[eluser]m4rw3r[/eluser]
About "real" cascading deletes:
Because I've abandoned CI's AR, it is done now!

(actually very fun to code, with IgnitedQuery's subqueries and a sort-of recursion)
So now IgnitedRecord performs real cascades through a whole relation tree. It starts with the table "farthest away" (relation-wise) from the record which is being deleted, then it works its way towards that record eventually deleting it.
NOTE! Do not use "circular" cascades, or IgnitedRecord would end up in a loop!
I also touched up some parts of the code (making some hooks disappear, because similar find methods have been instructed to use find_by*() to fetch).