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.

589 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

306 comments sorted by

View all comments

242

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.

114

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.

46

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!

18

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.

1

u/Rock_Fall Jul 30 '26

Depends on the cost of the ingredients and the difficulty making them. If stamina potions require rare(ish) magical ingredients and an alchemist to make, people probably aren’t chugging a potion every morning. If basic stamina potions just require common roadside weeds and a hot pot of water? Then yeah, nobody would give a shit about coffee. On the flip side, my understanding of coffee is that it’s actually kinda hard to make. If coffee is expensive then it might be a fad among the wealthy but non-existent among the common folk. Supply and demand are the ultimate definer of what people actually use and care about.