Food and Other People - The Wandering Inn
A story to cure a broken heart, or make it stop bleeding.
There were ways to cure a broken heart, or make it stop bleeding. One of them was food. Food, and other people.
(The Wandering Inn 5.00, Pirateaba)
Until I read those words, I never wanted a tattoo. There was no conviction, no imagery, no belief I could commit to so strongly as to want it etched on my skin. That passage crystallised something I already felt in my soul, but could never quite express.
I'm writing this because I need a break. I'm stressed, I'm tired, I'm finally processing some teenage era trauma and it's exhausting. Part of that processing has been trying to write about a webnovel, Ward, and that book inspires a certain kind of madness.
So.
I need to reset.
I need a break.
And when I need that, I go back to The Wandering Inn.
Before we go further, I need to ask you to stick with me. The Wandering Inn is a story intensely, equally, silly and sincere. There are certain tropes and genres which people tend to cringe away from, and that can make people bounce off this story. I understand that impulse, I do, but The Wandering Inn is beautiful, it is warm, it is restorative. I need you to set those barriers aside for a moment.
Let this story charm you.
I also need to lay bare my intent. I don't want you to read it, because that implies completion, and, we'll get there but that would be quite a commitment. I just want you to try it. It's free, it's online - apparently the audiobook is also very good - I just want you to open the first chapter, and go until you get bored.
The Wandering Inn is a web serial novel, which the author, Pirateaba, has been writing since 2016. Most of it has been written at a pace of two chapters a week, save for breaks, and she just went down to once weekly.
It's a LitRPG. That means the universe of the story works on something like roleplaying game rules. It doesn't have hit points or XP, but characters do gain Classes, Levels, and Skills. Your Class is who you are, it's professions or hobbies, [Warrior] or [Gossip] or [Innkeeper]. Unlike something like D&D or Pathfinder, these classes are infinitely granular. Anything can be a class - if it defines you in some way. You gain Levels in each class, by acting out the role, overcoming challenges. When you gain those Levels you also get Skills. Skills, here, are like minor super-powers.
[Conjure Stool], [Dangersense], [Flawless Dodge].
They let you be, in some small way, superhuman. Skills are tied to Class, but not in a strict, limited way. Your Levels, your Classes, your Skills respond to your actions, your challenges, your drive.
Really, the logic is more narrative than it is strictly mechanical. Levelling is idiosyncratic and dramatic, tied to revelations, feats, and achievements, not flat numbers. As one character notes "you can't grind."
As a rule, also, no classes are strictly better. This adds an aspect of intrigue, yes, but it also carries a note of warm affirmation. These universal rules, of Levels and Skills affirm the value of women and stereotypically "feminine" labor, care work, and soft power. A Level 50 [Lady], or [Courtesan], or, centrally, [Innkeeper], is someone so skilled, so versatile, so dangerous as to be an international power.
That system, that genre, is set within a very classic high fantasy world. There are dragons and dwarves and wizards and potions. It's a world elevated, grander and more vivid than our own. The mountains are taller, the grass greener, the wildlife more magical and strange.
Our story starts on one quiet autumnal day near the city of Liscor. These hilly grasslands have turned umber and purple with the changing seasons, gently tousled by a gathering storm.
Here we meet Erin Solstice, running. Hiding.
Seeking refuge in a long abandoned hilltop inn.
It's dark, dusty. Rain beats on the shutters.
She was at home ten minutes ago. Home, safe, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
And then, here. No puff, no noise, just... here. Burnt by a dragon, chased and harassed by goblins-
She's tired, terrified, she needs something to do to feel normal.
So she cleans.
She finds a rag, and sets to cleaning. Wiping the tables, the floor, using the rote motion of it all to get back to something like control.
Once the adrenaline lets off, and she goes to let the exhaustion take her -
[Innkeeper Class Obtained!]
[Innkeeper Level 1!]
[Skill – Basic Cleaning obtained!]
[Skill – Basic Cooking obtained!]
(The Wandering Inn 1.01, Pirateaba)
Her next day, her next week is concerned with survival. Pirateaba writes each chapter with a solid, contained plot. Erin finds a fruit tree grove. Erin goes fishing. Erin cuts herself while gutting a fish.
She is not good at this. She's been dropped into a world as wonderful as it is dangerous, and it is hard. She's a shut-in nerd from the city, she plays chess in her spare time...
But she can't not try. She can't give up.
So Erin chooses, at every step, to push further, to try, to reach out ever more.
Even when the first talking people she meets are two equally imposing, equally alien guardsmen from the city, she pushes past her initial reaction and chooses to reach out. Relc and Klbkch, Guardsmen of Liscor, respectively a Drake (humanoid descendent of Dragons) and Antinium (bipedal, six limbed, insectoid) look monstrous to Erin - for the sixty seconds it takes to shake that off.
“Excuse me? I’m not a Dragon, Miss Human. I’m just an incredible Drake in service to the City Watch. Me and my idiot partner were on patrol when we noticed the smoke. May we come in? I promise we won’t bite.”
“Or inflict other forms of bodily or mental harm upon you.”
“Shut up. Are you trying to scare her?”
Erin debated. Somewhere in her mind, she was trying to decide whether she should be laughing or panicking. And if she were going to laugh, would it be funny laughter or hysterics?
She couldn’t decide. So instead—
“Um. Give me a moment. I’ll open this door.”
“Thank you very much.”
Erin dragged the tables out of the way and hesitantly unlatched the door. She opened it and stared at the insect and giant lizard again. The insect just stared at her. The lizard, on the other hand, opened his mouth and curved his lips upward. It might have been a smile.
“…Hi.”
Erin’s hand tensed on the door. The lizard guy put his hand on the door and stopped her from closing it. She tried, but suddenly the door was locked into place. He gently opened it and gave her a lazy salute with his other clawed hand.
“Sorry, sorry, Miss. We’re not here to hurt you, I promise.”
Erin hoped that was the case. She couldn’t budge the door an inch. But this wasn’t the time for flight, right? She took a different tack.
“W-want something to eat?”
(The Wandering Inn 1.06, Pirateaba)
Then she welcomes them in. It's weird. It's awkward. She serves them shitty pasta with sickly sweet juice.
And they're just... people. They've kinda got a buddy-cop thing going on. They're not in any way human but they're definitely dudes.
It's social contact. It's food, and other people.
This is the heart of The Wandering Inn. In these stories, of being whisked away to a medieval fantasy land, theres a kind of implicit escapism. This fantasy of being the revolutionary, the herald, bringing knowledge of science and industry to a backwards world. It's something you think about as you read them - what would I bring with me? What advances could I alone provide? - and those are questions Pirateaba is interested in exploring, albeit, mostly in secondary plotlines.
Because Erin, ultimately, doesn't know how things work. She's not a mechanic, or a chemist, or a physicist. She can't build cars or guns or lightbulbs. She can't even bring over much culinary knowledge because her repertoire is firmly limited to American fast food.
And that's fine. Because Erin's story isn't about that.
The Wandering Inn says 'the greatest advancement of modern society is our commitment to dignity, decency, and social justice.'
... and when I put it that way it sounds like a naive, childish, liberal fantasy. One of sunshine and candy, warm company on a Summer's day, wearing a pantsuit to brunch with President Hilary Clinton.
The Wandering Inn is never naive.
At every step, this book emphasises the work, the fight. Mercy is never easy and always brave.
I lied a bit, before. Relc and Klbkch aren't the first people she meets, even though they're the first that can hold a conversation. She actually has a run-in with the local goblins - short, green, glowing red eyes and rows of sharp, sharklike teeth. Running works for a while, as does hiding, but after a while they track her back to the inn.
The front door had a single locking bar of wood on it. The stout door and the band of metal around it splintered inwards as something struck it. Louder than she could imagine anything sounding. A crash of wood. It barely lasted seconds as a second foot broke the rotted, weakened section of the door. A second—and the Goblin Chieftain burst through the door, charging into the inn.
His eyes were burning red orbs, swiveling as he lifted a pair of axes. He wore ragged fur armor, rusted chainmail, and he stood a head over the young woman, who flinched as he howled.
...
Erin lay under the table, stunned, until she felt a thick hand grab her by one ankle and drag her out.
The Goblin pulled Erin from under the table and laughed at her. She lay on her back, eyes unfocused. He pulled aside his loincloth and pulled her towards him. Erin looked up at him and felt horror beating in her chest. He bent down to rip her clothes off—
She kicked up, right at his groin, with all her strength.
The Goblin caught her leg easily. He grinned at her again. With his other hand, he grabbed her other leg—
Erin sat up. Her legs were caught, but her hands weren’t. She punched the dangling target right between the Goblin’s legs.
His eyes bulged, and the huge Goblin roared and threw her away.
...
Erin scrambled away. She was near the kitchen. The kitchen. She dashed inside and slammed the door shut.
There. The pot was sitting over the fire, and black smoke was coming out of the lid. Erin reached for it and felt the burning heat. Gloves. There was a rolling pin on the counter but no gloves or oven mitts. Where were—
...
Smoke billowed from the pot. The contents boiled and spat at her. There was no time for gloves. She grabbed the pot by the handles.
The metal burned her. Erin screamed as her hands blistered and the skin burned away. The pain was unbearable. But she held the pot and turned.
The Chieftain was on his feet. He snarled at her through his broken nose and bloody face. He had the kitchen knife in his hands. He lunged at her.
Erin tossed the contents of the pot at the Goblin Chieftain. The boiling oil splashed the Goblin’s face and ran down his chest.
He screamed. The Chieftain dropped the kitchen knife and screamed so loud Erin went deaf. She dropped the cooking pot and stumbled away from him.
She held her shaking hands out. Already, her skin was burnt black and white in places. Large blisters were forming out of her ruined skin. But it was only half. Only half of the pain in the world.
The Goblin Chieftain clawed at his face and sank to the floor. He was screaming still, but the sound he made was so very small. She heard him choking. Screaming quietly in agony. She understood. There wasn’t enough sound in the world to convey it all, and the screaming would make the pain worse. But still, he had to scream, so he did it quietly.
Erin sat on the ground and stared at him. He lay on the floor, steam rising from a face running with oil and dripping skin. Erin was bleeding. The wound in her stomach bled without stopping. But her hands—
They weren’t the same. And the agony of both was too much to bear. So Erin forgot the pain. She stared at the Chieftain as he lay on the floor. He was smoking.
Parts of his face were sloughing off. The boiling oil had…melted him. He was still alive. But he was dying.
Erin heard him breathing. Short, sharp bursts and whimpered pain. He lay on the ground and did not move. The fight was over. She’d won.
Slowly, Erin began to cry.
(The Wandering Inn 1.14, Pirateaba)
The first time Erin kills someone it destroys her. Physically, mentally, because unlike seemingly everyone in this world she can look into those red eyes and see a person.
“You are not from here, are you, Miss Solstice?”
That was the first thing Klbkch said to her after he’d made sure she was well.
...
“I do not mean this country or even this continent. You are not from here, are you?”
...
“How’d you figure it out?”
He raised a hand and began to tick off points on his fingers.
“Many clues lead me to this conclusion. Your curiosity about levels and classes, your mysterious arrival, and this ‘Michigan,’ which is no nation recorded in any book or map. But most of all, it was this last moment. No Human would weep for a Goblin.”
(The Wandering Inn 1.15, Pirateaba)
That is what makes her special, even amongst the other "Earthers" who soon start landing across the world. It's not exactly a commitment to "truth, justice, and the American way," it's not that patriotic, it's just a staunch belief that anyone who thinks is a person, and that all people are deserving of dignity and life.
"I would like to suggest a course of action.”
“Um. Okay?”
“I have disposed of the Goblin Chieftain’s body. However, there are many Goblins still hiding nearby. If you feel safe here, I will dispose of as many as I can. If not, I will escort you to the city and then return with reinforcements to—”
“No.”
Erin cut Klbkch off. She sensed the Antinium’s surprise.
“No? If you feel unable to travel, I can—”
“No. No killing Goblins.”
He paused. She could sense him looking at her even though his multifaceted eyes had no pupils. Klbkch seemed baffled, and his mandibles opened and closed several times, like someone opening and closing their mouth.
“May I ask why not?”
“It’s wrong.”
...
“They’re vicious, evil little monsters. And they’d probably eat me if they could.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And they’re murderers.”
...
Erin mumbled. She stared at her hands. Her clean, whole hands.
“They’re murderers. And so am I. Don’t kill them.”
(The Wandering Inn 1.15, Pirateaba)
I wanted to make a comparison, here, to the trope of like, "the first kill is always the hardest, it gets easier" because I distinctly remembering that being a thing - but then I actually tried to find an example and I couldn't. Turns out, what's way more common is a character killing someone by accident or in a moment justified by the narrative, then having a brief moment of crisis and just moving on, except, of course, for the protagonist now having "the will to kill."
As if it's a hump, or a hurdle, something you should just be able to do and get over pretty quickly. Characters or, I suppose, writers rarely feel conflicted about killing once they get going.
Most stories, most writers just want to get to the point where characters get to be badass, and, well, a lot of ink has been spilled about how weirdly cool our society is with fictional killing. I think - I think we have kinda a social norm that murder can be justified, and relatively easily. If we didn't, of course, it'd be kinda hard to respect cops or veterans. That's why a key part of the definition of murder is that it's socially unacceptable killing - of course, when you shoot an enemy combatant, that's just killing, not murder.
Erin Solstice is a wonderful protagonist because she doesn't see it that way. In her eyes, in her story, killing is always murder, always a terrible, horrific, destructive thing. After the kill, the next few days are, mostly, Erin sitting alone, in a depressive fugue state, her friends checking in, her, hardly able to recognise them. She's only able to start forgiving herself by correcting her mistake.
She sensed them following her. When she looked around, they fled. But they were slow, and she caught glimpses of them. Ragged clothes. Thin bodies. They looked like starving children, refugees from a war. Not like monsters. Except for the teeth and red eyes.
That gave Erin an idea. She stared at her hands for a moment and then picked up the pace. Suddenly, she was walking faster. When she got to the inn, she looked for the shopping bag and found Klbkch had stored all the ingredients away on the counter. It was very hard to start the fire. But when she’d started, it was easier than stopping.
...
How long did [the four Goblins] stand outside the front door, drooling? Too long. The door slammed open.
The Goblins cried out in fear and turned to run. But the Deceiver didn’t chase them. She stood in the doorway of the inn, hands on her hips. She raised one eyebrow.
“Well? Come on in.”
...
“Eat with a fork. See this? Fork.”
She pointed to a fork. The Goblin stared at it. Slowly, the tiny figure picked it up. The Goblin inspected it, turning it around and understood how to use it, but admired the tiny tines. Then, gingerly, he speared one buttered noodle and slowly transferred it to his mouth. It hung over the open mouth full of yellowed teeth as he stared at her. Asking for permission.
Erin nodded. The noodle fell. The Goblin gulped and went very still. Deathly still.
Then he smiled. It was a terrible smile, full of sharp crooked teeth and hesitation. But it was a smile.
Erin smiled back. She laughed for the first time in ages. It was a laugh that came straight out of her feet and through her heart. It exploded out of her chest. It was a good laugh, and it made the world right again.
(The Wandering Inn 1.16, Pirateaba)
It's food, and other people. In those red eyes she sees a person, an ensouled, dignified person, and, for the first time, they smile back. Erin Solstice is not from here, why on Earth would she Goblins any differently to Drakes, or Antinium? They're all just people.
A couple days later she tracks into the city, and buys some paint. On her return home, she spends the waning hours of the day painting two signs, one, a name, the other, a rule.
The new name of the inn and the message mattered. They were written, now there to stay. As was the young woman.
So, as Erin Solstice slept, the twin moons rose, and the night sky began to brighten. The moonlight from the two moons, a pale blue and a faint green, caught the inn’s sign. The letters spelled out the new name:
The Wandering Inn
Next to the inn, a large sign was hammered into the earth by the door. It read:
“No Killing Goblins.”
(The Wandering Inn 1.18, Pirateaba)
There's a tension through the whole story, between protection, sanctuary, home, and violence. When you set that rule, how do you expect to enforce it? The very world seems to bend towards violence, when she murders the chieftain the system rewards her with three Levels and two Skills - to reject that is to fight upstream against the very laws of the universe. It would be a trap, to fall into that, to let the nature of the world dictate the nature of her soul.
Peace, safety, is not a natural state. It is something that must be created from the abyss. Grown from seed, protected, cared for. This gets towards something that I would count as spoilers but I don't think it's an insular kind of peace. Not one you lock off and hoard. I think the peace Erin wants to build is an expansive one, a growing one. We see that here, with the sign, with the paint, but it will become more of a theme as the story starts to globalise.
So, I think it's time to address spoilers. I have, clearly, just skipped through roughly the first eighteen chapters of this series. That sounds like a lot.
It might be, if this were any other book/book series. I'm cool with it here because those chapters account for about half of a percent of the total story.
The reason I can't ask you to commit to reading this book is because it is... the longest. Um.
I-
Fuck.
Lets try that again.
The Wandering Inn is the longest single-author original work of English language fiction. By a large margin.
At time of writing, it's sitting at nearly thirteen million (13,000,000) words long. Not counting the spinoff graphic novel, or two spinoff novels.
Fuck.
That's what being a web-serial reader does to you - you start thinking in word counts, a system of measurement that is, on the scale of books, frankly incomprehensible to normal people. Humans don't think about books this way.
Fuck.
Okay. For comparison, the second largest work is Stephen King's (somewhat tenuous) shared universe of stories - and that's about half the length of The Wandering Inn. It is also, as mentioned, a shared universe, not a continuous series.
The longest coherent series you actually recognise is probably Discworld or Wheel of Time, and those are each about a third as long as The Wandering Inn. It’s almost incomprehensibly massive. And here is where I tell you the craziest part -
That should not intimidate you.
You need to understand that scale is a choice.
The sheer length of The Wandering Inn is not an incidental thing, or an accident of an author with poor self control. You don't just trip and fall and write thirteen million words - it's not a bug, it's a feature.
There's kinda a set, stock list of metaphors people use to describe reading, watching, or doing big things. Climbing mountains, running marathons, going on adventures and journeys - the theme is endurance. Effort, ache, pain, work.
We've talked about how labor is a theme but reading The Wandering Inn has never felt like... work to me. Climbing, running, hiking, they're all the wrong metaphor, here, because reading The Wandering Inn feels like coming home.
A lot of that must be given to Pirateaba's writing style - clear, funny, poetic, yet almost effortless. Those millions of words are not wasted on obtuse, overlong, egregious, repetitive, absurd, winding, needless, unnecessary, repetitive, overwrought, pretentious, drawn out, long winded, protracted, repetitive, or dragging purple prose. There is constant movement and action, and even when that is towards mundane, slice-of-life situations - school, cooking, shopping - Pirate writes with such warmth and joie de vivre. Opening a new chapter feels like the rush you get opening a box of unusual chocolates, that ooh and ahh of exciting new flavours and experiences.
Even when you get to The Horrors - and trust me, Pirate gets to The Horrors - she has such a wonderful sense for catharsis that reading feels like being led along a cliffside by a trusted, loving, steady hand. Back in high school there was a public speaking competition I went to, four times, over four years. I was too emotive for it, I think, but the head judge had this phrase he would drill in at the start of the night, at the end, during every piece of feedback, "light and shade," he'd say. Contrast is the key to catharsis, that is why Pirate is so willing to go into brutal, viscerally upsetting moments like the death of the Goblin Chieftain. The way Erin's hands burn and char, the way his face melts off, the tears, the rasping breathing, the smell of flesh.
It's light and shade, contrast. Going down, going dark, so the moments of breath, of comfort, of hijinks and comedy and bonding feel precious. Returning, always, to heal with food, and other people.
Not to get all "the medium is the message" but the story being so incredibly long works to reinforce those themes of "home," "return," "shelter," and "safety" in a structural sense because the experience of reading this story is one of literally, viscerally knowing that you can always come back. The story is so vast that there is always more of it, always a place for you to return, to pick up and continue.
Reading this book isn't an endurance challenge, it's tea, it's memory foam, it's a hug and a warm shower. To read The Wandering Inn is to do as the characters do, and return, day after day, week after week, month after month, to this warm, comfortable, healing place.
Structurally, as well, the book orbits around home and return. Each massive Volume is bookended by a return to the inn. Each new phase of this massive story starts and ends with connection, return, quiet time and healing with food, and other people. That, in fact, is where the quote at the top comes from, the first chapter of Volume 5. Volume 4 ended with a grand battle and a major death, so Volume 5 starts with mourning. And lunch. Then ice cream. Cooking, eating, food, and other people. It never abandons the premise, it never gives up on the inn.
You can make whole careers, whole fields of study writing about the social role of food rituals. What food means in mourning, in healing, why we have dates over coffee and arguments over dinner. Through all that, I think, you would struggle to find a writer who gets it, who conveys that feeling of connection and warmth like Pirateaba.
That's not even to mention the many parties, the chapters where the genre shifts from war-story to rom-com. That's something you can only properly do in serial fiction. The streaming model for tv has seen a shift away from real serial television, the 26 episode season, towards the tight, 8 episode miniseries, and in that transition something important is lost.
I've been struggling with this next paragraph for a few weeks - I wanted to make comparisons, to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, to pre-modern peak tv, but it got too long and it didn't quite work. What's hard to express here is that serial fiction is different. You fundamentally absorb it differently to a more concentrated art like film or print novels. I struggled to make comparisons for a while before it struck me; The Wandering Inn isn't following the mould of Buffy, or Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones, or the other Peak TV staples, no, there's only one genre that lets itself get so big -
The Soap Opera.
To believe the critics, Soap Operas are... low media. The lowest of the low, low budget, low effort, day time TV, and, worst of all, the target audience is mostly women.
Horrible, I know.
I won't pull punches, a lot of people detest Soaps because they detest women. The name Soap Opera comes from that fact - the genre traces a clean lineage back to the early days of radio, where long running serial shows were broadcast for housewives to listen to while they did the dishes and lots of Valium. While not by women for a very long time the genre has always been for women - there are echoes of the Soap Opera form throughout The Wandering Inn. In Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women - fuck.
This is meant to be my low effort essay, and here I go quoting academic feminist theory. I can't help it, I just really love feminism. Ladies😏.
Anyway.
Loving with a Vengeance traces the history of pop culture created for female audiences, and the latter third is devoted to the TV Soap Opera.
The theme of this essay is "food and other people" and Modleski has some thoughts on that, on healing and bonding in tragedy, on letting these feelings play out over a long, naturalistic timescale.
In soap operas, the important thing is that there always be time for a person to consider a remark’s ramifications, time for people to speak and to listen lavishly. Actions and climaxes are only of secondary importance. This may seem wilfully to misrepresent soap operas. Certainly they appear to contain a ludicrous number of climaxes and actions: people are always getting blackmailed, having major operations, dying, conducting extramarital affairs which inevitably result in pregnancy, being kidnapped, going mad, and losing their memories. But just as in real life (one constantly hears it said) it takes a wedding or a funeral to reunite scattered families, so soap opera catastrophes provide convenient occasions for people to come together, confront one another, and explore intense emotions. One advantage of placing people in hospitals, for example, is that because they are immobilized they are forced to take the time to talk to others and listen to what others have to say to them. And friends and family members, imprisoned in waiting rooms (in some ways an apt metaphor for women’s homes), can discuss their feelings about the latest tragedy, and, from there, since the waiting often seems interminable, go on to analyze the predicaments of their mutual friends, as well as the state of their own relationships. Thus, in direct contrast to the typical male narrative film, in which the climax functions to resolve difficulties, the “mini-climaxes” of soap opera function to introduce difficulties and to complicate rather than simplify the characters’ lives.
(Loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women, Tania Modleski)
That, literally, is what happens in the chapter I pulled the line from. When we find our characters in chapter 5.00, someone has died, and in the talking, the commiseration, plot threads are revisited, brought to the fore, and the story goes off in a new direction. This happens not despite the long moment to talk and sit and feel but because of it.
Not to go too far into details (I'm letting myself spoil up to 1.18 but that's it) but The Wandering Inn always gives you time to feel the long days after tragedy strikes. Scenes, chapters, that linger on small, private interactions between two or three people, dreaming, reminiscing.
I'm actively choosing not to dig in further, here, Modleski has a lot to say on Soap Operas that applies to this story, but I'll save that for another time. If you want to go write your own essay, go off, but just keep in mind Modleski is the beginning, not the end of scholarship in the domain. That book is forty-two years old.
Anyway.
The Wandering Inn is a really, really good book that just also happens to be the longest one ever written. People react to that fact - assigning this story to a bin alongside the 10 hour film of paint drying and that book that doesn't use "e." There's a Reddit thread in /r/Writing about Pirateaba - discussing their all time record for wordcount, a 37,000 word chapter she did in a day. Despite video evidence - Pirateaba livestreams her writing process - they think it's a joke.
37k words is ridiculous. You have to be writing stream of consciousness, low quality 1st draft babble and/or be on adderall or intravenous caffeine or some potent cocaine and/or write full time to do that.
/u/SamuelFlint
Whatever you spew out in that amount of time is going to be little better than keyboard mashing
/u/OverlanderEisenhorn
37,000 words a day is insane and I would question anyone who says they write that much, even a published and well known author.
/u/Novice89
Stephen King used to do 2000 a day. Whoever is claiming they do 37k in a day is using AI
/u/FancyAd9803
37k words, if they’re even telling the truth, is going to be some fairly atrocious garbage. It’s ZERO percent possible to have even a semi coherent narrative writing that fast.
/u/browncoatfever
This essay is not, can not, be about perfectly analysing this story, or winning you over completely. What I am doing here, pleading you for is to just give this wonderful strange beautiful thing I found a chance, to move past the scoffing, past the gut reaction. That's why I had to bury the lede, I had to get you past the big, round, scary number. I need you to see that it's not a grand joke, it's not a bit, it's art, and it's worth at least being treated seriously. I'm holding myself back - and that means not going further into Modleski, or de Beauvoir, or why exactly I'm so sure the anonymous author is a woman -
An acquaintance I made in the TWI Discord server drew comparisons to "tikkun olam" - a notion in Judaism usually translated as "repairing the world." It's the kind of thing that's heavily debated in a theological culture with long traditions of debate, but, as they explained it, tikkun olam is an imperative to kindness, to justice, to building and rebuilding imbued with sacred significance. I wish I could say these themes are universal, but they're not. We saw that with #SwedenGate a couple of years ago, that there are people who do not treat hospitality and decency as anything more than rote obligation. People who don't get it.
Yet she does, somehow. Maybe that's what drives Pirateaba to write so much, the same thing that drives me to read it, the deep, abiding, care and warmth of hospitality, of home, of hearth. Maybe this story can only be this massive because she chose to tell this story. Maybe any other plot, any other concoction of characters and theme would choke and die before it grew like this. Hell, so far they all have.
What I know is that I spent a year reading this story all but day-in, day-out, and I never got sick of it. I took breaks, but I came back. I always came back. Because you can always come back. I know this story makes me feel whole. It makes me believe in people. It has made me cheer in public and sob on Christmas. It gave me the first words I would ever want as a tattoo. I know that Pirateaba's ability to write so much, so poignantly, is grounds to consider her a once-in-a-generation talent.
I don't know if I would be a different person, had I found The Wandering Inn sooner. Happier, maybe. Different. I wish I found this book as a teenager. I'll give it to mine, if I ever have kids.
When I do, I'll ask them for the same promise I'm asking you, right now.
Don't promise to read it - that's too great a commitment - but this essay is longer than Chapter 1.
It's only 4,400 words. We hit that mark back when I started talking about TV. Since you can clearly do 4,400 words, promise me that you will try. Just try it, take a visit to The Wandering Inn. You can quit, after that, decide it's not your thing, leave the "Next Chapter →" link un-clicked, but you'll have your foot in the door, and once you've visited you'll know that you can always come back. So if you ever need to cure a broken heart, or, at least, make it stop bleeding, you'll know where to find an open door, a warm fire, food, and other people.
Click here to read Volume 1, Chapter 1 of The Wandering Inn
Special thanks;
to Yootie, on Discord, who made me feel sane, and
to the lovely girl I met at a party, who convinced me to finish this.
Loving your way to put it, when you talk about the egalitarian nature of the system, and the fact that it empower the reproductive and social work. Nailed it.
Really a great essay, thanks a lot for sharing!
Absolutely amazing essay.