YMMV / The Regulators

• Complete Monster: Tak is a sadistic entity who possesses autistic child Seth Garin with intent to rewrite reality to its whims. Orchestrating the slaughter of Seth's entire family, forcing his uncle to commit suicide, and turning his aunt Audrey into an abused slave that Tak regularly tries to rape, Tak begins terrorizing the town Wentworth with a series of mass shootings that claim several innocent lives. Slowly transforming Wentworth into a deadly pastiche of the Old West with intentions to "wipe this town off the map!", Tak further tortures and kills off various townsfolks in the name of feasting on their pain and suffering, culminating in Tak trying to wholly override Seth's willpower by torturing Audrey to death while he watches.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The premise itself became this when mass shooting happened in middle of Ohio in the summer of 2019.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One character describes the situation as "Alice in Wonderland but the Nine Inch Nails version." Four years or so after The Regulators was published, American McGee's Alice chronicled Alice's adventures in a deeply twisted Wonderland not entirely dissimilar to the world of this novel, with an original musical score composed by Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna.
• Tear Jerker: The deaths of Audrey and Seth and the final scrapbook drawing.
• The Woobie: Seth and Audrey. Seth is an innocent autistic child whose body and mind get hijacked by an Eldritch Abomination, which murders his entire family using constructs based on Seth's favorite TV show. Audrey is a woman who loses her sister and her husband thanks to Tak and is caught between trying to help her poor nephew and protecting herself from Tak's torture.