The Wandering Inn’s Core Problem
Disclaimer: I’ve read up to the end of book 1. Yes, I’m aware that the prose and characterization improves, but my critique does not target those areas.
I’m not a fan of the Wandering Inn.
I know, I know, the debates have been done to death. TWI seems to invite either pure vitriol or rabid devotion. As a result, the Goodreads page for the first book more resembles a warzone than it does a review page.
The critiques are myriad: the writing style is amateurish. The characters are infuriating. The story is too long (14m~ words!).
On the other side of things, you have the fanbase who will defend the story to their dying breath. They see a massive world full of believable characters. A plot that’s admittedly slow, but still draws you in with an artful picture of daily life in another world.
And so the Reddit threads go on for infinity, back and forth and back and forth until your eyes are bleeding and you’re left there wondering how the hell these people can keep up such a relentless argument for hours at a time. TWI fans have an excuse: if you have the time to read the single longest fantasy book ever written, then you have the time to debate with strangers on the internet. But what’s the excuse for the haters? Aren’t you supposed to have actual jobs and a life? That’s why you refused to read past the first 8 chapters—yet you still have the time to goof off on Reddit for no apparent gain?
Oops, we’re getting off topic. What’s more, I think I’ve successfully pissed off the haters as well as the fanboys. Well done, me. What are we here for? Ah, yes, I’m not a fan of the Wandering Inn. But why continue beating that dead horse? I think that my reason for disliking the Wandering Inn is an interesting one, and not one I’ve heard articulated before. In addition, I believe that my points touch on some interesting things I’ve observed in regard to LitRPG that the community might find some value in.
What is the core appeal of a LitRPG story? This is a question I faced while studying in order to write and serialize my own story, Fateweaver. There are several possible answers. There’s the relatability of the protagonists, who deal with situations that the readers wish to face. There’s the combat and action, which tends to be fun to read.
I think there’s something more foundational going on, though. One of the more curious advantages of LitRPG is how you have the familiarity of games systems that act as natural landmarks for readers. These landmarks help to provide a sense of progression for the story that other genres don’t have. They must rely on abstractions such as the gaining of maturity (in the case of more character-focused fiction) or perhaps the gaining of certain powers (in more speculative fiction).
LitRPG gets to cut away all that and use levels as landmarks, no need to abstract the gaining of power. Instead, it’s represented as a lovely numerical value. This, I think, reveals something of what the core appeal behind LitRPG (& Time Loop & Wuxia) is. The crystal-clear progression and sense of power the reader vicariously experiences as the main character becomes stronger. I think that’s something that a lot of people struggle with today. They feel as if they’re trapped without a clear goal, and even if they have a goal they don’t see a way to achieve it. They feel powerless, trapped under the weight of a massive, incoherent system. LitRPG provides an avenue for escape and to vent off some of the steam that builds up as a result of living under such conditions. I think that’s the primary reason that people read LitRPG.
What does this have to do with The Wandering Inn? I think that the root of TWI’s problem for me is that it tries to deconstruct this whole premise that I stated above, and ultimately fails.
Deconstruction is a tricky topic and I won’t go super in detail, but suffice to say that the LitRPG genre is still very young and hasn’t yet had a major deconstruction to rip it to shreds. We’ve come close—Beware of Chicken is the one that comes to mind, but after the first book it seems to settle into he realm of reconstruction. And yes, I know that it’s Wuxia but the core appeal is still the same and there’s a ton of crossover between the genres.
TWI to it’s credit, tries harder than any other story I’ve read to break apart the LitRPG genre. In other stories, you’ll have individual tropes attacked, but you don’t get anything that really gets down to the core of LitRPG and asks the hard questions about the pursuit of power and incremental growth that we’ve all just taken for granted. TWI on the other hand, gets pretty close.
You see shades of this throughout the first book in the more critical examination of leveling and classes and in the careful depiction of daily life that is lacking from most LitRPG. There’s a respect and even devotion for the normal: the daily acts that are carried out without expectation for glory or great reward. You see it in the tender care that the writer puts into things as simple as wiping tables. And you know what? It’s goddamn amazing. I honestly, genuinely love many of those scenes, despite my problems with the story as a whole.
Levels, and the concept of killing for the sake of power, is directly challenged by the story. I think even people who haven’t read the story have heard of the tagline ‘No Killing Goblins!’. The protagonist, Erin, often seeks peaceful means and resolutions to problems instead of jumping straight to violence.
Erin herself is a subversion of the typical LitRPG protagonist. She reacts very badly to her transmigration and panics a great deal. She has no special destiny or abilities beyond the simple ones that she claws out and develops for herself. Her class of Innkeeper is mundane, perhaps even uninteresting compared to the classes that are used in other pieces of fiction.
At first glance, this seems like the deconstructive work that the community has been waiting for. A masterpiece that clears the way for the next generation of LitRPG to come in, right?
Unfortunately not.
Despite how hard it attempts to question the ideas of progression fantasy, it seems to me that TWI falls right back into the trappings of the genre when you look at the story’s core.
When I was reading through the first volume, I remember being initially excited. I was zooming along, enjoying the care put into the small details, the way it truly brought you into the author’s world, and the way Erin actually felt like a real freaking person!
Now look, I love me some isekai and progression fantasy, but I could appreciate what TWI seemed to be building toward. There was something special going on here.
But the longer I went, the more of a sinking feeling started to enter my chest. There was something ringing false about it. Something about how Erin treated other characters and how she treated the world that rubbed me wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I kept on reading, and reading, and reading. I mean, Erin was unlikable, but I was able to swallow that. After all, wasn’t that what I was looking for? I hated Ryoka but I think everyone did so I won’t even comment on that. And then, when I saw Erin whip the ass of that dude who’s good at chess thanks to her sheer skill and intelligence it finally hit me.
The Wandering Inn is a power fantasy. Sort of. At the very least, it doesn’t seem to know what it is. At the end of the day, Erin is a moral exemplar, sent from the heavens above to provide guidance to the backward savages of the foreign planet. She does not do so with force or raw intelligence as in more traditional progression fantasy. Instead, she uses her connections and people skills to make change.
Make no mistake. This is power fantasy. It’s a power fantasy where the MC does go through intense difficulty to obtain their power. It’s a power fantasy where the MC doesn’t primarily use physical or magical power, but it’s still a power fantasy.
I’m not just talking about Erin being able to resolve conflicts or Ryoka’s Ryoka-ness. I’m also talking about the fact that it’s taken for granted that she’s (almost) always good. Who hasn’t wished that? Who hasn’t thought that their particular moral code is the right one, and that if they had the chance they’d be able to fix things? This is the power fantasy of the moralist, and it’s an important part of power fantasy in general. You see traces of this in more traditonal LitRPG, such as Primal Hunter. It’s taken for granted that the MC is (usually) in the right, and he often gets the chance to explain and lecture to others that they did something stupid or have an immature/foolish worldview.
And, of course, let’s not forget that Erin does advance in power and defeat opponents many times stronger than her, even if she usually has to use clever tactics in order to win.
One could make the argument that the suffering she goes through makes it so that it outweighs any of the power fantasy aspects the story has. Surely Erin has a sucky enough life that no one would want to be her.
To that, I would note that power fantasy isn’t always about an easy life. In Hell Difficulty Tutorial, the MC suffers a lot. He gets his arm cut off, has to endure his mind getting messed with, and otherwise deals with a lot of sucky things that are a tad bit spoiler-y. If a fan of that book tried to tell you or I that means that Hell Difficulty Tutorial isn’t a power fantasy, I would laugh in that person’s face. If anything, the struggles reinforce the power fantasy by making the eventual triumph more satisfying.
And again, despite everything else, Erin continues to gain resources and allies (i.e. power) the longer the story goes on. These resources allow her to affect the world in a truly significant way many, many times! Again, I’m not even going to talk about Ryoka.
So what?
The Wandering Inn isn’t what you wanted/expected. Who cares? Does that actually mean anything quality-wise? Could it be that I’m simply walking in with prior assumptions and they’re ruining the story for me? Well, no, I don’t think so. For me, part of what gives a story real lasting power is unity. Unity of theme, unity of character, unity of plot, all working together for a harmonious whole. I think this is why, in an odd, pulp-fiction-y way, some (not all, some!) of the best LitRPGs are masterpieces: because they are completely oriented toward creating a damn good time. They are unified in their purpose and this elevates the final product.
This is the issue with the Wandering Inn, for me, at least. A severe lack of unity. The deconstructive parts scream at me from the page, demanding that the rest of the story fall in line. The pure power fantasy fights with those deconstructive parts and pushes for an entirely different direction. The result, to me, is a confused end product that doesn’t seem to have any thing outside of itself. The characters have individual character arcs. The plot progresses. But to what end? What’s the thing that pulls everything together and unifies it into a collective story, greater than the sum of its parts?
I don’t think the Wandering Inn has one.
Then we have the awkward elephant in the room. Namely, that the Wandering Inn is hilariously, insanely successful. Not only that, but it’s amazingly resonant with its audience. The fanbase loves this story. They find it emotionally powerful and are willing to sit down and read it over multiple times. How? If the story has such major flaws, then why do people praise it so much?
Well, the dumb, lame, and mostly-false answer is that popularity doesn’t equal quality. Think Twilight or most of the crap that comes out on the AAA games market.
But that’s totally unfair and it doesn’t give due credit to Pirateaba, because despite all the flaws, there are certain things that TWI does that are truly exceptional. The worldbuilding, the way it’s able to explore daily life, the way that it captures such a detailed picture of humanity at its most real—all of that is icnredibly powerful, and it’s something that is worthy of praise. I suspect that this is the key behind TWI’s success. Despite the many, many flaws of the story, there are simply some things that it does better than just about any other story out there. One might even argue that this excuses those aforementioned flaws.
But what do I know? Perhaps this essay is nothing more than the jealous rantings and ravings of a significantly less successful author. That’s the tricky part of literary analysis when you have a stake in the field. Well, whatever. I’m going to be sitting down and reading Rise of The Infernal Paladin.
Hope you all got something out of this, have a good day.