some musings about cozy fantasy that (predictably) becomes about my love for robin mckinley

[lirazel]

Thanks to dolorosa_12 for linking to some interesting musings on cozy fantasy. I appreciated this article by Liz Bourke that made me articulate to myself why I just Cannot with the cozy genre (whether in fantasy or mystery) despite being very into domesticity and interiority. Bourke frames it as the opposite but reflection of grimdark stuff: fiction that lacks in tonal contrast. I think this is true. She elucidates this as being very different from other things that get labeled as "cozy" but that are really domesticity or interiority. These things can overlap on Venn diagrams and often do, but they aren't the same thing. I personally adore domesticity and interiority in my stories, but hate stories that lack that tonal contrast.

That's what I like about Robin McKinley--she can go full domestic (as in Chalice, Deerskin, Spindle's End, Rose Daughter, parts of Sunshine) without losing that tonal contrast, and so I eat it with a spoon. But if something's too fluffy, I am out of there. Also out of there if something is too grimdark. I have a very well-honed receptor that figures out early on in a story whether it's going to be in the temperate zone, and if it's not, I nope right out.

My idea kind of story--of any genre, whether fanfiction or original--is something that goes really angsty or poignant so that the happy ending (and I prefer happy endings most of the time) feels earned. I personally feel cheated if I read a happy ending that doesn't feel earned, that feels too easy.

Sometimes I will read a short fanfic about people being happy, but that is only because they already earned that happiness in canon. And I honestly don't read many of those.

I don't like cotton candy. I don't like the food and I don't like the literary equivalent. I've always been a savory person, both with food and with stories. I want things to feel emotionally real. I want the emotions to be realistic no matter how imaginative and alien the world is. I like dramas more than comedies, in general, but the comedies I like have enough realistic characterization/relationships/arcs that I can love them.

But of course the opposite is true too. I don't want to eat only vegetables. I don't like grimdark stuff. Things that are completely humorless strike me as unrealistic too! Life has humor! At least a glimmer of it! In even the worst circumstances. Life has hope! Life has relationships!

One of my favorite professors in undergrad used to say that literature is something that tells us, "This is what it feels like to be human." (Even if it's about aliens or unicorns, it's telling us something about how we are human.) And if something doesn't have both good and bad, laughter and tears, hope and heartbreak...it just doesn't feel human to me, and so what is the point? The line between good and evil does indeed run directly through the human heart, and no story that doesn't have both (even if in not-concentrated versions) just has no appeal for me.

I like this thought too:

It’s illuminating to compare the modern “cosy mystery” genre with the mystery novels written in the 1920s and 1930s to which they are sometimes compared – or the 1940s and 1950s – and find in the originals much less of an urge towards the comfortable.

AGREED. The Golden Age books tend to be deceptively cozy--if you scratch the surface, there's always a darkness or discomfort there. Which is just not true modern cozies. This is why I can read a Patricia Wentworth book, but not a modern cozy, even if, at first glance, they seem similar.



Now, all of this is a preference thing. Other people don't need that tonal contrast the way I do, and that's fine. I'm not judging anyone for what they choose to read/watch/whatever. I do think that Bourke is right that we can see the trend towards either grimdark or cozy as saying something about our cultural moment (basically, a retreat from moral complexity in one direction or the other), but that's not the same thing as judging people. If people want to wallow in the cozy right now because the real world sucks so hard, good for them. But I am never going to read those stories. They aren't for me.

If you don’t have the contrast of something bitter, sweetness can be very one-note. But bitterness, or even seriousness, to excess also becomes a form of monotony. Both modes often suffer – in an artistic, rather than commercial sense – from rejecting tonal contrast, and the potential of such contrast to highlight different parts of the human condition, and thus move the audience to reflect more deeply on the work and on themselves. It is in both cases a rejection of emotional complexity as well as moral complexity.

Yes, exactly.




I also enjoyed Wesley Osam's considerably snarkier thoughts on Legends and Lattes mostly because I know that I would have the same reaction if I read the book. Which is why I'm not reading the book!

I often wish more fantasy novels would focus on ordinary lives. Literature in general is not about adventure, but about… well, life. What it means to be a person in the world, even (especially) an ordinary person who is not going to save it.

And then Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes came along. And I said, “No, not like that.”

SAME, bro!

And also:

Instead, this is genre as warm fuzzy blanket. Unlike almost everything else in this review, this is not a criticism; there’s a place for fuzzy blanket books. I just don’t think there’s any reason they can’t have ambitions along some other axis, even as they build a cozily familiar world.

Yes! I actually think that Chalice has a cozily familiar world in some ways, but just because the worldbuilding feels at first glance like cottagecore doesn't mean that a) the details can't feel realistic and b) the plot and character arcs can't be more textured. There's a whole section of The Hero and the Crown where Aerin is trying to figure out how to make fire-repellent so that she can fight dragons and she's working with smelly herbs and keeps getting singed, and what other writer is doing that? Rose Daughter is as much about gardening as it is about falling in love with the Beast. Then you've got something like Deerskin, which has one long stretch that is essentially about how to live alone in a cabin in the woods by yourself and another long stretch that is about how to raise tiny puppies, and you just don't read stuff like that very often outside of classic middle grade chapter books! (Of course, the backdrop of the book is horrific trauma, so....) Honestly, imo, nobody does cottagecore-for-emotional-realists like McKinley. To me, she perfectly balances that aesthetic with actual emotional heft. Her attention to domestic details and the work of women is married to a beautiful world full of characters with actual struggles. I long for more writers doing the same! No one else scratches that itch for me!

Comments

[slaymesoftly]

"Cozy fantasy" is a whole new term to me. I have read Sunshine, and was pretty pleased with it, but not sure I've read anything else by Robin McKinley- maybe? The name is pretty familiar to me for an author I've only read once. "cottagecore" is also unfamiliar. What is that, exactly? The whole post was very interesting, if a bit bewildering, to me.

[lirazel]

Well, I talk about Robin McKinley frequently, so that may be where the familiarity comes from!

Cozy fantasy has been a buzzy genre for the past few years. Cottagecore is an aesthetic that is popular online and has been for a few years, like "dark academia." The best way to get a sense of it is to search the word and see the images that pop up.

[evewithanapple]

Interesting - a similar article went semi-viral on BlueSky, making a lot of the same points, and cozy fantasy fans were . . . not happy. There's got to be an internet law about how, the more inoffensive/twee a property is, the more rabid its fans will become when it gets criticized.

[lirazel]

That article is interesting! (And makes me want to rewatch Babette's Feast, which I loved when I watched for a film class in college.) It's definitely more judgemental in tone, so I kind of get why the fans weren't happy, though I don't actually disagree with it.

My favorite comedian, Chris Fleming has a whole bit about how the most toxic person you know is also the one who overidentifies with a small mouse living under a toadstool (or something) and it's very funny.

[rachelmanija]

My feeling is that it's the difference between sweet and saccharine. I love McKinley's Beauty. I thought Legends and Lattes was boring and The House on the Cerulean Sea was outright vomitous.

[lirazel]

That is a pithy way of putting it!

[chestnut_pod]

I agree entirely that anyone calling McKinley cozy is outright wrong! Domestic, yes, but if my reread last year taught me anything, it's that she's extremely alive to the horrors of the home and family even as she's hopeful about the possibility of recovery and familial healing. In a weird way, I think she's often actually more Gothic than cozy? That's the other major genre I can think of which has a profound interest in the domestic, but a twisted domestic.

[lirazel]

she's extremely alive to the horrors of the home and family even as she's hopeful about the possibility of recovery and familial healing

YES!

Oh interesting! I had truly never thought of her as Gothic-inspired, but I can certainly see that in some of her stories. I need to think about it more!

[bluapapilio]

I feel the exact same way, but Legends & Lattes was my first 'cozy fantasy' and I was not expecting to be stressed like I was because I believed that 'cozy _' meant little to no conflict. The happy ending came after that stress and the reckoning. I really enjoyed how it showed depression and friends helping pick you back up when things just plain suck.

[lirazel]

I was not expecting to be stressed like I was because I believed that 'cozy _' meant little to no conflict.

Oh wow! That does seem like an unpleasant experience to be faced with stress when you weren't expecting it!

[genarti]

I agree entirely!

I think for me it's that I DO love quiet, domestic books and books that are fundamentally about people being (reasonably) happy and kind to each other... but they have to feel like PEOPLE to me personally, not like cardboard cut-outs. Which is obviously a subjective thing, but part of that is feeling like the world has sufficient depth that it doesn't just shape itself to the protagonists' needs, and like there are options other than happiness for them. Also, that the work behind their material comforts matters, whether they're the ones doing it or not; it isn't just done by handwavy magic (unless that's explicitly part of the worldbuilding! that's fine if so) or by people who don't count enough to deserve a cozy story.

Also, I agree very much about McKinley's heft, and the attention to domestic details and work. She's just so good at that! (Though I don't know that a lot of her work counts as cozy, per se... but it does explore a lot of the same stuff that more explicitly cozy books try to embrace and often fail to make compelling or plausible.)

[lirazel]

but they have to feel like PEOPLE to me personally, not like cardboard cut-outs. Which is obviously a subjective thing, but part of that is feeling like the world has sufficient depth that it doesn't just shape itself to the protagonists' needs, and like there are options other than happiness for them. Also, that the work behind their material comforts matters, whether they're the ones doing it or not

This makes total sense and is well put!!!

Oh, I don't think McKinley is cozy at all--I think she appears cozy at first glance because of the aesthetics of her worldbuilding, but I don't think she is at all.

[dolorosa_12]

Exactly so. Domestic doesn't have to mean cosy (and in McKinley's case certainly doesn't). I'm thinking about Monica Furlong, another author whose work is almost entirely concerned with the domestic — the everyday labours of ordinary premodern life, like growing and preserving food, spinning and weaving, gathering peat for fires, and so on — but there's certainly nothing comfortable or cosy about it at all. But the stakes feel earned and real (and human, even when, like McKinley, the books deal with the supernatural), which seems to be the difference between these books, and the kind being criticised in the various linked reviews.

[lirazel]

Yes! Furlong is a great example! I think you were the one who introduced me to her so THANK YOU!

[dolorosa_12]

If it wasn't me, I was certainly going around praising her books constantly, so I was there in the background. They're such amazing (and underrated) pieces of writing.

[scripsi]

I'm so with you here! I never really thought about it before, but you are right, cozy that is tonaly bland, just gets bland and boring.

[lirazel]

:D