hatchetfield

hatchetfield is a fictional town on an island in the middle of lake michigan, an island they share with the rival town of clivesdale (FUCK CLIVESDALE!). it's the focus of the hatchetfield series by team starkid, three musicals and many short plays available online for free.

what's unique about hatchetfield is that the stories told about it, despite most ending in disaster, are all technically canon: it's a multiverse of different timelines. this allows for explorations of beloved characters that play with unique ideas like "what if the main character of tgwdlm was a robot?" or "what happens to this couple if things went a little differently?" or "does anyone help out the kids with weird supernatural problems, because that's way too common in hatchetfield?"

main musicals

these are the three, full-length starkid musicals that center on hatchetfield. they're listed chronologically by release date, but they can be watched in any order. there are some references to previous musicals in black friday and nerdy prudes must die, but they don't impact the plot.

the guy who didn't like musicals is a twist on zombie apocalypse stories that asks: what if the zombies turned the world into a musical? plays with the narrative structure of musicals in a very fun way and has a cast of loveable characters. or characters you love to hate.

black friday takes place during the american holiday of the same name, and everyone in town is obsessed with buying a "tickle me wiggly" doll. so obsessed that the local mall descends into violent madness and a cult is formed around the doll.

nerdy prudes must die is my favorite, and in my opinion is the best standalone musical in the series, though it still references the others! hatchetfield high school is metaphorically haunted by a powerful bully, but that haunting turns literal when a prank goes wrong and he seeks revenge on the nerds who were involved in his death.

nightmare time

nightmare time is a series of narratives, usually about an hour each, that expand on the beloved characters of hatchetfield. they're accompanied by a song or two but aren't full musicals. instead of being on a stage, they're set up like a zoom call with separate cameras for each character. like the musicals, these are listed in order of release but are standalone!

note: most nightmare time episodes have two stories bundled together. season 1 episode 1 was a livestream so doesn't have captions and can be laggy at times, but every other episode is fully captioned.

season one

the hatchetfield ape-man - professor hidgens finds an ape-man in the woods who isn't what he seems.

watcher world - bill and alice woodward spend the day at a strange amusement park.

forever & always - paul and emma from tgwdlm get married, but emma has a secret.

time bastard - ted spankoffski goes through some shit. loosely connects to the previous story.

jane's a car - jane perkins' soul transfers into the car she was killed in.

the witch in the web - hannah foster has some bad dreams and miss holloway helps.

season two

honey queen - linda monroe and zoey chambers would do anything to win the hatchetfield honey queen pageant.

perky's buds - emma perkins has a weed farm, and the local nighthawk population wants to eat all her plants.

abstinence camp - strange murders begin to occur at an abstinence-promoting summer camp in the witchwood.

daddy - frank pricely gets married and there's something odd about the family he marries into.

killer track - rose hears a song that threatens to kill her until miss holloway and duke keane help her out.