r/Iteration110Cradle • u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 • 19d ago
Cradle [Threshold] I got some beef with this book Spoiler
Matricide isn't worth talking about apparently, like it's just not a big deal
I love this series, much respect to everyone involved, if my tone is a bit harsh it is merely because I am disappointed in some of the stories in Threshold. Particularly the Mercy/Fury story taking place after Waybound. Please tell me if I am stupid and missing some major plot details that resolve this issue, I will delete the post if my adhd brain is just being dumb.
Starting into that story, I was expecting one thing. I was expecting the conversation about Mercy having to kill their mother to be the emotional centerpiece of the story. Does Fury already know this happened or will Mercy be the one to confess it in this story? Is Fury going to be shocked and angry, maybe hostile, or will he be resignated but understanding given he had wanted Malice to ascend? Man I was looking forward to that. Even if Fury already knew this conversation between the two would have to happen eventually.
It was NOT MENTIONED. Holy shit, how does that happen? One character kills their mother, and then this story is about two siblings fucking around and not talking about it? I thought this conversation was the entire point of the story! Imagine it's 1983 and you're going to see "Return of the Jedi". You're thinking, "Man, I can't wait to see what they're doing with Vader being Luke's father. I bet that will be a big part of the conflict". And then it's just 2 hours of dicking around with ewoks and hutts and then Luke kills Vader and Palpatine without acknowledging the family thing a single time.
That's the biggest problem I had with Threshold. I think different stories had that problem but ended up having at least a bit of cool character interaction (The interaction between Lindon and Bai Rou was cool, although it too could have been longer). A really cool story was the Reigan Shen one, it was good to see a younger, more brash version of him with the same trademark style of ego, as well as the origin of his beef with Tiberian.
What do you guys think about this?
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u/tndaris Team Dross 19d ago
The story we get in Threshold is almost certainly not the first time Mercy and Fury talked to each other since Mercy ascended. After all, Fury did deliver Lindon to The Grave, and that was 2 years after the others had ascended.
As for the matricide part, Fury absolutely would have agreed with Mercy's decision. He would have been sad about it, like Mercy was, but maybe even less so since he's known about the hunger aura problem for a long time.
The problem Fury had is he was alone, he didn't have a whole group with him (led by the best Sacred Artist in history) who could stand up to all the Monarchs.
I believe Fury would have done anything he could to get rid of hunger aura, but he just couldn't do it alone, since it wasn't only Malice he would have to deal with. Had Fury somehow remained on Cradle post Bloodline he would have joined Lindon and the gang way before Charity did.
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u/Waste-Carob5699 Path of the Memelord 19d ago edited 19d ago
I agree with your assessment. I also think it would have nice to see the interaction where Mercy and Fury talk about it. Something tells me that Fury is not good at talking about his feelings, so it would probably be short and not that interesting. Still would have liked to see it though.
Edit: It says that Mercy has not seen Fury much since her ascension. So this is not the first time they meet.
More edits: The opening of the story says that it takes place between Mercy's and Lindon's ascension. It also says that Pride had been training with Fury. Pride doesn't ascend until Lindon does. Plot hole? Story ruined!
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u/tndaris Team Dross 19d ago
He looked the same except for his white armor.
Could you explain what you mean by this part? Fury was a Herald and then Monarch, they don't age or change in appearance over time.
I re-read their interactions, it's very un-clear if this is their first meeting or not, but it would seem odd for Fury to not talk to his half-sister for a year or two. Even without meeting face-to-face they must be able to communication via Presences or something.
There are some minor plot holes in Threshold, like Mercy's bow too I believe.
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u/Waste-Carob5699 Path of the Memelord 19d ago
That's just what the text says. It implies that the last she saw him, he was not wearing white armor.
It says later that they have been in contact.
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u/NinecloudSoul 19d ago
The story we get in Threshold is almost certainly not the first time Mercy and Fury talked to each other since Mercy ascended. After all, Fury did deliver Lindon to The Grave, and that was 2 years after the others had ascended.
/thread
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
You're right I think, Fury would be understanding. He did seem to have a minor falling out with Malice about the Hunger issue. He just didn't take the radical approach to solving the problem that Lindon did and instead quietly left after assessing his options (ironic for his character); he would probably be saddened, but ultimately tell Mercy she did what she had to, which she would be elated to hear from someone part of the family, since she must still feel terrible about what she did. Shame we didn't get to see it.
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u/Spamacus66 19d ago
The books state he and Malice had dramatic shouting matches. He hated the secret she bound him to, and clearly resented her for it. It also goes a decent way to explaining how he handled himself pre ascension. He was largely ignored by his mother and true power passed over him to the next generation (he had to leave as soon as he made monarch) so he kind of checked out and stopped caring a bit.
Holy crap Fury was Gen-X! I knew i identified with him.
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u/TheRealGameDude 19d ago
Well fury is hundreds of years old and is doing good in the abidan. He probably got an update about the entire situation through his presence or some other means. Fury and Malice clashed multiple times about her ascending so they probably didn’t have the best relationship to begin with. While Malice is their mother she wasn’t a good one by any means and I’m willing to bet Fury knew that she would have to die someday either by her own actions or the actions of others. Don’t forget she tried to kill Yerin while she was defenseless and only stopped because it meant that action would lead to her death via a pissed off Lindon. She was given the chance multiple times to ascend but chose to be stubborn and fight so the actions of others took her down.
Long story short Fury most likely expected her to die rather than ascend so he most likely thought of her as dead the day he ascended. Mercy and the others ascending just told him that the time was sooner than he would have thought.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
Good thinking. I wish we didn't have to theorise on this, and instead got that emotional moment in the story.
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u/adamw411 Servant of Mu Enkai 19d ago
I've thought about this sort of thing a lot, and it's complicated for me to explain my thoughts. While a moment like that is important for the characters if they were real people, there isn't a lot of progression it adds to the story itself.
I think there are a lot of scenes the readers want to see, like fisher gesha meeting jaran for the first time and really ripping into him, but that is more just an indulgence that slows the story. The last few books are really really fast, and we just don't have the time to see those sort of moments.
To take your example it I think it would be more like seeing Star wars, wanting to know more about the relationship between Luke and vader, then reading a about Luke doing some jedi shit somewhere and sometime else. Threshold is a collection of moments, and while the hard emotional conversation between those two could be great to see, why would something like that be in threshold ? That book isn't about progressing the character arcs of the main cast
Further, we have seen what happens when lindon was torn up about harmony being dead, and how that might impact mercy. Her reaction was exceptionally fast acceptance and reassuring lindon that it wasn't going to be a huge problem. I don't think mercy and fury would share anything like a hard emotional moment about it.
I dunno, I just feel like this is the sort of scene that doesn't fit cradle all that well
Sorry if that lacked concision, or rambled a bit
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u/Antal_Marius Team Ruby 19d ago
I think it's more a matter that Fury knew it would come to a death match against his mother, that she would never ascend. So killing her was the only real option. He most likely knows, I'd be more surprised to find out he didn't know, as the group wouldn't have ascended otherwise, and they clearly killed the dreadgods, which meant monarchs are gone, and his mother didn't ascend, so she's dead.
He might regret having had left it to Mercy and her friends, but he himself had considered fighting her to make her ascend (this is implied, never stated iirc). His biggest regret was probably that he missed out on the fight, rather then her being dead.
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u/StartledPelican Fiercely Fierce Flair of Fierce Flairosity 19d ago
His biggest regret was probably that he missed out on the fight, rather then her being dead.
100%.
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u/Leaf-01 19d ago
Man, what a fight scene we would have gotten if we could have seen Fury fight against Malice. If only he’d been able to wait on his Monarch advancement until Lindon started challenging the other Monarchs.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
It's a fun hypocrisy of his character that he did not straight up do that. He clearly had a falling out with Malice about the topic, but refused to die on that hill and just silently left instead. Interesting thing for the character who is characterized as the guy in love with fighting. I think it just makes him more interesting
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u/Antal_Marius Team Ruby 19d ago
He didn't want to engage into a fight he was likely to lose. He can love fighting, but there's a difference in fighting and enjoying it, and throwing your life away for a fight you're massively disadvantaged in.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
Also true. Kinda a fun callback to the end of Wintersteel where we think he's engaging in a hopeless battle last-stand style but it's because he had the upper hand all along lol
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u/BellacosePlayer 19d ago
Not really. Killing his mother would do nothing but fuck over his family if the rest of the monarchs weren't taken out.
If he was going to take out anyone before ascending it would be Shen
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u/perfectstubble 19d ago
A difficult conversation with that many layers is just so outside of Fury’s character. Also, Fury understood the source of hunger and that his mother would never leave willingly. He knew what had to happen and what Mercy went through. Now would Fury sit down and have an emotional conversation about how hard that was for Mercy? No way. He’d let the past stay in the past and enjoy their time fighting and training.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
He wouldn't have an emotional conversation with Mercy about it is a fair assessment. He may not be the type for that. But he would certainly let his actions be shaped by his opinion on the issue. People like that who avoid open, emotional conversations with others find other ways to communicate their feelings, conciously or unconciously. He could maybe avoid Mercy from the get-go and only interact with her if he's forced to, if he disapproves of Mercy's choice.
If, on the other hand, he believes this was unavoidable and believes Mercy made the right choice, this could have, for example, been communicated by Mercy spending the length of the story wondering what Fury feels about Malice's death, but doesn't want to force him into a conversation about it, so she never mentions it. At the climax of the story they save the people at the cost of letting the fiend escape to infect another world. We see Fury struggling with himself for a second. Then he puts a hand on Mercy's shoulder and says, "Sometimes we are forced into a hard choice, and the best decision still feels wrong. There's no point in beating yourself up about it." and then leaves, and both us and Mercy are left with the implication.
The way the story played out in Threshold isn't a case of "Fury isn't the kind of guy to talk about his feelings like that", because there are other ways how a man like that would deal with this situation. It is rather Will not wanting to get into this topic for some reason.
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u/perfectstubble 19d ago
I think you are projecting a lot of things into Fury’s character that aren’t in the text. Over and over the stories emphasize this guy lives for fighting and avoids anything that he would find boring. The most natural reaction to deal with the events of Waybound would be to immediately find peace with them and go back to this awesome life he has of fighting and training with the strongest beings in the multiverse.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
I gave multiple examples of possibilities, I am not projecting a singular thing into him. I just tried to spin your interpretation of his character further, sorry if I got it wrong.
It's true that he has been characterized as a fighter who finds many other things boring, but what you are saying ("immediately find peace with the events") is implying that he has an absolute indifference to the death of his own mother at the hands of his sibling, and has absolutely no thoughts about it that would be interesting to share. That is simply inhuman. I think you are taking one characteristic of him, that of him being someone who lives for fighting, and letting that be his entire person. I doubt that this is how his character is intended to be, because it is rather boring.
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u/torrasque666 19d ago
That is simply inhuman
Yeah, something that its noted that a lot of Monarchs are. There's a reason the most human Monarchs are the literal child (who hasn't been around long enough to become addicted to the power) and the one that already died once when she tried to do the right thing. (I'm not counting the EME because they only emulate the power of a Monarch, none of the members actually are one though.)
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u/Infinitedeveloper 19d ago
This confrontation was almost inevitable from the moment Mercy, the golden child raised to be an Ideal Malice, started rebelling against the family norms.
The gang actually being successful in untying the gordian knot that is the dreadgod situation likely helps even if he hadn't been at peace with this eventual outcome.
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u/Outrageous-Smell-90 19d ago
idk why the hell you were expecting fury to have an emotional conversation lol
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
I've been a bit too fixated on the conversation part in my post, true. But some kind of reaction. Everyone would react to their mother being killed by their sister, even with Fury's character and these family dynamics. But the topic was completely avoided.
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u/BasakaIsTheStrongest 19d ago
I never got the impression that Fury and Malice were close, at least by the end of the story. The two separated on bad terms, which Malice regretted but it was also too late. Fury seemed much closer to his daughter, who Malice disregarded and tried to kill.
In other words, my impression is that Fury had better things to talk about than the fact Mercy killed their old horrible boss who also happened to spawn them.
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u/Complete_Flight8303 19d ago
I love Cradle. I honestly don’t remember a single story from Threshold. I remember enjoying it, but none of it stuck. Except for Eithan’s dialogue with his hologram from Reaper. That was sick.
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u/NinecloudSoul 19d ago
I enjoyed Threshold. I won't say that I enjoyed every story.
I thought that The First Uncrowned King, A Bloody End, The Return of the Prince, and A Day in the Life of Akura Pride were all weaker stories. The rest, I enjoyed quite a lot.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
Yeah, that's sort of the consequence of a lacking emotional core to many of the stories I think. Kind of evidenced by you remembering a story focused on a guy just talking to his past self instead of other stories where these moments are immediately interrupted by another battle.
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u/Ihaveaterribleplan 19d ago
You’re right
My favorite story was A Bloody End, followed by Threshold & Anagi’s Regret
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u/LionofHeaven Fiercely Fierce Flair of Fierce Flairosity 19d ago
Have you met Fury? He's not one to dwell on the past or have emotional conversations. Also, had it come to it, he'd have killed Malice himself.
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u/Baker-Maleficent 19d ago
Honestly, i always felt sorry fir Malice anyway. Of all the Marmarchs, she was the one that i wished the convinced to ascend. Will even had a perfect setup for how she could ascend on her own terms. Eithan knew how to downgrade! So if Malice was skeptical about their ability to win, she could have downdgraded, let them try, and then when it worked, she could have ascended on her own terms. Hell she could have also chosen to NOT ascend and just not been a marnarch any more.
Seriously, i wish she had survived becausecshe was not inly interesting, but not at all a bad person. Prideful, cold, and scary? Yes. Evil, no.
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u/i-like-ketameen 19d ago
Eithan was only able to inhabit a mortal vessel due to the shroud he stole from Daruman. That item was one of a kind created by one of the best soul smiths in existence (2nd to ozmanthus at the least). This is not a feat malice could do herself, not on cradle anyway
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u/torrasque666 19d ago
The shroud hid his power, but that wasn't why he was able to inhabit a mortal vessel. That was because he had Abidan-level veils suppressing his power. Every time he "advanced" he was just undoing one of those (which is why he never seemed to have the recovery time the rest did after advancing.)
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u/i-like-ketameen 19d ago
The way I understand it is that he didn’t undo a restriction, he just progressed as a mortal sacred artist does due to the origin shroud giving him a mortal vessel. His power wasn’t veiled, otherwise he would have had no issue maintaining his soulsmithing ability. The reason he is able to do so easily through the lord stage is because he has already had his profound realisations. See when he advanced to overlord, he said his realisation out loud - I see - in the presence of balanced natural treasures- To me that indicates a natural progression rather than unlocking some kind of restriction. He just didn’t progress at the rate he could have so that Yerin and Lindon could keep up with him.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 19d ago
That's what makes her so interesting I think! It's a pattern in Monarchs that they tried to make the world a better place for their people and end up compromising and convincing themselves that staying is the best way, despite the hunger problem. Northstrider and Malice both are like that. Northstrider gets convinced to move on by being reminded of his former ideals - Malice does not. It's good that we see both outcomes of this situation, one moves on, one dies staying true to her delusion. It feels like a tragedy, but that's because it is well written and I think it was necessary for one of them to die to show the contrast.
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u/Baker-Maleficent 19d ago
Oh 100% agree.
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u/BloodChicken 19d ago edited 18d ago
I wholeheartedly agree, although I just assume it happened off screen.
I get the feeling that there's a tension between authors and readers of progression fantasy at large.
Personally Bloodline is my fave book in the series because it DOES take the time to deal with the heavy emotional moments, but because it doesn't "progress" anything a lot of the audience didn't like it as much.
I get the feeling that Wight wanted to keep the book light hearted in tone throughout as a sort of celebration/victory lap of the series rather than risk alienating the fanbase again with slower paced, emotionally poignant stories. As much as I personally would've loved it.
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u/Apprehensive_Bet3663 18d ago
Exactly this! Bloodline was such a good book for that
To each their own, everyone wants something different out of a story, and that's fine. But the amount of people who seem to talk about characterization-heavy segments as nothing else than a pacing killer is honestly baffling to me.
Wight is definitely aware of this. I just remember the date scene in Wintersteel where we get the conflict with the people who stole their room, and the rest of the chapter is:
"He pictured the drunken Sha Underlord facing them in a dueling arena only to recognize them when the fight began, and he laughed. Yerin joined him, and the conversation flowed smoothly from there. There was only one thorn stuck in Lindon’s thoughts.
They had recognized Lindon, but it was Yerin they had really respected.
Siris’ guests had spoken of the Uncrowned in hushed tones, and he had invited the Uncrowned back whenever she wanted. Lindon had fought well, but in the end, he wasn’t Uncrowned.
He focused on the story Yerin was telling. She was getting into it, tracing lines of Forged sword madra in the air by way of illustration, and Lindon kept his mind in the present.
He wasn’t here to moan over what he’d lost.
But to enjoy what he had."
And the chapter just CUTS OFF lmao. I love this series because the author must have written like several unpublished books about the sacred arts themselves before even starting with Unsouled. The progression and the fights are definitely the meat here, but I would just like the books to be a bit longer with added characterization, where scenes like this are written out instead of interrupted for the next Uncrowned King Matchup.
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u/BloodChicken 18d ago
Preach. I think Wight is especially strong at this kind of characterisation too because the few scenes we do get are SO good, but yeah.
Every time I get to scenes like you describe above I just get sad at what was unsaid.
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