As a writer, this is why I’ll never condemn cozy books with happy endings. This type of media, whether it’s games or books or music, helps real people get through crappy times intact, even if elitists sneer that overly happy stuff isn’t this or that. Usually people who are going through the worst times irl are the ones who need avenues of escape most. If you’re already living through crap, you don’t need media to remind you of the crap, you already know good and well that crappy things exist.
As a reader, that’s definitely why I do condemn overly negative books and other media. Even after reading all horror books available in the library as a teenager. Life’s complicated enough by itself.
I’m trying to write a story, and I struggled with this, especially when confronting certain realities:
- While fantasy, the story is meant to reflect some harsh political realities
- Multiple villains are killed, but the heartfelt good guys live.
- The ending has everything fixed and everyone’s happy.
I’m aware most stories don’t come anywhere close to a full happy ending like this. Every Batman story ends with Gotham still a miserable shithole. Every noir story ends with the case solved but everyone broken for it and the city still a dystopia. It generally has good reasoning, to reflect harshness of reality, but that’s a realm of fantasy I really want to venture into; one where things just work out.
What about Steampunk & Cyberpunk ? Funny that there are no biopunk, Solarpunk, teslapunk or even clockpunk stories
Thank Goodness You’re Here was the last cozy game I played and I can’t recommend it enough to literally everyone.
Matt fucking Berry makes it
So does the soundtrack imo. Idk why, but a lot of the songs are incredibly moving to me. Especially the track March, which plays a couple times in the game but most notably during the scene when you float up in the sky with a bubble.
Would explain my excessive base-building and decorating in Subnautica.
Meanwhile me playing cozy games: https://youtu.be/viM6_Z2Nwx0
That first paragraph put me off from the article because it positioned the research on gaming violence as if there were a positive correlation instead of reporting that it is actually negatively correlated. It also did not mention the positive research that came from the studies on game playing and eye hand coordination and the many other benefits video games have been proven to have. The author made it sound like this was the first positive thing about video games.
Yeah, because we were all doing mentally fantastic when Animal Crossing New Horizons launched. Remind me again, when was that again? Oh right. Just in the heart of 2020 pandemic quarantine when everybody was losing their shit, and storming state capitol buildings trying to force the government to reopen businesses, and doing pushups outside gyms as cops killed black men and triggered riots across the country.
Great days for mental health.
