Hey guys, huge sci-fi, horror, and fantasy fan here, but somehow the whole Lovecraftian mythos has totally eluded me all these years. I know very little about it except for Cuthulu who's pretty well installed in popular culture and Eldritch abominations, etc. I can't really get into it because I have no idea where to start and the monsters don't interest me as much as possible sympathetic humans that might be battling/running from said monsters, if you know what I mean.

Like for me, Ripley is the draw in Alien/Aliens, not the Aliens so much. I'm not really a huge fan of things that I suspect are inspired by it, like Cloverfield, and not really into Kaiju so much. So because if you don't know anything about Lovecraft, and the only images you see are the tentacle monsters, I'm trying to find where the human emotional angle/point of entry would be for me. Is there humor? Pathos? Any cogent plots— my knowledge of this is so vague I just kind of imagine this Coleridge-esque fever dream or something of monsters raping/eating people. Is this even accurate? I find even the Wiki entries overwhelming in detail.

Do these stories have proper plots?

And where should I start??!! I realize this is a serious blind-spot in my nerd knowledge.