I think another common misstep people make with cosmic horror is an overreliance on secular nihilism and extraterrestrial theosophy (idk what else to call Ancient Aliens/Chariots of the Gods stuff). Part of the actual horror of cosmic horror comes from the twisting of the characters’ world view, the fundamental understanding of the universe being turned upside down, which is something entirely relative to the characters themselves.
But so many half-hearted attempts at cosmic horror just drop ‘There is no God, it was always space squids’ like it’s some kind of universal maxim on the characters and then just… leaves it, regardless of how it actually affects the characters or setting. (It’s particularly jarring when it’s ham-fisted into high fantasy or sci-fi where it’s like yeah, man; no duh there’s space squids. You tried to make-out with one last week.)
The revelation of cosmic truth has to be meaningful to the characters. If your character believes in a fundamentally good and reasonable universe, then you can hit them with the old-fashioned cosmic nihilism. But if they’re already cynical and skeptical, then you need to show them something else, like that there is, in fact, a God, but she’s actually a giant cat that feeds off of children’s tears, and that everything in the characters’ lives that they attributed to free will and chance were actually her grand design. Something like that.
