YMMV / Lights Are Off But Everyone's Home

• Jerkass Woobie: Trent's been through, and proceeds to go through, an endless procession of brutal tragedies. His vicious cynicism is understandable, if off-putting.
• Narm Charm: Trent's DIY Photoshop, multimedia artwork and bombastically over-the-top, gruesome horror stories.
• Paranoia Fuel: Trent's harassers spread rumors about him nonstop, and hundreds of people who go to his school know his full name and his semi-deserved reputation for being a morbid, eccentric, antisocial 'psycho.'
• Values Dissonance: People used a lot more homophobic and Islamophobic language in the 2000's, and bullying/cyberstalking weren't as well understood by either adults or adolescents. Trent himself throws around words like "fag" and "retard" without any significant thought as to whether or not there are any potential ramifications, and mentions in passing that there are girls who regularly sexually harass him at school and just get away with it, because they're girls. He also refers to girls who terrorize him as "sluts" and openly assumes them to be sexually deplorable, although when the book ends he finds out one of these girls, Caitlyn Newell, is actually a virgin who was assaulted by a boy who assumed the same thing as Trent did. She explains she just wanted to fit in, and her and Staley become friends.
• What Could Have Been: Trent was originally named Jack, so as to make the novel about Jack and Diane. Trent's Inferno used the Framing Device of Trent calling the Suicide Hotline, and telling the girl on the other line the narrative. And both Night Life and Trent's Inferno used a different story, Devils In A Cardboard Box, as Trent's novel. Night Life also featured Staley experimenting with music and standup comedy.