I’ve been on a rewatch/watch of Elementary (I only watched the first two seasons before this but now I’m watching everything) lately and contemplating on whether or not one could consider the show cozy. Sure, there are murders nearly every week but the show is relatively light on the gore and the high octane. The conflict and climax is almost always about the solving of a crime puzzle; the pieces quietly falling into place. The denouement almost always happens as we are told what things have been uncovered behind the scenes. Also, the two protagonists of the show are frequently found cooking, or fixing something, or doing something domestic at some point during at episode. Those moments are always my favourite moments in each episode. In short, if you look at it one way, Elementary is utterly cozy. If you take into account all of the other things, then maybe, it is not.
I’ve been drawn to cozy things and coziness my whole life. It’s a no-brainer; I’m an introverted homebody and my favourite places are always my home spaces. These spaces may be cluttered, and a little messy but everything about them is about making myself a safe nest against the iniquities and inequities of the outside world. Which does not mean I do not try to fight the good fight when I leave my nest or that I don’t have a good head for problem-solving and putting out fires. But I am sustained by my personal spaces and my quiet time. They fuel me and help me survive the Big Bad Outside. My novels and my stories are very much in this flavour as well. My protagonists have home, good food, comfort and friendships. But when they need to take action, they do. And when they need to huddle in despair, they do that as well. That’s life. And that’s my definition of cozy. As part of a balance, as are all things in our neverending odyssey in trying to negotiate the variables of being alive. Note that I do not say this is the only way to apprehend the concept or “vibe” of cozy. But it is my personal preference when it comes to the fiction I write. I like the other type of cozy as well, for reading!
I stopped using the term “cozy” for Watermyth some months ago because a lot of gatekeeping of the subgenre was happening. I didn’t feel it was necessary to tag Watermyth with that label. It can exist as it is, as a multidimensional mythic fantasy that straddles both domestic fantasy and epic fantasy while written in a literary fashion. I wasn’t sure it would find its readers, but it did. And now, I see there’s more gatekeeping happening but you know what, it happens. No matter how many people like the things we authors do, we do tend to fixate on that one person we feel did not “get it”. In this case, many people are arguing about what this subgenre is, or what it should be. And I find it befuddling, and somewhat amusing.
My take is that there’s room for more than one type of cozy. Mine has always been very Asian in flavour. I love reading books that have domestic elements, especially if there’s food involved. As a teenager I devoured tons of Malay novels because I adored the description of Malay food and Malay home life. It’s one of the things I love best about reading South Asian fiction (and memoirs!) as well. See, that’s my definition of cozy fiction that may not fit other people’s ideas at all. Because for me, a lot of the discourse around “cozy” is super Eurocentric. That’s part of the reason why I stepped away from appending the term to Watermyth and the rest of the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms books. I thought to myself, “I’ll let people decide if this is cozy or not. I don’t have to tag the thing to let people know it’s the thing.”
My perspective of “cozy” is the same as my perspective on a lot of other labels. For example: romantasy. In a restrained slow-burn way, Watermyth has elements of romantasy, but I whittled away at those elements while I was revising it because I didn’t want the romance aspect to dominate the narrative. There are also some elements of dark academia. But I didn’t want the novel to be defined by those labels and subcategories. In the end, I didn’t need to do so. Reader reviews have forged their own categories, showing they at least “got” what the book was about.
I just hope that people realize there’s room for many kinds of cozy fiction. The ones that allow you to huddle in a safe wordspace filled with books, good vibes and hot beverages. And the ones that juxtapose safe spaces against complicated and traumatic pasts. It doesn’t have to be either/or. As a reader, I enjoy all kinds of cozy. I’m a Gothic scholar who writes about the Domestic Gothic (amongst other things), and have taught years/semesters worth about Ann Radcliffe novels. Of which I often say in my lectures, “at the end of all the adventures and traumas our heroines prevail because they fought in their own way to forge their own safe spaces; with love, companionship, and hearth/home.” In a nutshell, this is what I hope each volume of the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms will provide. Whether it’s cozy or not, is entirely up to you.
Curious to read my debut novel Watermyth? Here’s the information on how to purchase the ebook (and how to borrow it from the library) and the print edition.
Published in Petaling, Selangor, Malaysia, 2025