Thread:Mesektet/@comment-27729149-20160128170019/@comment-3581997-20160610224233

The main character of the story need to be subverted, as does their story and their world. The cosmic horror coming for them needs to be something that ultimately they can not conceptually beat. In Shadow Hearts the 3 people who actually know the true existence of God all lose their minds, Roger (Good Guy) appears insane but the entire time he is still himself, a good character who helps as a bigger good, Albert(Bad Guy), Goes entirely mad but is driven more so by humanity's lack of redeeming qualities, to the point where God is just something that rounds out the universe, Koudelka (Heroine) hypnotizes herself to lock the memories of God away so she doesn't go mad like Roger. The two good characters acknowledge they are parts in a play/characters in a game, because they have comprehended their own reality by seeing God. The bad guy on the other-hand is bad because he is clinging to the vain hope that humans are worth something as a universal concept. The main characters of the game never enter into this but a quiet moment between these three characters set up an important contrast to the story, that as invested as we the audience are in it, that those three characters exists beyond it by mere act of interacting with the other.

If you do have a comfort zone for the story, a writing style or a mythos, the cosmic horror needs to up-end that. It needs to scoff not merely at the tiny mortals running around in your world, but at you the writer. The first step is of-course creating an engrossing world, not just setting up rules to be broken. But, once done with the story as a whole, look back at it and see what you can do to break the rules the story has set apart at the seams. I suggest you work out a scenario a mwah ha ha puny mortals moment, but not for any one story. Then as you make more an more stories find one that seems to have a good investing plot and then blow it apart with your Mwah ha ha ha moment by making subvert it. Don't try to cram it into everything but have it on standby for that one moment that will work completely.