Cosmic Horror Story/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A story where humanity is unimportant, and the universe is filled with creatures more mind-warping horrible and powerful than humans can grasp.

• Straight: The Scientific Investigation Corporation digs into the center of the earth and unleashes a horde of inhuman, uncaring, and horrifying monsters into a helpless world.
• Exaggerated:
  • The SIC, having discovered that the otherworldly creatures are indeed horrifying and incomprehensibly evil, decides that humanity itself must become a similar entity in order to survive. However, upon doing so, the humanity-abomination realizes that there are always even bigger fish in the sea that the 'Horrifying monsters' seem like helpless little humans compared to.
  • A horde of inhuman, horrifying, and incomprehensibly evil monsters conquer the helpless world in the space of a nanosecond and reshapes it into a twisted morass of horror and despair that would eclipse Hell itself. There, humans die horribly in factory farms, have their souls consumed, and are transformed into a...thing... whose mind and memory are scattered to a million pieces. Of course, death will only intensified the inhumanly immense agonies...
• Downplayed:
  • There are mind-boggling horrors in the world capable of rending it apart, but they're a distant, slumbering threat... for now.
  • Mind-boggling horrors threaten to destroy the world, but all is not lost! Humanity is an embryonic god waiting to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, and if we do manage to reach the next evolutionary stage, maybe we can drive off the monsters.
• Justified: The immense size and complexity of the universe, the limitations and conflicts of human existence, the existence of an infinity of other multiverses, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, justifies almost everything about the Cosmic Horror Story.
• Inverted: The SIC discovers intelligent aliens who turn out to be largely insignificant to humans, and who find us to be so abominable that they are likely to Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Subverted: The SIC digs down and discovers that the center of the earth is filled with ugly, tentacled creatures - who are, in fact, as heroic or more heroic than people.
• Double Subverted: . . .and then it turns out that it was an act, and they really are inhumanly evil.
• Parodied: The tentacle beast is named "Coco", and is actually a bigger monsters pet.
• Deconstructed:
  • Everyone realizes how insignificant they are. They all become Nietzsche Wannabes and/or commit suicide. Thus, no story.
  • Alternately: The premise is that Humans are insignificant to these creatures, which means they'd never bother with a small hunk of rock floating close around one in a zillion stars. What wouldn't bother causing humanity trouble.
  • This worldview basically fosters a Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy mentality among both the inhabitants and the readers.
  • In a more positive deconstruction: In Real Life cosmology there really are things out there so enormous, so powerful and so mind-shatteringly complex that our entire world is meaninglessly small in comparison, but we just don't care like how they don't care about us. Also, the existential horror of insignificance isn't that horrifying, being pretty easy to ignore.
  • The story is so depressing, hopeless, and horrifying that it drives people to insanity and suicide.
• Reconstructed:
  • The story switches to the perspective of the survivors who defied seeing the world pessimistically and/or the cosmic horrors themselves.
  • Alternately: ... so the entire story revolves around cultists trying to get the attention of the monstrosities so they will come to the earth to prove once and for all there is no god. Oops, forgot about the whole 'devouring worlds' thing...
  • So this kind of story basically fosters a Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy mentality.... but as a response, while the unstoppable horrors are still present, the protagonists are at the very least given some Character Development, with exploring the psychology and meaning of their existential crisis before the inevitable doom. Sometimes works and makes the characters more sympathetic than a bunch of ants, sometimes doesn't.
• Zig Zagged: A main character, very fearful of being attacked by an Eldritch Abomination, sights a tentacle in the forest, but it was just someone elses costume, then he sights an actual real tentacle, which grabs him. Only it was a dream and he's just letting paranoia get to him... or is he?
• Averted: There are no Lovecraftian horrors in the world.
• Enforced: The author is a Nietzsche Wannabe.
• Lampshaded: "VHYarghKXepft, the queen with a thousand eyes? I guess God is an H.P. Lovecraft fan."
• Invoked: The SIC develops a tentacle beast.
• Exploited: A Fundamentalist uses the event to rally an End of the World cult.
• Defied: The SIC finds that the Earth is filled with monstrous creatures of mind-warping horror - and they absolutely refuse to let this be one of those cosmic horror stories where humans are unimportant.
• Discussed: "Why bother living when we are going to end in their hands anyway?"
• Conversed: "Due to the immense size of the universe, it's possible for other creatures to evolve beyond our comprehension."
• Played For Laughs: The world is attacked by a incomprehensible tentacle beast from another dimension, and it attacks by kicking the dog or leaving the toilet seat up.

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