Oathbringer Stormlight Spoilers

Alright, so for a brief rundown of some of what I *think* the themes of Cradle and The Last Horizon are:

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. Enjoy the crumbs, fellow Cradle and TLH mutuals.

MeeLan wants Wayne so damn bad oml. World’s most down-bad flesh thing

Absolutely love when inspiration to write strikes so I end up doing it until the point of complete exhaustion and physical pain.

SHALLAN WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING WITH YOU THAT’S NOT HOW YOU RESPOND TI BEING SHOT IN THE FACE WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THR FUCK

Character art I did for @shoccoe for her Cradle oc!

What I’ve Been Reading Lately: Cradle

Fundamentally, every work of art, every story, is an attempt at communication. The author chooses to ask us a question, and we find the answer in the dialogue between the author and ourselves.

Cradle is a series that asks the question “If one dude did magic kung-fu to another dude so hard he exploded, would that be sick or what?”

And we, the readers, answer “Absolutely the FUCK yes.”

Cradle is a world where everybody has the capacity to practice the Sacred Arts, which are primarily the discipline of using mystical energy to be as bullshit awesome as possible. You aren’t allowed to be a major character in this series until you have committed at least one (1) act that would look sweet as hell if it was airbrushed onto the side of a stoner’s van. 

At one point we meet a member of a king’s landscaping staff. Her job is to mow the lawn, trim the hedges, and keep those damn slugs out of the vegetable garden. She can also command trees to rip you apart and devour your life force for herself, because fuck you, it’s Cradle. People just do that here. 

The main character is a young man by the name of Wei Shi Lindon, who has a natural deficiency that makes him extremely weak in the Sacred Arts, and is therefore banned from studying them. He responds “respectfully, no” and proceeds to spend the following ten books learning Sacred Arts and punching everything. 

It’s a little rough around the edges, but I had fun reading it and the author clearly had fun writing it, so I think it succeeds as a series. Would absolutely recommend if you just want to have a good time reading something. 

(Naturally, I got deeply attached to the biggest bastard in the main cast, because he’s hilarious. This man is a bitch and I like him so much.) 

As a delightful bonus, unlike most action series, the treatment of the female characters is genuinely excellent. The author is not here for fanservice, he is here for FIGHTSERVICE, which is when EVERYONE FIGHTS SO HARD THE LAWS OF PHYSICS GIVE UP. We’re ten books in to a twelve book series and I have yet to see a single woman’s boobs described on-page. 

In Cradle, when a teenage girl is worried about her body changing, what she means is that she’s unsatisfied with the amount of swords she can use at one time, so she’s going to grow six extra arms to hold six extra swords. Surprise! THE NEW ARMS ARE ALSO SWORDS, because the time spent picking up a sword to fight with it is time you didn’t spend swordfighting, and that is unacceptable to her. Now she and her eight swords are going to suplex a dragon, because on Cradle we know no gender politics, only THE BLADE.

Also, there’s a turtle.

oh my gosh I love this random cobbler so much and I’ve known him for- maybe five minutes. I love him so much.

Oh Dalinar you didn’t, did you. Please tell me you didn’t.

Mmmm…. Elhokar death flags. He’s too likable. I think I’m starting to see the patterns and I don’t know if this is good or not.

Oh! Suggestions, can’t say I really expected those, but this is super fun!!

Here’s my thoughts

1 - good idea all around. I think the block the character would represent could be altered to be one more relevant to the series, though! I tried to keep the language consisting of references almost entirely, so good idea with the crystals!

Something like:

X = Crystal = Quotation mark

(?# = Single Quotes)

(^# = Apostrophe)

(v# = Asterisk)

Yeah!! I like that!! Ty <3

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2 - Useful shorthand! No notes, but I wanna push that whenever you’re doing something for display purposes, the script was written the way it was for the aesthetics! One of its primary design principles is the language being *actual parkour you can do.* This gets muddled when ya use verticals, but for most sentences?? You can literally build a sentence. I’ve put some thought into how to delineate flourishes without muddying or making the language too complex, but if I come up with something I’ll probably release a guide with examples of how to build sentences! (Currently you can just put signs with what flourishes it has and the language is totally buildable… but that’s kinda lame)

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3 - Oh! I actually prepped something for this exact thing! “-“ for chain blocks! This is preferred to barriers (despite the lesser series-significance) because I honestly just value the buildability of the language more!

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4 - tbh! I don’t think this is a necessary addition to the system. It only applies if you want to make an entire system of [] capital, as numbers would take the negativity of their first digit. I suppose if you wanted, you could perhaps do:

?vu8[]____C[]__OC[]vu

I believe it’s best to try and use existing things to address a problem as opposed to introducing new things to keep track of.

(As it’s impossible to place more than one of the (?,^,v) set of Flourishes on any given block, the ? becomes a floating Flourish. This, paired with the vu pair makes the ? distribute the every block inside)

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Thanks for the feedback~!

So… I may or may not have written an entire Conlang based on a single joke in Minecraft Parkour Civilization 2. That would be ridiculous. Aha. Hahahaha. Ha.

*cough*

A Quick Guide to Writing in Parkour

Flourish List.

You add these in front of blocks to change their meaning. There’s a key at the bottom containing the Parkour alphabet which demonstrates how the space, 180°, 360°, and 720° Flourishes are used to refer to specific English-Letter analogs.

_ = Space

C = 180° Flourish = 5 spaces

O = 360° Flourish = 10 spaces

8 = 720° Flourish = 20 spaces

? = Reverse = Reverses input

^ = Vertical Jump = Raises Intensity

v = Drop = Lowers Intensity

Block List.

These are the building blocks (lmfao) of the language and are what would be counted as an “input” or “letter”. Also included are short legends under each block describing what each flourish does to each block!

(Note! _,C,O, and 8 cannot be applied to any block other than [ ] and H)

[ ] = Block = Grammatical Value

(?[ ] = Capitalized)

(^[ ] = Impassioned)

(v[ ] = Depressed)

H = Fence = Numerical Value

(?H = Negative)

(^H = Exponential)

(vH = Square Root)

u = Pot = Period

(?u = Comma)

(^u = Hyphen/Equality)

(vu = Parentheses)

I = Pane = Question

(?I = Exclamation)

(^I = Command)

(vI = Sarcasm)

% = Brewing Stand = Addition

(?% = Subtraction)

(^% = Multiplication)

(v% = Division)

Alphabet

a = [ ]

b = _[ ]

c = __[ ]

ch = ___[ ]

d = ____[ ]

e = C[ ]

f = _C[ ]

g = __C[ ]

h = ___C[ ]

i = ____C[ ]

j = O[ ]

l = _O[ ]

m = __O[ ]

n = ___O[ ]

o = ____O[ ]

p = OC[ ]

r = _OC[ ]

s = __OC[ ]

sh = ___OC[ ]

t = ____OC[ ]

th = 8[ ]

u = _8[ ]

v = __8[ ]

w = ___8[ ]

y = ____8[ ]

Numbers

0 = H

1 = _H

2 = __H

3 = ___H

4 = ____H

5 = CH

6 = _CH

7 = __CH

8 = ___CH

9 = ____CH

Now that you have all the tools, let’s put it all together~!

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?8[ ]____C[ ]__OC[ ] ____C[ ]__OC[ ] OC[ ][ ]_OC[ ]__[ ]____O[ ]_8[ ]_OC[ ]?I

____CHH% _HH ^u _HHH

?C[ ][ ]____OC[ ] 8[ ]C[ ] _OC[ ]____C[ ]___[ ]^I

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Big thanks to my friend PrismaticKoi for giving me the idea and helping me figure this all out! Working with her made this process super fun!!!

Enjoy Parkour-!!! I’ll be coding an English<—>Parkour translator at some point, so stick around to find that!!

All of you need to go watch Minecraft Parkour Civilization though. It’s seriously fantastic.