When I was seven, the first video game I ever owned was Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards for the Nintendo 64. In this game, the eponymous pink protagonist must travel across various worlds to collect the shattered shards of a magical crystal and return it to its home planet, a cheerful land of space fairies currently beset by a dark, sentient miasma. This is most definitely a game for children, with colorful and cartoonish characters and an aggressively upbeat soundtrack. The first level has the player travel across a verdant meadow crossed with charming little brooks, while the second level is a forest bathed in a warm autumnal dimness. At the end of each level, Kirby picnics with the friends he’s met along his journey. The whole game world is cozy, cheerful, and recklessly creative, with the nonsensical and charming abandon of childhood imagination.
This coziness makes the game’s secret ending all the more surprising. When Kirby returns the completed crystal to its home planet, the candy-colored streets are bleared with a black haze and swarming with monsters. Kirby ascends the city’s tallest building into a swirl of darkness, where he faces the amorphous entity Dark Matter, the defeat of which opens the possibility of encountering the game’s hidden final boss.
The game’s true antagonist, and the source of the miasma, is Zero Two, a giant bleeding eyeball with six seraphic wings. He is about as close to a Satanic figure as a children’s story could get. Beneath the halo of a fallen angel, his head is bandaged, hearkening back to an earlier game in which his past incarnation, Zero, tears out his eye in a last-ditch effort to destroy Kirby. The bandage implies that this new version of Zero has returned to wreak vengeance, motivated by envy and despair. Zero Two, a personified force of cosmic meaninglessness, is so tormented by his inability to experience happiness that he seeks to destroy all happiness in the universe, to inflict on the cosmos the same agony and emptiness he himself feels, to reduce the world to nothing.
Because Kirby, himself an insurmountably powerful entity of unknown origin, embodies the forces of love, friendship, hope, dreams, and simple unadulterated cheerfulness, he is the greatest threat to nihilism and therefore Zero’s greatest opponent.
Kirby faces him down in a swirling red and black void and shoots shards of crystal into the fallen angel’s eyeball. The music that plays during the fight is not the bombastic and dramatic swell one usually associates with a final boss theme. Instead, save for the quick rhythmic pulsing of strange percussion, the music is eerie, somber, a bit slow. And something about it evokes an inexpressible sadness.
Zero Two fascinated me as a young teen, when I actually finished the game. On the one hand, one can interpret him as a deeply tragic figure, so driven by anguish and loneliness, so tormented by his inability to love, that his only recourse is to destroy the love of others. Isn’t there something true to human experience in this extreme depiction of despair? Perhaps one thinks, for example, of schadenfreude, the sick pleasure one takes in the misfortune of others. Often such feelings of envy and violence are themselves the result of deep trauma, of viewing other people’s happiness as a sort of existential threat to oneself. In this respect, one can indeed view such nihilistic malice with some sympathy.
On the other hand, does this not also hit on something darkly mysterious about the nature of evil? The mystery of desiring nonbeing over being, of nothingness over the abundance of beauty. There’s something deeply disturbing about it, made all the more disturbing (at least to me) that I can see how a person might become so wounded as to end up in this place.
All this in a kid’s game, a game I first played when I was seven.
“Cozy” Vs. Traditional Cosmic Horror
For years I found the game’s ending fascinating, but I don’t think I would’ve been so taken with its depiction of dark subject matter if the game wasn’t otherwise so aggressively whimsical. The combination of childlike wonder and explicit darkness captured my imagination. It seemed to hit on something deep and true, something I’d never seen expressed in overt horror media.
Take H.P. Lovecraft, for example. Perhaps the most well-known writer of “cosmic horror,” his short stories paint a picture of an insignificant humanity in a vast, indifferent universe. The neurotic artists and scientists that people these stories see glimpses of alien forces so horrific, so far beyond human imagining, that they go insane because of it. Lovecraft’s godlike beings and eldritch abominations evoke an unsettling and numinous sense of terror at the sheer, unfeeling power of a cosmos that cares nothing for human wellbeing. It’s a bleak universe, but also fascinating to me (though I disagree with such a nihilistic vision of things).
These stories do ask quite fundamental questions about human experience, how we ought to understand our place in the universe, how we must come to terms with the unknown, given our frailty and the limitations of human knowledge. As flawed as Lovecraft certainly is (both in terms of purple prose and racism), I can’t deny that his stories are one of the things that first got me interested in philosophy as a teenager.
And yet, the overt horror of these stories still feels existentially flat to me. Flatter, at least, than the more surprising horror of Kirby 64. The game forced me to wrestle with deep questions about evil, love, despair, and cosmic nihilism that Lovecraft’s stories never did. While Lovecraft offers the aesthetics of numinous fear, this cartoony children’s game encouraged me to actually confront numinous fear.
Cozy Cosmic Horror and Childhood
Why is that? Why did the non-horror game give me a fuller sense of horror than actual horror stories?
Did Kirby 64’s juxtaposition of extreme goodness and extreme evil make it feel less flat? An acknowledgment of the sheer range of human experience? Or was it the way the horror slowly unfolded, toppling the game’s steady assumption of cheerful optimism—a simple matter of overturned expectations?
All of that might be part of it, but I think there’s something more fundamental going on. What I’ve termed “cozy cosmic horror,” that odd mix of childlike wonder and numinous fear, feels truer to me because it better reflects the complexity of human experience, and especially the process of growing up, than the flat universe of terror Lovecraft describes. (The secondary reason is that cozy cosmic horror is usually marked by a surprising lack of self-conscious sentimentality, something which, ironically, sometimes afflicts more overt horror media. But that’s a topic for another post).
When one grows up in a relatively stable household, one likely looks back on childhood through a haze of fond memories, maybe of roughhousing in the backyard with siblings on intrepid adventures of make-believe, or of building an idiosyncratic society of stuffed animals or having movie nights with friends. As a kid, you lose track of time. You wander in a world of wonder without thought of present or future. You have no agenda except the pleasure of experiencing things around you, of learning and playing, of letting your creativity run loose with unselfconscious abandon. (Though maybe I’m blinded by my own nostalgia).
But, of course, no one (or very few) can stay in this place of uncritical wonder. Nor should they; one has to grow up and learn how to actively navigate the world rather than passively experience it. You learn to keep track of time, to prioritize and make decisions, to balance your needs against the needs of others.
All of this is of course good and healthy, but there’s a certain sadness to letting go of the undifferentiated magic of childhood. And, what’s more, as you grow up, it slowly dawns on you that the world is full of things you don’t understand and things that scare you—evil and suffering you never could’ve imagined before. Maybe some of that suffering happens to you, poignantly crystalizing itself as an unescapable reality. And suddenly you must figure out how to navigate both the previous beauty of the world and also the reality of its horrors.
This isn’t a new idea, by any means. There are similarities to a sort of Romantic “loss of innocence,” the loss of inspiration Wordsworth complained of, or the moment after Coleridge’s ancient mariner shoots the albatross and his entire voyage goes dramatically and Gothically wrong.
But I think there’s something different going on in cozy cosmic horror. Whereas the Romantics seemed much keener on lamenting lost innocence, cozy cosmic horror doesn’t really look back to the past in the same way. In Kirby 64, there’s no bemoaning that the cheerful tone is gone. The contrasting realities of innocence and evil are simply presented without comment, as if to say, “These two realities exist. What are you going to do about it?” In other words, cozy cosmic horror feels in some ways more rooted in the present rather than in a wistful nostalgia. Because innocence isn’t mourned, that sense of childlike simplicity is actually carried forward into the horror, serving as a sort of bulwark against it. In a weird way, it’s more at home with the unfathomable reality of evil than any work of either Romantic poetry or traditional cosmic horror. More unflinching. Less indulgent in pathos.
Cozy Cosmic Horror and Trauma
Now, I don’t want to uncritically universalize. I am fortunate to have had an extraordinarily happy childhood. But not everyone has that. Not everyone has a suburban middleclass upbringing with a loving family. What about people who grow up in extreme impoverishment, or who are born into unstable family situations? Trauma, especially childhood trauma, affects one’s perception of the entire world. Maybe some people aren’t born into a world of childlike wonder from which darker realities might slowly emerge. Maybe some people are just born into horror, into the perceived flatness of an indifferent universe. I don’t want to discount the reality of such experiences. And to those who have undergone such trauma, I can only express my deepest sympathy and hope for healing.
Even in such situations, however, I do wonder if the type of media I’m calling “cozy cosmic horror” might actually help in that process of healing. (As a writer, I like to think so, at least. I can only hope that the sorts of stories I’m drawn to, and the sorts I like to tell, might legitimately help people, because the last thing I want is to revel in my own comforting narratives while remaining indifferent to the pain of others.)
But, insecurities aside, I digress. The point is that maybe “cozy cosmic horror” can be a consoling antidote to traumatized thinking. After Covid sent the whole world into lockdown, for example, I started noticing a lot of YouTube video essays about another video game, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. A common claim was that this game helped people cope with the pall of terror and isolation suddenly darkening the whole world. This game too strikes that same balance of childlike wonder and horror, and it unflinchingly examines themes of hope and despair, loneliness and empathy, extreme suffering and the inexpressible relief of healing.
The game begins with suffering and isolation. As Link wanders a dark forest on a quest to find his lost fairy companion, he is ambushed by Skull Kid the scarecrow imp, stripped of all his possessions, and transformed into a little wooden Deku Scrub. In an attempt to chase the Skull Kid, he falls through a nightmarish portal and stumbles into the strange land of Termina, over which presides an unknown feeling of unease. Above the city hovers a moon with a grotesque human face, and it is slowly inching toward earth. Something monstrous will happen in three days. The player is given a countdown timer to mark the hours until this impending doom, and Link must, somehow, stop it.
Without even his human body, Link is a total stranger in this eerie world, a nobody caught in a conflict he doesn’t understand, coming up against immense forces over which he has no power.
However, there’s a certain moment that offers respite from this futile alienation.
Through a hidden alley and underground canal, Link can find the isolated Astral Observatory, a quaint two-story building where an ancient astronomer lives. The first floor holds a storeroom crammed with crates and crystals, jars and papers and astronomical objects. Up a brightly painted spiral staircase, the astronomer stands before his immense telescope. The floors and walls of the astronomy dome are tessellated with bright geometric patterns, over which settles a warm diffusion of light. The soundtrack evokes a strange mix of joy and sadness with its droning, somber chord progression underlaid with a sparkling little instrument that might be a harpsichord. I don’t know music theory; all I know is the song, to me, feels like nostalgia, or like the night sky in summer.
The whole place is somehow lurid and soft, otherworldly and cozy.
It is also the hideout of a group of children devoted to helping the needy of Termina. (When you join their gang, they give you a notebook to keep track of all the people you meet in need of help). This contextualizes the observatory as a sort of safe haven, a place where the children can escape before heading back into the world to do good.
Its haven-like quality is heightened when Link looks out the telescope. In the far distance, he sees the Skull Kid perched on the clocktower, wearing the demonic mask for which the game is subtitled. The imp looks up to the moon, and the mask’s gaze is apparently so horrific that the moon sheds a meteor-like tear. The Skull Kid then mocks the moon with an obscene dance and leaps from the tower.
This brief interaction portends the horror the player knows they’ll have to face. They know they’re going to leave this haven and head into the vast unknown. Somehow, they’re going to face down the masked imp, stop the moon from falling, and save this world from the destructive forces that seem so far beyond the player’s control.
But, for now, this foreboding is contrasted with the Observatory’s pleasant music, and by the coolness and stillness of the navy night sky.
On Horror, Healing, and Hope
The moment evokes a sort of cosmic hygge, a feeling of coziness insulated from the unfathomable doom beyond, a momentary consolation as forces of evil gather far from these warmly lit walls.
I think about this moment a lot. When I was in highschool, I found myself in the midst of a multi-year long existential crisis, in which I felt totally unmoored from what I thought I believed about the world. Without burdening this post with the dreary details of a highschooler’s anxieties, the point is that the world suddenly struck me as strange and terrifying, a dark swirl of unknowns, with cold nihilism threatening to encroach.
And yet, even when nothing felt certain or solid, I remember moments when my racing mind would still, and I’d simply sit in a bubble of peace, listening to the wind through the tree out my window. I felt calm and steady and inexplicably safe.
Those times felt so similar to the Astral Observatory. Even then, I found myself comparing the two. I am convinced that this simple moment in a videogame truly managed to capture an actual existential reality. An experience of grace, maybe. Or hope.
There’s so much of that throughout the entire game. After Link manages to transform back into a human, he sets out to heal a hurting world. All across Termina, Link meets characters who are suffering through hardships in their personal lives and in their communities. The restless ghost of a fallen chieftain, guilty over failing to protect his community; estranged lovers cursed by the Skull Kid; a failed musician; a lonely little girl whose father has been transformed into a monster. Some know the world is ending in three days and are trying to come to terms with their impending deaths.
And Link interacts with these people through quiet moments of human contact. He listens to their cries for help and does what he can to heal their sorrows. Sometimes, that healing is simply a matter of being present. Moments of light and color in a swirl of darkness. Moments of love.
In the video essays I mentioned, people attested to being moved by these moments. They were heartening and consoling. In a world so full of fear, disease, violence, and political factionalism, this game recalled players to an experience of hope. It didn’t diminish the horrors of the world but instead illustrated ways to face them. It is this same quality G. K. Chesterton recommends in ostensibly “dark” fairytales. He writes, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Sometimes it’s the darkest stories that offer the most hope, because only such stories can reveal ways of navigating real darkness. Saccharine fictions can’t do that.
Maybe that’s what cozy cosmic horror boils down to. It offers hope, not through a sort of naïve optimism that everything will go well, but through the reminder that terror isn’t all there is.
The universe is filled with horrors, and yet there are still places of safety and rest, places of healing, places of redemption. I suppose in some ways I’m drawn to this aesthetic precisely because I want to see the world this way. I want to be able to acknowledge the world’s horror, but to acknowledge it through capacious, childlike eyes—eyes that don’t shirk from evil but are capable of viewing it for the horror it is precisely because they also see the beauty and goodness of things, precisely because they still know how to hope. Evil is real. Decay, death, the vastness of the universe; these are all real. But so is light and color. So is friendship. So is love. There’s something lovely and life-giving about that breadth of vision.
So, cheers to cozy cosmic horror. I hope such stories might fortify us in trying times, console those who need consolation, and remind us that there’s so much more to life than sorrow and fear.
Other Media with this Aesthetic
Over the Garden Wall – an animated mini-series that explores the process of growing up (or of accepting death?) in a weird autumnal world inspired by Dante’s Inferno
EarthBound – a game about a group of children who must travel across a surreal world influenced by small-town Americana in order to stop a malevolent entity from consuming the world with hatred
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – a truly cosmic vision of the battle between good and evil
Puella Magi Madoka Magica – an anime in the “magical girl” genre that presents the conflict between hope and despair amid seemingly inescapable cycles of violence
The Moomins books by Tove Jansson – Definitely leaning more toward cozy, but these books explore dark themes with incredible subtlety and wisdom
Good Video Essays on Majora’s Mask
Majora’s Mask is a Timeless Masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxdHGpeMzj8
The Horror and Intimacy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si4cGATFuZ4
Why Majora’s Mask is My Favorite Work of Art Ever Made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=722oALnco_0
The Bittersweet Comfort of Majora’s Mask: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zQvwq_b7FI
Majora’s Mask in 2021 is an Existential Nightmare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRKjwhNlZHg
