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Nightmare Fuel / Sharp Objects

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Series

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  • It would be easy to say everything about the ending. Amma was using the victim's teeth to build one of the floors in her dollhouse.
    • Both post-credits scenes: the first is a rapid-fire montage of Amma and her friends strangling all three victims. Especially one of the shots from under a bed, where the victim looks like she's staring right at you. There's also no sound except for a faint humming, which puts more emphasis on the imagery.
    • The second is just a simple shot of Amma as the woman in white that lured one of the victims into the woods. It looks so old and washed-out, like something out of The Ring. Oh, and it's the very last thing you see before the HBO logo, so you don't even have more credits to process it after.
  • Amma's Persephone wreath in the final episode, combined with her white nightgown, feverish flush, and very weak, almost hypnotized movements.

Book

  • The description of what takes place at the pig farm:
    Most sows are repeatedly inseminated, brood after brood, till their bodies give way and they go to slaughter. But while they're still useful, they're made to nurse—strapped to their sides in a farrowing crate, legs apart, nipples exposed. Pigs are extremely smart, sociable creatures, and this forced assembly line makes the sows want to die. Which, as soon as they dry up, they do.
    • Camille describes the practices as repulsive and states that it makes her feel "less human" watching it. Amma however, seems to enjoy watching the sows nurse.
  • In one scene Richard is tell Camille about previous cases he worked and he mentions he caught a man who was serially assaulting women. Camille assumes that this means rape but Richard has this to say
    "No. He straddled them and then reached inside their mouths, scratched their throats to pieces."
  • A lot of the bullying that takes place in the town crosses into this territory.
    • Camille recalls one instant she witnessed growing up when two fifth-grade boys cornered a girl and forced her to put a stick inside herself. This already horrible situation is made even worse by the fact that the teacher forces the girl to also apologise to the class because she doesn't believe that boys can control their impulses and therefore thinks it's the girls fault.
    • Richard brings up the case of two young women who may have been lovers that committed suicide together in 1975 to Camille, hoping to get a feel for the type of violence that occurs in Wind Gap. Camille tells him that one of the women had a daughter, Faye Murray, who was bullied and called "Fag" Murray. Because her mother was believed to have been a lesbian, Faye was pressured into having sex with every boy who wanted it to "prove" she wasn't also gay. Then no one wanted anything to do with her anyway because she was seen as a slut.
    • Amma is downright horrendous to other girls. She and her friends force an overweight girl to buy them their lunch every day then force her to eat some of it without using her hands before letting her leave, cornered Natalie in the bathroom after school one day and cut her hair off and made a girl pull her top up to show the boys her chest was flat. There's also a rumour that they got a girl who they'd fallen out with drunk and pimped her out to some older boys. And, of course, they were planning to kill Jodes because they though she might confess to the murders they committed.
  • The fact that Amma is only thirteen at the end of the novel and is already a serial killer who strangled three girls she knew and pulled their teeth out with pliers.
  • Adora's diary entries wherein her daughter's worsening health is relegated to a mere line. The majority is all about Adora's outfits, the praise she receives from the doctor and how best to ingratiate herself to the nurses the next time they visit the hospital, which she happily anticipates will probably involve Marian being operated on. The next entry shows that Marian wouldn't die for another three years.

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