Line #134 Creator/ThomasLigotti


1	[[quoteright:315:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thomas_ligotti.jpg]]
2
3	->''"... I've conceived of stories that were just too disturbing for me to write. If you can write something, then it's only so disturbing. Anything truly disturbing can't even be written. Even if it could, no one could stand to read it. And writing is essentially a means of entertainment for both the writer and the reader. I don't care who the writer is—literature is entertainment or it is nothing."''
4	-->-- '''Thomas Ligotti''', [[http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=420 in an interview with Neddal Ayad]]
5
6	Thomas Ligotti (born July 9, 1953) is a supernatural horror writer. He has been nominated for and won awards for his short stories and poetry on numerous occasions. Due to having been [[CreatorBreakdown afflicted with agoraphobia, panic-anxiety disorder, and severe bipolar disorder]], Ligotti is unable to [[ReclusiveArtist meet directly with fans or conduct face-to-face interviews]]. He also has a steadfast dedication to the small press, with some of his collections only being produced in editions of under a thousand. (For a particularly extreme example, [[http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=1280 look here]]. And yes, the webmaster has a copy.) Most of his works were later released in trade paperback, which have recently been re-printed by Mythos Books. Copies of Ligotti's most recent fiction (''Literature/MyWorkIsNotYetDone'' and ''Teatro Grottesco'') and a retrospective (''The Shadow At The Bottom Of The World'') are now available in major chain stores, while older collections are gradually being reissued in revised form.
7
8	Ligotti has also had a long-standing friendship with David Tibet of the English experimental music outfit Music/{{Current 93}}, and has collaborated with them on the following albums:
9	* ''All the Pretty Little Horses'' (1996): Ligotti reads an excerpt from his short story "Les Fleurs" at [[TheStinger the end of the album]]. "The Frolic" is also based on the story of the same name ([[VillainSong in a roundabout way]]).
10	* ''In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land'' (1997): Released with the book of the same name as a musical companion piece.
11	* ''Foxtrot'' (compilation, 1998): Ligotti plays steel guitar on Current 93's track "A Dream Of [=TheInmostLight=] (For Christoph Heemann)".
12	* ''I Have A Special Plan For This World'' (2000): Based around Tibet's reading of Ligotti's poem of the same name. He also supplied "The Bungalow Tapes".
13	* ''This Degenerate Little Town'' (2001): Ligotti recites his poem of the same name with backing from Current 93.
14	* ''The Light is Leaving Us All'' (2018): Ligotti's voice {{bookends}} the album. He also supplies "ghost" recordings that appear throughout.
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16	Also, he created on his own EP titled ''The Unholy City'', which is Ligotti reciting a cycle of poems over borderline minimalistic musical accompaniment.
17
18	In 2007 a 21-minute [[Film/TheFrolic adaptation]] of Ligotti's short story "The Frolic" was released. Ligotti himself cowrote the script with Brandon Trenz, also his collaborator on the unfilmed ''Series/TheXFiles'' script "Crampton."
19	----
20	!!Works by Thomas Ligotti with their own pages include:
21
22	* ''Literature/MyWorkIsNotYetDone''
23	* "Literature/TheRedTower"
24	----
25	!!Other works by Thomas Ligotti contain examples of:
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27	%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
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29	* AffablyEvil: The aforementioned John Doe is very friendly to the protagonist.
30	* AliceAllusion: The narrator of "Alice's Last Adventure" finds her life turning into an ever-darkening Wonderland.
31	* AllFirstPersonNarratorsWriteLikeNovelists: "The Chymist" is a justified variant of this trope: The character is an InsufferableGenius with an obvious penchant towards self-indulgent soliloquy, and hence speaks rather vividly. It's even lampshaded several times by the narrator himself.
32	%%* AmusementParkOfDoom: The titular carnivals of "Gas Station Carnivals". [[spoiler: Even though they never existed.]]
33	%%* AndIMustScream
34	%%* AnotherMansTerror: Used to grim and varied effect in the story-within-a-story in "Notes On The Writing Of Horror: A Story".
35	%%* AntiAntiChrist: Andrew Maness, being the living incarnation of "The Tsalal."
36	* AntiHero: Finding a [[TheHero straight hero]] in a Ligotti story is like finding a HappyEnding: If you think that you have, one can be certain that you are terribly, ''terribly'' wrong.
37	%%* ApocalypticLog: A few stories, most notably "Alice's Last Adventure" and "Nethescurial".
38	* ArcSymbol: Masks, clowns, and puppets.
39	* AuthorAppeal: Deconstructing horror and philosophy tropes seems to be a big one. Also, any of the recurring themes under Paranoia Fuel.
40	* AuthorTract: ''The Conspiracy Against The Human Race'', a novel-length non-fiction treatise on philosophical pessimism.
41	* TheBadGuyWins:
42	** When there ''is'' an antagonist rather than the conflict coming from the horrid reality itself this usually happens.
43	** Subverted in [[spoiler: ''Vastarien'' where the crow-like antagonist is murdered by the narrator after he absorbs the narrator's dream city.]]
44	%%* BazaarOfTheBizarre: The shop that the protagonist enters in "The Unfamiliar" is essentially a miniaturized version of one of these, played for SurrealHorror.
45	%%** Also the bookshop in ''Vastarien''.
46	* BittersweetEnding:
47	** 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]].
48	** Also ''Vastarien'' where the protagonist loses his mind and is sent to an asylum but gets to live in Vastarien in his dreams.
49	** Surprisingly, in [[spoiler: ''The Tsalal'' the protagonist sacrifices himself to save the world.]]
50	* BlackComedy: The tone of many of his first person stories is [[DeadpanSnarker extremely snarky]], which ultimately [[MoodWhiplash only adds to the horror of his endings]]. This is particularly evident in later stories like "The Town Manager" (whose closing WhamLine reads like the punchline to a joke) and "Metaphysica Morum".
51	* BlackSpeech: The vampire language in "The Lost Art of Twilight", which is less made up of words and more of demonic shrieking and groaning noises, and is primarily used to express concepts too foul for living human beings to even understand.
52	%%* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Attempting to assign moral values to the behaviour of Ligotti's characters, human or not, is futile in the extreme.
53	* BodyHorror: Generally averted, though "The Cocoons", "The Spectacles in the Drawer" and "The Tsalal" all contain some extremely visceral scenes.
54	** Dr. Thoss, as he appears in "The Troubles of Dr. Thoss", is [[spoiler: a decapitated, rotted, waterlogged head that can move on its own and keeps whispering the words "My name is Thoss, I am a doctor"]].
55	* CosmicHorrorStory:
56	** 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.
57	** "The Frolic" plays into both this ''and'' 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...
58	%%* CrapsackWorld: The world itself is the villain in many of his stories.
59	* CreatorBacklash: He apparently burned most of his early writings and states that he has no intention of ever publishing any of them.
60	* CreatorBreakdown: Ligotti has suffered from severe clinical depression, anxiety, insomnia, and agoraphobia for almost his whole life, which informs much of his body of work and is the main reason for his reclusiveness.
61	* CreatorThumbprint: Urban decay, soul-sucking corporate jobs, clowns, masks, puppets, dreams, and unethical medical professionals will all appear frequently in his work. Also expect his main characters to be intensely pessimistic, and also to suffer from either severe depression or anxiety.
62	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[NothingIsScarier But rarely "onstage."]] For example, "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...
63	%%* CruelTwistEnding: Quite frequently.
64	* DarkFantasy: "Masquerade of a Dead Sword" is dark medieval fantasy with Ligotti's signature philosophical pessimism. Also fits the original definition of the genre as "horror in a fantasy setting."
65	%%* DarknessEqualsDeath: Played with in various ways.
66	* DarkWorld:
67	** In "The Frolic", an inmate of a mental asylum describes a sort of ruined and rubbish strewn Dark World.
68	** The titular dream-dimension-thing from "Vastarien" is a particularly surreal example, seeing as it is, essentially, the protagonist's vision of paradise.
69	%%** The alternate Bruges in "The Journal of J.P. Drapeau".
70	%%** Hinted at in "The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise".
71	%%* DeadpanSnarker: 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.
72	* {{Dhampyr}}: The protagonist of "The Lost Art of Twilight", [[spoiler:born from his mother's staked corpse]], is his own, very special subset of this trope. Unlike most fictional dhampyr, however, he has very few actual powers, aside from the ability to paint bizarre abstract canvases [[BrownNote that are literally nauseating to look at]].
73	* DisposableSexWorker: Ligotti's first published short story "The Chymist" takes the form of a {{mad scientist}}'s monologue to a prostitute who '''really''' should have kept walking when he started talking.
74	%%* DoomedHometown: The implied fate of narrator's hometown in [[spoiler: ''The Town Manager'']].
75	%%* DownerEnding: All of them.
76	* 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. Its 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.]]
77	%%** Thin Mountain in "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain".
78	%%* EldritchLocation: The titular DarkWorld of "Vastarien" is a standout in modern literature.
79	%%* EnigmaticMinion: "The Clown Puppet" is [[ZigZaggedTrope the most confusing example]].
80	%%* EvilGloating: Done to the protagonist by [[spoiler: what is implied to be ''life itself'']] in "Masquerade of a Dead Sword."
81	* EvilSorcerer: [[spoiler: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.]]
82	%%* EyeScream: A reoccurring motif.
83	* AFeteWorseThanDeath: "The Last Feast of Harlequin": The winter solstice celebration with the ragged, hobo-like clowns is off-putting enough, but it turns out that [[spoiler:it's all part of an evil cult where the high priest of the religion, who turns out to be the narrator's beloved professor Dr. Thoss, sacrifices a young woman and turns the celebrants into giant, writhing worms.]]
84	%%**"The Greater Festival of Masks"
85	%%* FirstPersonSmartass: Naturally.
86	* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: "Nethescurial". The narrator reads a short story positing that the entire world is god, and GodIsEvil; the narrator snarks about the story's flaws but admits it has some interesting ideas. Scenes from the story begin to invade the narrator's dreams; finally, in his waking hours, the narrator sees the evil god at work in every physical object around him.
87	%%* GainaxEnding: Any of his more experimental stories, ''especially'' "The Nightmare Network".
88	%%* GambitPileUp: [[spoiler: Gas Station Carnivals. Also by Richard and Domino in "My Work Is Not Yet Done"]]
89	* GasStationOfDoom: In "Gas Station Carnivals", the protagonist's acquiaintance reminisces about [[AmusementParkOfDoom the titular carnivals that he used to visit as a kid]] when he and his parents stopped at gas stations. While the carnivals themselves were [[CrappyCarnival mostly just crappy]] (the attractions and rides were miniatures, the hypnotist and sideshow freaks were costumed attendants, and there was an air of oil-soaked dinginess about the whole thing), one of the employees, known as the Showman, [[HumanoidAbomination was uncannily creepy and menacing]]. [[spoiler:{{Subverted}}, it turns out that these carnivals never existed.]] [[spoiler:Double subverted, since the Showman is actually real - and now coming after the protagonist.]]
90	%%* GodOFEvil: The titular Nethescurial in ''Nethescurial''.
91	* GodIsDead: In ''The Tsalal'' it's posited that good deities used to exist but were destroyed by the Tsalal.
92	%%* GodIsEvil:
93	%%** "Nethescurial" in which the entire universe is an evil god.
94	%%** "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]].
95	%%** "The Shadow, The Darkness".
96	%%** Many of his stories imply that [[spoiler:''reality itself'' is inherently malignant.]]
97	* HeroicSacrifice: In ''The Tsalal'' [[spoiler: the protagonist]] must die in a terrible manner in order to stop the Tsalal's manifestation which will destroy the universe. [[spoiler: He accepts his fate and willingly dies to save the world.]]
98	* HumanSacrifice: In "The Last Feast of Harlequin", [[spoiler: the MonsterClown cultists are transformed into giant, carnivorous worms in a ritual underground and proceed to devour a young woman kidnapped from Mirocaw]].
99	%%* HumansAreSpecial: Deconstructed in ''The Conspiracy Against The Human Race''.
100	%%* ILoveTheDead: Heavily implied in ''Drink To Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes''.
101	* TheInsomniac: A trait shared by many of his protagonists, notably Alb Indys in "The Troubles of Dr. Thoss." Ligotti himself, much like Creator/HPLovecraft, is a lifelong sufferer of the condition, so it's very much a case of WriteWhatYouKnow.
102	* 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.
103	%%* LivingShadow: The eponymous... [[EldritchAbomination being]], in "Our Temporary Supervisor". And you thought ''your'' boss was a pain!
104	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes", from the opening line of "Song: To Celia" ("Drink to me only with thine eyes...")
105	* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: Ligotti ''loves'' ambiguous locations. "The Astronomic Blur", a StoryWithinAStory in ''"Sideshow", and Other Stories'', is one of the more unusual ones and plays with the trope. It involves a small shop that [[WeirdnessCensor no-one had previously noticed]] is suddenly inhabited by... [[OurMonstersAreDifferent something.]]
106	* LostEpisode: Several stories published through small-press magazines have never been collected or reprinted.
107	%%** 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]].
108	* MadArtist: A fair number of his protagonists count, particularly the narrator of "Les Fleures", who appears to draw his inspiration from alternate realms of existence.
109	%%* MedicalHorror: "The Cocoons" specifically, though [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate hearing that someone bears the title of "doctor" is usually a bad sign in the Ligotti universe]].
110	%%* {{Medusa}}: "The Medusa".
111	%%* MegaCorp: The Quine Organization, which shows up intermittently in ''Teatro Grottesco'', is an especially Kafkaesque example.
112	%%* 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.
113	%%* NewWeird: Considered to be one of the {{Trope Maker}}s.
114	* NietzscheWannabe: Interestingly averted with the man himself, who refuses the "nihilist" distinction and is extremely well-versed in pessimistic philosophy (as evidenced by ''The Conspiracy Against the Human Race'').
115	* NoFaceUnderTheMask: "The Last Feast of Harlequin": [[spoiler:The HumanSacrifice ritual turns the faces of various MonsterClown cultists into weird holes that the narrator compares to navels.]]
116	%%** Used in "The Greater Festival Of Masks" to drive home a rather unsettling point about identity.
117	%%** "Masquerade of a Dead Sword".
118	* NonIronicClown: The narrator and protagonist of "The Last Feast of Harlequin" enjoys dressing up as a clown and doing clown acts, like juggling. Not only is it pertinent to his academic interests, but he also just finds it plain fun. It's not presented as creepy or unusual in any way, which contrasts with [[spoiler:the MonsterClown cultists of Mirocaw, who shamble about lifelessly like zombies, wear disheveled clothes and skull-like makeup that remind the narrator of ''[[Art/TheScreamMunch The Scream]]'', and have an annual HumanSacrifice ritual that transforms them in giant worm-like creatures.]]
119	* 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". Ligotti has been noted to dislike the use of [[{{Gorn}} graphic violence]] in horror lit and largely prefers focusing on an ominous, oppressive atmosphere to evoke fear.
120	%%* OmnicidalManiac: The unnamed, [[EldritchAbomination possibly inhuman]] [[VillainProtagonist narrator]] of the poem cycle "I Have A Special Plan For This World".
121	%%* OurVampiresAreDifferent: [[spoiler:"The Lost Art of Twilight".]]
122	%%* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: [[spoiler:"The Real Wolf". Hello, {{Deconstruction}}!]]
123	%%* OurZombiesAreDifferent: [[spoiler:"Autumnal".]]
124	%%* PersonalHorror
125	%%* PerspectiveFlip: Most of the vignettes in ''The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales''.
126	* PuppetPermutation: In "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech", Dr. Voke looks to his friend Mr. Veech for revenge on his unfaithful wife and best friend, although he doesn't know the details. When he brings them to the location Veech has specified, he sees them dangling from strings and turning to wood.
127	%%* PurpleProse: Many of his more abstract vignettes fall into this category, albeit rarely to the degree of [[Creator/EdgarAllanPoe his chief]] [[Creator/HPLovecraft inspirations]].
128	* RavensAndCrows: The supposed antagonist in "Vastarien" is repeatedly compared to them and appears at the end as an enormous crow consuming everything in the titular dream world.
129	%%* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: ''The Conspiracy Against The Human Race'' is this as applied to ''everyone that has ever lived''.
130	%%* ScaryScarecrows: "The Shadow at the Bottom of the World".
131	%%* TheSnarkKnight: The unnamed author in ''"Sideshow", and Other Stories''.
132	* TheSpook: A recurring villain type, with the most notable examples being John Doe and Dr. Thoss.
133	** John Doe is a HumanoidAbomination of unknowable background who claims to come from some dilapidated alternate reality that he spirits his young victims away to to [[DeadlyEuphemism "frolic"]], inevitably resulting in their horrifying ends. While speaking to his psychiatrist he shows an almost clairvoyant knowledge of his personal life and makes playful insinuations that he can leave the prison any time he wants, all while shifting between every possible accent in the English language without apparently trying to.
134	** Dr. Thoss appears in two stories in wildly different forms, to the point where it's unclear if they're even meant to be the same character. His incarnation in "The Last Feast of Harlequin", however, fits this trope to a T. An eccentric anthropologist of obscure background, this Thoss traveled the world embedding himself into obscure tribes to study their traditions, eventually developing strange and controversial theories which saw him all but expelled from academia. When he reappears in the present day, [[spoiler: he's an EvilSorcerer leading a tribe of strange, subhuman vagrants whom he transforms into giant worms through his rituals]].
135	%%* TheStarsAreGoingOut: Played with.
136	%%* SurrealHorror: Even Ligotti's most realistic stories have a tendency to rely on a modicum of dream logic. Case in point: "The Frolic".
137	%%* 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.
138	%%* {{Ubermensch}}: {{Deconstructed\|CharacterArchetype}}, with ruthless vigour, in "The Shadow, The Darkness".
139	%%* UnseenEvil
140	* WhamLine: In "The Last Feast of Harlequin", [[spoiler:The narrator infiltrates the titular celebration and discovers that it's an evil ritual that transforms people into writhing, worm-like creatures. He decides to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere high-tail it out of there]] but trips. The cultists nearly catch up him, but their leader orders them to spare him, with a line that the narrator says he never heard: "He's one of us. He has ''always'' been one of us."]]
141	%%** "Nethescurial": [[spoiler:I am not dying in a nightmare.]]
142	%%** "The Chymist": [[spoiler:Now, Rose of Madness... Bloom!]]
143	%%** "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel": [[spoiler:"It was an ''angel'', did you know that?"]]
144	%%** "The Troubles of Doctor Thoss": [[spoiler:"My name is Thoss, I am a doctor."]]
145	%%** "Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes": [[spoiler:"You will not awaken until morning, ''no matter what sounds you hear outside your door''. Understand?".]]
146	%%** "The Nightmare Network": [[spoiler:There is no one behind the camera.]]
147	%%** "Purity": [[spoiler:"Why, it's families, sweetheart."]]
148	%%** "The Frolic": [[spoiler:He turned on the light. The child was gone.]]
149	%%* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: [[spoiler:Plomb from "The Spectacles in the Drawer".]]
150	* WriteWhatYouKnow: The reason for Ligotti's extremely bleak worldview is largely because he himself has lived a very bleak life. 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.

Context Creator / ThomasLigotti