Annotations for Barrett wilbert weed and ryan mccartan i am damaged

Lyric: [HEATHER MCNAMARA, spoken]
Annotation:
Heather Mcnamara is still alive despite trying to end her life.

Lyric: [J.D.]
Annotation:
In some productions of the show in addition to the movie, JD dies with his arms outstretched, the bomb strapped to his chest. This is the show’s final, momentous biblical allusion, as this pose mimics that of Jesus on the cross.

Lyric: And once I disappear
Annotation:
When JD says the word ‘disappear’, he could be referring to his imminent death, or the fact that if he dies due to the explosion of the bomb, his body most likely will not end up in one piece, perhaps not even found.

Lyric: J.D.
Annotation:
JD is seen as an insane, almost evil person, in the sense that he has murdered several people, including almost killing Veronica and blowing up the school. What most people don’t know is that the main reason JD is like this is because his Mom killed herself by walking into a building his Dad was about to blow up. So you can’t really blame him for what he did. There is also the fact that the deaths of Heather C, Ram, and Kurt, improved the lives of everyone who knew them.

Lyric: Stick around here
Annotation:
JD is telling Veronica not to kill herself just as he is about to do. This is because Veronica took the bomb that he had built that had been in the boiler room to the football field. In the reprise of dead girl walking, Veronica sings a line about how she deserves to die. after she takes the bomb to the field, she says the line “Dear diary, the irony of this is that I don’t get to write my own suicide, note”. JD wants her to stay on earth and make things better.

Lyric: Oh my God
Annotation:
By now Veronica has realized what J.D. is planning on doing – killing himself, which in his head is a way to trade his life for hers. J.D. knows that if he dies, Veronica is safe and can still make a change to the people around her - something he could never do.

Lyric: Not this way
Annotation:
Obviously, there were ways out of this situation that included J.D.  not dying. One simple solution would have been just placing the explosives at the football field and leaving. Let’s all agree that by now, Veronica is no longer in love with J.D. She faked her  suicide to avoid confronting him in  Meant To Be Yours BUT, BUT, BUT – she doesn’t want to see him die. Veronica has aided in three deaths already. She doesn’t want any more death and is probably thinking very quickly to find a way for them both to survive. J.D. is so “Damaged” that he has no desire to live. His suicide can also be seen as a way to manipulate Veronica into loving him, the last-ditch effort.

Lyric: Please stand back now
Annotation:
We have all been throwing theories back and forth about how J.D.’s pleas were cover-ups to what was actually an abusive relationship between the two and whatnot. But this “please stand back now” sounds a lot like a genuine plea where J.D. wants Veronica to be safe (away from him and the about to blow up bomb)  and/or somehow his last ‘order’ for Veronica to give up trying to ‘save’ him.
I think this line as well as the one after it could also be like what he’s been doing his whole life. He doesn’t have a close relationship with anyone except Veronica, so he’s pushing her away and at the same time letting her in by telling her that he cares about her enough to not want to hurt her again. During this whole scene he sees how his actions have really affected her and others, and he chooses to do the same thing by “pushing her away” while also doing it differently by protecting her.
as abusive as JD is, he does care for Veronica.

Lyric: You look like hell
Annotation:
This along with the “I just got back part” is a direct reference to the movie. It also shows H.Duke cruel and taunting personality. Compared to H. McNamara who voiced her concern for Veronica, all she had to say to her “friend” is a cruel remark.

Lyric: Wait, hold on
Annotation:
Even though JD has been extremely abusive to Veronica, they have been through the pits and peaks of high school together. Veronica does know that JD is a terrible person, but she still would want to try and save him. She also does this in the previous song.

Lyric: I’ll trade my life for yours
Annotation:
At this moment he is quite literally trading his life for Veronica’s, which has been foreshadowed since  “Our Love Is God”, and  “Freeze Your Brain”, earlier in the show.

Lyric: Say hi to God
Annotation:
In this moment Veronica reiterates the theme of her and J.D.’s love as God, which occurs throughout the show (see “Our Love is God”). Except Veronica is not implying that J.D. needs to ‘say hi to their love’, because that doesn’t make any sense. Veronica is telling J.D. that God is God, not their love. This could imply 1 of 3 things: It could be homage to the lines “We’re not special/ We’re not different/ We don’t choose who lives or dies" from the song “Seventeen.” It could simply be Veronica stating that their love can’t be God because it doesn’t exist anymore. Or, similarly to number 2, she is stating that their love no longer exists and that she understands that and is letting the past go. She is choosing to move on from everything that has happened to her. This is supported in the next few lines of dialogue between Veronica and Heather Duke (Heather: “You look like hell.” Veronica: “I just got back.”) In this line, Veronica assumes that J.D. is going to heaven (since God exists there). Such a statement demonstrates her optimism and willingness to believe in human goodness, even after all that has happened to her and all the trauma she has suffered at J.D.’s hands. This phrase also shows the audience that Veronica still cares a great deal about J.D., regardless of his mistakes. This line tells us that she still believes he’s a good person deep down, and hopes she’ll see him in heaven, where “good people” go. This is one of the most important lines in the whole show in terms of explaining Veronica’s generally optimistic and forgiving nature.
Or she’s telling JD that she thinks he’ll see God when he dies, implying that she thinks he’s going to heaven.
A lot of people say that Veronica is being a bad ass bitch for saying this but I think its more of her saying that she believes that he will get into heaven and when he gets there to say hi to god for her.
I think it’s because Veronica is very optimistic, and no matter if there is Heaven or Hell, God or Devil, she still believes that JD still has potential to be in a good place. In LITERALLY the first few lines of beautiful, she says, “I believe that there’s good in everyone.” Yes, JD killed three people, but he also saved the lives of his classmates with Veronica. I believe it’s Veronica’s way of saying like, “I know you’ve killed people, but now you’ve saved everyone’s life, so now you deserve to be happy.” JD was about to kill more than 100 people, but instead, to save the lives of others, he took himself out of the world. When Veronica’s time comes, she’d go to be with JD, and they’d live a happy afterlife together where there’s no “bigotry or cursin’”.
This line is ridiculously important. I think that she does think he’s going to heaven, but she’s not promising anything else. It’s kind of a comforting thing, an almost ‘I forgive you’…or it’s like if a friend was going to see some relatives or something, and I said, “Say hi for me.” Just a little…‘hope you think of me. Have a good time, see ya later.’
Many people thinks she a bad b for saying this but I think it’s more she thinks he’ll still go to heaven even though what he did… I think Veronica sees that JD had good intentions (OF COURSE, MURDER BAD) , he just wanted the world to be better, without assholes. His intentions could have been put to better use if his parents were there for him( LIKE NOT MURDER). and Veronica sees that.. By the end of the movie, ithink she still loved him. She knew what could’ve been if his parents were there for him. She seemed really upset when she realized he was killing himself
In some productions of the show in addition to the movie, JD dies with his arms outstretched, the bomb strapped to his chest. This is the show’s final, momentous biblical allusion, as this pose mimics that of Jesus on the cross.
This is showing that she thinks he would go to heaven. Or it could be implying that she still cares about him, but not enough to miss him. Either way, there were a few tears being shed when JD blew up
Also she’s not giving JD the satisfaction of hearing she loves him one last time which is what he was trying to get her to say in the movie and the musical
I always interpreted it as Veronica saying that the love they had that did once exist, is now dead.
She’s also telling J.D. that she believes that he will go to Heaven, and that he’ll see God.
Also, this could mean that Veronica sees that the bomb is about to explode, taking J.D.’s life with it. J.D. then is dead and goes out of this world, close up with God before he goes to Hell.
I think this is just her way of saying goodbye. She is unsure of her feelings towards him, but still believes he will go to heaven. She sees the good in him, despite the fact that he killed off three of her classmates and was going to blow up the school as well. She knew he had been through a lot, and although she knew he wasn’t innocent, she believed he still could be redeemed in the afterlife.
I feel like it means that she has given up on saving him from his death and letting him go. Veronica obviously doesn’t want JD to die but she doesn’t try to stop it this time and lets him die.
Every other time J.D. says “our love is god”, Veronica usually repeats him. So this marked difference shows how disillusioned she is to J.D. ideas of their love.
I feel like she’s either saying that he has the right to go to heaven, or that she just realized, in that moment, that he was sacrificing himself for her. this line makes me cry every freaking time
i thought it was Veronica pretty much just saying “You’re gonna die so say hi to God for me” tbh 💔
Instead of her thinking JD can get into Heaven, I think she has grown enough to believe he’s going to Hell. This is my interpretation: JD has stated that their love is god multiple times, so Veronica saying “Say hi to God” could be saying their love is dead, and he will meet it in thr afterlife.

Lyric: Hey! What are you doing?
Annotation:
This part is when Veronica rips the infamous red scrunchie from Heather Duke and puts it in her own hair, setting up the last song, the  Seventeen reprise

Lyric: Little further
Annotation:
This line (“…Little further…”) comes after a pause. Meaning, J.D. is predicting that Veronica is still too close and has to move herself farther from the anticipated blast radius. It always gets a huge laugh in performance, a much needed bit of comedy in a very sad scene.

Lyric: I just got back
Annotation:
She doesn’t literally mean she just got back from hell, (obviously) she is referring to how hard J.D’s actions have been on her. When people have been through traumatic events, they say, “I’ve been through hell and back.”

Lyric: Hope you’ll miss me, wish you’d kiss me
Annotation:
JD is killing himself not exactly for attention, but for something close. JD sees his actions as bad, and knows that Veronica deserves to hate him for it. With this in mind, it is clear that JD knows that suicide makes one look like a martyr or a better person (for example, everyone thought Heather Chandler was a good person after she died). He is desperate to make Veronica miss him and love him again – he sees the only way to make this happen is to die. This final act of manipulation may not seem exactly logical, and it really couldn’t be, considering his mental state, but JD is making this choice because he does care for Veronica, and really wants her to care for him as well.

Lyric: ’Cause you beat me fair and square
Annotation:
As previously mentioned, this song is J.D. having a last-minute redemption arc, but also realizing he’s past redemption. This lyric specifically is him finally seeing himself as the villain. This line is commonly used to refer to the protagonist beating the antagonist ‘fair and square’. Also, he’s goading Veronica to give him the bomb and let him finish this the only way he can–get rid of the evil in the world (himself).
I don’t know if he’s seeing himself as the villain as much as he’s realizing he’s the loser. He doesn’t regret the action, he regrets hurting Veronica. He knows it was wrong, but doesn’t care about that. JD just knows he lost, and he’s conceding.
Many times throughout the show, high school has been referred to as a “battle” or a “war.” Right now, he’s battling Veronica, the person stopping him from blowing up the school. She tricked him into thinking she was dead, briefly forgave him ultimately proving to be the better person, and shot him. Clearly, she is the winner in this battle and maybe while not fair and square, JD’s sense f wrong or right is a bit askew.
Beating him fair and square is literally Veronica shooting him and stopping him from killing everyone in the school.

Lyric: Far too damaged
 But you’re not beyond repair
Annotation:
This is the theme of the song. J.D. is having a last minute attempt at a redemption arc, but he also knows he’s not fixable to the point that death is what’s best for him. He has been fighting to show that he knows what’s best for the world. He’s developed a God complex and killed three people in its name. But here is where he realizes it’s wrong. It all comes crashing down that he’s wrong. He’s so wrong that he can’t be redeemed. But Veronica can. She saw the good in everything, including him, throughout the play and he knows it. She’s the best bet. She’s the seed to the garden he’s been wanting to plant. She’s the good she sees everywhere.

Lyric: Make things better
Annotation:
This is a fairly innocent command, but JD’s idea of “better” has been shown to be very twisted. Considering that JD is about to end his own life (in a further attempt to make Veronica forgive him), he has to find a way to make sure Veronica has heard all of his (ridiculously cynical, mind you) commentary on how the world could be rectified.
This line implied JD wished for Veronica to make the school a better place, to make the school at least less intense or bad.
He hesitates a bit before the word ‘better’, which kind of makes it seem like the word has lost some meaning to him, or he’s realizing he’s wrong and is directing her to carry out ‘better’ as she sees fit: giving her the judgement call.
It could also signify a change in JD perspective, he thinks that Veronica can actually change the school (Or society itself) since she was willing do die for everyone in the school , even the people that hurt her. Maybe this made him think that she can change them, instead of using violence

Lyric: Then you’d know I worship you
Annotation:
JD is making one last try to prove to Veronica that he “worships her.” Sadly, this is borderline abusive language choice that ties back into JD’s idea that he and Veronica are separate from the entire world. He has consistently thought of himself as above society and is now passing it all onto Veronica. This is also where JD stops reprising  Seventeen and falls into a rehashing of what he said in,  Our Love is God, showing that he was always incapable of truly letting go of that unhealthy display of his feelings. There was no hope for him to be “Seventeen” and he was always destined to fall back into what he knew.

Lyric: Our love is God, our love is God
 Our love is God, our love is God
Annotation:
Killing himself is JD’s final way to assert that he “loves” Veronica. He sees that what he has done to her has hurt her, as she has shown herself to now be very aggressive towards him (shooting him, for example). He desperately assures himself and Veronica that their love is still “God” in an attempt to maintain control over the situation. He also knows by now that after someone has killed themselves, they are seen as a martyr to those who once cared. In other words, he is desperate to make Veronica not “hate” him anymore, even when she has every right to want him dead, and JD is smart enough to see that. This is one final act of manipulation to make Veronica love and trust him.

Lyric: Clean up the mess down here
Annotation:
Here, JD is reciting his final wish before he dies, having acknowledged he is going to die. He is telling Veronica, in his wish, to make things better, to fix what he broke with the Veronica he manipulated. Clean up the mess left behind, her friendship and people hurt by their actions. The wording of “down here” may loosely refer to the current, living world and its state as a sort of special hell (considering the pain that high school has obviously brought to everyone in multiple ways, the cluelessness of the adults and teachers, etc). In a way, this is JD’s final wish to Veronica before he recites “Our love is God”. Towards the end of this song, Veronica attempts to fulfill this wish and fix Westerberg’s social hierarchy first by taking the red scrunchie. Later, in  Seventeen (Reprise), she continues to fulfill this by declaring that  “war is over” and by trying to make things  “beautiful”. On a surface level, it’s also possible that JD might be alluding that he wants Veronica to clean up the mess in the boiler room that his blood and the explosion he is now set on detonating will leave behind.
It could also be a parallel to the earlier line ‘We’ll build our city here/we’ll plant out garden here’. He’s having a change of heart at the last minute but he can’t fix what’s already been done (which is the main point of the song). The contrast probably points out how what he originally thought was a master plan for building a utopia is, in reality, just a mess that needs to be cleaned up.
They’re not in the boiler room, they’re outside on the football field. Funny use of “down here” – I don’t think it means that Sherwood Ohio and Westerberg High are the pits of hell; it’s likely JD, with characteristic egotism, was imagining that when he dies he’ll go to heaven, leaving earth “down there”. Or maybe JD doesn’t believe in heaven, and is just imagining the explosion hurling him upwards…
Or it could be taken in a very literal and honestly pretty revolting way – he wants someone to literally clean up his remains after he blows himself up, and he is charging Veronica with taking care of that.
or he could literally mean the mess from the explosion, aka his remains
I agree. I think, given his God complex, he believes he will go to Heaven.
Meaning his change or heart in this song and his choice to commit suicide was really for Veronica and his mind has not changed much. In my eyes, he most likely believed he would make it to Heaven before this change of heart. Part of his damaged psyche is his ego.
Because of this, he probably changed his mind to please Veronica, knowing that she will never forgive him. If he dies, he believes he might be redeemed in her eyes, even if just slightly.
If JD literally meant clean up his remains, he would’ve said “Clean up the out here” rather than “down here” so I’m going with that he thinks by killing himself, it will redeem himself in Veronica’s eyes even just a little and believes for this act of self sacrifice and encouraging Veronica to fix his mistakes, he thinks he will go to Heaven. I mean, God and Christianity is referred to a lot in this musical.
When JD says “down here”, he means the surface of the earth. This shows how he went back from all-controlling god (which is in heaven, believed to be above the sky) to mere mortal, living on the surface.
JD is facing the same arc that Veronica has already been through at “Seventeen”, and finally realizes that he is not above everyone else.
JD believes that if he dies with it the society or school will be a better place (going off the movie as well as the musical)

Lyric: People were saying you killed yourself
Annotation:
The concerned tone that H. McNamara says this with shows that she truly cares about Veronica. Where H. Duke only cares about her looks, H. McNamara sounds genuinely worried.

Lyric: Don’t know what this thing will do
Annotation:
The underlying themes of the Musical are childhood, innocence, and growing up. Because Veronica and J.D. felt that they were both more mature and emotionally superior than their peers, they (particularly J.D.) viewed them as Gods. Veronica realises they aren’t any better than the other kids in ‘Seventeen,’ but J.D. continues to play God. In this line, J.D. shows his own inner child, that despite his hard life and how he has changed because of it, he is still a child, unsure of himself and of what he can do. He relinquishes his power here or at least acknowledges that he doesn’t have all the answers. After all the manipulation and puppeteering, he’s left in the dark. Death is unknown to him. Nor does he presume to know/control the social impact this will have on their little society. This shows that his character isn’t an evil mastermind, but rather just a very emotionally damaged child who most likely never had any sort of emotional support after his mother’s death, and so did not know how to have a healthy relationship with Veronica.

Lyric: I am damaged
Annotation:
JD is literally damaged here, not just in the emotional sense as he was shot by Veronica just a moment before. This can also be seen as reference back to Seventeen when Veronica says  “We’re ‘damaged’, really ‘damaged’”.. But, again, only J. D. is the one damaged here (although it would not be surprising if Veronica has lasting psychological damage from the whole affair). Also, another note from the reference to Seventeen,  Veronica says  “But that does not make us "wise”. The interesting note, however, is that it takes this ( bullet that is severely damaging him) for J. D. to “wise up” so to speak and take a look around at what’s going on and what he’s done. He knows he’s done, that he no longer gets to  “choose who lives or dies”.

