Co-Geeking

I was checking something about the cozy fantasy genre the other day when I suddenly fell into a deeeep rabbit hole.

(And, by the way, long post warning. This post is not far from the dreaded “Let me tell you about my character” trope, so read or skip accordingly… TL;DR: Playing around with cozy gnomecore-themed photographs to make moodboards for my latest D&D character.)

During the covid pandemic’s most intense stage, I started hearing about cottagecore. New to me, however, are the terms (or cottagecore subgenres, as some call them) naturecore, bloomcore, grandmacore (or grandparentcore) as well as cottagegore (not as bad as I first thought). There are also aesthetics called goblincore, fairycore, pixiecore, and vulture culture. Some are easier to figure out, but the rest confused me at first. Time for research! 🙂

Reading up on these various cores immediately brought to mind the inspiration slideshow I made last year for my character in Erik’s latest Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which just happens to have quite a cozy setup in a homebrew fantasy world. I realized that, while I was planning out some details for my character’s home all those months ago, I had been dabbling in some variety of cozy core. Since my character is a Forest Gnome, perhaps gnomecore?

Apparently gnomecore as an established term is fairly recent, and sometimes prone to be mixed up with lawn gnomes. For my purposes, though, it’s a combination of naturecore and pixiecore (magic, comfort, forests, mushrooms, moss, water, clutter, indoor plants) with a dash of bloomcore (village greenery, flowers, berries, fields, fruit trees).

The most important facet, I think, is secrecy—or at least for my recovering guerilla Gnome druid it is.

For those who don’t know, Forest Gnomes are a subrace that’s described in the D&D 5th edition Player’s Handbook as rare and secretive but friendly with other good-spirited woodland folk. Like other D&D Gnomes, they live in well-hidden, bright and comfortable underground dwellings and make use of tricks, clever construction, and illusions for their safety.

My Gnome went through a decades-long war at a young age and lost a lot of the characteristic delight in life and exuberance that D&D Gnomes have. After all the loss and anguish, her home (a very private burrow) and its comforts are, therefore, extremely important to her as she slowly works to clean up the damage the war caused in her environment while also recovering herself.

I imagined her hidden burrow to be surrounded by a variety of food sources, either wild (honey, berries, nuts, mushrooms) or carefully cultivated to mimic wild occurrences of each type (apples, root vegetables, various plants for brewing tea or seasoning food). She industriously gathers and preserves stocks of foodstuffs.

Images: Mashups by Eppu Jensen. Stream surrounded by trees by Oliver Roos via Unsplash. Female druid algorithmically generated by Dungeons LAB on Pinterest.

Mashup1: Peeking through ferns cropped from a photo by Claire Luxton Art on Instagram and others via Unsplash (chicken by K Kannan, olive tree by Lucio Patone, daisies by Ilona Ivanova, mushrooms by Jesse Bauer).

Mashup2: Fireflies by Jon Liu via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) and others via Unsplash (deer by Ken Goulding, waterfalls by Cassandra Moore, low-light forest by Lukasz Szmigiel).

Mashup3: Images via Unsplash (lavender by Aaron Burden, hungry bee by Nicole Pearce, sprouts by Chetan Kolte, purple flowers by Chris Abney).

Mashup4: Images via Unsplash (radishes by Markus Spiske, pillar candles by Sixteen Miles Out, heirloom tomatoes by Vince Lee, stack of bread by Louis Hansel, charcuterie board by Daniel Lee).

Mashup5: Images via Unsplash (mortar and pestle by Katherine Hanlon, bowl with herbs by Nathan Dumlao, candle in lantern by Joanna Kosinska, drying flowers by Nicolette Meade, blueberries and raspberries by Tiago Faifa, wooden spoon with seeds by SwapnIl Dwivedi, dark Hobbiton movie set by T L).

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