"I'm only doing what He commands me to do. This is retribution. You are a sinner and you deserve to be punished."
—Sister Eloise, explaining her motivations before executing a Punch-Clock Villain.
Shotgun Nun is a 2021 "extreme revenge" novella by Harrison Phillips.
Sister Eloise is a nun who has spent three years servicing a church within a small village and helping those within her community. However, one night, a group of vagrants storm the church, kill one of the deacons, and gang rape Eloise as they steal the collection money from the congregation. After recovering from the attack, Eloise begins to question her faith, all while she slowly uncovers more information about the people who attacked her. It isn't long before Eloise starts plotting revenge and begins hunting down the assailants with a shotgun all in the name of punishing sinners.
A sequel titled Shotgun Nun Vol. 2: The Wrath of God was released in early 2023.
Shotgun Nun provides examples of:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Father David wastes no time pleading for his life when Eloise catches him trying to flee the country with the money he stole from Dixon. Given he and Dixon were indirectly responsible for what happened to her, she doesn't spare him.
- And the Adventure Continues: The book ends with Eloise getting her vengeance and keeping her faith, but deciding that she'll use her faith and her new weapon skills to continue "punishing sinners" like those in the Wood Street Gang.
- Ax-Crazy: Poppy is easily the most violent and cruel member of the Wood Street Gang, inciting two other gangsters to rape Eloise with basically no prompting.
- Big Bad: Trevor Dixon, the leader of the Wood Street Gang. Despite having no involvement in Eloise's assault, his minions are the ones who raped and mutilated her, and he doesn't punish them at all after finding out what happened. He's also indirectly responsible for what happened given that he sent them to the church to take money from Father David, who secretly stole money from Dixon and was looking to get his cash back.
- Boom, Headshot!: Most of Eloise's kills are her turning her victims' heads into mulch with her shotgun blasts.
- Character Development: Sister Eloise starts off being a normal nun who goes through a crisis of faith after she was raped inside her own church. After contemplating what to do with her life, she buys a shotgun, hunts down all of her assailants, and decides to spend her life "punishing sinners" with Jesus Christ aiding her.
- Crippling Castration: How Eloise kills Poppy, the woman responsible for her rape. Fittingly, Eloise places the barrel of her shotgun between her legs and pulls the trigger.
- Crisis of Faith: One of the main themes. Eloise spends a good chunk of the novel questioning if God is real and why He would allow Edward to die and Eloise be raped—in His house, no less. She comes very close to renouncing her faith altogether before realizing that this was all part of God's plan as a way for her to be a "tool" used to eliminate all the sinners around her.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Smithy is disgusted when he discovers Poppy allowed her companions to repeatedly rape Eloise in a church. Even Dixon tells Eloise that he did not instruct his goons to mutilate her, explaining that they were like "wild animals" he couldn't control.
- Evil All Along: The big twist of the novel is that Father David was secretly working with Dixon this whole time.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Trevor Dixon runs the Wood Street Gang, but almost all of the events in the book lead back to Father David. It turns out he had been laundering money for the Wood Street Gang for years and was caught stealing. Dixon sent his thugs to the church to take the money back from him, only for Eloise to get caught in the middle. Had David not done any of this, Dixon would've had no reason to send his minions to the church, and Eloise wouldn't have been assaulted.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Very few characters in the novel are fully righteous or fully evil. The Wood Street Gang are small-time gangsters who deal drugs and money, but most of them are just doing their jobs. Meanwhile, Sister Eloise, despite being justified in her vengeful quest, is still going around murdering anyone she writes off as a sinner, even while they plead for their life or promise to try and change their ways.
- The Heavy: Poppy is the one who told her companions to gang rape Eloise, and she personally mutilated her afterwards with a knife. Had it not been for her, Eloise probably wouldn't have bothered going after Dixon's entire gang, especially since Dixon never told any of his crew to rape Eloise in the first place.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Throughout the book, Eloise has visions of Jesus Christ telling her to hunt down and kill all of her attackers in the name of God. It's almost all but stated that no one can see Christ but Eloise. However, the sequel heavily muddles this when a new character, Sophia, also sees the same Jesus Christ that only Eloise has visions of. Both Eloise and the "vision" of Christ are considerably confused at this, and the sequel never explains why both of them see the same interpretation of Jesus Christ.
- Never My Fault: Even though Dixon sent Poppy and her friends to the church and was indirectly involved in Eloise being raped, he goes out of his way to offload the blame on everyone but himself. In Dixon's eyes, Dixon never told Poppy's goons to rape Eloise, therefore it wasn't his fault. He even blames Eloise herself, saying that she wasn't supposed to be in the church and if she had been somewhere else, she wouldn't have been raped.
- Off with His Head!: Eloise kills Father David by pointing her shotgun directly at his neck and pulling the trigger. Due to the close range, it tears his neck apart, causing his head to fall off.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Most of the gangsters involved in the church robbery are not known to Eloise by name, so she nicknames them based on identifying features. These are the only names the audience gets for them.
- Past Experience Nightmare: While recovering in the hospital after her assault, Eloise has a nightmare where she's chained to an altar and violently raped by Satan. It happens again after she's kidnapped by Dixon, only this time around, she welcomes it, symbolizing that she's embraced her own morally reprehensible actions in the story.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: All of Sister Eloise's victims are criminals, or "sinners" in her eyes. She doesn't bother showing them forgiveness, instead telling them that God will judge them in the afterlife after she kills them.Eloise: "I'm not sinning; I'm merely facilitating your punishment."
- Post-Rape Taunt: “Manbun” taunts Eloise with the insinuation that she enjoyed it when he raped her, possibly because she’s already shot him and he knows he’s going to die.
- Rape and Revenge: The overall premise. After Eloise is raped, she spends the first half of the story questioning her faith and wondering how she can move on with her life. The second half is her buying an eponymous shotgun and hunting down the entire gang involved in her assault.
- The Reveal: Father David has been secretly laundering money through his church for Dixon's gang and was caught stealing from him. So Dixon sent many of his thugs to the church to take money back from David. It was Eloise and Edward's unfortunate luck that they happened to be there, which Dixon didn't plan on.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: What Eloise goes on after she gets her hands on the shotgun. Not only does she kill Dixon and his entire gang, but she also hunts down and kills Father David, whose fault it was that the attack on her and her church happened in the first place.
- Spree Killer: Eloise herself, who extensively prepares an arsenal of weapons (a shotgun, knives, and even pipe bombs) before going after the Wood Street Gang and killing twenty or so people in a continuous series of attacks.
