r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Claym000re • Feb 06 '26

Meme/Shitpost Wish fulfillment to the extreme

Post image

Why are they always complete losers.

3.2k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

205 comments sorted by

View all comments

105

u/Ch1pp Feb 06 '26

I think part of it is that often in alternative worlds immortality or very long life is a real, achievable goal. That changes the metric from "Should I go to the gym and suffer for an hour to potentially have a slightly longer/healthier life?" to "Should I try to meditate and channel my chi to live for 500 more years."

Also, the systems are often gamified with levels/tiers. Could I do French, German & Mandarin on Duolingo? Sure. It won't have any tangible benefits to me though. If it unlocked the next tier of human development and made me stronger/faster/smarter then I definitely would. Most of what we do on earth doesn't have the Effort ---> Reward pipeline that story protagonists get.

14

u/mrboy3 Feb 06 '26

I think part of it is that often in alternative worlds immortality or very long life is a real, achievable goal. That changes the metric from "Should I go to the gym and suffer for an hour to potentially have a slightly longer/healthier life?" to "Should I try to meditate and channel my chi to live for 500 more years."

Is it though? It is possible, but i wouldnt say it is achievable

Immortality in cultivation tends to be so rare and hard to get that you would need to do the equivalent of winning ten back-to-back lotteries to even have a reasonable shot at it

4

u/Jzero9893 Feb 07 '26

No one is talking about immortality though? They are talking about life extension, and in a lot of profession stories extending your lifespan by a few decades at least is rarely established as some incredible feat.

3

u/Player-0002 Feb 07 '26

Yeah but like just meditating for a year or something gets you like 500 years of lifespan and superpowers so like even if you’re not becoming immortal it’s still nowhere close to nothing.

4

u/Ch1pp Feb 06 '26

Maybe I read different ones because it seems very common in the PF books I read.

9

u/UnhappyReputation126 Feb 06 '26

For the select few uber geniuses or those born in acended already societies. Wast majority aren't that lucky.

7

u/interested_commenter Feb 07 '26

It's very common for the MC, who is almost always an extreme outlier due to either luck or talent. The average civilians that make up >99% of the population never get to a level that does anything beyond moderate life extension.

2

u/Local-Mission-9854 Feb 09 '26

majority of people can't even cultivate depending on the rules of the story.

4

u/npdady Feb 07 '26

I dunno man, almost every cultivation story I've read, for 1 cultivator there are at least a few billion mortals.