Gothic vs Gothic vs Gothic , how should we organize and separate them out?.

Hi, so I've noticed that in media works there are three categories of Gothic, but they aren't necessarily marketed that way:

V.C. Andrews's Flowers in the Attic Paul Pen's The Light of the Fireflies (arguably) George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (fused with fantasy)

This type of gothic is really unsettling and disturbing, often has a feeling of suspense. The characters suffer (often a trauma conga line/repeated torture) and there's usually some extreme real-life horror involved (incest, rape, abuse.) The story is extremely twisted and there is not always a happy ending. Some of the appeal is both suspense and a feeling of fortunateness in one's circumstances from those I know whom enjoy this kind of story.

Then you have:

The Addams Family (gothic + dark comedy fusion/affectionate reference to gothic works) Edgar Allen Poe's works Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Then there's Japanese gothic (which I think falls into a similar category as Shelley & Poe's type Gothic). Yuki Kaori's works- with both a gothic aesthetic/gothic aristocrat/gothic lolita style fashion for all the characters and dark twisted plots referencing historical details or fairytales/folklore Yana Toboso's Black Butler- gothic aesthetic, gothic aristocrat type fashion, dark plot.

The thing is that the tone of Poe/Shelley/Japanese gothic is entirely different from VC Andrews Gothic. Poe/Shelley/Japanese gothic both involve a gothic aesthetic, and a dark plot, for the reader the story can be about examining the morbid- and a lot can be a call back of historical/folkloric details.

However VC Andrews gothic, which is still called "gothic horror" is not about aesthetics at all, the plot is twisted but the point is a type of torture of the characters, suspense, a "horrible truth".

I've observed that folks who are a fan of one type of gothic are not generally a fan of the other type of gothic and vice versa.

Ought these not to be separated out, and how would we go about doing this? How should we describe these two? I also have noticed that "gothic" has been on TV Tropes used to describe VC andrews a t some poitns in time and not to describe it, but the official genre of VC Andrews is "gothic fiction".

I've noticed we already have a "Gothic Horror trope" which seems to cover Victorian Gothic, Poe/Shelley Gothic, and arguably I suppose we could maybe fit in yuki kaori type stuff in there (Japanese gothic isn't really the same imo but at least it's close enough to being Gothic Horror), but what are we doing with Flowers in the Attic and Light of the Fireflies? I always mentally categorized it as "torture porn-type-gothic", lol, but we have a torture porn trope that means something entirely different than simply "making the characters go thru a lot of horrible things"- and that categorization may be somewhat bias and not doing it justice as I'm not into VC Andrews Gothic, so I struggle to figure out a way to properly categorize it separately.

There's also Warhammer 40,000, the most commonly used example of a gothic sci-fi work.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 11th 2022 at 12:47:46 PM

The word has a strange history. Starting off with a Germanic people and language, it was then applied to a type of architecture in Germany, then to a genre of dark, brooding literature that often called on this type of architecture to set the scene, then became an aesthetic and a sub-culture that drew on that genre.

I would restrict it to two things on this wiki: Gothic Horror, a genre of horror that typically featured wealthy families in old and dark houses and followed the sensibilities of the time (no sex, clean deaths however tragic, clear moral lessons). Then there is Gothic aesthetics, which are now connected less with horror than with aristocratic trappings, like a Disney princess look but darker. The two overlap, but we should be able to distinguish between the narrative sense and the aesthetic one.