History Creator / ThomasLigotti

* EldritchAbomination: ''The Tsalal'' in the namesake story is one of the closest things Ligotti has done to a classic Lovecraftian horror. It's both an entity and the true nature of reality, utter chaos, of which everything else is merely a mask. It exists to randomly transform the universe and is the entire reason anything changes at all. It's cultists try to summon it out of spite of such a nihilistic universe to hasten its arrival. [[spoiler: The protagonist sacrifices himself to stop it, but it's destined to break through and destroy the world eventually anyway.]]

* ''Literature/TheRedTower''

* AmusementParkOfDoom: The titular carnivals of "Gas Station Carnivals". [[spoiler: Even though they never existed.]]
* AndIMustScream
* AnotherMansTerror: Used to grim and varied effect in the story-within-a-story in "Notes On The Writing Of Horror: A Story".
* AntiAntiChrist: Andrew Maness, being the living incarnation of "The Tsalal."

* ApocalypticLog: A few stories, most notably "Alice's Last Adventure" and "Nethescurial".

* TheBadGuyWins: When there ''is'' an antagonist rather than the conflict coming from the horrid reality itself this usually happens.

* BazaarOfTheBizarre: The shop that the protagonist enters in "The Unfamiliar" is essentially a miniaturized version of one of these, played for SurrealHorror.
** Also the bookshop in ''Vastarien''.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Attempting to assign moral values to the behaviour of Ligotti's characters, human or not, is futile in the extreme.

* CosmicHorrorStory: A master of the genre. "The Sect of the Idiot" is definitely a Franchise/CthulhuMythos story, though "The Prodigy of Dreams", "Nethescurial", "Vastarien" and "The Last Feast of Harlequin" (which was dedicated to Creator/HPLovecraft) are all at least considered part of the {{Fanon}}. More broadly, quite a lot of Ligotti's work is arguably an exploration of what life would be like if reality really is a malignant, idiotic god.

* CrapsackWorld: The world itself is the villain in many of his stories.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[NothingIsScarier But rarely "onstage."]]
** "The Cocoons" has psychiatric patients being eaten from the inside out by giant Lovecraftian arthropods after the "pills" they were given have hatched. While this never actually occurs "on-stage", the narrator watches some very educational home videos of his doctor's work...
* CruelTwistEnding: Quite frequently.

* DarknessEqualsDeath: Played with in various ways.

** The alternate Bruges in "The Journal of J.P. Drapeau".
** Hinted at in "The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise".
* DeadpanSnarker / TheSnarkKnight: Most of Ligotti's more detailed protagonists are this, resulting in some [[BlackComedy surprisingly]] [[KafkaKomedy funny]] [[GallowsHumor moments]]. The man himself is also a fine specimen of the latter.
** FirstPersonSmartass: Naturally.

* DoomedHometown: The implied fate of narrator's hometown in [[spoiler: ''The Town Manager'']].
* DownerEnding: All of them.
* EldritchAbomination:
** Thin Mountain in "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain".
** ''The Tsalal'' in the namesake story is one of the closest things Ligotti has done to a classic Lovecraftian horror. It's both an entity and the true nature of reality, utter chaos, of which everything else is merely a mask. It exists to randomly transform the universe and is the entire reason anything changes at all. It's cultists try to summon it out of spite of such a nihilistic universe to hasten its arrival. [[spoiler: The protagonist sacrifices himself to stop it, but it's destined to break through and destroy the world eventually anyway.]]
* EldritchLocation: The titular DarkWorld of "Vastarien" is a standout in modern literature.
* EnigmaticMinion: "The Clown Puppet" is [[ZigZaggedTrope the most confusing example]].
* EvilGloating: Done to the protagonist by [[spoiler: what is implied to be ''life itself'']] in "Masquerade of a Dead Sword."
* EvilSorcerer: Dr. Thoss, at least in "The Last Feast of Harlequin". His surname is derived from "Thoth", the Egyptian god of magic, heavily implying he's something more than human.
* EyeScream: A reoccurring motif.
* AFeteWorseThanDeath: "The Last Feast of Harlequin", "The Greater Festival of Masks"

* GainaxEnding: Any of his more experimental stories, ''especially'' "The Nightmare Network".
* GambitPileUp: [[spoiler: Gas Station Carnivals. Also by Richard and Domino in "My Work Is Not Yet Done"]]

* GodOFEvil: The titular Nethescurial in ''Nethescurial''.

* GodIsEvil:
** "Nethescurial" in which the entire universe is an evil god.
** "The Tsalal", though the titular being is more chaos than evil as a concept. It's still considered evil by humans because of its [[WorldOfChaos designs for the universe]].
** "The Shadow, The Darkness".
** Many of his stories imply that [[spoiler:''reality itself'' is inherently malignant.]]

* HumansAreSpecial: Deconstructed in ''The Conspiracy Against The Human Race''.
* ILoveTheDead: Heavily implied in ''Drink To Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes''.

* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: Ligotti ''loves'' ambiguous locations, though "The Astronomic Blur" from ''"Sideshow," and Other Stories'' is one of the most unusual.
* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The seminal ''Songs of a Dead Dreamer'' has been reprinted a few times, but none of its edition is currently available through retail. Second-hand copies are available online at [[ShockinglyExpensiveBill exorbitant prices]]. A mass market paperback edition of ''Songs'', in an omnibus with ''Grimscribe'' was released in 2015.
* LivingShadow: The eponymous... [[EldritchAbomination being]], in "Our Temporary Supervisor". And you thought ''your'' boss was a pain!

* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday:
** Played with in "The Astronomic Blur", a StoryWithinAStory in ''"Sideshow", and Other Stories'', in which a small shop that [[WeirdnessCensor no-one had previously noticed]] is suddenly inhabited by... [[OurMonstersAreDifferent something.]]
** The mask shop in "The Greater Festival of Masks" seems to be one of these, although [[MindScrew it is probably one of the least mystifying things in said story]].
* LostEpisode: Several stories published through small-press magazines have never been collected or reprinted.

* MedicalHorror: "The Cocoons" specifically, though [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate hearing that someone bears the title of "doctor" is usually a bad sign in the Ligotti universe]].
* {{Medusa}}: "The Medusa".
* MegaCorp: The Quine Organization, which shows up intermittently in ''Teatro Grottesco'', is an especially Kafkaesque example.
* MindScrew: Par for the course, though some stories ("Eye of the Lynx", "The Greater Festival of Masks", "Notes on the Writing of Horror", "The Nightmare Network") are more perplexing than others.
* NewWeird: Considered to be one of the {{Trope Maker}}s.

* NoFaceUnderTheMask:
** Used in "The Greater Festival Of Masks" to drive home a rather unsettling point about identity.
** "Masquerade of a Dead Sword".
** "The Last Feast of Harlequin".

* OmnicidalManiac: The unnamed, [[EldritchAbomination possibly inhuman]] [[VillainProtagonist narrator]] of the poem cycle "I Have A Special Plan For This World".
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: [[spoiler:"The Lost Art of Twilight".]]
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: [[spoiler:"The Real Wolf". Hello, {{Deconstruction}}!]]
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: [[spoiler:"Autumnal".]]
* PersonalHorror
* PerspectiveFlip: Most of the vignettes in ''The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales''.

* PurpleProse: Many of his more abstract vignettes fall into this category, albeit rarely to the degree of [[Creator/EdgarAllanPoe his chief]] [[Creator/HPLovecraft inspirations]].

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: ''The Conspiracy Against The Human Race'' is this as applied to ''everyone that has ever lived''.
* ScaryScarecrows: "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World".
* TheSnarkKnight: The unnamed author in ''"Sideshow", and Other Stories''.

* TheStarsAreGoingOut: Played with.
* SurrealHorror: Even Ligotti's most realistic stories have a tendency to rely on a modicum of dream logic. Case in point: "The Frolic".

* {{Ubermensch}}: {{Deconstructed|CharacterArchetype}}, with ruthless vigour, in "The Shadow, The Darkness".
* UnseenEvil
* WhamLine:
** "Nethescurial": [[spoiler:I am not dying in a nightmare.]]
** "The Chymist": [[spoiler:Now, Rose of Madness... Bloom!]]
** "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel": [[spoiler:"It was an ''angel'', did you know that?"]]
** "The Troubles of Doctor Thoss": [[spoiler:"My name is Thoss, I am a doctor."]]
** "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes": [[spoiler:"You will not awaken until morning, ''no matter what sounds you hear outside your door''. Understand?".]]
** "The Nightmare Network": [[spoiler:There is no one behind the camera.]]
** "The Last Feast of Harlequin": [[spoiler:"He's one of us. He has ''always'' been one of us."]]
** "Purity": [[spoiler:"Why, it's families, sweetheart."]]
** "The Frolic": [[spoiler:He turned on the light. The child was gone.]]
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: [[spoiler:Plomb from "The Spectacles in the Drawer".]]
* WriteWhatYouKnow: Ligotti is a depressive insomniac who grew up in Detroit as the city started deteriorating and spent much of his life working various tedious office jobs. All of these elements influence his work in fairly obvious ways, most notably the persistent focus on mental illness, urban decay, liminal spaces, dream worlds, and philosophical pessimism.

* [[invoked]] TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: PlayedForLaughs (of [[StealthParody a rather subtle]], [[BlackComedy bleak kind]]) in many of the stories in ''Teatro Grottesco'', most of which are set in art communities.

* BittersweetEnding: In [[spoiler:"The Order of Illusion" the protagonist becomes a cult leader, in what may be the closest Ligotti's work gets to a positive conclusion]].

* EldritchAbomination: Thin Mountain in "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain".

** "The Tsalal".

* AdultFear: "The Frolic" plays into both this ''and'' [[CosmicHorrorStory existential terror]] with the walking, talking slab of undiluted ParanoiaFuel that is "John Doe". Think of ''[[FateWorseThanDeath the worst thing]]'' that someone could possibly do [[WouldHurtAChild to a child.]] Now, think of someone who does this. Often. Someone that does this [[ObliviouslyEvil without even knowing]] [[BlueAndOrangeMorality that it's even slightly wrong]]. Someone (or rather ''something'') that [[HumanoidAbomination may not even be human]]. [[PlayAlongPrisoner His capture, he says, is merely time for him to rest.]] Now, imagine that, for what ever reason, he just ''knows'' that you have a daughter...

* TheUbermensch: {{Deconstructed}}, with ruthless vigour, in "The Shadow, The Darkness".
* UltimateEvil

* EvilSorcerer: Dr. Thoss, whose surname is derived from "Thoth", the Egyptian god of magic.

* HumanSacrifice: In "The Last Feast of Harlequin."

* WriteWhatYouKnow: Ligotti is a depressive insomniac who grew up in Detroit as the city started deteriorating and spent much of his life working various tedious office jobs. All of these elements influence his work is fairly obvious ways, most notably the persistent focus on mental illness, urban decay, liminal spaces, dream worlds, and philosophical pessimism.

[[caption-width-right:315:some caption text]]

** For some explanation, please read "Nethescurial".

* NothingIsScarier: Most of the vignettes in the "Notebook of the Night" section of the collection ''Noctuary'' are of this nature, with special mention to be paid to "One May Be Dreaming".