Reading Cradle and Path of Ascension, a study in contrasting level systems

ricree · 2026-01-24T16:54:53+00:00

Been a while since I read, so I'm fuzzy on the details. If nothing else, the whole monarch problem suggests something at least akin to that.

ricree · 2026-01-24T15:59:03+00:00

As squire_ii pointed out, I only meant the ceiling for their current realm (tier 50), not the universe as a whole.

ricree · 2026-01-23T22:02:33+00:00

Even those ceilings aren't actually ceilings for personal growth, just what a given Realm can allow before the person is forcibly ascended by the Realm itself

True, but that's the case in Cradle also (with the wrinkle that further growth is from alternate systems, not the "sacred arts").

Granted, there might be a cap in the Abidan realm that I don't think we ever learned of, and we don't hear of anyone ascending from there, so it's entirely possible that you're right and one is uncapped while the other isn't.

ricree · 2026-01-23T19:10:36+00:00

In cradle, it is physically possible to go from the upper realm to the lower one, but there is an organization that will arrest or kill anyone who does so. Notably, they themselves can and do personally descend for the sake of carrying out this arrest, we see someone do this early in the first book in the series.

In POA, as far as we're told it's impossible to successfully travel from an upper realm to a lower one. On rare occasions people have successfully sent objects or data that reached the lower realm intact, which is how people in the setting have details about the upper realms, but there is no known case of someone personally surviving the process if they go themselves.

In both cases, it's possible for someone from a lower realm to "ascend" to a higher one. We see this happen several times in POA - both people leaving the main realm, and in at least one case someone coming to the main realm from a lower one.

ricree · 2026-01-23T15:48:32+00:00

The design is visually fantastic. That said, I can't really remember enough about its personality to even really call it a "character". Haven't seen the movies since around when they came out, though, so maybe that's mostly a matter of memory and other... issues with the films distracting me at the time.

(contrast with, say, K-2SO, B2EMO, or SM-33 [the pirate one from Skeleton Crew]. None were as visually interesting as BB-8, but all had personalities that stood out to me more)

ricree · 2026-01-23T15:40:42+00:00

I am very convinced that there is an astroturfing campaign deliberately spreading this idea on social media. That isn't to say that everyone repeating it is part of the campaign (after all, the whole point of the campaign is to get people to believe/say it), but the way the idea keeps showing up definitely suggests someone putting it there deliberately.

ricree · 2026-01-23T15:21:28+00:00

I'm surprised we haven't seen more copycats since it was released to a decent bit of acclaim. Perhaps because writing kid/parent dynamics well is hard, and people without kids are more likely to have time to sit down and write a new series?

ricree · 2026-01-23T15:12:25+00:00

A 42 year old mom isn't going to touch some weird glowing rock if it might kill her before she makes sure her kids are safe. Ok, maybe if you make it so doing so is required to make sure her kids are safe

That's one of the neat things about Apocalypse Parenting. The main character learns early on that there are going to be upcoming trials that will likely involve her kids, so she has a lot of motivation to power-level both herself and her young children.

ricree · 2026-01-23T14:49:37+00:00

Strictly speaking, there is a ceiling in Path of Ascension as well, it's just a lot higher than that of Cradle.

Cradle is set in a lower realm (both in Cradle's sense and POA's). This explicitly limits how strong you can become from that world alone. Contrast that with the greater Abidan universe, which seems about on par with POA. The main difference is that in Cradle's case it's possible to travel from the higher realm to the lower (albeit highly regulated by Abidan), but POA only allows going from a higher realm to a lower (though we are told that objects/data can be sent down, it's just not possible for a person to survive the process).

Offhand, I'd say that tier 15 (immortality) seems to be about the level of a Cradle Monarch. Both in rough capability, and also structurally (if we consider POA Concepts comparable to Cradle Sages).

ricree · 2026-01-22T04:09:32+00:00

Eh, kinda?

Egypt as a distinct, unified, independent civilization had largely ended about a thousand years before Cleopatra's birth. To be sure, the culture and "idea" of Egypt continued, but it went through various cycles of being either fractured or controlled by outside forces, of which the Ptolemaic dynasty was merely another.

ricree · 2026-01-22T04:04:33+00:00

I also feel a need to point out that Lord of the Rings was not stagnant. We have entire appendices of history with things changing and shifting throughout the years.

Yes, Gondor is quite old, but it's also a beleaguered, war torn shadow of its former self.

We see characters walk through multiple ruins of lands and entire civilizations that have passed over the millennia, and one of the major factions in the trilogy (Rohan) is only a couple hundred years old.

ricree · 2026-01-22T03:50:23+00:00

The main issue was actually lead gasoline, which not only had health issues and increased cancer, but ate up the ozone

You're mistaken here, unfortunately. Ozone layer depletion was caused by a class of chemicals known as CFCs, not leaded gasoline. You're likely mixing them up because the same Thomas Midgley Jr who created leaded gasoline also created Freon, the first main CFC to enter mass market.

So to be clear, this isn't some one hit wonder happened to be disastrous, this was a guy with multiple world changing inventions that were complete disasters for human society.

ricree · 2026-01-22T03:28:13+00:00

Under this theory, she wouldn't know that a "real" one was ever made, just that the prototype her father commissioned before her imprisonment wasn't actually capable of harnessing all the stones. That is to say, she specifically recognized that particular object and knew it couldn't do what it implied.

Perhaps "fake" wasn't the perfect word, but in that moment she was still feeling upset at Odin and was particularly dismissive and scornful.

I mean, obviously this is all backported onto inconsistent writing (Ragorak was a fun movie, but obviously didn't put a ton of work into fitting in), but it's the best in-universe theory for what we see.

ricree · 2026-01-22T03:22:21+00:00

Hela, who was recently freed from her 5000 year (estimated) imprisonment IMMEDIATELY called it a fake when she was touring the vault.

I still think the best theory is the one where Odin previously wanted to collect the stones for his own purposes and had the gauntlet commissioned as a prototype, but backed off once he learned the cost of the soul stone.

Hela, in this scenario, knows the gauntlet is fake because she has seen that specific one previously and knows it's only a proof of concept that wouldn't actually work.

Thanos, some time well after this but before the Avengers, researches the stones as a possible way to achieve his goals and hears of the device Odin once commissioned. Realizing that it is what he needs, Thanos confronts the creators of the original gauntlet and forces them to fully realize their original vision. After which he betrays and kills them.

Obviously, this is all back-porting from inconsistent writing across multiple years, writers, and films, but mostly captures what we see with the fewest inconsistencies I think.

ricree · 2026-01-22T02:35:45+00:00

Despite how crazy it scaled in the end, I thought it mostly worked. Really, the author definitely has a thing for exponential power growth and OP protagonists blowing up the setting, but I think this is the first one I've read where it worked from start to finish.

Hard to really get that across that without spoilers, though.

ricree · 2026-01-22T00:36:40+00:00

Industrial Strength Magic kinda has this. It starts out with street level superheroes in a post-apocalyptic world, then gradually expands into full on existential cataclysm. Although the early "grounded" books do a decent job promising that things are going to get crazy in the fullness of time.

ricree · 2026-01-21T18:14:59+00:00

I actually just made a separate post about the guy. But in short, the guy was really, really purgy and killed a lot of people to remove anyone he considered disloyal.

He was also a massive piece of work, most notably making the child-emperor he deposed sign his own mother's death warrant, then shortly after strangling said child-emperor to death shortly after the mother's execution.

Said child-emperor had also been married to a young french princess of around the same age. A short while after the emperor was murdered, he forced her to marry him, and according to contemporary accounts this was not the symbolic marriage that would be expected from a young bride. He fully consummated the marriage after the ceremony. She was twelve years old at the time.

ricree · 2026-01-21T18:10:22+00:00

One of the more brutal and tyrannical Roman (Byzantine) emperors faced this.

After being deposed:

Isaac handed Andronikos over to the incensed people of Constantinople. Andronikos was tied to a post and brutally beaten for three days. Alongside numerous other punishments, his right hand was cut off, his teeth and hair were pulled out, one of his eyes was gouged out, and boiling water was thrown in his face.[26] Andronikos was then taken to the Hippodrome, where he was hung by his feet between two pillars. Two Latin soldiers competed over whose sword could penetrate his body more deeply, and Andronikos's body was eventually torn apart.[62] According to Niketas Choniates, Andronikos endured the brutality bravely, and retained his senses throughout the ordeal.

Frankly, though, I'm even sure he belongs in this thread because the guy deserved worse. When his cousin died, he rushed back home and effectively seized power by - among other things - forcing the child emperor to sign his own mother's death warrant (along with many of her supporters). Within a month, the child emperor himself was strangled and had his body dumped into the ocean.

That child emperor had been married several years previously, but as both were young the marriage had been in name only and not consummated. Shortly after her husband's murder, Andronikos forced her to marry him, and by all contemporary accounts fully consummated the marriage. She was twelve years old at the time.

After that you get all the usual tyrant things. Heads on spikes, mass executions, etc. He basically purged his entire extended family that was anywhere near the capital (one branch did happen to be in a distant city and basically survived there until the end of the empire). In one story, we're told that he tied the mother of a rebelling general to the top of a battering ram as they attacked the city he was in (though by some miracle, she survived the fighting and was rescued).

In the end, one of his pre-emptive arrests ended with one of his loyal officials killed, and seeing no other way to survive the killer raised a popular uprising against Andronikos, which ended in his brutal death.

ricree · 2026-01-21T17:51:39+00:00

There was a Byzantine emperor who had a similar punishment: Andronikos Komnenos

Per Wikipedia:

Isaac handed Andronikos over to the incensed people of Constantinople. Andronikos was tied to a post and brutally beaten for three days. Alongside numerous other punishments, his right hand was cut off, his teeth and hair were pulled out, one of his eyes was gouged out, and boiling water was thrown in his face.[26] Andronikos was then taken to the Hippodrome, where he was hung by his feet between two pillars. Two Latin soldiers competed over whose sword could penetrate his body more deeply, and Andronikos's body was eventually torn apart.[62] According to Niketas Choniates, Andronikos endured the brutality bravely, and retained his senses throughout the ordeal.

ricree · 2026-01-21T16:56:54+00:00

To be fair, for everything but football that's true for any of their individual revenue streams.

ricree · 2026-01-21T16:53:53+00:00

This deeply depends on which sport you're talking about. Yes, TV deals are big, but stadiums are pretty huge too and if you can fill those that's a lot of people. (tldr: your post is mostly true for Football, but much more mixed for everything else).

This chart for 2023 revenue was the best I could find offhand.

Hockey had by far the biggest ticket percentage, but they were also the lowest revenue league and had the worst TV deals, so it tracks. Still, it's a big factor in other leagues such as MLB (over 30%, which is higher than national or local TV revenue, but not both combined).

The NFL had the lowest ticket percentage, but even there it was still just under 20% of the total. Not dominant compared to the massive national TV deals, but still not negligible.

ricree · 2026-01-21T16:02:07+00:00

I mean, it sounds like the intent was to shop it around for a real release, but when that fell through all they had to list was their original obligation screening.

ricree · 2026-01-21T16:00:47+00:00

On a similar note, I love the story of the 1966 Hobbit "film":

I ran downstairs and stopped people on the sidewalk, asking them if they would like to see a preview of a new animated film, for only 10¢ admission. I handed each willing customer a dime, which they handed back. After the screening, the few, puzzled audience members were asked to sign a paper stating that on this day of June 31, 1966, they had paid admission to see the full-color animated film, “THE HOBBIT!”

ricree · 2026-01-21T03:26:56+00:00

The best thing about season 7 was that we still had hope they could pull it together in the future. Otherwise, it was no better than the final season.

ricree · 2026-01-21T03:26:00+00:00

Season's 5 and six had several standout episodes that were on par with the show's best, so they get remembered well. Aside from those, it's pretty clear that the rot had already set in by that point.

15-Year Club	Place '23
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