@brentru said in Why Bookworm is better then most webnovels lightnovels:
Honestly I said lightnovels/webnovels but there aren't many authors willing to just have their MC fail. If they do fail they always seem to have some caveat. Some secret information was gained. Some new macguffin is found.
I want to poke at this point a bit, as I think this misses things she is gaining.
First, while it may not be "secret" information, she is gaining information. Knowledge is an accretive process; we build off the prior state. But we often discount the steps involved more generally, and especially so when those steps are about winnowing back the possibilities of things that don't work.
Edison, in varying statements over decades, repeatedly pointed out that the thousands of failures he had in his experiments constituted evidence and experience that he could apply to later experiments. This is no less true with Myne failing with papyrus, then clay, then mokkan. She learned ways not to make those things; she also learned from the processes, both the parts that failed and the parts that worked, for when she made paper.
Second, and it's a bit of a stretch but I think it's worth it, is the value of the speedbump that failure represents in overcoming future challenges. When the story starts, she's a bedridden girl who can barely do anything. Each setback runs the risk of being an effectively insurmountable obstacle. However, every time she manages to not let it hold her back, she becomes stronger - both in the literal sense of being more physically capable (even if not by much) and more importantly in the metaphorical sense that each time she persists it motivates her a bit more to not give up next time.
Recently, another series also lauded for its worldbuilding, Mushoku Tensei, had a similar inflection point in the anime's final episode. The MC had a major setback at the end of the penultimate episode, but the final episode was about him overcoming that in exactly the way that his "loser" pre-isekai self would never have been able to. Part of that change was the positive impact of those around him, but a concrete part was also the changes he had gone through individually by facing smaller obstacles - some of which (like a person dying because of his poor decision) were clearly failures on their own - and becoming stronger and more confident for it.
What I think we're really talking about when we see series like bookworm get recognition for things such as a character having a loss that doesn't feel like a victory is that the character's growth more realistically mimics the kinds of little victories and losses, and the resulting gains in oneself that we don't always adequately recognize, that we in real life go through daily. When we see the big victories, a part of us can tell that it wouldn't have been possible without all the successes and failures that came prior, but when we look at those successes and failures individually we often lack the vision to see how it fits into the overall growth.
@kuali said in Why Bookworm is better then most webnovels lightnovels:
None of us will have a very satisfying diet if we just eat our favourite foodstuff on it's own for every meal. Indeed, we'd all get bored of eating only one thing pretty quickly. Then die of nutrient deficiency.
Try telling that to Ferdinand, who seems to have leaned in a bit too heavily on the consommé...
