin' Boys.
  • Becky Barnes dated Tom in high school, obtained a nursing degree and married an abusive man. Concurrently, both Emma Perkins and Linda Monroe share one thing in common: an Irrational Hatred of Becky. (Bonus points: Lauren Lopez plays both Emma and Linda.) Linda has no reason to pick on Becky except that the woman isn't scared of her and can't be bribed or blackmailed, and still has her perky cheerleader attitude. Emma's case may be more justified owing to Big Sister Instinct: it's confirmed Tom married her sister Jane in some timelines, and the town is convinced that Tom and Becky should have stayed together according to gossip in Black Friday. Emma does have a point that it's insulting people think her dead sister wasn't good enough for Tom.
  • Jane Perkins died in a car crash while her sister was world-hopping. Black Friday and some of the Night Time stories confirm that her husband Tom was driving though he wasn't at fault; he wasn't able to react fast enough when another driver switched lanes and ploughed into the passenger side. It's ambiguous in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals if Tom and Jane had married, considering Emma doesn't mention her nephew Tim or her brother-in-law, just that Jane died and Emma feels guilty that she kept putting off her return home.
  • Paul and Emma meet, and they fall in love, with "Perky's Buds" is the exception. What's more, despite both of them being misanthropes, they bring out the best in each other. "Forever and Always" lampshades this when Robot-Emma tells real-Emma that even if she was mutinously single, she would have fallen for Paul evenutally.
• Kick the Dog: For once, in "Daddy", Ted didn't do anything to deserve it. Sheila Young shoots him dead when Sherman says he wants Frank back as his daddy.
• Kick the Son of a Bitch: In "Honey Queen," it should be cruel about the way that the senior Mr. Murray sacrifices his daughter and emotionally cuts her down while she's screaming in her last moments. Thing is, it's Linda.
• Lesser of Two Evils: How "Abstinence Camp" ends; while the campers aren't thrilled that Grace Chastity is their new counselor-- and she's sharpening an axe, Pete and Steph go with it because unlike Boy-Jerry, Grace isn't a killer and she rescued them from Lumberaxe.
• Mama Bear: It only shows up in the second season of Nightmare Time, but Linda Monroe's sole redeeming quality is that she loves her son River. When Zoey and Sam kidnap River, using his police authority, Linda goes ballistic and starts a cat fight with Zoey in the dressing room, all the while dialing Gerald and begging him to rescue River while she keeps Zoey busy.
• Mistaken for Murderer: In "Abstinence Camp," Steph and Pete see Counselor Boy-Jerry burying a bag full of dead bodies in a hole. Steph comes to the conclusion that he killed some campers. Boy-Jerry doesn't dispel that notion by going after them with a shovel, and siccing the real killer- Lumberaxe-- on them.
• Not What It Looks Like: Counselors Boy-Jerry and Girl-Jerry try to say this when Grace walks in on them about to make out...while Noah and Mary's bones are arranged like firewood. It doesn't matter to Grace: she runs out of there screaming.
• Only Sane Man: There are a few depending on the story. Jon Matteson plays a handful of them:
  • Paul in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals remains cynical, immune to the Hive's machinations, and insightful about the danger everyone is in from the singing zombies. It's why the Hive in interested in converting him. While Paul eventually dies and the Hive manages to assimilate him, he goes down fighting.
  • Gerald in "Honey Queen" tries talking his wife out of trying to get affection from her father. He says that if he weren't a gentleman he would deck the senior Murray for how little he cares about his only daughter. What's more, his method of helping her sabotage her competitors is technically fair: he doesn't schedule collagen appointments for one woman, and doesn't make Zoey sing at the coffee shop, only tips her a few hundred dollars and pretends to be a Broadway producer's assistant. As Linda smugly tells Zoey, she was an idiot for believing that a Broadway producer would screen for girls at a coffee shop.
  • Much to his shock, Frank Pricely becomes this in "Daddy". When he marries Sheila Young to get her funds to save the store, he actually tries to parent Sherman. It doesn't go well, but A for effort.
• Only Sane Woman:
  • In Black Friday, while Lex steals a Tickle-Me-Wiggly from her boss's shop, she resists the thrall of Wiggly when the toy talks to her. Her intention is to sell the doll online so she and Ethan have enough money to take Hannah with them to California and start a new life. Throughout the whole show, she registers the danger of the situation when the store riot starts, doing her best to get out of dodge while her boss stupidly tries to demand all the fighting customers leave. It ends up being Lex's determination to save Hannah and her empathy for Tom that breaks the brainwashing on him, so at least she and her sister survive the riots.
  • In "Honey Queen", the poor pageant volunteer is the only person not drawn into the vicious competition that Zoey and Linda start. She just reminds Zoey to not be late for rehearsal and tells them every contestant needs a talent.
  • In "Abstinence Camp," Steph is the only person who realizes the camp is stupid and the rules are arbitrary. She figures out how to bust herself and Pete out of solitary confinement-- using an axe, and manages to help him run from Lumberaxe when the man chases them. While she later agrees that Grace can be summer counselor after Lumberaxe kills the Jerrys, she plans to go back to business come the fall.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man" compared to most of the urban horror of "Nightmare Time" plays out like a love letter to Gothic literature. You have a British heiress investigating a beast with a Mad Scientist manipulating her, and an aura of mystery about the woods around the manor.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Bill will defend his daughter Alice a face monsters to save her. He fails in The Guy Who Didn't LIke Musicals'; because Alice is long-dead before he can rescue her, but succeeds in "Watcher's World" when he resists Blinky's brainwashing at the right time."
  • Gerald in "Honey Queen" dies while successfully rescuing his son from Sam Sweetly after the latter kidnaps River. He gets shot three times, and that doesn't slow him down until Sam is dead.
• Pet the Dog: At the end of "Honey Queen," Linda leaves a heartfelt voicemail on her husband's phone, saying she loves him and thanks to him for believing in her.
• Properly Paranoid: Emma hates her boss Zoey in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, saying that she and the manager are self-absorbed divas that only care about their acting careers. "Honey Queen" reveals that Zoey is an uber-competitive actress who uses emotional blackmail and entitlement to get what she wants.
• Redemption Equals Death: This happens during a few Nightmare Time episodes:
  • In "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man," a disguised Ted ends up taking a bullet for Lucy when Professor Hidgens pulls a gun on her, and chooses to die without ever revealing the ruse or the scam.
  • "Honey Queen" has the otherwise manipulative and ruthless Gerald take three bullets to the chest while rescuing his son from Sam Sweetly. He refuses to acknowledge the shock and blood loss until Sam is dead, and River is safe.
• The Stool Pigeon: In "Abstinence Camp," Stephanie calls out Grace Chastity for being this, telling on her wanting to "shower" with Pete. She says that Grace may have good intentions, but she's a "nerdy prude".
• Token Good Teammate: There are a handful of benevolent supernatural entitles that help the protagonists rather than try to kill them:
  • Webby is revealed to be Hannah's Not-So-Imaginary Friend that tries to give her advice to stay out of danger. In Black Friday, Webby warns Hannah to not trust Wiggly when he starts talking through her via the toy in the backpack that Lex convinces her to smuggle out of the small. When Hannah points this out, Wiggly calls Webby "a little bitch!" confirming that she's real. In "The Witch in the Web", Webby works to help Hannah fight off the Witch as well as her sister's impending jail time.
  • The real Hatchetfield Ape-Man is confirmed to be Good All Along. Lucy is in love with the Ape-Man because he saved her life as a child; Hidgens doesn't know if it was a real man or a hobo that didn't shave, but he's willing to make a buck off her fascination. In the climax of "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man," it tears apart Professor Hidgens just as he's about to shoot Lucy, rescues her from falling, and carries her into the dark woods, much to her delight.
• Villainous Rescue: Against all odds, Sherman of all people does this when his mother locks Frank in the dungeon after he walks out on her. Turns out that he genuinely did bond with Frank, the first person to actually parent him and understand his love for toys. Frank apologizes for trying to walk out on him, in a bit of Sanity Slippage, and they have a hug. Frank takes the opportunity to steal the keys, and attempt to unlock the sewers.
• Villains Out Shopping: Rather the Wild Card Professor Hidgens does nothing chaotic or villainous during "Honey Queen", leaving room for Zoey and Linda to fight. Granted, he is finally given the means to relive his dream when Linda offers to sponsor "Working Boys" the way that he intends if he helps her win.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Owing to his upbringing, Lumberaxe cannot stand porn. It briefly stalls him before he can kill Steph and buys time before he tosses a tree to pin her down.