Thread:LucidPigeons/@comment-24469175-20160518184507/@comment-26205772-20160611191010

It does not work like that, no.

Cosmic Horror Story... With those kinds of stories, it's the tone that makes everything. A true Cosmic Horror Story is horribly, horribly pessimistic about the antagonist - who's usually an Eldritch Abomination, mind you - ever being defeated, let alone harmed. The general mood of the work will usually be nihilistic about mankind's continued existence. The only instance of western animation ever truly crossing the threshold to cosmic horror I can think of is Shadow Raiders. The antagonist in this series, the Beast Planet, is a classic example of a Lovecraftian abomination; it can't be stopped, it can't be hurt, it can't be reasoned with, and the only hope of surviving is to either repel it or run away. That's all. Mighty Max's antagonist might be virtually invincible, but that alone does not make a cosmic horror story given that the rest of the series' tone doesn't even remotely fit any of the conventions of cosmic horror. Rick and Morty is a bloody comedy. Of course it wouldn't count.

I'd suggest channeling Lovecraft himself (leave out the racism) but there actually are a few good ways to do a cosmic horror story. It's just a shame it's so rarely done right. I can't really list all of them, but make sure to generally follow the tropes and tone of a cosmic horror story; feel free to play around with and subvert typical tropes (I had a merry time doing that in The City of Never, although its prequel is a much straighter example of a cosmic horror) but the general result should still ultimately resemble something from the genre. Another way to do so is to pull a Madoka and not reveal the cosmic horror until the end of the story.