Curtis D. Carbonell
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620573
- eISBN:
- 9781789629644
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Discontinued
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620573.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the World[s] of Darkness’s most important gametexts within the context of the move from Gothic to cosmic horror. It utilizes literary and philosophical analysis of the Gothic, ...
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This chapter examines the World[s] of Darkness’s most important gametexts within the context of the move from Gothic to cosmic horror. It utilizes literary and philosophical analysis of the Gothic, especially that of Fred Botting and Noël Carroll. Botting helps by posing a question of what sort of ‘spectral return’ we might see with a reinvigorated Gothic, while Carroll views ‘art-horror,’ or the horror derived from the genre of popular culture, as a key driver in how we have come to represent horror. This chapter works through the tensions of how a Lovecraftian-like cosmic horror displaced the Gothic yet acknowledges the Gothic’s persistence. It sees in the World[s] of Darkness’s TRPGs like Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse attempts at a renewed Gothicism. Yet, in the New Worlds of Darkness’s, the ‘God Machine’ emerges as a novel posthuman trope, one that hints at a machinic inscrutable entity far beyond any human understanding.Less
This chapter examines the World[s] of Darkness’s most important gametexts within the context of the move from Gothic to cosmic horror. It utilizes literary and philosophical analysis of the Gothic, especially that of Fred Botting and Noël Carroll. Botting helps by posing a question of what sort of ‘spectral return’ we might see with a reinvigorated Gothic, while Carroll views ‘art-horror,’ or the horror derived from the genre of popular culture, as a key driver in how we have come to represent horror. This chapter works through the tensions of how a Lovecraftian-like cosmic horror displaced the Gothic yet acknowledges the Gothic’s persistence. It sees in the World[s] of Darkness’s TRPGs like Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse attempts at a renewed Gothicism. Yet, in the New Worlds of Darkness’s, the ‘God Machine’ emerges as a novel posthuman trope, one that hints at a machinic inscrutable entity far beyond any human understanding.
