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* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to Creator/JimmySavile. He was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted (and despite the fact that ''he himself'' refused to allow his daughters to be alone with Diamond, so he damn well knew something was wrong), which other students at school bullied and mocked her for.
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* {{Hypocrite}}: Vance Diamond, who as noted below was revealed to be a pedophile, was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted--yet ''he himself'' refused to allow his daughters (and any female guests of similar age) to be alone with Diamond.
* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to Creator/JimmySavile. He was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted (and despite the fact that ''he himself'' refused to allow his daughters to be alone with Diamond, so he damn well knew something was wrong), which other students at school bullied and mocked her for.
* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to Creator/JimmySavile.
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* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile Jimmy Savile]]. He was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted (and despite the fact that ''he himself'' refused to allow his daughters to be alone with Diamond, so he damn well knew something was wrong), which other students at school bullied and mocked her for.
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* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile Jimmy Savile]].Creator/JimmySavile. He was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted (and despite the fact that ''he himself'' refused to allow his daughters to be alone with Diamond, so he damn well knew something was wrong), which other students at school bullied and mocked her for.
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* PsychoLesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and there are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians.
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* PsychoLesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and there they are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians.lesbians (but Jayde comes across as a decent person, and Dolly is suggested to be bisexual rather than gay).
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* AmbiguousSituation: Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an ImpliedRape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous. (Notably, Dolly makes Matty [=McKnight=]'s parents the exact type of abusive Heather claims ''Dolly's'' parents were in her fanfiction, despite the [=McKnight=] couple being by all accounts perfectly nice people.)
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* AmbiguousSituation: AmbiguousSituation:
** Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an ImpliedRape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous. (Notably, Dolly makes Matty [=McKnight=]'s parents the exact type of abusive Heather claims ''Dolly's'' parents were in her fanfiction, despite the [=McKnight=] couple being by all accounts perfectly nice people.))
** Whose idea was it to torture Joan, Angelica or Dolly? Or both of them? It's known they were the only two present for the entirety of Joan's torture, and it's stated that both girls blamed each other. Carelli suggests it was Dolly, but he's an UnreliableNarrator at best.
* BystanderEffect: Violet's role in Joan's brutal murder. She's present for the kidnapping and then gets locked out of the beach hut and stands outside all night while Dolly and Angelica horrifically torture and murder Joan, which takes hours. Though she calls the police, she hangs up before it connects.
** Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an ImpliedRape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous. (Notably, Dolly makes Matty [=McKnight=]'s parents the exact type of abusive Heather claims ''Dolly's'' parents were in her fanfiction, despite the [=McKnight=] couple being by all accounts perfectly nice people.
** Whose idea was it to torture Joan, Angelica or Dolly? Or both of them? It's known they were the only two present for the entirety of Joan's torture, and it's stated that both girls blamed each other. Carelli suggests it was Dolly, but he's an UnreliableNarrator at best.
* BystanderEffect: Violet's role in Joan's brutal murder. She's present for the kidnapping and then gets locked out of the beach hut and stands outside all night while Dolly and Angelica horrifically torture and murder Joan, which takes hours. Though she calls the police, she hangs up before it connects.
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** Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are plenty more to it than that.
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** Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are there's plenty more to it than that.
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* AmbiguousSituation: Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an ImpliedRape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous.
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* AmbiguousSituation: Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an ImpliedRape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous. (Notably, Dolly makes Matty [=McKnight=]'s parents the exact type of abusive Heather claims ''Dolly's'' parents were in her fanfiction, despite the [=McKnight=] couple being by all accounts perfectly nice people.)
* RonTheDeathEater: In-universe, the Creekers again. As part of their whitewashing of Matty's actions, they write his victims as terrible people who provoked the shooting with their awful behavior (for instance, they portray his Black victim as a violent JerkJock who bullied Matty, and the female survivor as a heartless slut, so they don't have to accept their hero is a racist proto-incel).
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** Alec Carelli is a hack writer who exploits the memories of people involved in notorious crimes to "rebrand" himself, including with the Joan Wilson murder. It's revealed that he promised to leave alone the people involved while actually drawing people to Crow-on-Sea.
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** Alec Carelli is a hack writer who exploits the memories of people involved in notorious crimes to "rebrand" himself, including with the Joan Wilson murder. It's revealed that he promised to leave alone the people involved while actually drawing people to Crow-on-Sea.Crow-on-Sea, and that large parts of the book are exaggerated or outright fabrications.
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** Dolly and her online community are obsessive fans of the Cherry Creek massacre.
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** Dolly and her online community are obsessive fans of the Cherry Creek massacre.massacre.
* UnreliableNarrator: The in-universe introduction and the attached interview afterwards both state that Carelli's relationship with the truth is flexible at best. Many details are extrapolations or bald-faced lies, and he portrays his investigation as a lot more sensitive and a lot less unwelcome than it actually was. The biggest example is the supposed correspondence from Angelica, Violet, and Dolly--they never wrote him letters, he bribed prison employees for access to their psychiatric records.
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* UnreliableNarrator: The in-universe introduction and the attached interview afterwards both state that Carelli's relationship with the truth is flexible at best. Many details are extrapolations or bald-faced lies, and he portrays his investigation as a lot more sensitive and a lot less unwelcome than it actually was. The biggest example is the supposed correspondence from Angelica, Violet, and Dolly--they never wrote him letters, he bribed prison employees for access to their psychiatric records.
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* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Vance Diamond, a native of Crow-on-Sea who became a very popular and beloved media personality and philanthropist, and who was discovered to be a serial child molester and rapist, is obviously a reference to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile Jimmy Savile]]. He was also a family friend of the Stirling-Stewarts, and Angelica's very conservative father stridently defended him in the press even as the evidence against him mounted (and despite the fact that ''he himself'' refused to allow his daughters to be alone with Diamond, so he damn well knew something was wrong), which other students at school bullied and mocked her for.
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* TheFriendNobodyLikes: Deconstructed. Lauren, a former friend of Angelica's, says (per Carelli's account of the interview, anyway) that Angelica was this--the girls found her mean and childish and would make fun of her behind her back. However, Lauren now feels terrible about how they all treated Angelica, noting that they made fun of her for harmless things like enjoying musicals and could get just as mean, and can't help but blame herself for not stopping everyone from picking on her.
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* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Angelica's stereotypical AlphaBitch behavior, far from cementing her popularity, actually just annoyed and confused people and made them like her ''less'', because being catty, insulting, and obsessed with imaginary hierarchies are unattractive qualities in a friend. For instance, she describes half her friend group as the "B-tier", less pretty and popular hangers-on to the "A-tier", in a way that wouldn't be out of place in a YA novel or teen movie...but everyone else in the group just thought of those girls as their friends and thought the A-tier/B-tier thing was weird.
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* ButchLesbian: Jayde is considered uncool in Crow-on-Sea because she's stereotypically masculine. It's suggested that Joan becomes friends with Jayde out of her own curiosity because Jayde made no effort to hide being a lesbian, but it's not known by anyone if Joan was actually a lesbian, if she was just curious, or if she wanted to be friends with Jayde.
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* AmbiguousSituation: Whether Dolly was sexually abused by her father, as her stepsister thinks, is left ambiguous. Alec takes this story about Dolly's potential abuse very personally, and tells her that he would also go into his daughter's room to look after her when she was struggling with her mental health. Whether this is an ImpliedRape situation for Dolly, Frances, or both is left very ambiguous.
* ButchLesbian: Jayde isconsidered uncool ostracized and bullied in Crow-on-Sea because she's stereotypically masculine.masculine (and from a poor background). It's suggested that Joan becomes friends with Jayde out of her own curiosity because Jayde made no effort to hide being a lesbian, but it's not known by anyone if Joan was actually a lesbian, if she was just curious, or if she wanted to be friends with Jayde.
* ButchLesbian: Jayde is
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* ButchLesbian: Jayde is considered uncool in Crow-on-Sea because she's stereotypically masculine. It's suggested that Joan becomes friends with Jayde out of her own curiosity because Jayde made no effort to hide being a lesbian, but it's not known by anyone if Joan was actually a lesbian, if she was just curious, or if she wanted to be friends with Jayde.
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* DracoInLeatherPants: In-universe. Matty is a FetishizedAbuser by Dolly and her Tumblr friends, who view him as a misunderstood ByronicHero. Alec points out that they ignore that he's ''also'' a Neo-Nazi who murdered a black kid in the shooting out of pure racism, an incel who shot a girl who rejected him (despite knowing she had a boyfriend), and possibly raped his co-conspirator before his suicide.
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* RasputinianDeath: Dolly, Violet, and Angelica kidnapped and savagely tortured Joan over an entire night before killing her by setting her on fire. She still lives for around an hour afterwards.
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* ExpyCoexistence: Joan's savage torture and murder by a group of female friends (apparently over a LoveTriangle and culminating in being burned alive) is extremely reminiscent of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shanda_Sharer the murder of Shanda Sharer]] in the US. However, Jacque Vaught's donation of a dog to Melinda Loveless, one of Shanda's killers, is mentioned in the book itself (though no names are used).
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* OvershadowedByControversy: In-universe. Joan's brutal murder happened on the night of the June 2016 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum Brexit referendum]], and was not covered as much in the media as a result. Alec floats two reasons for this: possibly because it wasn't related in any way, but also because Angelica was the daughter of a low-rent rightwing pundit.
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* TakeThat: The podcast transcribed within is a clear {{Expy}} of ''Podcast/TheLastPodcastOnTheLeft'', complete with a title riffing on a notorious 1970s movie (here, ''Film/ISpitOnYourGrave'').
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** The American podcast quoted within are depicted as mocking the "lezzy English schoolgirls".
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* DepravedBisexual: Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are plenty more to it than that.
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* DepravedBisexual: DepravedBisexual:
** Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are plenty more to it than that.
** Possibly, Matty from the Cherry Creek massacre. He is known to have asked out a girl, but is also believed to have raped Brian, his co-conspirator in the shooting.
** Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are plenty more to it than that.
** Possibly, Matty from the Cherry Creek massacre. He is known to have asked out a girl, but is also believed to have raped Brian, his co-conspirator in the shooting.
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* PsychoLesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and there are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians.
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* PsychoLesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and there are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians.lesbians.
* TrashyTrueCrime: Every which way.
** Alec Carelli is a hack writer who exploits the memories of people involved in notorious crimes to "rebrand" himself, including with the Joan Wilson murder. It's revealed that he promised to leave alone the people involved while actually drawing people to Crow-on-Sea.
** Dolly and her online community are obsessive fans of the Cherry Creek massacre.
* TrashyTrueCrime: Every which way.
** Alec Carelli is a hack writer who exploits the memories of people involved in notorious crimes to "rebrand" himself, including with the Joan Wilson murder. It's revealed that he promised to leave alone the people involved while actually drawing people to Crow-on-Sea.
** Dolly and her online community are obsessive fans of the Cherry Creek massacre.
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''Penance'' is Eliza Clarke's second novel, published in 2023. In 2016, in the small town of Crow-on-Sea in Yorkshire, three girls - Angelica, Violet, and Dolly - murdered a classmate. Now in the present day, a true crime writer goes to Crow-on-Sea to get the story about what happened.
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''Penance'' is Eliza Clarke's second novel, published in 2023. In 2016, in the small town of Crow-on-Sea in Yorkshire, three girls - Angelica, Violet, and Dolly - murdered a classmate.classmate, Joan Wilson. Now in the present day, a true crime writer goes to Crow-on-Sea to get the story about what happened.
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* DepravedBisexual: Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are plenty more to it than that.
* PopularityCycle: One of the major themes of the novel is how certain behavior can change from being regarded as "cool" to tragic in teens. Angelica and Alesha's behavior changed from being regarded as the peak of coolness to pathetic and uncool in secondary school, while Joan became more accepted for her supposed oddities.
* PsychoLesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and there are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians.
* DepravedBisexual: Dolly is bisexual and apparently tortured Joan and ''set her on fire'' because she was flirting with Dolly's girlfriend Jayde. While that was the theoretic trigger, there are plenty more to it than that.
* PopularityCycle: One of the major themes of the novel is how certain behavior can change from being regarded as "cool" to tragic in teens. Angelica and Alesha's behavior changed from being regarded as the peak of coolness to pathetic and uncool in secondary school, while Joan became more accepted for her supposed oddities.
* PsychoLesbian: Discussed. It's common to assume that Joan was set alight because of Dolly's relationship with Jayde, and there are mocked often for being schoolgirl lesbians.
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''Penance'' is Eliza Clarke's second novel, published in 2023. In 2016, in the small town of Crow-on-Sea in Yorkshire, three girls - Angelica, Violet, and Dolly - murdered a classmate. Now in the present day, a true crime writer goes to Crow-on-Sea to get the story about what happened.
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