Share

Having survived several near-death experiences myself, I’ve developed a quiet, persistent obsession with death and the fragile threads holding us here. After diving into research, I realised this fascination with decay and the grotesque is a profound aspect of the human condition. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his First Duino Elegy:

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are barely able to endure, and we stand in awe of it as it effortlessly spares us.”

It mirrors that infamous exchange in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History:

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.” ... “And if beauty is terror, then what is desire?”

When we speak of beauty in the “horrid,” we are navigating the intersection of psychology, aesthetics, and our own mortality. Yet I still wanted to understand why, in the darkest corners of my own mind, I was drawn to it all the way to its most uncomfortable edges.

The Sublime: Distance from the Abyss

The philosopher Edmund Burke could explain it better than me, as he famously distinguished between the beautiful (which is calm, harmonious, and pleasure-giving) and the sublime (which is vast, overwhelming, and potentially terrifying).

We are drawn to the morbid because it invokes the sublime. When we look at a scene of decay—a ruined building, a wilting flower, or the visceral imagery of death—we are engaging with a force that is massive and uncontrollable. We find beauty in it precisely because we are observing it from a position of relative safety. It allows us to contemplate the “infinite” or the “final” act without being immediately extinguished by it. It is the thrill of standing on the edge of a cliff: the terror is the very core of the allure.

Vanitas, Transience, and The fragility of Life as Soap Bubbles

This aesthetic is deeply rooted in the 16th and 17th-century tradition of Vanitas—artworks explicitly designed as Memento Mori (”remember you must die”). Skulls, expiring candles, rotting fruit, and hourglasses were placed alongside symbols of wealth to remind the viewer of the futility of worldly pleasures and the inevitability of rot.

One of my all-time favourite artwork is a form of this lineage has haunted me for years ever since i discovered when i was 17-years old: ‘Death Blowing Bubbles’, an 18th-century stucco ceiling relief by Johann Georg Leinberger. In it, the Grim Reaper delicately blows fragile soap bubbles into the air—a haunting visual metaphor for Homo Bulla (man as a bubble)— which compares life with a soap bubble, an expression for its infinite fragility. It actually inspired one of the central characters in my gothic fantasy manuscript: the idea that our existence is as brilliant, iridescent, and fundamentally temporary as a sphere of soap waiting to burst.

Decay is the ultimate proof of reality. A pristine object is static; a decaying object is active—it is participating in the cycle of life and death. We find this beautiful because it reflects our own biological truth.

The Cult of Wasting Away

Historically, human culture has taken this fascination a step further: actively romanticising the physical erosion of the self to draw closer to the divine or the sublime.

In medieval Europe, women practiced extreme holy starvation. Known as “holy anorexia,” or ‘‘anorexia mirabilis’’ women like Catherine of Siena would starved themselves to strip away the “corrupt” from their physical vessel. By embracing bodily decay, they believed they were ascending into a state of spiritual purity, angelic refinement, holly spirity and the divine proximity to God.

Many centuries later, the Victorian era turned a deadly disease into the epitome of romantic beauty. Consumption (tuberculosis) was glamorized: pale skin, hollow cheeks, feverish eyes, and languid bodies wasting away were viewed as signs of high refinement, tragic sensitivity, and artistic genius. Death was no longer just an event; it was a curated aesthetic.

We have a long, disturbing history of seeking beauty in the gradual erasure of the human form, turning physical suffering into an elevation of the soul.

So Why ‘‘Beauty is Terror’’?

When Rilke says “beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,” he is suggesting that true, arresting beauty is not a soft, comforting experience. Instead, it is a destabilizing force. When we encounter something truly profound, it strips away our defenses. It reminds us of our own fragility. The terror arises because beauty possesses a kind of “completeness” that we, as finite beings, cannot fully process. It hints at the scale of the universe, the inevitability of our end, and the vastness of time.

If beauty were merely “pleasant,” it would be decorative. Because beauty is “terror,” it is transformative. It forces us to confront the fact that everything we love will eventually pass, and it is precisely that fragility that gives the object its value. We aren’t attracted to the horror itself; we are attracted to the truth that the horror reveals: that life is fleeting, and because it is fleeting, it is intense.

Subscribe now

AI ruined my writing experience by distorting expectations and condemning what is seamlessly written. Everything has already been invented, so there is no fully original story; yet I understand that people are tired of reading the same "I-am-not-like-other-girls" female protagonist or the "Who-did-this-to-you?" while clenching his jaw male character. Back in 2016, every book looked the same. Dystopian novels filled every shelf and every library; titles like The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, Shatter Me, and The Giver dominated the landscape. We wanted to escape our reality by reading about evil governments taking control and 16-year-olds saving the day. Nearly a decade later, as our reality began to mirror those teenage dystopias, we quickly emigrated to fantasy worlds filled with dragons and fairies, thinking we were safe there.

Then AI took over. And with it came the rise of publishing industry plants.

Countless accusations of AI-generated books surfaced—some seemingly obvious, others rooted in pure bias. One of the most infamous cases is Mia Ballard’s Shy Girl. It was proven that the original cover art was stolen from an artist on Pinterest (Whyn Lewis’s painting “The Dreamer”), edited with AI, and repackaged as the face of her book.

Eventually, the public backlash—which the publisher perpetually tried to ignore—grew so severe that the cover was changed. Yet the actual content of the book remained deeply fishy, to the point where the author had to step out from the shadows and declare that she or her editor might have involved AI in the creative process. What many miss in these cases is that people attempt to "prove" the usage of AI by running text through AI detectors—a practice that completely misses the point given how unreliable these scanners are.

Another famous author accused of using AI is Freida McFadden, author of The Housemaid. She recently had to step in and defend her work against claims that she writes "too fast" and relies on an "addictive algorithm." McFadden—who revealed her real identity as Dr. Sara Cohen, a practicing neurologist from Massachusetts—stated emphatically that she has been writing since the age of nine, long before AI existed.

Back in the day, writers like Stephen King and Cassandra Clare would publish a book every year and nobody would bat an eye. The rise of AI has created a collective paranoia, a 21st-century witch hunt. Reading has become an act of surveillance, a commodification that has gutted the art.

Media literacy didn't just die; it was brutally assassinated by an industry that traded depth and emotion for accessibility—an industry that influences new writers to "dumb down" their books under the assumption that younger generations have no attention span and get bored easily. They demand bestsellers that are fast-consuming, not deep. Every character in modern literature now feels the need to explicitly declare their emotions in order to be understood.

I refuse to have my main character verbally announce his melancholy rather than lengthening my syntax to mirror introspection. I refuse to have a character state they are anxious instead of shortening my sentences to induce claustrophobia—a device modern critics ironically label “bad writing.” I want to use architectural externalization to asphyxiate a character in a room crowded with heavy furniture, have them run up giant spiral staircases to signal their ruminating thoughts, or use my favorite literary device —the pathetic fallacy—, to make stormy and foggy weather an extension of my character’s thoughts and emotions.

The death of the third-person omniscient narrator is the ultimate symptom of our literary decay.

People now accuse writers of using AI simply because the writing is “inconsistent”—forgetting that narrative voices should shift when navigating a complex cast of characters. BookTok, in particular, refuses the challenge of engaging with inner character complexity. Readers are no longer interested in profound observations of the human condition; they would rather project themselves into a fae fantasy world with plenty of spice.

That is why being a writer in the era of AI is the ultimate witchcraft accusation. It is specially very brave as it’s also challenging, denigrating, and demands that you become a marketing strategist or social media influencer just to be acknowledged.

Or, as an ultimate act of resistance against AI and the rise of anti-intellectualism, you can choose to stand out. You can choose to be read by a small, niche community rather than seek global reach. I would rather do the former than sell my soul to the publishing industry.

It is far better to be understood by a few than loved by a mass that will never truly get you.

But I speak loudly the words that terrified you the most
I talk the language of your demons
While you keep dirt under your nails,
from digging your own grave
And hide from the truth behind the mirror

Your darkness is no mystery. I had a house in hell
that I decided to sell,

So I called a Priest to exorcise my soul
and die every weekend.
You dig in silence, I give Death to my Ego

Then I burned the house down, to see the stars
while you used the ashes to build your own tomb
I won’t witness a murder
I won’t attend your funeral
I mourn a memory, a part of you that is safe, and virtuous, and gentle
as God intended you to be

life isn’t gentle.
cells devour each other.
it’s not a metaphor — it’s literal.
your body survives because there is death inside it.
we eat corpses.
everything lives because something dies,
and we bloom through rot.
biology doesn’t ask for permission.
nothing is pure.
everything is mutation.
stars explode so that planets may exist.
the universe is a wound that never closes — a war of transformation.

to love is to let someone disarrange you,
to let them cut through your absence.
to think is to strip the flesh from the soul.
every question is a knife.
every revelation, a fire.

awakening isn’t ascension —
it’s falling, without comfort,
outside the theater of masks

.

“Abandoned," a painting by Czech artist Jakub Schikaneder (1855–1924)

the way i dont know him well
yet his soul resonates with mine
like if we were born at the same period,
and carried knowledge in our bones.

the way his voice, soft and calm,
echoes and ricochet inside my ribcage,
filling my entire body with bliss,
wrapped in poison.

it’s reverie, it’s derange,
and in my insanity,
i look for clues of anything mendacious
that could pull me apart
and get me out of this limerence.

to find myself solivagant in the chiaroscuro,
after this retrouvailles
i hope it ends
in redamancy.

historically speaking, conjugal unity has never had anything to do with love. it is a social contract and a form of economic power. romantic love, as we understand it today, was a late invention—a medieval marketing strategy that consolidated in literature, cinema, Disney stories with their happily ever after, and later, social media. performance has become vital for our existence. love was just the sugarcoat behind politics, power, and control. politicians understood that it was easier to control people if they were united in sacred matrimony, the sooner they reproduce, the higher the possibilities for those individuals to participate in society and economy.

capitalism has brutally affected romantic relationships: flowers, travel, rings, valentine’s day—everything requires economic branding. and that only shows an extreme disconnection between ourselves and reality. society no longer hides that love has always been a transaction; it is now strategic. look at me, validate my relationship. the public applauds because we have been taught that grand gestures equate greatness of love. being single is pitied, seen as a defect, not as a choice.

in today’s society, love has become cannibalism, devouring our souls, our thoughts, our sense of identity, and individuality.

and in this highly political climate, society wants consumption: consume weddings, consume babies, consume partnerships. being single, especially as a woman, is almost a political defiance. choosing your own company over someone who cannot understand your soul is threatening to a system that rewards conformity and submission.

loneliness is metaphysical, not physical. being with someone who cannot understand you infinitesimally, is more devastating than being alone. i have never felt alone in my own thoughts, but i have felt loneliest in the company of someone who doesn’t get me. there is something secure and erotic about comprehension: a naked mind is more exciting than a naked body. physical pleasure cannot compete with the vertigo of being understood, the electric shock of a conversation, the gravitational pull when someone enters your world. this is gold—eros in its true form.

plato’s symposium does not see eros as sexual desire but as a force that elevates the soul toward divinity and transcendence. modern eros, however, is trapped in immediacy and hyperstimulation, which explains the popularity of hookup culture and dating apps. aristotle’s ideas in nicomachean ethics—his concept of eudaimonia, the flowering of human potential—stand in contrast to ephemeral pleasures. schopenhauer would argue that desire is a liability, never satisfied, always dragging us back. nietzsche criticizes christianity for suffocating the vital instance. our society regulates and defigurates eros: it is capitalist, pornographic, rapid-consuming. simone de beauvoir identifies the woman’s body as a political territory, subject to desire, politics, or feminism. freud’s psychoanalysis shows desire as repressed, fragmented, and displayed.

i perceive love as untransactional and unconditional. i give and respect fully. but today, society has become shallow and superficial about love. tiktok’s princess treatment teaches that a thousand flowers equate love, while a single flower implies failure. red-pill culture dictates that if performance does not match the script, love is worthless. modern love is no longer nourishment; it is consumption. people do not grow together—they devour each other’s energies, identities, and individuality. unconditional versus transactional love: society trains people to ask, “what can you give me? what can i get back?” this kills authenticity and erases individuality. love in today’s society erases singularity, devours the individual, and molds them to collective conformity.

women are accused of herd mentality, men of a more aggressive, territorial, hierarchical “pack mentality.” this dynamic underpins toxic masculinity. princess treatment, high-value men and women, red-pill men—do you notice the pattern? society trains us to uphold gender roles with a cute tiktok hashtag, silently supporting conservatism. love and relationships are performance pieces, no longer two souls seeking compatibility or shared humanity. scripts, roles, and aesthetics dictate value.