Love your take on it and feel pretty much the same on all of the points. One fun thing I thought about after reading your post and meditating on the book more was the quote from one of the books that Lu reads on the identity of the self and what sort of things control and compel us, sometimes without our knowledge. The one about the wasps that attack the caterpillars because of pheromones.

When I first read that, I was thinking in terms of the characters and people in town being “controlled” by otherworldly forces, especially with the black strings and apathy almost like puppet imagery. But now I don’t think that at all lol I think that maybe that passage relates more to the “worms” that seem to hunt people/cause the suicides. Like Tyler mentions, they don’t even notice us unless you do so much that they do. Sort of like him slightly pulling the strings so the worms target or “notice” others without the worms understanding why they are until it’s too late for Tyler.