#have fun translating the aurebesh

[l-bubee-l]

Playboy - Republic Issue 1010

Honestly this was not the direction I was expecting this to go in but since it did, I took heavy inspiration from @zoruui 's Vogue series!

With my own down bad twist of course >:]

—

[tonyloon]

Huxloween 2024 - Day 5 - Mirrors

Thank you so much again  @huxloween ! You really got me out of a multiple year long slump (especially with all the AI stuff going on, I was super demotivated) but now I see the fun again, in drawing more of this dumpsterfire <3

[breakingdownsomebarriers]

For those of you who can read/write aurebesh: you’re great. You’re a real one.

I use it all the time when writing in public on like a notepad or on my phone. Nobody, except those who took the time to learn aurebesh, can even begin to read it. It’s hilarious.

Another note: Artists who use aurebesh to hide funny messages are great. I love reading the stuff in the background and seeing something funny written down. It’s like a little inside joke and I am here for it.

[chipthekeeper]

Andor S1 Rewatch Commentary - Episode 2

the adhd was strong with this one

Okay, episode two rewatch, part two—take two! It's take two. Because I couldn't hear it at first and that's kind of essential

I'm a day late because I was not really in the mood yesterday, and I did not want that to affect fun commentary. I mean I don't know how fun this commentary will be but at least I'm in a fun mood now. High probability of having to yell at cats though

Trying to be patient through this first arc but it's hard. I miss my children

Lizard! Or….slug…thing? I want it to be a lizard

These Kenari kids look like they're having fun. Maybe they killed all their parents. Just like, fuck it we'll do it ourselves……That was morbid. I take it back. Be funny, though. No one's ever thought of that before I bet

The whole mystery here on Kenari really bugs me. But not to the point where I am interested in theorizing about it. Because I don't care that much. But als—TIME GRAPPLER!!!!

This being like the first thing we saw in like a trailer was just the dopest fucking shit. I will never get over how fucking cool that was. Bangggg! And now I should see a shot of Vel because that's how the trailer went *sad grumbling*…..Who makes his headphones? I want some.

Aww Wilmon, he's so sleepy

Steelpeckers!!!!!!

How have they not made a Lego like, Ferrix Tower with him up there with his hammers? I need it. I need it!!!!

Cassian does have a dope jacket in this arc, I'll give him that

Looks like Bix has a rack of K-cups on her desk

Ugh. I don't care what you guys say. I hate Timm and it's not hard to hate him. Ugh

It always bugs me that I never got the chance to actually read that Aurebesh before they...just went ahead and translated it on the screen for me

I want my house to look like this. I don't have a house, but if I had a house…….It really does look cold as hell, though

Does Maarva have a TV? She's probably bored all day just sitting there…..Just kidding, her son is all over the police scanner

The Fest thing. I was so prepared to be so mad that they erased Fest, but that made me pump my fist SO. HARD. There are still some things they changed that I have issues with, but that was perfect

It really is cold in there, you can see his breath

*sits up and starts losing my mind at the bar scene* What is this shuffleboard game they're playing?!!! Ahhhh I need to know the Ferrix bar games!! Put that in focus please!!! Not that I don't want to focus on Bix but that's very interesting. I've never noticed that before

Again, Bix's big brown eyes are right. there.

Timm you fucking creep. Jesus christ

She definitely did not take a drink out of that cup. I hate noticing things like that. Timm definitely took a drink out of that flask though.

I want to play Name That Alien, but I don't know that guy :(

Noodles Brian part two!!! And girlfriend?...Hm, that guy's not in the throuple

The fucking cereal. Timm and Cereal Karn connected by the cereal. They're both bastards and I hate them both (sorry, Em)

That doesn’t make any sense Timm!! *dumbass voice* “Yes, it's not too late.” Drunk and stupid….Why don't you take your boots off?! I can't even watch this. This is the only romance we get and it has to be Timm for half of it. The other half is perfect…..Give Bix a girlfriend for god's sake

What's this funky little droid on the floor?

Oh my god, I just realized. Mosk moves just like my old boss that I hated. Just walking like you're the hottest shit that's ever lived. I wish I hadn't noticed that. Now I hate him even more……….How would all of these events have been different if Mosk was not such a dumb, aggressive bulldog?

She really does just sit there and stare at nothing all day

Again, this ship and these people, another thing that bothers me, but I don't care enough to theorize or make it make sense. Thankfully the rest of this show is a rich enough text that I don't feel the need to think about it, even two and a half years later

Fondor Haulcraft!!!! I can't look at this ship now without thinking about doing the Lego mod of it, which was annoying as hell

Luthen with a walking stick, not going to say anything about that….today…

Love how big the hotel is. You can see it even from where he is

*lethally sarcastic* Yay creepy Timm and his creepy socks. Jesus. Thank god he's dead. Oh, spoilers. Did he keep the socks on while they were—nevermind

I seriously don't know how they have not started selling these bantha plushies. You're just sitting on money. I would buy that so fast

Just…completely zoned out for like a full two minutes. It's not important what I was thinking about. Not for this episode anyway. We can come back to that in a couple

When that guy started standing up I freaked out. You can see him unfocused in the background. It was so scary the first time. And then he just opens fire. Insane. Shoot first, ask questions later. Later, Pincushion!

Listening to that thing that somebody believes is in English/Basic. And I have to say, that's completely nonsense. That was just as much gibberish as the rest of this

Xan and Granik!!! This is the highlight of the episode for me. Is Xan's across from a barber shop? Or are they just shining shoes over there? It is a barber shop! Somebody's getting a shave. That's amazing. I love not listening to what anyone is saying just so I can watch. Wait, Xan has the same computer monitor that I do? “Does it talk?” I want Xan's hat. Those guys are just cleaning that chair the whole time in the wider shot, but when it's close up on Cassian there's somebody in the chair hahaha [this whole scene provided an incredible showcase of my ADHD]

This Pre-Mor ship is just kind of hilarious…..Go ahead Inspector Karn, rouse the troops….That guy trying not to yawn *laughing*….See the thing is I couldn't really do better, so I can't laugh too hard, but also if I was offered the opportunity I would just say, that's okay, no thank you….And then if anyone tried to clap I would punch them in the mouth *cackling* ohh the lip bite

Hi Willi. You perfect bus weirdo

The DRUUUMMMSSSSSS *just doing enthusiastic drum noises* Yeah. Hearing those drums for the first time was a life-changing experience

I don't think I'm gonna sit through all the credits this time. So bye!

[enigma-absolute]

One individual fun fact for each OC in the tags. ヽ(‘ ∇‘ )ノ (author's choice!)

ohgoodlordhavemercyonme

Let's work with the Star Wars OCs, shall we?

Maddox: Cannot and will never read Aurebesh when he is in the GFFA. He tries to learn and gets better translating it into English, but only with a decoder/translator on hand. Otherwise, he'll never get the hang of it. It's English (sorry, HiGh gAlAcTiC) for him or nothing.

Soph (Maddox's Sister): if she WERE to rock up in the GFFA (mainly via AUs), she'd be the 'other half' of a Jedi that Maddox won't take on. He has a grip on the Force while bad at saberfighting, she's the saberwoman while struggling to match her brother's Force attunements. He has to disguise himself and be charismatic to feel a part of the GFFA's inhabitants, she doesn't have to.

The Darling siblings are two halves of a whole Jedi.

Petra-Ariel: She has two lightsabers! One is a more kyber-crystal standard from her padawan days, but the blue in her crystal changed into a light orange after she died to the Force and came to Christ. The other is her own build in the saber academy, a kyberless variant with a teal-blue blade. (Think Corridor Digital's 'To The Death' short.)

[notasapleasure]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

I've been tidying out my likes and remembered @elwenyere's open invitation tags on this, too, so here we go!

sshysmm's works on ao3 (user name is a ref to my old tumblr)

1) How many works do you have on ao3

128 (and I think I'm missing some of the band AU stuff I never moved over from the blog @theartistknownaslymond…)

2) What's your ao3 word count?

1,038,645 words. haha. what the fuck.

3) What fandoms do you write for?

Actively, right now: Star Wars (particularly Andor; previously Rogue One and a few spin-off novels), the Lymond Chronicles, and I do very much intend to return to my fics for And Then We Danced.

I have also written for Ripper Street, The Terror, The Musketeers (don't look! don't look! it's my 'now can i remember how to write fic after over a decade out of fandom fic) and Utopia (another one it would be cool to add to after I get a chance to rewatch).

4) What are your top five fics by kudos?

good god they're all Jyn/Cassian. it's the only big ship I've written for I suppose

Be alright tomorrow (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) Hope in the air (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) Singer, save our secular souls (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) To steal what she never could own (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian) Delayed gratification (Rogue One, Jyn/Cassian)

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to!! Sometimes when I'm deep in the writing hole I just stay away from ao3 so as not to ?? idk?? make myself feel guilty? get distracted? so it can take me a while to respond.

When people are reading updates as I post them I try to respond quicker! I like to respond to acknowledge how grateful I am to people who took the time to read and cheerlead and say something nice. To show I appreciate it and the time they spent on it. If it possibly leads to discussion about what's going on in the fic then so much the better!

6) What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably just Hope in the Air, for sticking with the canon Rogue One ending and leaning into the sense that even if he got to a bacta tank, Cassian's in a pretty bad way. Also Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing (Ripper Street), again for…following canon, dealing with Deborah's decision to stop seeing Reid and Emily's descent into a place where Reid feels he has to have her sent to the asylum.

7) What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Jerott wish-fulfilment!! The ransoun made, the prisoneris redeemit (Lymond Chronicles, Francis/Jerott).

8) Do you get hate on fics?

I don't think I've had any hate on ao3, no. Some blunt comments when I hadn't done my research on aurebesh well enough/resued a plot device, but not hate.

9) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes? All kinds? Idk, I'm trying to get more creative, though traditionally I think I write emotionally knotty, not-always-satisfying sex that does heavily lifting on the characterisation. And is also hot.

10) Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I haven't posted it on ao3 yet, but there's the Lymond Chronicles 1980s band AU crossover with And Then We Danced, which is just like. The nichest of nichey niches. Can't believe there are like three people who might read it, so it's still not as unpopular as a medieval Icelandic saga au of a niche Andor ship written in the first person. I didn't go out of my way to drive readers away, I swear!!! Please give The Saga of the Coal-biter and the Skraeling a chance, it's my precious baby.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, lol. I think more people would need to want to read my fics first.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I'm open to it if anyone wants! I have had two podfics made of my works, which has been lovely!

13) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

No, though there was a fun Lymond Pawn in Frankincense AU which started as me and @erinaceina spit-balling about Philippa getting captured by GRM and Khaireddin surviving, and @stripedroseandsketchpads wrote some nice whumpy scenes about it!

14) What's your all time favorite ship?

Oh, usually whatever I'm writing at any given time. Faramir/Éowyn was formative influences, though.

15) What's a WIP you'd like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I really don't like admitting that I don't think I'll finish something. I do have 17 subscribers(!!??) to a Lord Bateman (Child ballad 53) inspired Rogue One AU (What would you give?) so even though finishing that is very low down my priorities I'd hate to say outright that I wouldn't return to it.

16) What are your writing strengths?

Emotion, description, description of emotion… capturing micro-expressions and little tics that define a character. Because of this I think I'm pretty good at making people in-character even in weird settings. Writing people who aren't good or bad, just flawed and affected by their lived experiences. Creating an atmosphere. Also, when I pull it off, making you laugh one moment at something ridiculous and then sucker-punching you in the gut :')

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

That when I'm asked to think of my strengths I go blank. That I constantly, constantly overthink things when I've posted them in case I wrote something that will be horribly misunderstood or just actively bore established readers into giving up. The fear that what I enjoy writing is so inherently dull no one else will enjoy reading it, that I'm not setting out to 'write fic' but to write something pretentious and beautiful and that's not what anyone reads fic for. Also oh my god I need to learn brevity. Simple plots. Don't overthink the plot Jo. I what-if my plots to death and then find myself disgusted by all the ways they're inadequate. Actually what all this comes down to is a controlling urge in my writing: I want to control every detail of this scene, including where the information is lacking, and I worry that if I leave anything to chance I'll be misunderstood. But at the same time I love ambiguity and gaps and leaving things open to interpretation. Inside me there are two wolves and one adores unanswered questions while the other suffers from a neurodivergent urge to info-dump in order to make sure everything is clear.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I'd love to quote from Umberto Eco's author's note to The Name of the Rose, where he argued with his publisher about keeping Latin dialogue in! Ony my copy of the book is in storage. Also there's the whole…I'm a fan of the Lymond Chronicles. If there isn't untranslated dialogue in at least five different languages why are you bothering? And yeah I very much did learn a language because of a film and then spent a lot of time considering how communicating in this language as opposed to English would affect the dialogue and interactions I was writing. So yes, dialogue in another language when it's properly contextualised is good - not when it's random phrases of unnecessary Space Spanish because someone's exoticising Diego Luna.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

I'm of the generation where it was inevitably H*rry P*tter, if we're talking internet published fanfic. But as a kid I did keep diaries full of drawings and stories about Sandokan the tiger and Bucky O'Hare.

20) Favorite fic you've ever written?

I have like. Post-partum depression about the saga AU right now because seeing it interact with the world makes me doubt myself horribly, but realistically, it's my beloved child. It's just having to carry all my grad school trauma as well as all my past Star Wars fandom trauma and you know what?? It's good enough to do that. It is. It's the first of a trilogy, and I WILL finish the trilogy.

As previously said by elwenyere: Open tags for anyone who would like to play!!! This was very fun: @ me with your answers if you'd like to join. <3<3<3

[godmybackhurts]

Hi OP I hope you know that a friend and I are having fun translating the aurebesh, here's what I have so far

Thinking about the Coruscant subway system

[sheliesshattered]

My window to order was starting to narrow, so I finally pulled the trigger on the Captain Accreditation License prop I'd been eyeing for my Batuu Bound birthday outing coming up. It's such a silly little detail, but the reviews are filled with people talking about getting to use it in Galaxy's Edge when the Stormtroopers stop them to ask to see some identification, which sounds like a fun interaction. And like, I can make a great deal of soft kit, I can even put together my own greebles out of foam -- but laser engraving is way outside my wheelhouse and tool access.

But before I could order it, I had to come up with a bunch of info to go on it, like name, home planet, ship type, that sort of thing. I had a basic idea of what sort of character I wanted to portray with my outfit for Batuu, but filling out the info for the pilot's license really made me lock down a bunch of details, which eventually evolved into full on original character creation.

It also got me started in learning to read Aurebesh, the Star Wars transliteration alphabet, but that's a whole other rabbit hole, lol.

Character wise, I started with my absolute love of piloting the Falcon in Smuggler's Run (my desire to do so again was one of the major reasons for deciding to do this for my birthday) and my fav in the sequel movies, Benicio Del Toro's "D.J." character. (The very brief political commentary about weapons manufacturers profiting off both sides of the war, and his little "live free, don't join" axiom are just so amazing, I still cannot believe we got that in a Star Wars movie.)

I also took into account that the timeframe for Galaxy's Edge is between Ep 8 and Ep 9, in roughly 34 or 35 ABY (years after the Battle of Yavin, at the end of Ep 4), and that I want to do the lightsaber building activity at Savi's Workshop the day we visit. The Etsy listing for the license also had an interesting little note about choosing a homeworld, calling out that 'because of well-known galactic events' Alderaan would only be an option for characters over the age of 40 or so. That comment got my mental gears turning, and sent me down the path of researching the year that Disney's Batuu is set in, etc.

At that same time, I was trying out different potential hairstyles for keeping my waist-length hair controlled during a day at Disneyland while still looking Star Wars-y. I tried a couple of Rey inspired hair styles, but eventually settled on something much more like Leia's looks in Ep 5 and Ep 6, with multiple braids wrapped around the crown to form a full circle. It's easy and comfortable and will keep my hair from tangling and works well with my hooded wrap thing, so I decided that hairstyle would be part of my look, and part of my character building.

So at that point I had: pilot, politically unaffiliated, soon to own a lightsaber, emulating Princess Leia and/or Alderaanian hairstyles, and grew up mostly after the fall of the Empire and probably wouldn't remember (or only just barely remember) the destruction of Alderaan. On that last point I was splitting the difference slightly -- if I translated my real age now into the Star Wars timeline (and Galaxy's Edge being set in ~35 ABY), then I would have been roughly 8 years old when Alderaan was destroyed. But in reality, I was born shortly after Ep 5 came out, and my earliest memories of Star Wars are knowing all about the movies, playing Star Wars make-believe with other kids in the neighborhood, and being excited that Ep 4 was going to be airing on TV.

After a lot of noodling on this, while sewing or driving or trying to fall asleep, the character started to come together in my head. Her mother was born and raised on Alderaan, but around age 20 (in 2 or 3 BBY, roughly) met a dashing young pilot on a freighter passing through, fell in love, and left Alderaan to be with him. They got married and lived mostly in the hyperspace lanes for a couple years, jumping from place to place. When she found out she was pregnant, she temporarily went back to Alderaan to be with her family and have her baby there. In the last year before the Battle of Yavin, she had a baby girl she named Samæni Ray, and after a few weeks she and the baby left Alderaan to meet up with her husband again.

So none of them were on Alderaan when the Death Star targeted and destroyed the planet. In the wake of the tragedy, the Alderaanian diaspora would have pulled together all across the galaxy, trying to get word of anyone who might have survived. And then, a miracle: Princess Leia somehow survived! The princess that Samæni's mother had grown up idolizing from afar, someone similar to her in age and physical appearance (pictures of my real mother from the 1970s bear a striking resemblance to Carrie Fisher in the same time period) -- the princess that Samæni's mother had loved for as long as she could remember, she not only survived but she stepped up to lead the Resistance against the Empire!

You know those people in real life who like, collected merchandise about Princess Diana? Yeah, that's Samæni's mom, but with Princess Leia, lol.

The war to overthrow the Empire only lasted for another 5 years or so, ending with the Battle of Jakuu in 5 ABY. So I figure Samæni might have vague early childhood memories of her parents celebrating the end of the war. They weren't actively members of the Resistance, and Samæni's father was much more politically neutral, preferring to focus on his work as a freighter pilot, but as far as Samæni's mother was concerned, anything Princess Leia did was a blessing on the galaxy, so it would have been a big deal for her, both during the war and in the years after as the New Republic was established.

During those early years of the New Republic, Samæni's father's freight business continued to do well, and she mostly grew up in her family's Gozanti-class cruiser, as they moved things from one planet to the next. She learned to pilot at her father's side, eventually sat for a pilot's license exam as a young adult, and then struck out on her own. Samæni's first job as a pilot was for a company that operated light freighters as party ships, allowing those with modest disposable income to see the galaxy in style but without the expense of a yacht cruiser. (The company probably had a ridiculous tagline like: "From here to thar with an open bar!")

Since those early jobs-for-hire, Samæni saved up enough money to buy her own little light freighter and start an inport/export business in which she (and her partner Jack) go to outer rim worlds to buy antiquities, oddities, and rare objects and bring them back to an upper-middle class clientele in the core worlds and inner rim. Their current ship is a bit of an antique itself, a Kazellis-class light freighter that is flashy enough to fit in in the nicer areas of Coruscant, but hard-working and easily repairable enough to take Samæni and Jack to all those far-flung worlds with treasures to acquire. Their ship has room for some larger pieces, but most of the cargo area has been converted into full-time living quarters, since they rarely stay planet-side for very long.

Their home-port is the ecumenoplis planet of Denon, an inner-rim world that sits at the intersection of two major hyperspeed trade routes. Denon was the closest thing to a homeworld that Samæni had growing up, and her parents have since retired to the equatorial area of the planet, in a community with a lot of other retired pilots and haulers and ship mechanics. (Her father's favorite local cantina is named for the CEC catalog part number for a replacement hyperdrive lever. He and all his old pilot buddies think it is hilarious.)

Samæni's mother continues to talk about Princess Leia like they are close friends (despite never actually having met her), and keeps informed on the rise of the First Order and the resistance to it mostly because she has set up HoloNet news alerts for General Organa. But Samæni takes more after her father in that regard, doesn't particularly care about politics or taking sides in any civil war, other than how it impacts business. The destruction of the Hosnian system by the First Order's Starkiller Base is enough to push Samæni towards siding against the First Order, but she still isn't about to rush out to join the Resistance, either.

Her pilot's license lists Denon as her homeworld, and it would take some dedicated digging to find that her planet of birth is actually Alderaan. She only lived there for the first few weeks of her life, and her only memory of it is how sad it's always made her mother. The traditional hairstyles and the stories about Princess Leia are really the only parts of the culture that she inherited. Samæni has never wanted to talk about being from Alderaan with anyone, and as the Empire's successor has come to power in the last few years, it's seemed even more dangerous to let anyone outside of close friends and family know that she is technically a survivor of the last time a galactic power was going around destroying planets.

Samæni and Jack are heading to the outer rim world of Batuu to visit Dok Ondar's Den of Antiquities, and follow up on a tip about Savi's crew of 'scrap metal' gatherers, in case there's something there that might sell well on a core world. Arriving to find that both the Resistance and the First Order have a presence in Black Spire Outpost will be less than ideal, but Samæni and Jack have been to enough rough ports across the galaxy that they know how to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

And hey, if First Order troopers stop to ask them for ID, Samæni will have a genuine pilot's license to show them. ;)

[dont-fear-thereaper]

Prologue

Page 4/6

[castametric]

this is a confession to the star wars fandom because I have to get this off my chest. last summer just for fun I taught myself to read aurebesh and. you fanartists have Got to Continue putting the most Hilarious stuff into the background of your art because it is literally my favorite thing

here’s a couple of excellent things I’ve read since I started keeping a list just last month:

- “I hate drawing lightsabers”

- “Idk what to put here”

- “stupid fucking sign”

- “eat paste, it’s good”

- an entire news article on a phone screen which I actually found really impressive

- a few funny misspellings but the best one so far was ahsoka somehow becoming “asock”

- wanted poster of obi wan that read “wanted for fashion crimes”. the caption translated it as “wanted for high treason”. like blatantly lying to my face. love it.

- door on a ship was labeled “cake storage”

- “shopping list: frogs, hair gel, lightsaber polish”

and my personal favorite:

- “if you’re reading this you’re a fucking nerd”

[perfectlyvalid49]

Ok, one more post on this because I see a lot of stuff in the comments that show a pretty big misunderstanding of the experience and I want to clarify. Am I mostly just mad that other people are making fun of a thing I like? Yes, absolutely. But what is the internet for, if not arguing over stuff that doesn’t really matter?

Doesn’t this place cost like $2500 a night with a minimum of 2 nights? Sorta? First off, you can only book 2 nights. They’re telling a story and it takes 2 days, so when you book, you’re signing up to be there for the whole story. You can’t stay more than that, and you can’t stay less. As for the $2500 a night, that’s the price of the room (about), but not the price per person. If you go alone, it costs $5000 for one person for two nights. But if you go with a friend (and when I was there, I saw a few different groups that were there as friends, not as families), then it’s $5000 for TWO people for two nights, or $2500 per person for two nights or $1250 per person per night. And the basic rooms sleep up to 5, so if you have a big enough friend group that can go, you can drop the per person price significantly. It is still expensive, don’t get me wrong, and obviously that means it’s not family friendly, but $2500 a night is a misleading number.

Isn’t this the one where you can side with the space fascists? Technically, yes. But it’s also the one where you can mock the space fascists, tell the space fascists to suck it and ultimately defeat the space fascists. When I went, there were fewer than a dozen people who were siding with the First Order. One of them was a kid, and we left her alone, but honestly, the rest of them were kinda shunned by the rest of the guests. Like, I feel like there were more consequences for the people siding with the space fascists than there are for people siding with real fascists in Florida.

Don’t you spend all your time on your phone? Not really? I feel like the easiest way to explain it is to think of it like a video game. The app on your phone is like your menus for the game. It has maps, and tracks your quest progress, and your faction standings. There are also a couple of tools (the ability to “hack” things, the ability to scan things, an Aurebesh to English translator) that can come in handy for certain tasks. But much in the same way that when you play a video game, you don’t spend all your time in the menu, you don’t spend all of your time on your phone. I will say that the parts of the story that take place in the park are much more dependent on the messaging system in the app and the tools, so when you’re in the park, you do wind up spending a lot of time checking your phone, but in the hotel, it is much more based around face to face interactions with people.

There are no windows! I’d go insane after two days with no windows! There are no windows. There is a garden if you want to go outside - there are walls so you can’t see that you’re on a back lot in the middle of Disney, but fresh air and the sky are both present. You can also be outside at Disney World for about 6 hours on the second day. Maybe it’s because I’m from a part of the country where you just don’t go outside much for 6 months out of the year, but at no point in time did it feel claustrophobic to me.

Bwahahaha of course it failed! What did Disney think was gonna happen? I can only speculate here, but my guess is that Disney figured that some portion of the people who would spend $250 on building a lightsaber (an activity that takes less than an hour) would spend ten times that on a two day experience, and that portion would be enough people that it would be profitable. I think they miscalculated there (obviously) because it’s a lot easier to save up a few hundred dollars for something you don’t need than a few thousand dollars for something you don’t need. I really think they just set the price point to high for a lot of people who would be interested, and a lot of people who have the money would rather do a more traditional Disney vacation instead.

I still think it’s a shame though, as I think that they made a really awesome experience. We had a blast when we went, as did a lot of the people who we met there. It’s a shame they couldn’t find a price point to make it work.

[lanadelphoxx]

Translating Aurebesh in The Skywalker Saga so you don’t have to!

I’ve been playing the Skywalker Saga A LOT and my god it’s so much fun. Not only that, but obscure references that have even the most devoted SW fans scurrying to Wookiepedia to reread the lore? Absolutely phenomenal, this game was made for Star Wars fans in ways that many more recent Star Wars titles were not.

When you fight big villains, or any big fight for that matter, there’s a “title card” (for lack of a better term) with their name and Aurebesh text underneath. I’ve translated a few big ones, and they’re hilarious. Time to share! More to come as I translate more of these :)

[paperfrog1987]

alright y’all are gonna have to bear with me here but I’m a FRICKIN GENIUS.

So my brother and i were looking through this star wars guide book thing and there was a page about holocrons.

And i noticed the inscriptions at the bottom of the sith holocron were in Aurebesh. So we thought “hey let’s try to translate it, just for fun.

As it turns out the writing was upside down but we figured it out anyway and it read

“tse satsetop sirbm ui”

So i was like “that doesn’t make any sense” but then my brother pointed out that since it was upside down it might be backwards too. So we flipped it around and it read

“iu mbris potestas est”

Still nonsense but then i realized “huh, that kinda looks like Latin”

So we plug it in to google translate and LOOK AT THAT

“it is the power of the law”

[wendingways]

More art: Rebel graffiti!

It's also a sneak peek for Fortune's Rule p-III, ch-II! (Or possibly ch-III, depending on how stuff works out.)

So, I love it when SW fanart/comics include aurebesh. I really enjoy decoding the secret messages and seeing if there's anything interesting hidden in them! Naturally, then, I needed an excuse to write a bunch of aurebesh in my own art, and what better reason than anti-Imperial graffiti? Plus, it makes such a cool little snapshot of the political situation on... ahem, whatever world this is. (You'll probably know which world it is if you read the graffiti/translations.)

It was a lot of fun to do all the aurebesh lettering! At first, I was really intimidated by the idea of doing aurebesh in different font styles, like how the heck do you do that, where do you even start? But, unsurprisingly, turns out that it's not a whole lot different from writing Latin letters in different fonts.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how the whole thing turned out, especially given that the graffiti was added in a somewhat haphazard manner.

Aurebesh translations included at the bottom of the post!

This piece took two evenings, hand drawing in pencil and then going over that in Pigma Micron pen, and finally erasing the pencil. First night's progress:

I dunno what was up with that shoulder at first. Suffice it to say, things went much better after I remembered that reference photos do exist and are a really good idea.

And second night's progress:

Goodness gracious, that Anakin poster gave me grief. The CW reference pic I used had really dramatic lighting that must have tricked my brain somehow, because even though it showed him straight-on, I ended up drawing his face angled a bit toward the side, the first time? And then after that, he kind of looked a bit anime-style, which was interesting as I've never drawn in that style before in my life and didn't know it was a thing you could stumble into, but also inconvenient.

Final note—whoever was in charge of Imperial PR quite frankly sucked at their job. Because. The Imperial crest. It's insanely difficult to draw freehand. The Republic crest? Pretty easy. But the Imperial one, sheesh. Nobody's gonna be drawing that on their faces to show their support at sporting games.

Click below for aurebesh translations!

Aurebesh translations! Proceeding in order from top left of the drawing, based on location of the first letter of each sentence.

[NA]BOO WEEPS (partially cut off)

FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE---ENLIST! (stormtrooper poster)

FOR APAILANA

FIGHT BACK QUEEN K!

KARKIN' TARKIN

LON[G] LIVE [THE] REPUBLIC (partially cut off)

TO THE DEATH, SHEEV

THE HERO WILL RETURN---HAVE NO FEA[R] (partially cut off)

INACHU MOCO, POODOO LORDA (Huttese: eat maggots, sh*t boss)

KRIFF THE IMPS

FOR [THE REPUB]LIC (mostly cut off, Clone Wars poster)

[MAY THE] F[ORCE] BE WI[TH] US A[LL] (mostly cut off)

VICTORY AND JUSTICE

HER SPIRIT LIVES ON

TRAITOR

QUASH! QUARSH!

DOWN WITH PALPATINE!

DOWN WITH VADER!

[phantom-of-the-501st]

I like Mando a lot but I'm a little sad about the storytelling choices the Mandalorian is making with the involvement of christian imagery and terminology rather than creating/building on actual mandalorian culture (that whole thing about putting a bible verse on the relic Din showed the armorer, the amount of ppl i've seen automatically relate the first scene to a baptism, even kind of the ep title). on the other hand its the first ep and i really liked it, don't feel like it was too fast or anything like that, it was quite fun as a setup ep

Yes, I saw about the bible verse! I do wish that they would lean more into Mandalorian culture as it's own thing. There are plenty of people out there who would love to write out inscriptions in Mando'a for the show! Huttese, Tusken (and Tusken sign), Anzellan (though not translated) etc. all get used as their own entirely separate languages. I would love to see Mando'a get the same treatment, rather than using the alphabet to just transcribe English words (we already see that with Aurebesh).

I'm atheist and always have been, so I don't always pick up on every single parallel between our religions and those in the show. But the Christian imagery feels very obvious here. There's always gonna be some level of parallel between them because, as humans, we create things based on our own experiences, but I would love for it to not feel like a near-exact reflection. Let it be it's own thing!

Saying all that, I'm glad you like the episode! You make some great points about what could be improved, but I'm happy you enjoyed it. 😄

[zaftikat]

On Aurebesh and cursive

I'm migrating a Twitter thread to Tumblr because twitter threads are hellish.

As a brief intro, I created a handwritten version of the Aurebesh for use on ChicksWithDice, because the current planet they're on uses paper books and pens. This post is going to be about orthography, and how to construct logical graphemes based on an extant ConAlphabet. So buckle up for a wild ride through proto-Canaanite scripts (namely Phoenician), modern Hebrew cursive, and the development of a cursive system.

Like most grapheme-based writing systems (as opposed to logograms and syllabaries) Aurebesh has a pretty direct connection to the Proto-Canaanite script system (and the alphabets derived thereof like Phoenecian and proto-Hebrew).

Let's take a look at a grapheme that exemplifies the connection. We don't need to go far to find our first culprit: A, א, and ����. In Aurebesh, the character Aurek.

There's a pretty direct connection to be made from Phoenician directly to all 3 other characters. So in developing a handwritten system, I looked to the handwritten version of modern cursive Hebrew for inspiration (since I'm currently learning Yiddish for fun).

What stood out to me was how well cursive א translates into a cursive version of Aurek. It also worked for Besh/ב/B, Dorn/ד/D, Leth/ל/L and Resh/ר/R. I used the graphemes from ע, ס, and כ in other places as were appropriate, but they don't exactly correspond 1 for 1.

That leaves a hell of a lot of characters to fill in. So, I started thinking about how symbols would evolve as they were written over centuries, and people got lazy with their writing. The first thing I looked at was stroke count. When you need to write quickly you're looking at limiting the number of times you need to make distinct motions. Printed Aurebesh characters have a tiresome number of distinct movements. Aurek is a 6 stroke character. Besh is 7.

If we could take Aurek from 6 to 2 using cursive Hebrew as a guide and Besh from 7 to 3, the rest of the alphabet should follow similar conventions. Cresh could literally just be 1 stroke instead of 3 distinct lines. Esk could be written as 2 strokes instead of 4.

This ended up working for a large portion of the graphemes, which made life super easy. The hard part comes in dealing with graphically similar characters like Cherek and Krill, or Osk, Wesk, and Xesh. In their printed form, it's pretty clear each of these characters is distinct, but in a system where speed is emphasized, especially as we look to limit strokes, they tend to bleed together.

As an example, Cherek and Krill could both reasonably be represented by the cursive כ (see above). Cherek would also be a 1 for 1 phonemic correspondence to cursive Hebrew in that case, but graphically, Krill makes for a better analog. Krill would use the cursive כ and an alternative grapheme needed to be developed for Cherek. In that process, I looked at other alphabets and syllabaries that I had studied previously. Hiragana in particular stood out since the kana つ (tsu) has a similar vibe. Eventually, those inspirations evolved into what you'll see at the end of this post. My instinct for Osk was straight up just an O or something akin to cursive ס, which is honestly just what I went for. Then I got to Wesk and went, "oh kriff". I took a look at my handy cursive Hebrew chart that I have hanging above my desk for reference, and tried to come up with something. I came up with a version of cursive פ but in all honesty, I'm not happy with it especially when I could have opted for cursive ם, which is literally right there. I think Wesk and Yirt are my weakest graphemes, and I am liable to redo them as I work on this project more. With all that said in this long post, I probably owe you the actual Aurebesh. It's laid out as Roman, Printed Aurebesh, Handwritten Aurebesh. This is all subject to change, but I'm still pretty proud of the work I put into this! Thanks for reading this far!

If you'd like to support this kind of bullshit, and my Actual Play series visit the Soses Media Patreon