#I’m a grad student and love picking apart lit and history and such

[schrodingersgerbil]

Hello! I saw your post about bloodborn being a gothic fantastic horror and how it is very similar to Frankenstein! I am planning to write an essay for my university course on exactly this topic, (Bloodborne being very similar to Frankenstein) and wondered if you'd want to share your thoughts/ elaborate on that post? :)

Hey! So, I am SO glad you asked this question because you gave me a chance to ramble about one of my current fixations. Basically I think Bloodborne (when it doesn’t dive straight into cosmic horror) pulls a lot of narrative tropes from famous works of gothic fiction, ESPECIALLY Frankenstein. I am going to try to fit in some major points but I’m unfortunately leaving out a few for the sake of brevity.

The first major point I want to bring up is the one I posted about, with youths trying to break the natural order and take power that would otherwise belong to the divine. It’s one of the key aspects of both Frankenstein and Bloodborne. The Byrgenwyrth scholars find something in the tombs which allows them to transcend humanity and heal otherwise impossible injuries, but at a terrible cost. Victor Frankenstein, also a college student, does the same thing, attempting to create a “better human” and is successful but it blows up in his face. Both of these are their narrative’s respective “Prometheus,” the one taking the power of the gods and being punished for it. Hubris is the key word for all of this.

Speaking of that punishment, the phrase “More than human, and human no more” which is used in the Japanese game instead of “we are made men by the blood etc etc.” can be used to apply to MANY gothic novel’s protagonists. It applies to Frankenstein’s creation Adam, Carmilla, Count Dracula and his victim Lucy, and Dorian Grey. All of these creatures have transcended some human weakness, such as death, illness, or emotion, but have lost something key about themselves in the process. This is also the case with the Byrgenwyrth scholars, the school of Menses, and the Healing church. They surpass humanity, sure, according to the game Yharnam reaches new heights of culture, art, science, and refinement… all before the beast plague hits. This comes back to the Prometheus motif. If we consider Laurence, due to his flame motif and founding of the healing church, or Gerhman, due to his confinement by the moon presence, as our “Gothic Protagonist,” it is not only them who is punished by the Great Ones but the whole of Yharnam. This parallels Prometheus being chained by the gods but also Humanity being punished with Pandora and her diseases.

Speaking of Pandora and Lucy, another way in which Bloodborne parallels Gothic lit is the treatment of women in the plot. Even “Badass” women like my beloved Eileen and Maria have very little agency in the plot. You have women such as Ariana and Adeline filling the similar role to Lucy in Dracula or Elizabeth in Frankenstein, being the passive victim of supernatural torment due to the actions of others. Maria and the Doll are another case of this, being primarily described in their relationship to Gehrman and their tragic death, rather than in reference to their own life and choices. Finally, on the flip side, women in the game also have a strange connection or link with the supernatural, which is a recurring theme in gothic lit. (Also sexuality but I don’t want this post to get flagged oops.)

Anyway, this is basically my quick and dirty take on the connections between Bloodborne’s overall arching themes and some of the famous Gothic lit it takes inspiration from! The “don’t play god” and visual motifs, as well as many character archetypes really lends itself to gothic horror well. I also would like to point out the thematic connections between Jurassic park and Frankenstein but that’s an essay for another time.