#Samaeni Ray

[sheliesshattered]

We had a fabulous time visiting Batuu yesterday! Our outfits were comfortable and functional and well suited to what turned out to be a relatively cold and cloudy day in southern California. Disney cast members definitely seemed to interact with us more because we made the effort to dress up, and we got some lovely compliments from other guests, too. We were even gifted some BSO credit coins by random strangers who liked our outfits!

It was Jack's first visit to Batuu, and while I did get to spend a little bit of time there with my mom in October, this was my first opportunity to really explore the entire area, browse through the shops, and sample all the food and drinks available. It was at least as cool as my first impression of it back in October, and Jack was impressed and delighted by all of it. We spent a good portion of the day just admiring all the details and world-building and excellent sets.

Jack has requested no photos, but I did manage to snag this pic of him blocking the camera like a victim of the paparazzi, lol.

But look at those pleats! Both Jack and I are so pleased with how they turned out. Several of the Resistance jackets on display in the Rise of the Resistance queue had similar pleat details, and it was fun to look at them up close.

Over this last weekend and all the way up to late Monday night, I was able to add a few last details to our outfits. I finally adjusted the chain length of my dangley earrings and glued the leather cording wraps to the back of my kyber crystal necklace so that it wouldn't slip out. While I had the glue out, I figured I'd take a stab at making some spat-type things to cover the lacings of my tall Doc Marten boots. I was completely winging it from start to finish, but I'm really happy with how they turned out!

The spats are made from some left over suede I've had in my stash for literally more than 20 years now -- it's been used for an Aragorn vest for Jack, a couple of bags for me, and the inner layers of the big wedge shaped piece on my Oswin belt. And I still have some left over! Maybe I'll make myself a belt pouch to match these spats at some point in the future.

The narrow end of each spat tucks under the laces closest to the toe of my boot, and theoretically secures to itself with a hook and eye, though I found the hook didn't really hold from that angle, and really wasn't necessary anyway. The straps then velcro around the back of my leg, at the lowest point of the bend of my ankle, and right at the top of the boot, so that the strap sits just above the top edge of the boot in the back, which helps keep it from slipping down.

To make these I really just draped scrap suede on my boot while wearing it, started cutting it to the shape I thought might make sense, then copied that over for a second spat. I measured how much I would need for the straps and how much of an overlap I wanted for the velcro, then cut out all those pieces and glued them together using E6000 -- which works wonderful for adhering velcro to suede and suede to suede, but is a bit more iffy with the metal hooks and eyes (one eye popped off when I was taking off the spat at the end of the night, but since it wasn't staying hooked anyway, I'm not fussed).

Despite being such a quick off-the-cuff project, the spats worked out great, and added that last little bit to my outfit by covering the laces of my boots. They're visible in the third photo, the full-length shot in front of the door (and in the video below), and I think they add an understated bit of texture difference in all the black-on-black there, in addition to obscuring the modern look of the boots a bit.

Besides those detail bits for me, I also made a pair of little pockets for Jack's jacket, to hold 'code cylinders'. It's a tiny detail that really makes the jacket look that much more Star Wars-y, and the cylinders themselves are empty and their tops unscrew, so the space can actually be functional, too. (Currently they're filled with gum!)

And at Jack's request, I threw together a quick insert for the zipper section on his collar that used to hold the hood before we removed it. The hood was making the collar too puffy, but without it the collar didn't have enough body to stand up on its own.

I took some measurements, then cut a piece of cotton duck canvas (that I had originally bought to cover the zippers on my Moment vest, before I changed gears and made the Batuu vest instead) to the right length and about three times the height of the interior of the hood section. I did a simple zigzag tri-fold on the height, ironed it flat, and marked some guide lines perpendicular to the length. Then it was just a simple process of quilting the three layers together by machine sewing in short vertical rows ~1cm apart.

The quilting gave the canvas even more stiffness, and after that point it absolutely did not want to fold or droop along the short vertical axis. I slipped it into the former hood pocket (after snipping one corner to fit around the snap I hadn't accounted for), zipped it closed, and gave the whole collar area a quick pressing. It's removable if we ever need to, completely washable, and keeps the collar standing upright without looking too stiff. Jack was very happy with the result.

With our outfits finally done, we headed into the park around mid-morning, with a plan to stay late. I wasn't quite sure what to expect with Batuu Bounding at Disneyland (which is notoriously a bit more hit-and-miss than Batuu East, in Florida), but we got through security without incident and through the rest of the park without anyone commenting on our outfits. We saw someone else wearing the same leather-look leggings as me, and a guy wearing similar jacket and pants to Jack (but without the pleating), which made us feel like we didn't look too weird, by general Disneyland standards.

Once we were in Batuu, though, our bounding definitely got noticed more. A couple of fellow guests complemented our outfits (including the kind strangers who gave us the coins!), and cast members seemed way more interested in interacting with us in-character. I got to bring up a bit about the history I'd made up for Samæni Ray -- which led to one cast member later referring to me and Jack as "my friends from Denon!" All of the prep and character design made it a lot easier to think on my feet in those little improv interactions.

One cast member in particular kept finding us throughout the day, just suddenly appearing out of nowhere it felt like, and kept trying to sell us a speederbike that totally wasn't a broken down lemon.

Later in the day, he kind of sold us out to Kylo Ren and a pair of stormtroopers (but like, in a fun way, lol) which led to an intense interaction with Kylo Ren right up in both my face and Jack's. Kylo Ren is tall, and the voice and the mask and the body language was all perfect up close. There was a bit of nervous laughter on our part, but we kept our cool and convinced Ren that that since we'd only just arrived on Batuu from Denon, we couldn't possibly know anything about any Resistance activity in Black Spire Outpost.

We were way too in the moment to get any photos, but because we were dressed up and Kylo Ren was so much up in our faces, we did draw a bit of a crowd, so for all I know other people may have taken pictures or videos of the event, lol. My family has a saying about 'look hard' rather than take photos, and it was definitely that for us.

Overall the whole day was wonderful, and we ended up spending nearly 12 hours in Batuu without leaving once. I got to pilot the Falcon multiple times (though I can't really say I've gotten any better at it, lol), and got to try out gunner and engineer, too. We managed to ride Rise of the Resistance both during the day and again after dark, explore every part of Black Spire Outpost in detail, learn to play Sabacc with a cast member, have drinks at Oga's, and eat a bunch of really tasty, really well-presented food.

All together it was an excellent, excellent birthday. And we're already talking about when we might want to go back again.

#Batuu Bounding #Batuu West #Disneyland #Disneybound #Disneybounding #Star Wars bounding #2024 mood #this is my real life #my sewing #Batuu vest #scrappy sweatshirt project #Jyn Erso sweatshirt #hooded wrap #Jack's jacket project #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #long post #safe to unmute #there was a snaffu with my lightsaber so I didn't get to take it -- but I don't regret not doing Savi's #soon I will have a lovely slim saber that I can spin with #I didn't really miss having a saber on this trip (and it would have made the interaction with Kylo a bit more pointed I think) #but if we go back for another round of bounding for Star Wars night then I'll certainly take it for the lightsaber meetup #last night and this morning I was SO TIRED -- spoonies are not meant to go for 14 hour days like that #but I am already back in the mode of wanting to be Samæni all the time lol #and hey the Season of the Force Star Wars nights haven't sold out yet so just maybe we can do this again soon

[sheliesshattered]

Last night I did a little test run of the Aurebesh lettering style (drawn on in chalk, then inked over with a Sharpie) for the exterior of my lightsaber carrying case. In the last week I also finished the padded interior, and got the carrying straps attached and the little pocket for the blade retention screws and wrench sewed to the exterior. Besides getting this lettering done, the only thing I have left for the exterior is to sew on a little fake pocket flap that will allow me to close the bag at a shorter length when it's just holding the blade without the hilt.

The word in the lettering test is Samæni, the name of my Star Wars OC. Not sure if I'll end up using that scrap of fabric somewhere, but I like how it came out so I might try to find a place to use it. The full phrase that will run the length of the carrying case is: fragile antique handle with care -- the photo is from the lower end bag, showing just a bit of 'handle' and then 'with' (using the digraph for th) and 'care' between the carrying strap and the pocket. The full phrase will look like this:

I'm working from right to left at the moment, because fitting 'care' into the limited spacing between the strap and the pocket was what determined the size of all the letters. I haven't gotten to the first words in the phrase yet (gotta pace myself because of my rotten hand strength), but I think I've managed to lay it out in such a way that when the whole saber is in the case and the flap is closed and velcro'd shut, it'll read fragile antique handle with care -- but when I take the hilt off and just have the blade in the bag, and the bag is velcro'd shut at the lower (false flap) point, it'll read as just fragile handle with care.

It's such a tiny ridiculous detail that can really only be appreciated if you can read Aurebesh in the first place, but it's exactly the sort of tiny ridiculous detail that I just live for in costuming. If it works out, I'll take photos of it both ways to show it off.

Once the lettering is done, I'll sew on that false flap/second velcro location (in between 'antique' and 'handle'), and then I'll be able to sew the exterior into a tube and attach it to the padded interior I posted about last week. I have the crossbody carrying strap itself sewn, but I need to attach the hardware that it'll clip to the rings that I've already sewn to the bag. Not a ton of steps left to go, but sketching in the letters in chalk and then going over them with Sharpie is something I can't do a ton of in one go, so it may still take me awhile to finish this up.

We haven't gotten tickets for Star Wars Nite yet, but we're still talking seriously about going, probably to one of the earlier nights in April. This is the major project I want to get done for if/when we go, along with a couple of tiny glue repairs on accessories. If I have time, I would like to do a weathering pass on my lightsaber hilt, and maybe even customize the soundfont a bit before I take it out in public. But I expect it will spend most of the night inside this case, and only come out now and then for specific activities, so getting the bag functional and looking good is really my priority.

#my sewing #Batuu Bounding #lightsaber bag #2024 mood #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray

[sheliesshattered]

After all my posting about Batuu Bounding the last few months, Jack and I did actually make it to Star Wars Nite 2024 last week! The new set of hooks and eyes I added to my vest helped it to lay much better in every way, and the rest of my outfit held up well, even with the colder night-time temperatures that set in by the end of the night. We arrived around 5pm and stayed until almost 1am, had a ton of fun, and remembered to take photos in a few places we'd missed during my birthday trip back in February.

It was a ton of fun wearing my Batuu Bounding outfit again, and slipping back into Samæni Ray mode. I got to pilot the Falcon twice more (not that I've actually gotten any better at not crashing into things, lol) and ride Hyperspace Mountain and a few other things. We got stupidly lucky with our timing and got into Oga's with close to zero wait, enjoyed quite a lot of people watching and character spotting, ate lots of tasty treats, and generally had a blast.

This was the first trip out of the house for my lightsaber and the bag I made to carry it. The bag held up great and was lightweight and easy to carry, either slung across my back or hanging from one shoulder, depending on the density of the crowds. There were a ton of people just carrying their lightsabers in hand, and some people with the saber bags that Disney sells, but I really preferred the look and function of my bag. I also liked the look of my saber better than any others I saw, which I suppose is a good sign that all my effort to make a saber that's just mine really paid off.

As useful as the bag was, I did find a few chances to take my saber out, throughout the night -- one of the big lightsaber meetups in front of the Falcon with Rey and the whole crew, at the DJ stand at the hub to dance along to the music for awhile, and again later when the crowds were a bit thinner in front of the Falcon:

I was slightly off-balance trying to do my spins with my leather bag, but I'm still absolutely in love with how it looks with the Falcon in the background. I still want to make a whole post on the lightsaber itself, including the weathering I did on the hilt and maybe better footage of how good my spinning has gotten in the last couple of months. More of that to come at some point soon.

#Star Wars Nite #Star Wars Nite 2024 #Disneyland #lightsabers #Batuu Bounding #Star Wars Bounding #Batuu Bound #Star Wars Bound #my costuming #my sewing #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #2024 mood #safe to unmute #no sound

[sheliesshattered]

All the lettering for my lightsaber bag is finished! I'm still slowly cleaning up all the chalk guidelines, but the inking itself is done. I photographed it here with the padded interior and the saber inside, to give an idea of how it'll look all together. I need to trim down the upper edge of the padded bag, which right now is making the 'f' in 'fragile' (far left in the first pic) lay a bit oddly, but I think it'll be fine once it's trimmed and sewn together.

I also ended up adding some text to the utility pocket at the lower end of the bag, in a much smaller font. It reads 'license number AZ311I5-291001' which is the same (made up) number on the freighter pilot's license I had made for my OC, Samæni.

Mostly I just wanted some visual texture there, something different from the larger block letters (and rotated 90 degrees off of those letters), but for character/worldbuilding I'm thinking of it as sort of a certification of being a licensed import/export pilot. I did that bit in fine-tip sharpie, so especially with the smaller letters it went together much faster than the main lettering.

The next step for this project will be putting on the little fake pocket flap between 'antique' and 'handle', and I'll probably sew the hardware onto the crossbody strap while I'm at it. I think I might want to add some weathering via fabric paints to give a bit more texture and Star Wars look to this, but I can probably do that after the whole bag is sewn together. Depending on what paints I have on hand, I may do some of that this weekend even before I sew the exterior into a tube, but unlike the lettering and the pockets, it's not completely necessary to finish before sewing the tube closed.

Work this week was pretty demanding, and I think will continue to be over the next two weeks especially, but I feel like I'm in a good spot to get this finished by the time the Star Wars Nite events at Disneyland start up on April 16th. We still haven't bought tickets yet -- we've been waiting to see how work settled in -- so I don't have a specific date I'm aiming for, but the 16th would be the earliest. And I still want to spend some time weathering my saber hilt before then, too, but I think that's probably only a couple of hours of work total.

#my sewing #lightsaber bag #Batuu Bounding #Aurebesh #2024 mood #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #my painting #sorta

[sheliesshattered]

The face you make at the cold end of a wonderful day on Batuu

#more photos and a whole write-up to come #but for now I am le tired #Batuu Bounding #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #my sewing #hooded wrap #the other things I sewed are all there too but I'll tag them in photos where you can actually see them lol #and yes this was about 12 hours ago now but today is going to be for lounging around and recovering #but here have a preview

[sheliesshattered]

I was playing around with some of my accessories for Samæni (which I get to wear in its entirety tomorrow!) last night and thought I'd grab a quick pic for a new pfp -- featuring my own hair for the first time in more than four years, I think. I have every expectation that I'll change this out in a couple of days for a better Samæni photo, but for now enjoy this little preview of my outfit for my silly Star Wars OC that I've been working on for the last month and a half.

#new pfp #about me #2024 mood #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #t o m o r r o w

[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. ;)

#Batuu Bounding #Star Wars original character #2024 mood #my original characters #Samæni Ray #Samaeni Ray #pronounced sa-MAHN-ee #the spelling was a whole thing -- I didn't want it to be a real-world name or place AND to look good written in Aurebesh #but there's an Aurebesh letter for the combined ae vowel sound that makes it 6 letters long instead of 7 #and with that spelling the only real-world thing that comes up with a google of it is an Icelandic word. I can live with that #I haven't done character building like this since I was originally preparing for Wasteland Weekend #the process is fun and I love the way that it informs the corresponding clothing/costume design #and in that sense this post is relevant to: #hooded wrap #Batuu vest #scrappy sweatshirt project #which I started yesterday but haven't taken any pictures of yet #info on that coming soon #and also relevant to the tag I was using before I decided on my character's name: #my SW/BB OC #I think it's still in my queue but there's a post I've reblogged with that tag on it #that talks about how Leia's survival of the destruction of Alderaan would have been viewed by people outside her immediate circle #that post also helped jumpstart a lot of my thinking about Samæni's parents #who no -- do not actually have names at this point. but hey it's fun to have places to continue to develop the backstory #I also want to come up with a name for Samæni and Jack's Kazellis-class ship #Jack said 'Ravencrest' half joking but I think that might stick lol