I am, in general, a fan of the Lovecraftian Mythos. It’s a well-constructed fictional setting that manages to contain and produce a sense of weird, dreadful eldritchness; as a content maker, I know how hard it is to make sure your content produces any sort of emotion, so I’m fascinated by the way the Mythos provoke a very specific sense of “fear of the unknown” (which isn’t an easy emotion to generate even in a general sense).
I don’t see myself as a part of the geek culture’s trend of assimilating the Mythos into itself – I don’t have any Cthulhu t-shirts, and usually don’t find them amusing by default of “containing a reference to big-squid-guy”, but I enjoy it very much when the Mythos is used in a way that respects the original themes (losing your grip on a world slowly growing insane, such as in Eldritch Horror or Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu), or knowingly subverts them (Pokethulhu, where 10 year olds are capturing eldritch gods for to make them battle against each other).
I also see the Mythos as an interesting historic phenomena – I’m not sure if it’s the first shared universe, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of the earliest. If I were an academic, of the literature or cultural sort, I would probably focus my study on these sorts of things.
