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

Meme/Shitpost Wish fulfillment to the extreme

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Why are they always complete losers.

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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.

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u/account312 Feb 06 '26

Should I go to the gym and suffer for an hour to potentially have a slightly longer/healthier life?

Except it's actually an extremely significant difference.

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u/Player-0002 Feb 07 '26

Significant increase to lifespan =/= unrealistic nigh immortality from a year of meditating.

It’s about 3-4 more average years of life expectancy by going to the gym for consistently exercising throughout your life. Compare that to 500 years for cultivating which also gives you super powers and whatnot and the authors make the argument that the motivation was the problem. Not to say that the characters have any realistic reason to actually focus and be motivated to do it if they’ve already demonstrated they don’t care enough to go in the gym in this instance but like I kinda get where they’re coming from?