Despite Worm fans claiming not to care about Wildbow's WOG, they still fall for the propaganda about how Taylor is the most important person in the universe and things need to happen to beat Scion.
I've seen plenty of stories where the MC outgrows the bashed character, and the author needs to justify a power up just to keep bashing them.
I've seen plenty of stories where the MC outgrows the bashed character, and the author needs to justify a power up just to keep bashing them.
If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were in love with them.
Especially some of the Hazbinverse fics. Like, seriously! The last time I ever come across a multiple-character bashing so extreme from that fandom, it was in that crossover with MHA on AO3 in which Adam ends up having a new life in that world and become a priest-king of sort of an island of Quirkless, those with mutant quirks and so forth.
How can they claim to have uplifted society if they haven't even abolished slavery for minimum wage capitalism?
Don't forget the rarer, more advanced version of the trope where the transmigrated protagonist decides to get super strong upon rebirth, but since they can't really think of anything specific from experience, they default to the tried and true ONE-HUNDRED PUSHUPS, ONE-HUNDRED SITUPS, 10-KM RUN etc. every single day. Sometimes done as early as five years old or so, which is really my personal favourite.
You made imagine someone who wrote a mc fitter than they are, realised this and got pissed about it and decided to outdo them because they ain't gonna write about some mf who is stronger than them lmao
On the danger of sounding like an idiot... Isn't a swimmer's build one with broad shoulders? I get a runner's build being a twink, but I don't really associate a swimmer's build with those.
Honestly, whenever that happens I just hope it's tongue-in-cheek, to reference the kinda stupid training regimes a Shonen or Comic setting comes up with where it's obvious the writer's never lifted anything more than a pencil either.
....The author and readers of a fic being invested in the Main character of the canon text is one of the most predictable things in the history of fandom.
Generally an actual swimmer's build has fuck off massive back muscles and above average musculature in every other category. The 'swimmer's build' most fanfic authors visualize is just a lean body type with low body fat, average musculature and high vascularity.
It's either that or the generic 2000s romance movie male love interest body type which is just 'dude that goes to the gym and isn't overweight'. The physical training scenes always suspend my disbelief too, there's no recovery days or progressive overload and I'm supposed to believe the MC isn't a crippled wreck that can't use his joints and has persistent exhaustion is because of 'regeneration'.
Oh my god the diets piss me off so bad. Some of these MCs will never eat a SINGLE carb or fiber in the story during their training arc or the cannibal characters that aren't built for cannibalism like a Ghoul and are walking perfectly fine despite the absurd amount of red meat they just ate and the author acts as if that's enough to keep a 'human' functioning. Not to go 'muh realism' but some these people shouldn't have a digestive system that isn't about to fail on them at any moment.
Ultimately something they don't think about because this idea was never sold to them or it ruins their fantasy of the always perfect ubermensch that never need to take a shit.
We can actually take this a step further, as the whole "100 push ups etc" routine was first done in Scorsese's Taxi Driver all the way back in the early 70s. Fittingly enough, that too featured a concerningly thin protagonist who talked about how they're getting so fit but actually just looked like they were one missed meal away from an Auschwitz physique.
I started writing my "Issei starts lifting and his whole life improves almost immediately" DxD fic specifically because I got back into taking the gym and bodybuilding seriously around 2019 and, surprise, my whole life improved almost immediately. You're literally just describing me right now.
If we wanted to be as accurate as possible, I would say the ideal "swimmer's build" is somebody with a wide clavicle (not necessarily big deltoids like you were saying, but in fact the bone itself is longer than average), HIGHLY developed mid and upper back (specifically having ginormous lats) and very long limbs with big hands.
They're not even thinking of Ryan Murphy. They're thinking of one of those little fruitcakes that sing in a KPop boy band, with photoshopped abs over their 165lb frame.
These people don't know the first fucking thing about weight training, they don't know the first fucking thing about combat sports (go read literally any fight scene and just try to visualize some of the ridiculous shit they're claiming the characters are doing), they don't know the first fucking thing about sports dieting, they don't understand basic principles of exercise like recovery times, carb intake, etc etc etc. The entire extent of their exposure to that world is shonenslop and maybe 30 seconds of a "Get Abs in 10 minutes a day!" YouTube ad they saw a decade ago.
Ayy nice man, started gym myself like 6 months back and it's honestly been great. It's honestly refreshing and missing a session makes me feel weird