YMMV / Beautiful Darkness

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is the human man who lives in the woods the father of the dead girl, or is he the one who killed her? The flashback before her death could be interpreted either way.
    • It's unclear if the scene is even a flashback— it's possibly just the nightmare of the fairy that's taken up residence in her skull. The man in the cabin may have nothing to do with the dead girl at all, even if he (probably) ignored her decaying body.
  • Vehlmann, the primary author of the story, even implies that the girl may have just spontaneously passed away, with the man in the cabin having an incidental presence in the forest.
    What's interesting is that we never explain why this little girl died in the story, but you can be sure that a majority of the readers will think there was a murder. But we never say that. Never. And we'll never say that it's a murder. Some of the readers may be disappointed by the end because there is no explanation. All we will say is that there is a corpse in the forest. Is she real or is she not is a question? Is there a link between that girl and the man in the forest? It's a good question but there is no answer.
  • A popular reading is that each of the fairies represents a different aspect of the dead girl's personality; Aurora is her conscientiousness, Zelie her selfishness, Jane her pragmatism, etc.
  • Aurora's relationship with Jane is another one. While the book never really hints at anything more than a friendship, both girls spend several months living together and Jane's death at the hands of Zelie is enough to push Aurora to have the remaining fair folk burned alive in a stove, hinting at possible romantic feelings between the two. However, it's shown in greater detail that Aurora may have developed a crush on the "giant", calling him her prince, actually liking his smell and watching him sleep. She also has a semi-romantic relationship with Hector earlier in the comic. It is possible she could be bisexual.
• Catharsis Factor: Aurora having Zelie and her few followers burnt alive. It's hard not to feel some satisfaction given their actions through the story, such as burying Timothy alive and killing Jane when she tries to warn them about the human.
• Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory: The nature of the fairies is never explained, leading some readers to interpret them as aspects of the dead girl's psyche (if not outright imaginary friends), and their hardships as a sort of karmic afterlife.
• Moral Event Horizon: While Aurora is still somewhat sympathetic afterward, the point where she gouges out the eyes of her mouse friend in a rage is the turning point from her being a kind, selfless girl, to someone who discards morality for the sake of her own survival.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Pretty much the point of the story. Special notice to the fairy who died of a poisonous plant, and the fact that by the time she was immobile and swollen all over her body, her supposed best friend responded by... stealing her stuff and leaving her to die.
  • The book opens with the main characters taking shelter in the decaying corpse of a little girl. How she died and why she was even out in the middle of the woods to begin with is never explained...
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Nearly every character both major and minor ends up dying and almost everyone is a callous sociopathic asshole anyway, making it hard to mourn their deaths or even care what happens to the remaining survivors afterwards. Averted for some readers, however, as this is largely the point.
• The Woobie: Timothy, big time, between being outcasted by the others for having one eye, being made to partake in a “fake funeral” in which she’s buried alive, and on top of that, the baby she had already saved being left abandoned in the woods anyway. Aurora also counts as one, having her optimism and good-heartedness slowly worn down over the course of the book by her selfish peers.