#stakes

I recently read one where the main character is banished from her village. Great, could be conflict there... except she still goes to the market and pays for things, seemingly without worry. Another one had a penniless MC welcomed with open arms wherever she went. A third had a stowaway character instantly forgiven by a supposed desperate crew, who - again! - seemed to have no problem putting food on the table.

And like, I get it. Not having to think about characters paying rent or worrying about when they can eat next is a relief these days. Everyone likes chosen family. But there is a huge lack of conflict to these stories that also results in a lack of character development. No one faces a hardship that is both the result of the environment around them and their own personal flaws. Bad choices don't have negative consequences characters have to learn from, because there are no consequences at all. Endings just kind of peter out or feel unearned. There is no real stress in the environment that feeds into stakes at all.

Think of the Murderbot Diaries, which I have bafflingly seen people refer to as cosy. Murderbot doesn't have to worry about feeding itself. Murderbot would rather watch its shows, but it repeatedly has to get involved in situations it doesn't want to instead. Murderbot would like to pretend it doesn't have to deal with icky emotions, but the driving core of the books are its attachment to its human friends (and ART). Murderbot makes choices that have positive and negative consequences, and has to learn how to deal with its own emotions and anxiety while also learning to accept that other people like it. While you might not be writing science fiction, it's a great study on how a character tells you one thing about themselves while their actions tell you another.

Another series I liked a lot is Daniel M Ford's Warden books, which take a lot of the dressing you see in cosy fantasies - generic DnD tropes, found family aspects, and romance - and injects it with mystery, plot, and stakes. Aelis de Lenti is rich, powerful, and connected, but she steps on toes, insults other characters on accident, and is locked out of the great path she believes she deserves. Throughout the first book, she learns and grows, and carries that forward into the next books.