Jonathan: We’re going to talk about a K-lytics report on cozy fantasy. Everyone needs to get a hold of this because cozy fantasy is surging. I spent about an hour skimming the report so I could present the highlights on the episode, but I’m going to dive deeper on my own because I write fantasy, and there are elements here I need to use.
The quickest way to understand cozy fantasy is to think about The Lord of the Rings. The epic story is good versus evil, Mordor, and the war for Middle-earth. The cozy part is the Shire. It’s a bunch of mostly happy people whose problems are petty. The “bad guys” are the Sackville-Bagginses trying to take the silverware. The worst threat is usually some annoying person in the background.
And at the end of The Lord of the Rings, Lobelia winds up being a kind of hero because she’s so stubborn that even Saruman can’t break her. The hobbits have an innate strength because they live in a hopeful place, and that hope is part of what allows Frodo to endure the corruptive influence of the Ring, which feeds on ambition.
Thomas: One interesting thing is there’s a meme about this. When I was a kid, the Shire sounded boring. Now it’s aspirational. It’s people living in peace with each other.
Jonathan: I just want to sit in my book nook with a cup of tea.
Thomas: Yes, and for the biggest drama to be who is invited to the birthday party and who isn’t. In some ways, that gives contrast to the end-of-the-world story. A lot of writers jump straight into epic stakes without first establishing a sense of place and a sense of what’s worth defending.
The end-of-the-world story feels bigger when you start with the Shire. When characters talk about sacrifices for something back home, you know what they mean because you spent time there before the quest.
The challenge is keeping it interesting. What’s fascinating is that cozy fantasy has become a genre built around the question, “What if we stayed in the Shire for the whole story?”
What is the cozy reader craving?
Jonathan: The cozy reader is craving escape. People are trying to get away from the news and the constant drumbeat of high stakes. They want relief from “everything is World War III.”
They want a book about someone caring for tea dragons, little creatures that grow tea leaves, where you learn how to brew tea and find peace with cute little critters who love tea.
There’s a craving for what I would call nonsense, because I like epic-scale stories. But I understand the pull. People just want to get away.
Can cozy fantasy be a “seasoning” instead of the whole genre?
Thomas: I’m reading a Seth Ring litRPG right now. It has big stakes, but it also takes breaks.
There was an entire chapter where the protagonist goes into a dwarven forge and upgrades his armor. Not a paragraph, a whole chapter. It was a soothing pause from the intrigue, drama, and violence. It still built the world because it wasn’t just any armor. It was magical armor with special dwarven metal.
It worked, and it created contrast.
So cozy fantasy can be the main genre, but it can also be seasoning. In that sense, it’s like romance. Romance can be the genre, or it can be a thread running through an action-adventure story.
As people long for more optimism, there’s a growing desire for stories with lower stakes. Not every story needs to be about the multiverse. It’s fatiguing.
Jonathan: In big multiverse stories, the most beloved characters are often the “NPC” types. Agent Coulson had such a fan base that they created Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. because he was popular as a side character.
Cozy emphasizes those characters. People who would be side characters in an epic story become the focus.
A lot of cozy titles are things like Assistant to the Villain or Apprentice to the Sorcerer. The point is smaller concerns. “I’m trying to make my hours. I don’t want to blow up and die.” It’s relatable.
How does cozy connect to old fairy tales?
Thomas: This connects to ancient fairy tales. My wife reads aloud to the kids a lot. I overheard a story about a princess who was blessed by a fairy to not be very pretty. Very old-fashioned.
What struck me was how insulated the protagonist is from the political drama around her. There are big stakes, diplomatic negotiations, kingdoms, but she’s not part of any of it. That insulation creates a cozy feeling.
There’s no dark overlord. There’s no existential dread. It has a happy ending, like most fairy tales.
Where did cozy fantasy come from historically?
Jonathan: Cozy fantasy draws from the pastoral tradition, which goes back to Greek poets. It was refined by Roman poets like Virgil. They idealized rural life, presenting shepherds as symbols of simplicity, peace, and harmony with nature.
Later you get pastoral literature in the 1500s and 1700s, like The Shepheardes Calender and Windsor Forest, which present rural life as refuge from the complexities of court life.
Then you get the domestic novel. Pride and Prejudice is cozy. It focuses on the intimate, everyday lives of its characters: community, relationships, personal growth. Nothing major happening in the world.
Thomas: There’s a world war going on during Pride and Prejudice. The Napoleonic Wars. People sometimes call them World War Zero because the fighting spanned the globe among global empires. Meanwhile, the Bennets are deciding who to marry. None of the guillotine or the political stakes show up on the page. It’s all offscreen.
What do readers want right now?
Jonathan: The demand on Google is higher than the supply. People are searching for cozy fantasy books, and there aren’t enough to meet demand.
If you can write cozy quickly, do it well, and hit that heartwarming feel, there’s opportunity. It should feel like holding a warm mug of tea.
Thomas: I wonder if part of it is authors feel that a low-stakes story is a less important book.
Jonathan: If you feel that way, don’t write cozy. You can’t fake it.
Thomas: That’s true. Some authors will never pull it off. Jonathan, you are that author. Not writing cozy is the right call for you.
The best thing you did was smashing marines and zombies together. There’s no making that cozy.
But there are other writers who have wanted to write cozy their whole lives, and the zeitgeist finally caught up.
Most writers are in the middle. They can add cozy elements without switching genres. Done well, it adds musicality.
In music, you have notes and rhythm, but you also have dynamics, the markings that tell you how loud or soft to sing. In choir, my director used big hands for loud and small hands for quiet. That contrast gives emotional power.
Because The Lord of the Rings starts in the Shire, the Charge of the Rohirrim hits harder. The story earns that volume.
Can a dungeon story be cozy?
Jonathan: Would a dungeon-builder fantasy count as cozy? It’s a world totally in the protagonist’s control. Safe and warm?
I don’t think so. You have the word “dungeon.” The only way is to treat it as subversive, focusing on the dwarf building it, having a rough day, wanting to go to the tavern after work. Smaller concerns.
Thomas: I read a book with a cozy dungeon. It was a litRPG about a family, which is rare. The dad is strong. The mom is a healer. The kids have family drama, normal family drama, while surviving in a litRPG world.
At one point the dad conquers a dungeon, bonds it, and uses time dilation for crafting. Time moves differently inside. They can do four days of crafting inside for one day outside. Once it’s bonded, they control the difficulty, and there are safe crafting zones.
So it depends on what you mean by dungeon. The word is going through a semantic shift.
Jonathan: A dungeon has to be conquered. Conquering isn’t cozy. Once conquered, you can make it cozy, but the conquering part isn’t.
How is cozy fantasy different from noblebright?
Jonathan: Noblebright is about conquering evil, holding back darkness with heroic optimism. Cozy doesn’t do that. Cozy doesn’t touch the dark. It isn’t even brought up.
Olaf from Frozen is a cozy character dropped into a larger story. He wants hugs, warmth, and happiness. Cozy is more about the emotional volume and pacing.
Thomas: And you can put cozy inside grimdark. A cozy start makes the dark feel darker when it gets shattered.
Jonathan: There’s a Warhammer 40,000 novel in the Horus Heresy series, The Unremembered Empire. Guilliman has a safe home world, and his adoptive mother is there. She’s sweet, human, and you love her.
Then Curze shows up, basically Batman and the Joker combined, and he stalks into the safe space. Suddenly the cozy element is under assault, and the tension spikes because you care.
That inversion is powerful.
Thomas: It’s John Wick’s dog.
Jonathan: Exactly. That’s grimdark.
Thomas: But it starts with a cozy setup. The man is grieving, he’s sad, he has this dog, and it’s tender. Then the bad guys kill the dog, and the movie becomes what it becomes.
Without the dog, you don’t get the same emotional payoff. After John Wick kills his seventieth bad guy, you’re still cheering because they killed his dog. People who are normally gentle are like, “He hasn’t shot enough people yet.”
Cozy is a tool. One way to grow in craft is to try writing straight cozy fantasy to learn the tropes. But you can also work these tropes into almost any genre to deepen contrast.
Some stories don’t work without it.
The plot of the wronged assassin getting revenge is common in Hollywood. What made John Wick different and turned it into a franchise was opening with that cozy element. That contrast moved it from a good film to an amazing one.
Why do people pay so much for Starbucks when they can make coffee at home? Coffee has bitterness, creaminess, and neutral water.
What you pay for in a latte is less water. Espresso is more bitter, but there’s less dilution, which allows more cream. It’s more bitter and creamier at the same time.
Cozy works like that. You remove the neutral layer. John Wick is more violent than most action movies, but it gets away with it because the cozy element was cozier than most action movies.
That contrast is what makes it hit.
Jonathan: Welcome to Author Update, where we explain cozy using John Wick.
