I don't know if I fully agree the distinction is about "people" maybe about "relationships" or something similar. But I'm glad she came to terms with her discomfort with the term "cozy" despite...
I don't know if I fully agree the distinction is about "people" maybe about "relationships" or something similar. But I'm glad she came to terms with her discomfort with the term "cozy" despite wanting similar sorts of stories herself. I appreciate wanting to find that rock in her shoe. I think similarly about my dislikes and poke them with a stick til I understand them.
But I definitely disagree that they can't be about robots, as specifically the Monk and Robot duology is one of the examples of cozy fantasy/sff often given. It features a tea monk called Sibling Dex and a Robot named Mossflower and while it's also "solarpunk" or sometimes "hopepunk" they're definitely cozy and about the people and relationships. It's just that Mossflower, while an "it" and an "object," is still a person.
This article seems really bizarre to me. Well, no, the point of cozy fiction is precisely this: You're reading about one person's stakes, or maybe a small group of friends. If the scope of "who is...
This article seems really bizarre to me.
Why do I hate it when stories are called “low stakes” because they’re not about saving the world? The stakes for anyone, in their own life, are high.
Well, no, the point of cozy fiction is precisely this: You're reading about one person's stakes, or maybe a small group of friends. If the scope of "who is impacted if things go wrong" is bigger than a couple people, it's probably not cozy fiction.
Cozy, in SFF, just means it’s about people.
What?????? All good SFF is about people. Look at Green Bone Saga. You don't get more "about people" than that, but this is pretty much the farthest thing from cozy possible. For another, look at Masquerade (Traitor Baru Cormorant & sequels, unfinished). Tell me it's not about people.
Cozy SFF is SFF where the small scale is more important than the large scale. You can have an entire novel where you're living in a castle with statues that come to life at night, but the most exciting thing that happens is that it rains one day and they have a picnic in the basement after a mad dash through the rain. Or you're in a world with orcs, gnomes, adventurers, quests, and magic, but your entire story is about opening a coffee shop.
The big scale exists, we know it's out there, but we're standing in defiance of the rest of the world. Find a story worth telling about the smallest of events and tell it.
P.S. I don't agree with the characterization of Becky Chambers as "cozy." For me there's way too much social commentary in Monk & Robot, and way too much depressing shit in Wayfarers [for this label to apply]. To me it feels like the publishers gave it this label, and so people read the books as what they're told they are and not as what they actually are, and miss all of the depressing and terrible shit that's happening, constantly.
I've never seen the term 'cozy' used to describe works, and am unfamiliar with most of the works being discussed, but that definition also sounds bizarre. Would that mean many of Ray Bradbury's...
Well, no, the point of cozy fiction is precisely this: You're reading about one person's stakes, or maybe a small group of friends. If the scope of "who is impacted if things go wrong" is bigger than a couple people, it's probably not cozy fiction.
I've never seen the term 'cozy' used to describe works, and am unfamiliar with most of the works being discussed, but that definition also sounds bizarre. Would that mean many of Ray Bradbury's stories are cozy? 'The Veldt', to give a widely known example, only involves the domestic life of a single family over a short time, yet I think 'cozy' doesn't exactly fit.
The big scale exists, we know it's out there, but we're standing in defiance of the rest of the world. Find a story worth telling about the smallest of events and tell it.
Is Solaris cozy? There's a completely incomprehensible, planet-sized entity they're orbiting around, but, when the text isn't the narrator describing the movement of clouds, or the ocean, the story is just a few people on an old space station dealing with their flaws and memories. That there are no stakes beyond those people, nothing in the story really matters, and the human element of it will always remain distinctly small-scale, is a major theme of the novel. Yet I don't think it is anyone's idea of a 'cozy' novel. If anything, it's the sort of heavy classic that is perhaps more discussed than it is read.
Meanwhile, I feel like many of Lem's more humorous short stories (like in The Cyberiad) are rather cozy in some intuitive sense by comparison, despite often having vast, if absurd, stakes. Yes, a typical story might have a title like 'How the World was Saved', and involve the protagonists saving all of existence from destruction, but... it's really just the light-hearted antics of two people, not an exploration of the impossibility of comprehending the truly alien and the limitations of human exploration.
Extend this beyond science fiction, and it seems even more problematic of a definition. Is Ulysses cozy?
For me there's way too much social commentary in Monk & Robot, and way too much depressing shit in Wayfarers
This distinction seems important to the idea of 'cozy' stories, but seems like it's outside of the idea of defining it by stakes or people or events, and is instead about themes.
I think the Monk and Robot fits in as cozy, commentary or not, because the story is about Dex finding their place in the world and feeling as if they should be happy when they're not. I see it as...
I think the Monk and Robot fits in as cozy, commentary or not, because the story is about Dex finding their place in the world and feeling as if they should be happy when they're not. I see it as a solarpunk world, and I see why hopepunk is a similar label, but I think the world building fits.
I think Wayfarers falls more into Slice of Life which obviously can overlap with cozy but doesnt have to. Though I think there's some level of YMMV with "cozy".
In cozy mysteries there's still a murder for example. But there's just not a lot of emotional attachment to it. Other people find The House on the Cerulean Sea to be "cozy" and I think the child abuse inherent in the story is enough to make that very inaccurate. Cozy outside of "cozy mysteries" is a "vibes" based label IMO.
100% agree with you on House, I already had an impression that this was super pro-colonialism when I read it, and then seeing that it was actually inspired by the 60s Scoop horrified me. I can see...
100% agree with you on House, I already had an impression that this was super pro-colonialism when I read it, and then seeing that it was actually inspired by the 60s Scoop horrified me.
I can see that argument for Monk but for Wayfarer, they involve:
Wayfarer spoilers
* Ignoring a person's advance directives and force-administering unwanted life-prolonging medicine
* The death of a primary character's girlfriend (and I don't think you can say this death is less impactful cos she's an AI, as a strong thesis of this series is that the robots are also people
* Child labor in a work colony??
* One of the actual protagonists dying (but it's ok because he was a criminal)
* The near-death of a kid
* Societal coercion to have a child regardless of the character's wishes
Pei I think is very normal for us, but for the Exodans that renounced weapons is very unusual. I sort of think of her as being American contrasted with some of the rest of the world about our...
Pei I think is very normal for us, but for the Exodans that renounced weapons is very unusual. I sort of think of her as being American contrasted with some of the rest of the world about our attitudes about weapons and war. Ironically I was just thinking that the 4th book with all its bottle episode vibes might qualify as cozier especially in the cozy mystery sense, despite the conflict.
Face colors would be helpful but I can't imagine communicating entirely with them. Too wired for verbal communication. I wish for standard non-binary pronouns and general acceptance of them though. And found family I could actually stay with. Becky Chambers writes worlds I wish I could exist in.
Oh I agree with all your points about Wayfarers, I think that's why it's very individual what falls into the "cozy" vibe for people. For me the child abuse narrative was too strong even in the...
Oh I agree with all your points about Wayfarers, I think that's why it's very individual what falls into the "cozy" vibe for people. For me the child abuse narrative was too strong even in the background/history of it, but I worked in the field. The sadness and pain in Wayfarers doesn't hit the same - they're wrestling with big issues sure but I find it cozier than House. Maybe cozy is a spectrum outside of the mystery genre.
I don't agree with this take. Cozy is a sentiment, a vibe, a feeling. It can contain negatively charged elements, but I don't think a book can be considered "cozy" if it leaves you feeling...
I don't agree with this take. Cozy is a sentiment, a vibe, a feeling. It can contain negatively charged elements, but I don't think a book can be considered "cozy" if it leaves you feeling depressed or nihilistic. But "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky or "Hunger" by Hamsun are definitely about people, to cite two non-SFF examples. Being centered around human relationships or human introspection is hardly a guarantee of a cozy vibe.
The whole thing about soft vs hard SFF, also, was generally about distinguishing how hard the author tries to explain and justify the speculative elements of the story. A "soft" sci-fi story may have wormholes or warp drives but doesn't care how they work; a "hard" story will explain in some detail, usually by extrapolating from known physics, their mechanics. The latter kind of story often tends to have less of a character focus, but that's not inherent to the distinction.
It seems needlessly reductive to exclude stories based on "hard science" or with stakes on the level of nations or galaxies from being, at their core, stories about people, how they interact and how they understand the world. This distinction also has nothing whatsoever to do with the vibe of cozy. If I want to read a cozy book, I want to read a book that leaves me feeling, at worst, melancholic, at best, optimistic about the world. Yet there are a lot of books that are very dark, definitely not comfort reads, and yet are deep meditations on people and relationships and their place in the world.
To put it succinctly: cozy is a vibe. It has very little to do with the level of stakes, the level of scientific (ish) detail, and absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the level of character focus or narrative intimacy.
I have noticed this trend in tv, movies, and video games as well. I wonder if we are collectively trying to escape from lives that are getting increasingly complex and overwhelming. I only...
I have noticed this trend in tv, movies, and video games as well. I wonder if we are collectively trying to escape from lives that are getting increasingly complex and overwhelming.
I only graduated college during the pandemic, so I can’t really speak to how adult life was pre-pandemic, but life seems to have many layers of complexity and technology is breaking down the walls of the sanctuary that home once was. You constantly hear negative news due to algorithms trying to keep your attention, so reading a story of a nice life where all problems aren’t too bad is a nice form of escapism.
I would actually like to hear from older people who can let me know if feeling like finding your way in life is overwhelming is because I’m still fairly fresh in the adult world, or if something changed that has made life a bit more overwhelming for everyone.
Interestingly I’d heard the opposite — that western media has been leaning towards portraying cynical, corporate dystopias as the default, instead of dreaming of optimism during trying times. I...
Interestingly I’d heard the opposite — that western media has been leaning towards portraying cynical, corporate dystopias as the default, instead of dreaming of optimism during trying times. I guess there isn’t one objective vantage point from which to observe all of modern culture 😅
I agree with the trend you have seen in western media. I was trying to say that it feels like people seek out feel-good media to consume due to the rise in pessimistic media. The game Stardew...
I agree with the trend you have seen in western media. I was trying to say that it feels like people seek out feel-good media to consume due to the rise in pessimistic media.
The game Stardew Valley is a good example. In Stardew Valley, you move out of a city onto your grandfather's abandoned farm in a small town. You can interact with the townspeople, farm, fish, mine, or collect forageable items. It lets you enter a world where there are no tough choices, there's a strong community, and you have agency over how you live your life. It seems like those are things that many people feel they lack in their real lives.
Your question is worth it's own post I think, where it can gain attention from people who might not read this post about cozy fantasy. If I have misunderstood your comment I apologize. But here is...
Your question is worth it's own post I think, where it can gain attention from people who might not read this post about cozy fantasy.
If I have misunderstood your comment I apologize. But here is my attempted answer.
In my life, my early to mid 20s was by far the most difficult. School provides structure and community. Learning to chart my own path was confusing and frightening 30 years ago. I don't think it has gotten any easier.
Bad news and dread is not new. I grew up with nuclear terror. Today's issues are different with climate change etc but fear is not new.
Some books I wish I had found in my early 20s include Range by David Epstein, Algorithms to live by by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, Being Wrong Adventures on the Margin of Error, So Good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport. Breakfast with Seneca.
I don't know if I fully agree the distinction is about "people" maybe about "relationships" or something similar. But I'm glad she came to terms with her discomfort with the term "cozy" despite wanting similar sorts of stories herself. I appreciate wanting to find that rock in her shoe. I think similarly about my dislikes and poke them with a stick til I understand them.
But I definitely disagree that they can't be about robots, as specifically the Monk and Robot duology is one of the examples of cozy fantasy/sff often given. It features a tea monk called Sibling Dex and a Robot named Mossflower and while it's also "solarpunk" or sometimes "hopepunk" they're definitely cozy and about the people and relationships. It's just that Mossflower, while an "it" and an "object," is still a person.
I really enjoyed the Monk and Robot books. In addition to being cozy, they are meditative and philosophical although not at all rigorous.
Yeah it's not supposed to be "rigorous" it's just two people figuring shit out.
For sure. Just if you use the word philosophical, it can imply being difficult to parse.
This article seems really bizarre to me.
Well, no, the point of cozy fiction is precisely this: You're reading about one person's stakes, or maybe a small group of friends. If the scope of "who is impacted if things go wrong" is bigger than a couple people, it's probably not cozy fiction.
What?????? All good SFF is about people. Look at Green Bone Saga. You don't get more "about people" than that, but this is pretty much the farthest thing from cozy possible. For another, look at Masquerade (Traitor Baru Cormorant & sequels, unfinished). Tell me it's not about people.
Cozy SFF is SFF where the small scale is more important than the large scale. You can have an entire novel where you're living in a castle with statues that come to life at night, but the most exciting thing that happens is that it rains one day and they have a picnic in the basement after a mad dash through the rain. Or you're in a world with orcs, gnomes, adventurers, quests, and magic, but your entire story is about opening a coffee shop.
The big scale exists, we know it's out there, but we're standing in defiance of the rest of the world. Find a story worth telling about the smallest of events and tell it.
P.S. I don't agree with the characterization of Becky Chambers as "cozy." For me there's way too much social commentary in Monk & Robot, and way too much depressing shit in Wayfarers [for this label to apply]. To me it feels like the publishers gave it this label, and so people read the books as what they're told they are and not as what they actually are, and miss all of the depressing and terrible shit that's happening, constantly.
I've never seen the term 'cozy' used to describe works, and am unfamiliar with most of the works being discussed, but that definition also sounds bizarre. Would that mean many of Ray Bradbury's stories are cozy? 'The Veldt', to give a widely known example, only involves the domestic life of a single family over a short time, yet I think 'cozy' doesn't exactly fit.
Is Solaris cozy? There's a completely incomprehensible, planet-sized entity they're orbiting around, but, when the text isn't the narrator describing the movement of clouds, or the ocean, the story is just a few people on an old space station dealing with their flaws and memories. That there are no stakes beyond those people, nothing in the story really matters, and the human element of it will always remain distinctly small-scale, is a major theme of the novel. Yet I don't think it is anyone's idea of a 'cozy' novel. If anything, it's the sort of heavy classic that is perhaps more discussed than it is read.
Meanwhile, I feel like many of Lem's more humorous short stories (like in The Cyberiad) are rather cozy in some intuitive sense by comparison, despite often having vast, if absurd, stakes. Yes, a typical story might have a title like 'How the World was Saved', and involve the protagonists saving all of existence from destruction, but... it's really just the light-hearted antics of two people, not an exploration of the impossibility of comprehending the truly alien and the limitations of human exploration.
Extend this beyond science fiction, and it seems even more problematic of a definition. Is Ulysses cozy?
This distinction seems important to the idea of 'cozy' stories, but seems like it's outside of the idea of defining it by stakes or people or events, and is instead about themes.
I think the Monk and Robot fits in as cozy, commentary or not, because the story is about Dex finding their place in the world and feeling as if they should be happy when they're not. I see it as a solarpunk world, and I see why hopepunk is a similar label, but I think the world building fits.
I think Wayfarers falls more into Slice of Life which obviously can overlap with cozy but doesnt have to. Though I think there's some level of YMMV with "cozy".
In cozy mysteries there's still a murder for example. But there's just not a lot of emotional attachment to it. Other people find The House on the Cerulean Sea to be "cozy" and I think the child abuse inherent in the story is enough to make that very inaccurate. Cozy outside of "cozy mysteries" is a "vibes" based label IMO.
100% agree with you on House, I already had an impression that this was super pro-colonialism when I read it, and then seeing that it was actually inspired by the 60s Scoop horrified me.
I can see that argument for Monk but for Wayfarer, they involve:
Wayfarer spoilers
* Ignoring a person's advance directives and force-administering unwanted life-prolonging medicine * The death of a primary character's girlfriend (and I don't think you can say this death is less impactful cos she's an AI, as a strong thesis of this series is that the robots are also people * Child labor in a work colony?? * One of the actual protagonists dying (but it's ok because he was a criminal) * The near-death of a kid * Societal coercion to have a child regardless of the character's wishesPei I think is very normal for us, but for the Exodans that renounced weapons is very unusual. I sort of think of her as being American contrasted with some of the rest of the world about our attitudes about weapons and war. Ironically I was just thinking that the 4th book with all its bottle episode vibes might qualify as cozier especially in the cozy mystery sense, despite the conflict.
Face colors would be helpful but I can't imagine communicating entirely with them. Too wired for verbal communication. I wish for standard non-binary pronouns and general acceptance of them though. And found family I could actually stay with. Becky Chambers writes worlds I wish I could exist in.
Oh I agree with all your points about Wayfarers, I think that's why it's very individual what falls into the "cozy" vibe for people. For me the child abuse narrative was too strong even in the background/history of it, but I worked in the field. The sadness and pain in Wayfarers doesn't hit the same - they're wrestling with big issues sure but I find it cozier than House. Maybe cozy is a spectrum outside of the mystery genre.
I don't agree with this take. Cozy is a sentiment, a vibe, a feeling. It can contain negatively charged elements, but I don't think a book can be considered "cozy" if it leaves you feeling depressed or nihilistic. But "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky or "Hunger" by Hamsun are definitely about people, to cite two non-SFF examples. Being centered around human relationships or human introspection is hardly a guarantee of a cozy vibe.
The whole thing about soft vs hard SFF, also, was generally about distinguishing how hard the author tries to explain and justify the speculative elements of the story. A "soft" sci-fi story may have wormholes or warp drives but doesn't care how they work; a "hard" story will explain in some detail, usually by extrapolating from known physics, their mechanics. The latter kind of story often tends to have less of a character focus, but that's not inherent to the distinction.
It seems needlessly reductive to exclude stories based on "hard science" or with stakes on the level of nations or galaxies from being, at their core, stories about people, how they interact and how they understand the world. This distinction also has nothing whatsoever to do with the vibe of cozy. If I want to read a cozy book, I want to read a book that leaves me feeling, at worst, melancholic, at best, optimistic about the world. Yet there are a lot of books that are very dark, definitely not comfort reads, and yet are deep meditations on people and relationships and their place in the world.
To put it succinctly: cozy is a vibe. It has very little to do with the level of stakes, the level of scientific (ish) detail, and absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the level of character focus or narrative intimacy.
I have noticed this trend in tv, movies, and video games as well. I wonder if we are collectively trying to escape from lives that are getting increasingly complex and overwhelming.
I only graduated college during the pandemic, so I can’t really speak to how adult life was pre-pandemic, but life seems to have many layers of complexity and technology is breaking down the walls of the sanctuary that home once was. You constantly hear negative news due to algorithms trying to keep your attention, so reading a story of a nice life where all problems aren’t too bad is a nice form of escapism.
I would actually like to hear from older people who can let me know if feeling like finding your way in life is overwhelming is because I’m still fairly fresh in the adult world, or if something changed that has made life a bit more overwhelming for everyone.
Interestingly I’d heard the opposite — that western media has been leaning towards portraying cynical, corporate dystopias as the default, instead of dreaming of optimism during trying times. I guess there isn’t one objective vantage point from which to observe all of modern culture 😅
I agree with the trend you have seen in western media. I was trying to say that it feels like people seek out feel-good media to consume due to the rise in pessimistic media.
The game Stardew Valley is a good example. In Stardew Valley, you move out of a city onto your grandfather's abandoned farm in a small town. You can interact with the townspeople, farm, fish, mine, or collect forageable items. It lets you enter a world where there are no tough choices, there's a strong community, and you have agency over how you live your life. It seems like those are things that many people feel they lack in their real lives.
Your question is worth it's own post I think, where it can gain attention from people who might not read this post about cozy fantasy.
If I have misunderstood your comment I apologize. But here is my attempted answer.
In my life, my early to mid 20s was by far the most difficult. School provides structure and community. Learning to chart my own path was confusing and frightening 30 years ago. I don't think it has gotten any easier.
Bad news and dread is not new. I grew up with nuclear terror. Today's issues are different with climate change etc but fear is not new.
Some books I wish I had found in my early 20s include Range by David Epstein, Algorithms to live by by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, Being Wrong Adventures on the Margin of Error, So Good they can't ignore you by Cal Newport. Breakfast with Seneca.
You are not alone. Best of luck.