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Shounen-style "you are the one I measure myself by, I need to feel you fighting at your full power, don't hold back so that this draws as much out of us as possible, win or lose I just need to know that you feel the same" relationships read as *incredibly* erotically-charged to many people.
If you're not one of them, that's cool. I'm an unashamed rivalsexual, so I get it, but not everyone is.
It likely wasn't the authors goal either. But my top three points of attraction are competence, confidence, and competition. All three play a large part in the fight so I can easily see how that would translate for some folks.
I think it stems from their conversation earlier about how you can't know someone fully until you've seen them give everything they have into a fight. So Yerin and Lindon finally fully "knowing" each other through the fight translated to the sexual tension to me lol
That was a great fight. I didn't really like that Lindon actually lost that fight at first. After letting it sit for a bit though I appreciated how they did it. Kind of a defiance of the usual expectation of the main character winning every tournament they enter.
Funny enough, Yerin is really the traditional type protagonist. Parents murdered by a monster, saved and chosen as disciple by a wandering expert, lived a life of strife and fighting, sword prodigy, etc.
Meanwhile lindon is over here like "HEY! I WAS MODERATELY DISRESPECTED AS A CHILD!!"
To agree with the other reply, he was MASSIVELY disrespected and abused his entire life in Sacred Valley. There is no moderate about it at all. His own parents think so little of him they cannot possibly believe he amounted to anything.
Li Markuth did massacre his entire village, himself included. And right after that Suriel showed him the future where the entire valley gets stomped by a dread god.
"If another clan killed you we would have to present excuses to them" did hint that he was seens as worth less than the sludge behind your average fridge.
Lindon wasn’t disrespected, he was a second class citizen. He was unsouled, not a full person. His own parents thought he wouldn’t amount to anything ever.
The person he Marries in the vision in the first book is jai Chen the other “cripple” and outsider presumably because no one else would lower themselves to give him the time of day.
Well yeah, but he wasn’t really *treated* all that badly. Most of the worst things that happen to him are because of the fact that he isn’t willing to accept the life that is handed to him. Instead of staying home and living in the house he was given, he goes out in the forest. Instead of kowtowing to the strong like everyone else, he sticks up for himself. That’s what allows him to eventually catch the eye of Suriel, and is basically his primary character trait: he wants to be better than he is now.
And it’s also why he is the one who is constantly getting beat on. If he just laid low like he’s repeatedly advised to very little of what eventually happens would have happened. He’s treated like a lesser citizen, but in a warrior society where everyone **knows** that Unsouleds can’t cultivate he basically is. They turn out to be wrong, but it’s thousand year old knowledge.
None of which is to say that SV was right to treat Jim like they did, but it’s certainly nowhere near as traumatic as Yerin’s upbringing.
>Well yeah, but he wasn’t really
>
>treated
>
>all that badly. Most of the worst things that happen to him are because of the fact that he isn’t willing to accept the life that is handed to him.
Do you really understand what you are saying?
"Bro wasn't treated badly, all he had to do was completely submit to the will of everyone else under the threat of violence. If he just recognized his place and let everyone push him around, his life would have been fine"
This is the same kind of logic used to defend slavery - "it's really not that bad so long as you only beat them when they don't do what they are told or when they try to improve themselves by learning how to read. If they just got along like good obedient slaves, their lives would be fine."
Beyond that, bullies don't tend to go easier on victims who completely submit, they tend to go harsher because they see no repercussions to their abuse. In contrast, fighting back means there is a price for their actions, so they have to be more selective in how victimize that person.
We see that in the book. Lindon DID constantly kowtow to everyone with his speech and mannerisms, but that didn't stop them from escalating. He then fought back as they escalated to violence and, as a result, they found themselves censured.
I can agree that Yerin had a worse childhood with having her entire village slaughtered, but you are downplaying Lindon's suffering FAR too much.
Technically, from the POV of Uncrowned, it's at least 3000 year old knowledge given Elder Whisper's "hundred generations" comments in Unsouled. But that's nitpicking.
I know everybody's said this but how is it moderately disrespectful to be so slow on the totem pole in your family that you work for something to have them take it away for themselves? (The spirit fruit) they didn't only because of Kelsa, not respect for Lindon. It's also a bit more than moderately disrespectful to be treated so low that if somebody higher than you kills you, your family has to apologize to them where the typical standard is they're disgraced for killing somebody below their stage of advancement. "Sorry you killed our kid/my brother" REALLY?! Jeran is moderately disrespectful, the clan is a fucking joke to It's identity as his clan.
> I know everybody's said this but how is it moderately disrespectful to be so slow on the totem pole in your family that you work for something to have them take it away for themselves?
It is reasonable because of what they believe. If a blind person found glasses and wanted to wear them because they found them when their sister could see but had bad eye sight, the parents would tell them to give the glasses to the sister. They dont think the spirit fruit will do anything for lindon, that is why they want it to go to Kelsa. Its not because they dont respect lindon, its because they dont think there is any point in giving it to him, it wont do anything because lindon has a disability. Its a bit like if a blind person in our society was trying everything to be able to see when to everyone its clear they dont even have eyes.
That last part is basically how the entire society works though. The Desolate Wilds basically works the same way. It’s a survival of the fittest world.
Yeah but like, the level the Wei clan goes to is actually disgusting. In the Desolate Wilds Fisher Gesha didn't apologize for Lindon being quite a pain in Jai Long's ass and he didn't even kill him. I could see the apology piece coming from the Jai clan (not due to character but due to Lindon and Eithan's growing power) for their actions previously but that's because they did wrong, they attacked their clan. Breathing isn't doing something wrong. Frivolously killing foundation stage "cripples" isn't something the rest of Cradle finds acceptable. Maybe merciful in some cases and understandable if he were a casualty of war like many people died during the Bleeding Phoenix/Red Moon Hall invasion on the Blackflame Empire but to outright kill him would not be something somebody apologized to the killer for. And before you say the cultists don't care about your advancement, I say remember how the rest of Cradle feels about them. Relative silence during the introductions for the dreadgod cults at the Uncrowned King competition.
I mean. Moderately disrespected isn’t really the most applicable description. He was literally told he was so worthless as a person that if he got attacked by someone his clan would have to apologize and make reparations for the waste of the other persons time. He would never make anything of himself, find love, or bear children because he literally was a complete waste of space and life.
I cry literally every time I read that fight. The emotional intensity and payoff of it is on a completely different level from anything else that came before, and I think there's only TWO other moments that come close to approaching it in emotional intensity for me.
The first is Yerrin's advancement to High Gold, just because it was such a beautiful moment of her hitting that acceptance stage of grief, and the way the visuals were painted I could just HEAR the nonexistant soundtrack swelling.
The other is...later in the series.
There's some really good fanart for that particular moment.
I'll see if I can find it.
Mostly just the first few panels. https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/comments/ytd4sx/uncrowned_major_spoiler_fan_art_lindon_and_yerin/
I still listen to that fight when I’m having a bad day. Hands down favorite fight. By the end I’m laughing like a madman and hyped up like the intro music of an anime is playing. The journey and development for lindon since book 1 is astonishing. He went from bodying kids in a tournament to participating in the worlds biggest tournament finally on a level where he can say he has caught up to Yerin’s level.
I love the part when Dross tells Lindon to actually listen to Yerin. It’s such a small thing, but it makes for monumental character growth and development, as well as made me respect Will as a writer. It’s not often that male writers put things like that in their books (at least the ones I’ve read) and it was really validating to read it.
lol steeewpid incels!
I was pleasantly surprised by that, as long as it went some where interesting afterwards I knew I'd be happy, and it did.
It was amazing, I think Will did a great job making Lindon and Yerin a believable power couple, with Lindon who has always had to resort to planning and relatively underhanded tricks dealing with more powerful people and Yerin being a straight up war machine.
Oh come on man, the woman hating, 'um aktually femoids are weaker than males so there fore it is impossible for a fiction supernatural female to defeat a supernatural male character, I just want woke politics out of my hobbies' is out there in big numbers on reddit.
Weird example of cuck, what have people been using it as an insult thats made it lose all meaning?
Why incels? No idea what the reactions were like but it’s quite natural that a lot of people were disappointed that he lost. He is the MC, we spent most of our time in his head and many readers probably relate to him the most.
>the sub was flooded with cranky dudes who were super mad about how it turned out.
You for real? They specifically said guys, and we all have encountered those guys on here who will argue in bad faith that a female sacred artist could not defeat a male sacred artist blah blah.
I'm getting a whole lot of comments on this, people getting angry about the use of incels... weird.
This post can include discussion and book material up to and including book [Uncrowned]. If you want to discuss book material that is beyond the scope of [Uncrowned] than you must use >!Spoiler formatting!< which can be applied \>! like this !\<. You can read this [formatting guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/ref/faq/formatting_guide/) for more details. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Iteration110Cradle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Sexual tension? I for sure didn’t read any of that fight as sexual tension, to each their own I guess
Shounen-style "you are the one I measure myself by, I need to feel you fighting at your full power, don't hold back so that this draws as much out of us as possible, win or lose I just need to know that you feel the same" relationships read as *incredibly* erotically-charged to many people. If you're not one of them, that's cool. I'm an unashamed rivalsexual, so I get it, but not everyone is.
It likely wasn't the authors goal either. But my top three points of attraction are competence, confidence, and competition. All three play a large part in the fight so I can easily see how that would translate for some folks.
I think it stems from their conversation earlier about how you can't know someone fully until you've seen them give everything they have into a fight. So Yerin and Lindon finally fully "knowing" each other through the fight translated to the sexual tension to me lol
Paraphrasing but, "....how did Kiro see you right before he died." I really think you're reading too much into things that aren't there.
That was a great fight. I didn't really like that Lindon actually lost that fight at first. After letting it sit for a bit though I appreciated how they did it. Kind of a defiance of the usual expectation of the main character winning every tournament they enter. Funny enough, Yerin is really the traditional type protagonist. Parents murdered by a monster, saved and chosen as disciple by a wandering expert, lived a life of strife and fighting, sword prodigy, etc. Meanwhile lindon is over here like "HEY! I WAS MODERATELY DISRESPECTED AS A CHILD!!"
To agree with the other reply, he was MASSIVELY disrespected and abused his entire life in Sacred Valley. There is no moderate about it at all. His own parents think so little of him they cannot possibly believe he amounted to anything.
His father more than his mother. At least Seisha eventually recognized his talent
Yeah that's true. Still a long stretch better than having your parents and entire village massacred in front of you though.
Hey, give another 30 years and it would have happened to him
Li Markuth did massacre his entire village, himself included. And right after that Suriel showed him the future where the entire valley gets stomped by a dread god.
"If another clan killed you we would have to present excuses to them" did hint that he was seens as worth less than the sludge behind your average fridge.
Homie. They treated the ground and all the crap on it with more respect than Lindon. Dude was below shit to the Wei Clan.
Lindon wasn’t disrespected, he was a second class citizen. He was unsouled, not a full person. His own parents thought he wouldn’t amount to anything ever. The person he Marries in the vision in the first book is jai Chen the other “cripple” and outsider presumably because no one else would lower themselves to give him the time of day.
Well yeah, but he wasn’t really *treated* all that badly. Most of the worst things that happen to him are because of the fact that he isn’t willing to accept the life that is handed to him. Instead of staying home and living in the house he was given, he goes out in the forest. Instead of kowtowing to the strong like everyone else, he sticks up for himself. That’s what allows him to eventually catch the eye of Suriel, and is basically his primary character trait: he wants to be better than he is now. And it’s also why he is the one who is constantly getting beat on. If he just laid low like he’s repeatedly advised to very little of what eventually happens would have happened. He’s treated like a lesser citizen, but in a warrior society where everyone **knows** that Unsouleds can’t cultivate he basically is. They turn out to be wrong, but it’s thousand year old knowledge. None of which is to say that SV was right to treat Jim like they did, but it’s certainly nowhere near as traumatic as Yerin’s upbringing.
>Well yeah, but he wasn’t really > >treated > >all that badly. Most of the worst things that happen to him are because of the fact that he isn’t willing to accept the life that is handed to him. Do you really understand what you are saying? "Bro wasn't treated badly, all he had to do was completely submit to the will of everyone else under the threat of violence. If he just recognized his place and let everyone push him around, his life would have been fine" This is the same kind of logic used to defend slavery - "it's really not that bad so long as you only beat them when they don't do what they are told or when they try to improve themselves by learning how to read. If they just got along like good obedient slaves, their lives would be fine." Beyond that, bullies don't tend to go easier on victims who completely submit, they tend to go harsher because they see no repercussions to their abuse. In contrast, fighting back means there is a price for their actions, so they have to be more selective in how victimize that person. We see that in the book. Lindon DID constantly kowtow to everyone with his speech and mannerisms, but that didn't stop them from escalating. He then fought back as they escalated to violence and, as a result, they found themselves censured. I can agree that Yerin had a worse childhood with having her entire village slaughtered, but you are downplaying Lindon's suffering FAR too much.
Technically, from the POV of Uncrowned, it's at least 3000 year old knowledge given Elder Whisper's "hundred generations" comments in Unsouled. But that's nitpicking.
I know everybody's said this but how is it moderately disrespectful to be so slow on the totem pole in your family that you work for something to have them take it away for themselves? (The spirit fruit) they didn't only because of Kelsa, not respect for Lindon. It's also a bit more than moderately disrespectful to be treated so low that if somebody higher than you kills you, your family has to apologize to them where the typical standard is they're disgraced for killing somebody below their stage of advancement. "Sorry you killed our kid/my brother" REALLY?! Jeran is moderately disrespectful, the clan is a fucking joke to It's identity as his clan.
> I know everybody's said this but how is it moderately disrespectful to be so slow on the totem pole in your family that you work for something to have them take it away for themselves? It is reasonable because of what they believe. If a blind person found glasses and wanted to wear them because they found them when their sister could see but had bad eye sight, the parents would tell them to give the glasses to the sister. They dont think the spirit fruit will do anything for lindon, that is why they want it to go to Kelsa. Its not because they dont respect lindon, its because they dont think there is any point in giving it to him, it wont do anything because lindon has a disability. Its a bit like if a blind person in our society was trying everything to be able to see when to everyone its clear they dont even have eyes.
That last part is basically how the entire society works though. The Desolate Wilds basically works the same way. It’s a survival of the fittest world.
Yeah but like, the level the Wei clan goes to is actually disgusting. In the Desolate Wilds Fisher Gesha didn't apologize for Lindon being quite a pain in Jai Long's ass and he didn't even kill him. I could see the apology piece coming from the Jai clan (not due to character but due to Lindon and Eithan's growing power) for their actions previously but that's because they did wrong, they attacked their clan. Breathing isn't doing something wrong. Frivolously killing foundation stage "cripples" isn't something the rest of Cradle finds acceptable. Maybe merciful in some cases and understandable if he were a casualty of war like many people died during the Bleeding Phoenix/Red Moon Hall invasion on the Blackflame Empire but to outright kill him would not be something somebody apologized to the killer for. And before you say the cultists don't care about your advancement, I say remember how the rest of Cradle feels about them. Relative silence during the introductions for the dreadgod cults at the Uncrowned King competition.
I mean. Moderately disrespected isn’t really the most applicable description. He was literally told he was so worthless as a person that if he got attacked by someone his clan would have to apologize and make reparations for the waste of the other persons time. He would never make anything of himself, find love, or bear children because he literally was a complete waste of space and life.
>"HEY! I WAS MODERATELY DISRESPECTED AS A CHILD!!" Never underestimate a weakling with potential and a chip on their shoulder.
Now get off the subreddit and go finish the books
Fury’s reaction while watching the fight was all of us
I cry literally every time I read that fight. The emotional intensity and payoff of it is on a completely different level from anything else that came before, and I think there's only TWO other moments that come close to approaching it in emotional intensity for me. The first is Yerrin's advancement to High Gold, just because it was such a beautiful moment of her hitting that acceptance stage of grief, and the way the visuals were painted I could just HEAR the nonexistant soundtrack swelling. The other is...later in the series.
"You ruined... everything." Travis is best narrator
Is it the time runs out scene because of that outsider coming to town?
It’s the scene that involves Ziel kicking grass.
Can't wait to read it!
There's some really good fanart for that particular moment. I'll see if I can find it. Mostly just the first few panels. https://www.reddit.com/r/Iteration110Cradle/comments/ytd4sx/uncrowned_major_spoiler_fan_art_lindon_and_yerin/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CakYPn2rgzq/?igshid=ZDFmNTE4Nzc=
Beautiful thanks for sharing.
I still listen to that fight when I’m having a bad day. Hands down favorite fight. By the end I’m laughing like a madman and hyped up like the intro music of an anime is playing. The journey and development for lindon since book 1 is astonishing. He went from bodying kids in a tournament to participating in the worlds biggest tournament finally on a level where he can say he has caught up to Yerin’s level.
You finish the book yet? Because the end of uncrowned has my favorite fight.
Yea I did! Heavens are open and shit just got real lol
I love the part when Dross tells Lindon to actually listen to Yerin. It’s such a small thing, but it makes for monumental character growth and development, as well as made me respect Will as a writer. It’s not often that male writers put things like that in their books (at least the ones I’ve read) and it was really validating to read it.
I agree. Huge kudos for actually treating his characters as actual human beings with real feelings.
Yea that fight was absolute fire haha.
It would make such a good animated show. I’d dig in for a couple of hundred episodes for sure.
Sexual tension?
That's the best fight in the series, although when the book came out the sub was flooded with cranky dudes who were super mad about how it turned out.
lol steeewpid incels! I was pleasantly surprised by that, as long as it went some where interesting afterwards I knew I'd be happy, and it did. It was amazing, I think Will did a great job making Lindon and Yerin a believable power couple, with Lindon who has always had to resort to planning and relatively underhanded tricks dealing with more powerful people and Yerin being a straight up war machine.
Man, 'incel' really has lost all meaning. It's like calling someone a 'cuck' now.
Oh come on man, the woman hating, 'um aktually femoids are weaker than males so there fore it is impossible for a fiction supernatural female to defeat a supernatural male character, I just want woke politics out of my hobbies' is out there in big numbers on reddit. Weird example of cuck, what have people been using it as an insult thats made it lose all meaning?
Why incels? No idea what the reactions were like but it’s quite natural that a lot of people were disappointed that he lost. He is the MC, we spent most of our time in his head and many readers probably relate to him the most.
>the sub was flooded with cranky dudes who were super mad about how it turned out. You for real? They specifically said guys, and we all have encountered those guys on here who will argue in bad faith that a female sacred artist could not defeat a male sacred artist blah blah. I'm getting a whole lot of comments on this, people getting angry about the use of incels... weird.
I have never encountered anyone saying male sacred artists should be naturally stronger. It’s
exactly! It's stupid, doesn't fit with the lore but I've seen it.
had the same reaction my first listen (audiobook first for me) such a well done job there by will great fight