C****** doesn’t do business that way. Usually you try to avoid being noticed by him at all. One noticed, the best you can generally hope for is to die quickly. 
Really? Darn. And I always think of Cthulhu when I hear that old Beatles song “I Saw Her Standin’ There.” Love at first sight, or something.
Sounds like you need to find yourself a Cthulhu-ish god rather than Cthulhu himself then. 
I’ve read some of Lovecraft’s stories, and cheerful he ain’t. Most of what I know comes from playing some Call of Cthulhu as gaming conventions.
I never played CoC, but played quite a bit of Runequest, which was produced by the same company, and uses the same mechanics, and heard quite a bit about the former from my fellow players. I believe I remember hearing that CoC has a ‘Sanity’ stat, and the more your character learns about Cthulhu and his brethren, the lower that stat becomes. 
Some guys, like Satan, just don’t have a very good press agent. He’s probably just a slightly easily-annoyed cuttlefish. Couldn’t be much worse than some of the conventional gods at large.
For me it’s Chantilly lace, aka Tentacled face (and a carapace…)
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This summary of the plot of the original short story Call of Cthulhu is informative:
The sailors approached a huge door, which began to appear not quite vertical. When they accidentally opened it, Cthulhu emerged, awakening from a dream. Two of the eight sailors died on the spot from fright. Cthulhu grabbed three more with its paw and swallowed them. As the other three fled, one of them hit the corner of a building and seemed to be sucked in. The remaining two managed to reach the yacht, but one of the sailors lost his mind from the horror he experienced and died a few days later. The only one who escaped with his life and mind, Johansen, started the yacht, but realized there was insufficient time to pick up speed. Johansen turned the yacht around and rammed Cthulhu. By the time Cthulhu began to recover, the yacht had already sailed to a safe distance. A few days later, R’lyeh submerged back into the ocean, and the nightmares that had plagued humanity ceased.[1]
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David E. Schultz said Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to serve merely as a background element.[11]: 46, 54 Lovecraft himself humorously referred to his Mythos as “Yog Sothothery” (Dirk W. Mosig coincidentally suggested the term Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth be substituted for Cthulhu Mythos ).[12] [13] At times, Lovecraft even had to remind his readers that his Mythos creations were entirely fictional.[9]: 33–34
From the Lovecraft stories I have read, his writing style is sometimes just plain awful. He can take pages to describe things that might be adequately written in a few sentences. It’s possible that he was being paid by the word, and so stretched stories out to make a little more $, and he would not be the first (or best known) author to do so.
What stands out, I think, is his sense of dark creativity. You get the sense there is more out there, waiting to be learned, even if Lovecraft himself didn’t have anything more in mind.
Yes, the sanity stat is basically a timer for how long your character will last before “losing it.” This usually means your character collapses in a mental fog (useless), or remains conscious but with some mandated bit of insanity to role-play. In a continuing game your character has earned a stay in a mental institution, or even permanent retirement. It doesn’t mean “going over to the Dark Side” in my experience, but other (non-player) characters who already have gone over to the dark side are a frequent plot point.
Playing at a convention, games are “One Shot” and you can throw caution to the wind, reading ancient tomes, casting dark spells, taking risks and spending all your (spare?) sanity before the session ends. In a continuing game players will generally be much more cautious, avoiding sanity checks if at all possible.
I got eaten by Tsathoggua once. That was a really fun session.
Just out …
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