#cradle runnerpost

She spent some time with the Eight-Man Empire in Dreadgod, hunting down various monsters left in the wake of the Bleeding Phoenix — Blood Shadows, mostly, but some others. She could have taken the blood/hunger (and sword) madra from them, drawn more power out, gotten to Archlord and peak Herald earlier.

And the best part of this idea is, to me, that she would be more vulnerable to the Phoenix. And here is where she ascends to Monarch — by commanding a division between herself and the Phoenix, obtaining the Sword Icon. There’s a lot of cool uses for this Icon that we never got to see in canon, and I think this would really fit.

In canon, Lindon is already a master Soulsmith, and on top of that surpasses Yerin in combat ability by the last two books (and un-Enforced strength??). It works, but I’d like to see them stand equal. Frankly, Lindon getting massive doses of strength from his diet (book 5 eating poisonous carp, book 8 eating Crusher) feels like a massive disservice to the others. Yerin got a few really useful things from the Uncrowned King tournament that should have catapulted her own development as well. And I know Lindon’s thing is advancing at full speed, but considering how much time he’s got to spend Soulsmithing, I think Yerin should at least keep pace in terms of advancement. (Sorry to Mercy who’s just left in the dust in this hypothetical)

Cradle -- with enough power, you can do almost anything, but not everything. Also, the society mirrors an exaggerated version of capitalism where economic and political power are interchangeable at the highest levels, that power is half-created by being a "big player" who has more leverage to create wealth, and half-taken from those below you; also also, it's a somewhat-meritocracy where talent is rewarded, but only if you're exceptionally lucky -- by running into resources yourself, or getting a sponsor who is willing to commit Big Nepotism. Finally, there will always be problems with big enough systems -- but you can still change them to be better -- and change can cost unimaginable resources and lives. There are more themes than this, but these are the ones I'd remark on.

The Last Horizon -- there are always fires to put out, and you can't go wrong trying to put them out. And people will always get in your way of putting out those fires because they personally benefit from them, and also because they value their autonomy or something.

The Last Horizon is much shorter than Cradle, on account of being ongoing and also just being a more streamlined story, and its setting being less possible to twist into a real-world allegory. But it is also true that I haven't examined either story deeply, and could stand to do some more in-depth analysis.

Anyway, the main examples that come to mind here are Kaladin’s curmudgeonly attitude and mostly-inflexible code of honor (both inherited from Lirin, and the second partially also inherited from Hesina), Miles Morales thinking of his parents‘ and uncle’s words at critical moments in the Spiderverse movies (and also him and his dad walking down stairs instead of taking risky parkour jumps), and Yerin’s whole manner of speaking (inherited from the Sword Sage, a father figure).

So, since I’m not feeling particularly brainy right now, I’ll just paste and re-edit something I’ve said off Tumblr here, about the Iron Body advancement. We have a few important mentions, such as Lindon’s Bloodforged Iron Body and Yerin’s Steelborn Iron Body, but the others also support this idea as far as I can tell.

I think Iron Bodies are (in addition to setting a spiritual and physical foundation for later advancement stages) full-body Enforcer techniques with no Path/madra-type requirement, and no need for concentration.

Add that to my other comic idea of the scene in Bloodline, of Dross saying “East! East!” right before Malice’s arrow rockets past the ship at Mach 2.

Akura Charity's emotions and stuff (she constantly is kept in the dark about things during Uncrowned and Wintersteel, and is jaded by the end of the series)

Icons that the characters could be close to (i.e. Mercy and the Bow Icon, Yerin and the Shield Icon (and Sword and Blood Icons), Ziel and the Script Icon (if it exists), etc.)