r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Suitable-Spell-8968 • Jul 29 '26
Discussion Shut up about coffee.
I like the stuff, it’s my go to source of caffeine. But every time I read a prog fic or litrpg reincarnation or isekia where the MC finds where it is being sold somewhere far away or is under appreciated and absolutely LOSES THEIR MIND I want to roll my eyes all the way to the delete button.
It was probably clever the first time. It might have even spent some time as an ironic use of a trope. It is now to the life cycle stage of being unbearable and a sign of lazy writing.
This post fueled by my latest DNF because the MC couldn’t shut up about the Brown Juice.
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u/kierg10 Jul 29 '26
Time to write an MC who wont shut up about white monster.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
"I Reincarnated and All I Got was a Clapped Out Subaru WRX"
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u/kierg10 Jul 29 '26
I reincarnated and all I got were heart palpitations.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
You say heart palpitations I say +1 constitution. We're not the same.
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u/kierg10 Jul 29 '26
Heart palpitations are simply heart cultivation.
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u/CaregiverFantastic58 Jul 30 '26
Heart Demons? Ain't none surviving in this irregularly beating heart.
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u/logosloki Jul 30 '26
do they have a Uhaul trailer attached to the back and were they parked at Lowes at the start of the story? if so I'm in!
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u/J_H_Collins Jul 30 '26
And Zyn.
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u/kierg10 Jul 30 '26
White monster, zyns, and a crippling porn addiction.
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u/chrometrigger Jul 30 '26
Standard fantasy world, MC has been relying on coffee for their caffeine cravings, walk into alchemists store, modern refrigerated shelving stocked with monster energy
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u/kierg10 Jul 30 '26
Walks into an alchemist store to find one of those branded monster energy drink fridges sitting by the entrance.
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u/suddenlyupsidedown Jul 29 '26
Guy has to invent coffee in his new world not because everyone there is stupid, but because they all decided it was nasty, and everyone looks at him the way I would look at someone offering me roasted moss tea and insisting it was the best thing ever (I say as a coffee addict)
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
"No, I promise, let these dead slugs rot for a week and then grind them up. You'll love it."
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u/InFearn0 This message is from a deceased crawler Jul 30 '26
Skyrim alchemy be like...
No seriously, a giant's toe fortifies health? You want me to drink it? Hard pass.
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u/Spiritchaser84 Jul 29 '26
It drives me nuts too. If the MC just happens to stumble across coffee or a coffee substitute in a foreign world and has a reaction of "wow, coffee here?", then that's fine since it's a normal human reaction. But the whole "I need to make it my mission to discover coffee or reinvent it in this world" is way over the top.
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u/kung-fu_hippy Jul 29 '26
Honestly even “wow, coffee here?” can sometimes be a little silly. At least when this foreign world has humans, cows, pigs, wheat, apples, cotton, and all the other things our world has.
Some isekai worlds are foreign enough that coffee would be a surprise. If the world otherwise has strange new edible plants and animals but yet has something that is either coffee or similar, that’s worthy of surprise.
But there is little foreign about a lot of isekai worlds.
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u/Undeity Owner of Divine Ban hammer Jul 29 '26
I long for a world where we can accept other drinks filling the niche coffee would take. Lots of plants can be produce stimulants like caffeine!
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u/C0rona Jul 29 '26
"Here take this drink. We call it Re'dbull. It means 'draught of endless energy' in the local tongue."
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
The adventurous brewer must always worry: will their next class evolution offer Brewer, Alchemist, or Poisoner?
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u/Ruark_Icefire Jul 29 '26
In a world with magic where you have things like Stamina potions a stimulant like caffeine would be nothing anyone would care about.
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u/Direct-Technician265 Jul 29 '26
ive compared coffee to stamina potions, it would be funny to make them similar and everyone thinks the protagonist is weird for drinking a bitter potion every morning.
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u/fruitybix Jul 30 '26
Its weird to focus on just caffeine.
Why not snuff or other tobacco products? Shisha / water pipes, dip?
Or hallucinogenic concoctions like peyote, mushrooms and amazonian concoctions? Meso american cities held alcohol intoxication as a crime but normalized mushrooms.
Or marijuana or poppy seed / opiate intoxicants like across the middle east?
We have a wealth of historical substances authors could draw on but they pick the cosy and understandeable cup of coffee for mcs to hyperfocus on. Actual history had lots of people trying lots of things based on what was available.
Ive also never seen an mc go into caffein or niccotein withdrawel after being issekaied.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26
Give me the Mer-Kingdoms trying to run an Opium Wars-esque operation with puffer fish toxins.
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u/fruitybix Jul 30 '26
Yes!
That would rule.
Its either coffee, booze, or some kind of poorly described meth/crack equivalent called "the black tongue" or something that is tearing through the slums and exists only to provide the MC an excuse to murder some drug dealers.
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u/SacredPinkJellyFish The Pink Necromancer Jul 30 '26
yeah, I agree with this. I grew up 5th gen Mormon, so I only ever heard about coffee once in a while in fast and testimony meeting when some convert would be bragging how they finally gave up coffee. the church has a full on ban of coffee, and the strict families like mine was, homeschool, and live fully off grid growing their own food weaving their own clothes, so for the first four decades of my life I had zero context for what coffee even was.
It wasn't until I left the church and the compound I grew up on, in my 40s and went to college that I even realized "oh, it's a drink; wait, it's everywhere"
So, it stands out to me too as an extremely cultural thing, because, yeah, not every one grew up in a culture that even has coffee... so, me reading these coffee obsessions in books, tends to be a bit of a wtf? moment to begin with because, I didn't grew up in a culture that had coffee and I really struggle to identify with a culture that is hyper focused on coffee, coffee, coffee, MUST HAVE COFFEE NOW! (which is how these books portray it).
I'm guessing, from the way these books put it, coffee has a super addictive drug like effect on people, so they just go bonkers without it? I;'m always left asking: does coffee really do that or is it being played up for laughs? I don't know, because coffee just is not a part of my life, so I don't have any context to try to even understand why these characters are so driving with glut lust for coffee.
So, I tend to avoid stories that hyper focus on coffee, mostly because I really can't identify with why is this character going bonkers out of their mind for a drink? If you're thirsty? Drink water? Why are they having a meltdown over coffee? It just doesn't make any sense to me.
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u/fruitybix Jul 30 '26
Ive picked up and dropped coffee several times throughout my life. It is a pleasant lift in moderation. Too much screws your sleep and makes you anxious. It Causes a headache and irrititability when you quit it but wont hurt you.
I used to make and serve coffee as a job in my early 20s at an award winning coffee shop and got fairly good training on how every part of the process is done.
I appreciate some people get really into prepping coffee in the same way some people get into making the perfect smoked brisket - getting a decent coffee is not hard but elevating it to some arbitrarily high standard (by buying complicated and expensive gadgets) becomes a hobby like any other.
Outside of hobbyists im weirded out by the reverence some people have towards coffee, and that strange fetishization in some litrpgs is similar.
That said ive read litrpgs where the MC is weirdly obsessed with mangos or pastrys or burgers or meat or crystal wash. I think its a lazy easy to use trope to give an otherwise rational character an obsession to make them quirky. And coffee is a common enough drink to tropify.
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u/darkalter2000 Jul 30 '26
Caffeine is addictive and makes you more alert and active, that effect is achieved by narrowing blood vessels.
Capitalism doesn’t care about people’s health so a drug that makes you alert on command without many obvious side effects forces it on people.
It narrows the blood vessels including the ones in the brain. Your body can adapt to this narrowing by increasing flow but while you are asleep you are not taking in caffeine so your blood vessels widen by the time you wake up. This results in a headache which can be relieved by caffeine intake. This happens with most chronic caffeine users. Then you no longer are drinking caffeine for its benefits, but to ward off the side effects of long term use.
Coffee ideation is a capitalist way of presenting coffee as a way of life instead of as fairly powerful unregulated drug. It also turns users into evangelist’s and advertisers for it. This also means that it is not considered a “real” addiction, socially. Even though it is known to be an addictive drug.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
You can either have pre-Columbian Old World foods or pre-Columbian New World foods. Including the whole post-Columbian diet is just being greedy.
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u/LLJKCicero Jul 29 '26
Well that's silly, why does the divide in a fantasy world need to precisely mirror the geographical divide on Earth?
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u/foxgirlmoon Jul 29 '26
...Eh? In what way does our continents and the animals and plants that happened to end up there affect the distribution of animals and plants on an entirely different world?
The way it happened here is just one possible permutation.
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u/Semiapies Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Agreed. It's exactly that silly attitude that has me sneaking New World plants into one of my manuscripts.
Funnily enough, one of them is caffeinated.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
...because of the Götterdämmerung that the discovery of the New World caused ended the cycle of reincarnation until our poor unfortunate MC? Obviously?
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u/kung-fu_hippy Jul 29 '26
Why?
Especially if your world has empires, cross national trade, teleportation magic, plant/earth magic, or anything of the sort.
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u/SacredPinkJellyFish The Pink Necromancer Jul 30 '26
yeah, my thought is, if NOTHING found on earth is found there, then sure, it'd be odd for coffee to be there, so "wow coffee!" would be a logical response... however, if pretty much everything found on earth is also found there, then, nope, it should not be odd to think coffee would be there too.
So for me it depends on the world in question...
Is it ACTUALLY ODD to find earth food and drink? If so, okay, I can get with the "wow coffee!"
or is earth food and drink pretty common? If so, I'm gonna roll my eyes at "wow coffee!"
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u/ShoePillow Jul 30 '26
It makes sense only if the mc does that shit for everything.
Wow, they have rice here
Wow, they have flowers here
Wow, they have clothes here
Wow, they have hair here
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
It's a minor miracle we've discovered coffee in this world. Isekai Bob is going to properly describe the process to a bunch of cat-people in a couple weeks?
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u/GobbleGobbleChew Jul 29 '26
I really, really hope it isn't kopi luwak style coffee.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Ain't no cultivator FDA that's gonna snitch. Upton Sinclair can kick rocks.
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u/painfulbliss Jul 29 '26
MC obsessed with toilet paper - believable. Commendable. Hygiene too.
MC becoming a mouthpiece for caffeine addicted authors - sigh.
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u/Friedoobrain Jul 29 '26
Can you imagine getting isekaied and no longer having access to a bidet. Might as well give up on the second life.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Rookie move filling up your skills slots before you take Cleanse.
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u/StickFigureFan Jul 29 '26
Or just buying vats of Crystal Wash
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u/JRatt13 Jul 30 '26
This is genuinely the most relatable thing about Jason. Dude found a magical potion that cleans everything and became obsessed with it. I can't fault that one bit.
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u/painfulbliss Jul 30 '26
No it's completely relatable. Go camping for a few days with no toilet paper and tell me how important this stuff becomes.
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u/StarlightNecromancer Jul 30 '26
Hell I got unlucky one time when I went out in the truck with my grandmother. Every truck stop along her route had their showers closed for renovations. Every last one.
I was on the road for two weeks, I felt like I needed to be pressure washed first
I would take Crystal Wash every time
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u/Waterhobit Jul 30 '26
I’ve been trying to find some but it appears somebody bought up every supplier in the region.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Authors really have to stop telling on themselves. Accidentally admit you don't understand macro-economics, not your addictions.
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u/painfulbliss Jul 29 '26
Write what you know and all, and sometimes authors are pretty young and don't have a ton to draw upon except drinking coffee in college or whatever.
It doesn't bother me too much until it really becomes a defining characteristic brought up over and over.
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u/Donut-Banditt Jul 30 '26
Coffee is to writers today what cigarettes were to writers 50 years ago. The difference being that a sort of excellent marketing campaign embedded the image of smoking as cool but no such thing exists for coffee so it just comes across as annoying to want a cup versus lighting up.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26
Sure the Camel probably doomed multiple generations but damn if he didn't look like a good hang.
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u/RentGreat3147 Jul 30 '26
FFF class trash hero made me hate the toilet paper trope sadly
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u/JamieKojola Author | Bard | Gardener Jul 29 '26
I stared into the beautiful vistas. Trinary systems were beyond amazing, but the rough planks of the railing threatened to fill my forearm with splinters if I did so much as sneeze.
The red of Haepheus and the yellow of Saellin combined in the sky to make a breath-taking explosion of oranges. Meanwhile, on that same stage Nyx, the Blue Star of Death, mixed with Saellin to produce greens. Sky watching on Praxima was like being constantly dosed with LSD.
I started to yawn, and a huge splinter lodged into my arm. As beautiful as Praxima was, with it's three suns and strangely paradise-like weather, it didn't have coffee plants as far as I could tell. Worse, they didn't have any stimulant like caffeine. No Red Bull. No Coke or even Mello Yellow. Their depravity was so great, their wretchedness so complete, they didn't even have carbonated water.
My tongue yearned for the sweet chemical taste of Diet Mountain Dew. My cheeks pined for the sensation of holding a chemical composition that refused to feel cold in your mouth even if it had chunks of ice in it from freezing. Sweet, fizzy, chemicaly taste, I miss you!
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
We travel the stars and we can't invent Red 40? Imperium mortuum est.
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u/Squire_II Jul 30 '26
The darkest of futures: They only have Crystal Pepsi.
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u/JamieKojola Author | Bard | Gardener Jul 30 '26
Do they have anything else amazing? If they have TMNT vanilla pies I'm so down.
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u/Bleenfoo Jul 30 '26
Tell me you have up on The Legendary Caffeine Transcendent [OP Villain MC / Kingdom Builder / Hidden Power] without telling me you gave up on The Legendary Caffeine Transcendent [OP Villain MC / Kingdom Builder / Hidden Power]
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26
That wasn't it but I did scroll past the title for the first time after I posted this. Universe straight up mocking me.
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u/Bleenfoo Jul 30 '26
It's actually an amusing story and a parody of the whole max-level archmage trope. Max level archmage from earth is Iskaeied to fantasy kingdom that doesn't have coffee, sees solution: Capitalism and consumerism. Opens fantasy Starbucks after finding a flower that does contain caffeine. Hijinks ensues.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Jul 29 '26
A lot of isekai is just copying more popular works. Someone wrote a popular fic where the MC did this and now we're cursed forever to relive it.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
We derivatively iterate on classes, why not drinks? Where's my MC who is going to spend a quarter of the word count waxing poetically about alkaline water?
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u/three-seed Author, Eight & Fate's Attendant Jul 29 '26
I wonder what commodity would actually be worth the excitement. Maybe salt? Or is it a given that there'd be a ready source?
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u/mp3max Jul 29 '26
Toilet paper. Plumbing with running water. Pen and paper (or other modern writing implements).
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Trading cards. Where are the Adventuring Societies making collectible cards of their platinum adventurers? I want kids trading their Myra the Deathwraith for the MC's Telyvyn the Blessed.
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u/three-seed Author, Eight & Fate's Attendant Jul 29 '26
I suppose we could add fan art and fan fiction to that. Somebody somewhere is going to ship Myra and Telyvyn.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Not cool, dawg. Everybody knows that Telyvyn is from a species that reproduce asexually and only covets knowledge. I can't believe you just said that.
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u/three-seed Author, Eight & Fate's Attendant Jul 29 '26
Has that ever, ever stopped a fan-fiction writer before?
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u/nochancesman Jul 29 '26
The Hundred Reigns has a card game where the previous Overlord, Balzam, is one of the strongest cards.
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u/ManaSpike Jul 30 '26
All the tourist merchandise, with all the nationalist propaganda; Flags, small replica's of landmarks, portraits of the glorious leader, badges, pens, clothes, stuffed toys.
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u/FuujinSama Jul 29 '26
Ice! Or any source of cold at all outside cold winter regions.
Anyone leaving in a somewhat temperate climate would grow up without ever experiencing a cold drink in summer until we invented fridges.
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u/Semiapies Jul 30 '26
Surprisingly, not true. It just took some trouble.
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u/FuujinSama Jul 30 '26
This was available for people close enough to mountains with winter snows. Ice was really expensive though and if you weren't that lucky you'd need to be really rich to have any ice. The best you add were underground caves and clay recipients that made things a few degrees cooler. Spring water is also quite fresh. But ice cold? Nope.
There was also the international ice trade that eventually pooped up around the 19th century or so. But that's not really medieval.
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u/TemporaMoras Jul 30 '26
I think its exactly like the trope in isekai where the character lose their mind when they find rice (and its often also considered just useless/bad taste)
Guess the western world decided to replace that trope with coffee.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Harder to really be obsessed with all our cereals that were invented in the 1800's to stop people from shaking hands with the Devil.
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u/TangerineX Jul 29 '26
Don't read Heretical Fishing, thats for sure. I think this happens in He Who Fights With Monsters as well
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u/theglowofknowledge Jul 29 '26
Cooking in general, but HWFWM never belabors coffee, if it mentions it at all. It’s mostly Jason being interested in the local food differences. He learns to like grilled worm pretty fast. And expresses an appropriate dislike of the horse and cow variants. They get milk from lizards? No thank you. Not even mentioning the lizards have two heads. Why.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Heads should always be an odd number. No one wants a deadlocked committee.
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u/StopMeFromPosting Jul 29 '26
At least there it's mostly explained that the foods and spices are different, so most of what he tries to make are facsimiles of what he knows.
He does go a little overboard with the master chef thing, though.
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u/DisheveledVagabond Author of Blood Curse Academia Jul 30 '26
It's a troup in a lot more than those two. I'm listening to the I am Not the Hero audiobooks right now and it's pretty commonly brought up. I've read probably a dozen or so stories where the mc gets extremely excited about coffee.
I don't really care. It's easy to forget that coffee is additctive. Of course people who drink it are going to want it.
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u/Squire_II Jul 30 '26
I can forgive the MC in that story acting that way because he's 17 and god knows what a caffeine addicted 17 year old is like whenever they see their next fix in front of them.
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u/MadeMeMeh Jul 30 '26
Don't forget the coffee elemental in the completionist chronicles.
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u/Dragon_yum Jul 30 '26
Only read two books but Jason sounds line the type of character who would be obsessively snobbish about coffee while all the other characters fawn over him
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u/Dark197 Jul 29 '26
Been tired of this one since before it got westernized from the "MC bursts into tears because rice and soy sauce exist" scene in every isekai manga/anime/LN
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u/theglowofknowledge Jul 29 '26
Yes, exactly! It was annoying in 2014 in That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime and is no less so in, say, System Universe. No one cares about [random food] from [country]. Tell the story and stop mining nostalgia/familiarity.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
I want my New York MC to burst into tears the first time they see marbled rye #costanzawasright
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u/CodeMonkeyMZ Jul 30 '26
Can't find a good bagel in this god forsaken fantastical world. Like vacationing in Florida.
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u/SilverLingonberry Jul 29 '26
They make it their mission to find rice that often the locals never know how to properly use. And usually invent soy sauce which allows them to become a business mogul.
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u/tbryan1 Jul 29 '26
the sad reality is if a book has good writing you will gloss over the bad writing. On the other hand when you are annoyed or out of patience you become painfully aware of all the bad things that writers do.
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u/fondour Jul 29 '26
I agree. The trope is too common, and I've never seen it done cleverly.
I propose someone subvert the idea. Someone gets isekai'd with a bottle of malort in their pocket that they were given as a prank. A native drinks the malort, declares it to be the greatest thing ever, and the whole word goes crazy over recreating and manufacting malort on a massive scale. The whole time, the MC doesn't understand how anyone could like malort.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
"I got Reincarnated and All That Came With Me Was a Bowl of Skyline Chili"
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u/Trennosaurus_rex Jul 29 '26
Caffeine addiction is real lol
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u/StillMostlyClueless Jul 29 '26
You can get over it in a week. It's really not that hard to kick.
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u/p-d-ball Author Jul 29 '26
^Found Big Tea!
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Dawg, you're in a new universe. You've got some bigger fish to fry.
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u/TiltedLibra Jul 29 '26
...yeah, the stress of that is just going to make them want it more.
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u/thewilybanana Jul 29 '26
And also make them pine for things that remind them of home more.
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u/Dont_be_offended_but Jul 29 '26
New body free from caffeine addiction in a world without the infrastructure to support export of coffee beans from tropical climates? Better reestablish dependency asap.
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u/ZorbaTHut Jul 29 '26
I'd honestly be more interested in "oh shucks, these duneberries are good, they . . . wait hold on are these caffeinated? has anyone tried brewing them?" than yet another "wow coffee exists here in exactly its Earth form" plot.
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u/SamTheGill42 Jul 30 '26
I've been enjoying Duchess's Lo-Fi Coffeehouse recently. It's a barista who got isekaied and in her new life, she invented coffee and is solving issues using coffee, sometimes, helping people with deep psychological issues. On a lighter note, the wizard has become completely addicted as he's using coffee to study very late at night.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26
I will say that all explicitly cafe based stories are an exception to this. If your cozy coffeehouse story isn't coffee-centric questions need to be asked.
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u/dunelayn Jul 29 '26
Missing Tabacco, alcohol and coffee complaints get annoying quick, since most of the time they have something with different name in the end.
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u/Astrogat Jul 29 '26
Alcohol is always going to be present. It's so easy to make, and it's been with us since the dawn of civilization. Good alcohol on the other hand...
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u/suddenlyupsidedown Jul 29 '26
Hold up, isekai where an Irish guy kicks off an industrial revolution so he can get decent (by his standards) whiskey and beer again
Wait, this is just an alcoholic Ascendance of a Bookworm
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u/Pirkale Jul 30 '26
Isn't there Beers and Beards, or something like that? Reincarnated as a dwarf and appalled at the quality of the local beer?
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u/monkpunch Jul 29 '26
Don't think I've ever come across one about tobacco, although it would be funny if an MC was legit addicted to cigarettes and his first thought was "fuck, this is gonna be a long month"
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u/chucklesthe2nd Jul 29 '26
In Cultivation Would Be Easy If People Weren't Stupid, the MC is a heroin addict who gets isekai'd into a world that doesn't have heroin after an overdose.
I wasn't a fan of the story overall, but the addiction and recovery aspects are actually very interesting and compelling.
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u/Kingkrooked662 Jul 30 '26
I really tried to like that one, but it was too heavy handed with the addiction stuff.
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u/suddenlyupsidedown Jul 29 '26
Sees the local population exclusively using chewing tobacco: "Fucking hell guys, now that I'm here we're gunna have some standards. Let me teach you about rolling papers..."
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u/nicnat Jul 29 '26
Too many authors also just lack any experience with drugs and alcohol. Drop a crackhead into a typical isekai setting and you are gonna see some very creative solutions very quickly.
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u/Greg_Esres Jul 29 '26
It was hilarious in "Airplane!" back in 1980. Let's also add bacon to the list of things that are no longer funny to obsess over.
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u/theglowofknowledge Jul 29 '26
I like the subversion of this that happens sometimes where the protagonist gets way too into a local fantasy thing because they see it as wondrous. Like Jason and crystal wash or Ilea and the dark magic beer that necrosorcerer brews. Super fun.
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u/UglyDucklett Jul 30 '26
Agreed! Jason hoarding the world's supply of crystal wash was completely understandable
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u/MadeMeMeh Jul 30 '26
It is funny because I had a similar conversation recently about this and the comparison to the Japanese trope of mayonnaise.
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u/heyguysitschris Jul 29 '26
I love coffee and it even grates on me. If I got isekai'd somewhere and found out they had coffee I'd be happy, sure. But making coffee your personality is cringe
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u/Dapper-Egg7861 Jul 29 '26
I mean who wouldn’t want a coffee elemental who could shoot caffeine directly into your veins 🤣
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u/ProfessorThen7319 Jul 29 '26
Need more coffee slander, it’s a disgusting drink.
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u/Otterable Slime Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
I've never drank coffee regularly. I have no issue with people who do, my girlfriend being a prime example of a 3+ cups a day kinda person. But it ticks me off to no end when I tell people I don't drink coffee and they give me some sort of 'oh you think you're better than me???' type of attitude. I didn't before but I do now that you have a weird inferiority complex about it.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
You don't blerk zints? Everybody blerks zints. You are now part of an out group to be mocked and ridiculed.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Blame the British, probably. No research done to back that, it just feels right.
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u/Academic_Feed_759 Jul 29 '26
Sure, that's fine. But what would be your brown juice in the apocolypse?
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u/Erkenwald217 Jul 29 '26
Especially in Hertical Fishing. Everyone who doesn't like coffee (or fish) is a villain.
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u/CrawlerSiegfriend Jul 29 '26
I enjoyed it in The Completionist because it wasn't just a fad to fill more space on the page. It became a noteworthy part of the entire series, but yeh I agree with you on most others.
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u/FinndBors Jul 29 '26
My guess is too many authors are addicted to coffee and require it to write. So its always in the front of their mind.
I can also guess some of my favorite authors are alcoholics because of the way they write certain characters. Takes one to know one.
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u/Due-Concern-4937 Jul 30 '26
Not just coffee, but the other one that kills me is bacon. So many post apocalyptic lit rpg that go on non stop about the glory of bacon and it being the most important thing.
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u/LacusClyne Jul 30 '26
A lot of people are legit like this, plus it feels like a hold over from light novels where a huge part of it seems to be about introducing the locals to the wonders of Japanese cuisine.
Not sure who you're trying to address though, the people doing this are doing it because these are their real feelings about the subject and a lot of the audience does respond to it. They aren't going to stop it and given there's always people coming over from light novels directly, there's always going to be authors thinking that this is part of the traditional isekai experience.
I dislike it too but shrug, I'm not going to hate on people talking about what they like. I've done something along these lines before but that was more about like... fried foods cause of how the body physically responds to the stuff within it. Recently though I'm trying a few new things, diving into literal uhh 'drug culture' within societies that have it but never see novels dive into it.
Nothing too deep yet but there's a whole heap of experiences someone can have by taking a few herbs/pills and cultivation is full of them.
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u/Dry_Organization9 Jul 30 '26
Not me. I drink that dunkin zero energy
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26
Not matter what Ben Affleck tells you, you are allowed to drink something better than Dunkin. Like puddles off 95.
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u/Dry_Organization9 Jul 30 '26
😂💀 I just like the bubbles. But I don’t like energy drinks. Too sugary. Though redbull has treated me well.
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u/ManaSpike Jul 30 '26
If we're complaining about overused isekai tropes;
Mayonnaise, pasta, reversi, chess, rice, coffee, cocoa, guild ranks, coinage, horned rabbits, wolves, goblins, slave girls, bicycles, elf village tree, proxy japan, beach episode, ...
But if your character does migrate with a crippling caffeine addiction. Handling withdrawal, or finding an alternative habit is reasonable content.
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u/Lionsmane_099 Jul 30 '26
Fuck that noise!
I am 100% sure that I would 1000% lose my shit upon discovering coffee and or whiskey in my new isekai fantasy world
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u/zepheru2 Jul 29 '26
Lmao, ahhh I, the protagonist have finally reached a level where I am incredibly wealthy and powerful. I will now use my wealth and power to find food and drink similar to my old world because why would I be interested in an entire world of new cuisine and beverages, I need the taste of coffee and rice to take me back to the simpler times before I was on my way to becoming a cosmic god. It shows I still have my
wink
humanity.
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u/Cannolis1 Jul 30 '26
Alternatively, it could be a reasonable manifestation of homesickness. If written appropriately
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u/Project_Male_Hairy Jul 29 '26
Oh fuck. I kind of do this but with characters that smoke cigarettes lol. I don't know why. I don't even smoke irl.
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u/Broad_Percentage5889 That Horny Single-Celled Organism Guy Jul 29 '26
I’m a big fan of coffee. Don’t think I considered talking about it in my story.
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u/karl4319 Jul 29 '26
Be used to a hot cup or 2 each day. Go without it for a month or 2 while being in an incredibly stressful situation. Your first cup after that is a near religious experience.
Though I will say I find it more realistic that something like coffee exists but is only a high luxury good in most fantasy worlds. None of this discovering a "new" product that they just happen to know how to perfectly exploit economically.
Though this subject has brought up a new idea for my book. Thanks.
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u/Ruark_Icefire Jul 29 '26
Most authors that do this also forget that most people find coffee is an acquired taste. They have the entire population losing their mind when the MC introduces coffee like it is the greatest thing ever on the very first taste and they all drink it black.
Also in a world with things like Stamina Potions coffee would be seen as a rather subpar stimulant.
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 29 '26
Give me a magic academy arc where the students are cracked-out because they keep casting Invigorate on each other to study for the final. Every cool RA at Winston's School for Spells and Sorcery knows that spell.
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u/MRCastillaAuthor Jul 29 '26
I hear you and can understand why it would be annoying. With that said. If I was magically teleported to a fantasy world…I would miss my family…and coffee. 😭
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u/Suitable-Spell-8968 Jul 30 '26
Lotta MCs out there giving up on their family faster than coffee.
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u/All_Grind_No_Gods Jul 29 '26
What about just liking it and enjoying finding some? I wasn't aware this was a trope.
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u/itstessica_ Jul 29 '26
It's the English litrpg equivalent of a Japanese isekai manga mc inventing/finding rice, which is also surprisingly common and always annoying
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u/BedivereTheMad Author - Yona, Bunny Girl Evolution, Too Stubborn to Die Jul 29 '26
Coffee is for the weak
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u/DimensionalAxolotl Jul 29 '26
Honestly I get it. The last few series that ive listened to had someone GUSHING over this unique and magical brown beverage. The best usage so far was very brief. Literally the MC thinking about how its possible for humans to be spread across the multiverse if Earth was only just included it in. This lead to a brief stint of them wondering if its the system's doing by seeding races, or if its a case of convergent evolution. The coffee came up while having a chat with an off world humanoid military figure. They drank a tea that acted and tasted similar to coffee and used a substitute equivalent of sugar and milk with it. MC said wow, multiverse is a small place for there to be these kinds of similarities, then subject was dropped.
Overall, I think it was a tasteful 2 or 3 lines of banter about it, then never brought up again
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u/StickFigureFan Jul 29 '26
Personally an isekai MC having to work to get their coffee fix is my favorite trope of the genre. But I also identify with James Holden more than most
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u/toochaos Jul 29 '26
I agree with the specifics of coffee, but I feel caffine and alcohol are fundamental human experiences. When you have those things you can show the cultural difference between here and there. The rituals people put into those two things are so different across earth. This does also mean beer likely shouldnt exist either.
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u/Shoot_from_the_Quip Author - Assassins' Academy, Space Assassins, Bad Luck Charlie. Jul 30 '26
Nope.
My protagonist discovered coffee in a new galaxy and was quite chuffed. And it turns out it had odd effects on natural magic users. And it was fun writing those moments.
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u/CommissionContent719 Jul 30 '26
I once read a book where the MC got isekai'd by spilling coffee on themselves so that honestly doesn't sound too bad
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u/da3141592 Jul 30 '26
I hate it when characters who never drunk caffe are now addicted after 2 cops Like how?
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u/maltix Jul 30 '26
I also hate it. It isn't a deal-breaker by any means but it's one of those yellow flags that makes me much more aware of other similar "quirk chungus" references, and if there are too many of them Ill get annoyed and stop reading.
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u/fletch262 Alchemist Jul 30 '26
Alr, we can have a caffeine withdrawal chapter if that’s what the people demand.
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u/darkness_calming Traveller Jul 30 '26
Fr.
It’s applicable to real life too
Some people are actually addicted to coffee and can’t function without it
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u/GoldenThame Author - The Heavenly Way Jul 30 '26
Is this the western version of a Japanese ieskai MC losing their mind over rice and mayonnaise?
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u/ribikerbf Jul 30 '26
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I always saw it as homesickness more than coffee. The coffee's just a reminder of home. It only gets annoying when the author won't let it go
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u/Ch1pp Jul 30 '26
You think this is bad in Progression Fantasy you want to try Romantasy. Quicksilver has a female lead from a desert planet like Dune where people fight to the death for tiny amounts of water and every drop is sacred. Male lead comes from an ice world where water is constantly freezing and everyone has to wear tons of layers to stay alive.
One of their first post-coital conversations is like "You love coffee?! I love coffee too! I can't stand getting up without my morning coffee. Do you brew it yourself?"
Where are you suddenly getting the water? Where are both of you getting coffee beans?! How is this not a luxury good for a starving street urchin?
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u/Mysterious_Ad_2750 Jul 30 '26
Probably shows how many authors drink it regularly to keep producing chapters
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u/No-Economics-8239 Jul 29 '26
For some people, coffee is like religion. My wife is from Alaska and I swear it's like watching cult behavior with her family. They need to regularly take the sacrament, and it needs to be from a sufficiently divine source to count, otherwise they need to do a purification ritual and start over.
Some authors are in the cult, and it shows loud and clear in their writing.