Lovecraft himself wrote some Lovecraft Lite, so don't think it's a departure from the tone of the original stories, including some of his most famous. It's been said that the occasional human victory actually serves to drive home the tone and message of Lovecraft's philosophy. The universe is big and terrible and full of things that can wipe us out in an instant, but sometimes humans can win against Eldritch Abominations anyway... because they aren't really any more important than we are.
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, in which the Terror From Beyond that the protagonist accidentally summons turns out to be helpful, and the evil sorcerer is easy to defeat by saying the right words.
"The Shunned House", which features flamethrowers. Of course the flamethrowers don't do much good, but some sulfuric acid deals with the situation perfectly.
"The Dunwich Horror", where humanity actually wins, as the Badass Bookworm protagonists successfully banish the spawn of Yog-Sothoth that was going to bring about the end of the world. They do end up severely traumatised by the events, and a lot of innocent bystanders get killed by the monster, but nobody goes insane and Yog-Sothoth loses a foothold in our world. "The Dunwich Horror" is considered by many Lovecraftian scholars to be so uncharacteristic of Lovecraft that it must have been a parody, though Lovecraft's letters don't support the theory. Perhaps he just decided to cut humanity some slack for once. It may be edifying to note that the many books, games, and TV series which have drawn upon the works of Lovecraft for almost a century have far more in common with "The Dunwich Horror" than any of his other works. It's worth noting that the event that saves all of humanity from being potentially slaughtered by the Old Ones happens early in the story: It's when a common guard dog mauls Wilbur Whateley to death! After that, the "victory" the human character struggle for is really just cleaning up the mess that Whateley left (in the form of his partially-human twin brother that's rampaging through the countryside).
At the Mountains of Madness also has some shades of this. While still a pretty dark story compared to some of the more extreme examples on this page, it does contain one of the only monsters Lovecraft wanted us to somewhat sympathize with (the Elder-Things). Also while Danforth is psychologically messed up by... whatever it was he sees at the end, he has it pretty easy compared to some of Lovecraft's other characters. (Some versions add mention of him being committed to an asylum, but in the original novella it's mentioned that he still acts his normal self most of the time outside of the occasional strange muttering.)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is basically an adventure story with Cthuloid trappings — Nyarlathotep Himself shows up toward the end — and a happy ending.
Even in "The Call of Cthulhu" Cthulhu's cult is defeated (although still active enough to finish off the survivors and narrator) and the premature awakening stopped. Cthulhu himself even gets physically knocked out at one point, and although he regenerates all the damage almost immediately he still decides he's had enough and goes back to bed.
"The Shadow Out of Time" includes humans characters from the years 2518, 5000 and even 16,000 CE. So even though Lovecraft's stories make it seem like humanity's in constant peril from Cthulhu rising or the Wilbur Whateleys of the world unleashing the Old Ones to murder us all, humanity clearly survives for quite a while in an (at least partially) un-murdered state.
Matthew Davenport writes a whole bunch of Lovecraft Lite stories:
Andrew Doran by Matthew Davenport is pretty far to the Lite portion of the spectrum with Andrew Doran being a heroic two-fisted adventurer battling Nazis, Great Old Ones, cultists, and monsters while walking away with victory (nearly) every time.
The Trail of Cthulhuuntil the very end of the book subverts it, going out on a very bleak and appropriately Lovecraftian note, much closer to a Cosmic Horror Story.
Derleth did this quite a bit. He came up with a number of higher and benevolent powers to side against the monstrousities of Lovecraft's canon. He also associated each of the beings with an element, meaning they could also be beaten by properly summoning the opposite elemental (as in "The Dweller in Darkness"). He was pretty much the father of Lovecraft Lite.
Whether intentional or not, at least some of Derleth's stories actually feature "horrors" that come across as designated villains more than anything else. Take the human-masked aliens in "The Dark Brotherhood", who for all their weirdness converse with the human narrator easily and openly enough — really monstrous infiltrators plotting to take over human society in the long run, or more victims of human misunderstanding and xenophobia?
Most of Simon R. Green's novels feature some flavour of Lovecraft Lite, most evident in his Forest Kingdom series. Basically, Angels, Devils and Squid is predominate with humans able to beat all three.
The Whyborne and Griffin paranormal romance series by Jordan L. Hawk. "Happily ever after" is a genre requirement, so you know our favorite couple is always going to save the day regardless of how crazy things get.
And another contributor to the original Cthulhu mythos, Robert E. Howard often wrote in the same way as well. The universe is ultimately hostile in his works, and mind-melting horrors that contaminate everything they touch are plentiful in his works. The difference is, characters often are badass enough to look them straight into the eyes and, rather than Go Mad from the Revelation, stab them in the face. And the Conan stories generally follow the example Robert E. Howard set as Conan's creator — they are on the line between Lovecraft Lite and Cosmic Horror Story. Conan regularly battles eldritch things and always comes out of it okay, although they are still treated as freakishly terrifying. "The Tower of the Elephant" even has an Eldritch Abomination (of sorts) who is basically the tragic victim of the story's human villain. With Conan's help, he can finally get even with his tormentor.
Stephen King dips into this quite a bit, most notably in It. His characters often run into supernatural enemies that verge on Eldritch Abomination status, but an undercurrent of faith in basic human goodness and occasional glimpses of a possible Big Good keep the majority of his work from full-on Cosmic Horror Story territory. Endings tend to be bittersweet and usually hard-fought, but true Downer Endings are few and far between.
Dean Koontz just falls way too far on the Idealistic Side to avoid this trope. The alien invasion in The Taking has all the trappings of Cosmic Horror Story complete with a couple of Lovecraftian references... except it turns out to have been an Apocalypse (sort of) in which humanity's wickedness is punished (cue Koontz's Anvilicious rants about the downfall of Western civilization) and all children and sufficiently virtuous (i.e., conservative-ish) adults are spared. The subsequent new world actually seems rather utopian. The Eldritch Abomination in Winter Moon is defeated by an everyday American nuclear family.
Every singleBrian Lumley attempt at a Cosmic Horror Story ends up like this. Great Old One Ithaqua rules supreme on an alien planet, but his Half-Human Hybrid daughter leads La Résistance. Cthulhu has a good brother named Kthanid. His most famous contribution to the mythos, the Cthonians, who cause massive earthquakes, drive people insane through prolonged psychic contact, and burrow through bedrock and magma like a hot knife through butter... can be killed by contact with water. The same story that introduces them features a secret society whose modus operandi is locating sleeping eldritch abominations and blowing them up with bombs and an enormous drill.
The United States of Monsters has the Elder Gods being ancient fallen angels that live sleeping under the Earth as gigantic monsters. They're worshiped by evil cults and humans are constantly trying to bring them back to life. They can still be killed, though, if you have the right spells or magical patron.
The Supervillainy Saga has the Great Beasts and their Brotherhood of Infamy cult minions. Gary proceeds to interrupt the summoning of the former and ends up cutting it in half with his scythe. The cult even has its own version of the Necronomicon called the Book of Midnight.
Clark Ashton Smith's stories often fall into this, not because of actual content, but because of attitude. Yes, there are horrors beyond imagination lurking just beyond humanity's sight, and the universe does not give a crap about whether a primitive race of two-legged apes lives or dies, but this is usually no reason to Go Mad from the Revelation. And "strange and inhuman" means "malevolent" considerably less often. Also, humanity as a whole manages to outlive all the Eldritch Abominations plaguing its past and present, and survive until the Sun starts dimming (by the way, note, that Clark Ashton Smith's and Lovecraft's work were supposed to happen in a shared verse).
In some aspects, the Laundryverse is even more horrible as the standard Lovecraft universe, because the repercussions are discussed, and presented, in great detail: for example, instead of saying how a group of sufficiently determined madmen can very well unleash something capable of destroying the entire universe, The Atrocity Archive features a visit to the dying remnants of a parallel universe where the Nazis succeeded at doing exactly this.
And yet, while some people do go gibbering mad from witnessing the sheer frailty of humanity compared to these forces, the only reason the world has held together so far is humanity's own actions. Many countries have secret agencies to counter supernatural threats, one of them being the titular Laundry. No matter the threat, it usually drives the protagonists to greater determination and ingenuity in holding the line, instead of madness and despair (and, of course, the little detail that said determination tends to win them at least temporary victories).
Emphasis on "temporary". The problem is that CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (AKA, the Stars being Right) is just getting warmed up and still has another seventy years left to run. A reduction of Earth's population by 90% through nuclear war has been considered as a viable solution to reduce humanity's psychic imprint that may usher forth the local Cthulhu.
Of course, Charles Stross also wrote "A Colder War", which readers might better describe as Lovecraft Dark.
J. R. R. Tolkien's works, and particularly The Lord of the Rings, feature demons of immense power whose only goal is to enslave and destroy all in their path. Be it Sauron, Morgoth, the Balrog, Saruman of Many Colors, the Witch King or even the Ring itself, each is powerful enough to smite entire armies. Their insidious ability to sap their opponents' will to fight is a recurring theme—a creeping hopelessness that takes over and weakens any defense. Additionally, The Ring inspires some to try to use it for good until learning too late that it's Power at a Price. On the other hand, the forces of good have equally spectacular heroes on their side, whose willpower can easily withstand even the worst psychological onslaught. And in the end, even Sauron is defeated by nothing more than a couple of hobbits. This is even more evident in the books, compared to the films, given that the motif of reluctant heroes who are more susceptible to the Enemy's influence was added for extra drama on the big screen. Tolkien's original heroes were extremely resolute. Sauron et al. are more like fallen angels than eldritch abominations. But Tolkien also includes Ungoliant, a light-devouring spider who seems to not fit into his own creation myth, and nameless things beneath the Misty Mountains, of which Gandalf says "even Sauron knows not". Plus the tentacled Watcher outside Moria.
By Work
Blood in the Mist is set centuries after humanity is wiped out in a nuclear war and Earth was covered in blood-colored crystal, but the Solar system has been populated by human-animal hybrid "Vectors". The story follows a corporate police officer on Venus as she investigates a bloodthirsty cult dedicated to an extradimensional entity, guided by her own less xenocidal entity.
The Books Of Cthulhu anthologies are pretty much a collection of books that run on this genre. The Eldritch Abomination monsters are still there but all of the protagonist are Two-Fisted Tales pulp heroes and emerge victorious as often as not.
The short collaborative story "The Challenge from Beyond" ends up like this because Robert E. Howard's part comes after Lovecraft's. (There are other writers too, but these two dominate the story.) Lovecraft leaves the protagonist in terror trapped in the body of a Starfish Alien who exchanged minds with him; Howard has him go kick ass in the alien world in it. Frank Belknap Long finishes things off by showing how the alien that took over the human's body meets an embarrassing end, thus saving the world.
Discworld has plenty of examples of abominations — the things from the Dungeon Dimensions, the Hiver, etc. But ultimately, none of them succeeds in causing permanent damage, and the heroes always win in the end. It helps that they're defined, somewhat; they're explicitly less "real" than everything else, which makes them simultaneously more magically and psychically potent, and much more vulnerable physically. Rincewind once took one out with camera flash, and held several off with a sock containing half a brick.
Yob-Soddoth deserves special mention for the name alone.
Note, too, that occasionally the Discworld version of an Eldritch Abomination will turn out to be deserving of some pity.
The Auditors of Reality give a bit of a Lovecraft vibe whenever they show up. Not least because their stories tend to center around Death.Though it should be noted that Death is about as far from this as an Anthropomorphic Personification can possibly be and in fact teams up with the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse in order to fight them.
...while it is true we have to ride out, Death added, drawing his sword, it doesn't say anywhere against whom.
Several of the Doctor WhoExpanded Universe novels use Lovecraftian elements, and they're all inevitably Lovecraft Lite. One of the more self-aware is the Doctor Who New Adventures novel All-Consuming Fire by Andy Lane, which alternates the narration between a Public Domain Character19th-century guest, who finds the experience full of incomprehensible strangeness and mind-scarring horror in classic Lovecraft fashion, and the Doctor's companion, who's much more blasé about the whole thing. ("Rugose alien monstrosities? What, again?") All-Consuming Fire is so self-aware about being Lovecraft Lite that the monster turns out to be a moderately powerful Starfish Alienpretending to be an Eldritch Abomination.
Haruhi Suzumiya, wherein sentient data entities are too busy trying to understand each other's motivations and the powers of the eponymous Shorttank to concern themselves with the after-effects their actions have with humans on Earth, and/or the Human Aliens they create. Just as unsettling, those same Human Aliens come equipped with their own hostile form of Blue-and-Orange Morality, to the point the villainous ones veer straight into Humanoid Abomination territory. That said, as a comedy, the series is far more on the idealistic side than the cynical, and the heroes have more than enough powers (and a secret Trust Password) to come out on top.
Scream for Jeeves, by P. H. Cannon, is a Bertie Wooster/Lovecraft crossover, retelling a number of canon stories as Bertie/Jeeves adventures. Jeeves, of course, is Up To Snuff, having been dealing in Eldritch Phenomena since a lad...
The Mall of Cthulhu by Seamus Cooper is a light comedy novel set in the Lovecraft mythos, wherein a nerdy barista and his FBI agent best friend battle a cult of skinheads attempting to raise Cthulhu. While the main characters are fairly messed up as a result of their brushes with the unspeakable, in this universe the supernatural seems more likely to make you a codependent, socially awkward, unlucky-in-love loser than a gibbering lunatic.
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny presents opening the gate to the Great Old Ones as a game played by Jack the Ripper, Dracula, the Wolfman, witches, mad scientists, and assorted other stock characters of horror. And it's narrated by Jack the Ripper's dog. What's interesting here is that looked at carefully, the actual setting isn't really much brighter or more idealistic than straight Lovecraft. All the coziness comes from the "insider's perspective" on the happenings, as well as the main characters' resistance to the more debilitating forms of insanity.
Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! is pretty well-built on this concept. Nyarlathotep is a silver-haired Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Cthuguha is her StoicStalker with a Crush, Hastur is a cute little boy in a yellow hoodie, and the Shantak-Bird is Nyarlathotep's Pokémon-style pet. While monsters get splattered with reckless abandon, for the most part the series is a Romantic Comedy parody. On top of this, the male lead Mahiro is a fan of Lovecraft, and alternates between Genre Savvy (looking up information about new aliens in Call of Cthulhu gamebooks) and Genre Blind (he's terrified by Nyarko's advances because he's afraid she'll turn out to be just as evil as her fictional counterpart).
John Dies at the End, while dipping into how meaningless, cruel, and violent the human world is, notes that the dark forces that the eponymous John and protagonist David fight are just as human as they are - and incredibly immature. The Big Bad turns out to be a gigantic, reality-warping organic supercomputer with the voice of a prepubescent boy and tossing out racist, homophobic slurs by the dozen in an attempt to look tough, and the forces it works with aren't any better - one of the Big Bad's servants talks like a bratty tween trying to act black. In the end, a bomb destroys the Big Bad.
The heroes killed an elder god with reality. Literally. A mundane nuke only infuriated the creature, but a magitech reality amplifier destroyed it. They can't handle linear time any better than we handle them.
In general, the whole point of the series is that all those ghosts and monsters stories have been told about are real...and like any real thing, they can die if you know how to do it. As quoted in the foreword...
You know what the difference between me and you really is? You look out there and see a horde of evil, brain eating zombies. I look out there and see a target-rich environment.
"Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear. In 1938 an African-American college professor investigates the shoggoth populating reefs off the coasts of Maine. Rather than suffering a horrible death, the shoggoth contact the professor telepathically asking him to be their new master; having turned against the Old Ones, they find their new freedom unbearable. This puts the professor in a quandary — the shoggoth would make the perfect weapon against the rising tide of fascism in Europe, but is he morally right to enslave them again? In the end he tells the shoggoth they must learn to be free, and leaves to France to enlist in the army.
Chasing the Moon makes a invokes this to prove that Tropes Are Not Bad. The story starts out as a classic Cosmic Horror Story with a quirky side before deconstructing the very concept. Bottom Line: apparently horrible alien beings are more likely to Form seem (and act) "horrible" if you treat themjust as horribly yourself; conversely, even if they seem horrible (or horribly alien), you might be surprised how similar, intelligent and not actually horrible it actually is.
The Innsmouth Legacy by Ruthanna Emyrs is a story about H.P. Lovecraft's traditional othering of the Deep Ones, only the protagonist is one. They are a noble culture that, if not pacifistic, then at least no danger to surfacers.
The Boojumverse by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette. Despite humanity populating a solar system preyed on by brain-stealing Mi-Go, zombie-raising Arkhamers and extra-dimensional monsters like the doppelkinder and bandersnatch, human ingenuity has produced technology capable of fighting them, and the stories tend to end with the protagonist prevailing, usually thanks to The Power of Friendship.
Interestingly, considering the general bleakness of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, the semi-related novella Boy in Darkness is this. While he's intended to be sacrificed to the obviously Lucifer-esque Eldritch Abomination, the White Lamb, the unnamed protagonist, a young boy (almost certainly Titus) not only manages to slay the Lamb physically with fairly little effort, but in doing so saves Hyena and Goat from the Fate Worse than Death planned for them, and turns them back into humans in the process. They promptly make a Heel–Face Turn and let him go on his own.
Fritz Leiber's short story "To Arkham and the Stars" is an interesting twist on the original Cthulhu Mythos. Set several decades after Lovecraft's own stories, many of their surviving protagonists have learned that there are positive sides to the cosmic forces they once dreaded, and have established friendly relations with several Mythos species. The overall atmosphere is positive and hopeful for the future, a total inversion of all the original stories referenced. And in a strange way it kind of works.
Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids falls pretty firmly here. Grownup expies of the Scooby Gang (with dashes of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Encyclopedia Brown's Sally Kimbal) return to the lakeside town where they solved their cases as teens and face off against prehistoric fish monsters and a lake sized tentacle flailing elder god from the far reaches of space and prove up to the task.
The Sun Eater: Eons ago the Lovecraftian gods, the Watchers had been defeated and reduced to bones in their battle against the Cosmic Entity, the Quiet. Jumping almost 20,000 years in our future, a Servant Race to these gods are battling a faction of humanity and their quest is essentially to bring back their gods and destroy the universe. Unfortunately for these aliens, human created A.I. gov't gone mad had created Star Killing weapons millenniums ago...
WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us? features a number of obvious Lovecraftian themes and references. The lore concerning the 17 Beasts and Visitors wouldn’t be too out of place outside of a Cosmic Horror Story. Plus a number of characters have names clearly inspired by Lovecraft’s works. Still, despite the constant threat of the world ending and many tearjerkers, the story has an uplifting tone. It’s more about living your life to the fullest in the face of inevitable doom rather than giving into despair. The story also does something rare in that it actually makes you empathize with the 17 Beasts. Similiar to works by Yoko Taro it adds a layer of depth to its otherwise alien antagonists and gives them understandable motivations.
World of Warcraft: Chronicle put a new spin on this, revealing the Old Gods to be servants of the Void, an unknowable and horrifying force from the dawn of time. However, while the hopelessness of fighting them became directly plot relevant, it was for the villains. The Burning Legion was formed by a once-good titan because he felt that the only possible hope in foiling the Void's plans was by wiping out all life in the universe and leaving it dead. On the other hand, hope is being increasingly portrayed as a unique and indomitable force of the heroes, who have stood against the Legion against all odds, and will one day confront the Void with the same conviction.
In Seal of the Worm the titular Worm has an impressive list of eldritch powers. It can corrupt the children of its enemies into puppet soldiers and warp the geometry of its city so all caves in the world lead to (and from) there. Anything in its presence or the presence of its minions loses the ability to comprehend either technology or magic, making war machines and great magicians equally helpless against it. What makes it qualify for this trope is that behind the veil of choking darkness is a flesh-and-blood giant centipede, and that removing someone's ability to comprehend grenades doesn't make them any less explosive.
ends up like this because Robert E. Howard's part comes after Lovecraft's. (There are other writers too, but these two dominate the story.) Lovecraft leaves the protagonist in terror trapped in the body of a Starfish Alien who exchanged minds with him; Howard has him go kick ass in the alien world in it. Frank Belknap Long finishes things off by showing how the alien that took over the human's body meets an embarrassing end, thus saving the world.