it's boggling my mind that "cozy fantasy" is a buzzy subgenre and how many things get bundled under the "cozy" label. i keep seeing t. kingfisher on there. t. kingfisher is one of my favorite authors of all time, and i read all her books. her most recent one is hemlock & silver, which i just read.
it's loosely based on snow white. the original snow white. in hemlock & silver, a child is murdered by having her heart cut out. you find this out in chapter 1. i think, perhaps, "cozy" as a book subgene is a more useless label than "cozy games"
i don't think games need to have stakes, per se. games need to have gameplay, and gameplay can be fun and compelling without stakes. but books need stakes. a book without stakes is incredibly fucking boring. and the stakes don't need to be world ending! there's a reason romance is a popular genre!
i'm just sick of looking at a book and it's being introduced to me as "cozy fantasy" and then the summary is like "this story starts when someone attempts to murder one of the main characters" like ex-fucking-cuse me?
What's a bit of casual murder among friends?
nothing cozier than some homicide for sure 💖
Just lil toku fam things
it's true tho LMAO