#the spectacular failure of the Star Wars hotel

[likeabitchylamb]

the biggest roast of the Jenny Nicholson video was her comparing the gameplay to handing a child an unplugged controller

[tinseltownie]

Been watching The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel and hats off to Jenny Nicholson, you have a new forever fan. I am in awe you are a filmmaker like no other

[glassheadcanon]

Yuletide 2024 recs (part 2 of ?)

Another 5 fics (this time from the Yuletide Madness collection), in 5 different fandoms:

Pillory, by anonymous

Fandoms: The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel - Jenny Nicholson, Object and Concept Anthropomorphism Rating: Gen No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Character: Dining Room Support Pillar Summary: The Dining Room Support Pillar reflects on its failures.

633 brilliant words of a dining room support pillar's existential angst, based on this portion of a lengthy review.

Graduate Student-Snake Alliance: Fall Schedule of Events by anonymous (447 words)

Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns Rating: Gen Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings Category: Gen Summary: The Graduate Student-Snake Alliance is committed to providing high-quality training and practical education to facilitate successful thesis defenses for the greater university community.

Includes the digital version of the poster advertising these events, which one might easily find on any campus bulletin board.

Queen by Loophole by anonymous (429 words)

Fandom: Macbeth - Shakespeare Rating: Teen+ Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: F/M, Gen Characters: Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Child of Macbeths, Duncan, Banquo Summary: A version of I.v in which Macbeth's letter carries more detail and Lady Macbeth considers their history.

Evocative verse!

The witch and the water by anonymous (708 words)

Fandom: Majo no Takkyuubin | Kiki's Delivery Service Rating: Gen No Archive Warnings Apply Category: F/M Relationship: Kiki/Tombo Characters: Kiki, Jiji, Tombo Additional Tags: Fluff, Drabble Collection, Yuletide Treat Summary: Two short stories revolving around Kiki and her connection to the water.

Very poignant!

The Night of the Living Brain Eaters by anonymous (673 words)

Fandom: Galaxy Quest (1999) Rating: Gen No Archive Warnings Apply Category: Gen Relationship: Alexander Dane & Gwen DeMarco & Fred Kwan & Tommy Webber Characters: Gwen DeMarco, Alexander Dane Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Actors, Not exactly found family Summary: Gwen has an audition and needs a favor.

A pre-canon snippet that fits right in; great to see more of Gwen's interiority and her friendship with Alexander.

Yuletide 2024 recs! (part 1 of ?)

Both the main Yuletide collection (1760 works in 1153 fandoms) and Yuletide Madness collection (350 works in 270 fandoms) are now open, and in the anon period - go forth and enjoy!

Here are some initial recs, starting with my gifts!

Massage by anonymous (2766 words)

Fandom: Ratatouille (2007) Rating: Gen No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M, Gen Characters: Alfredo Linguini, Colette Tatou, Remy Additional Tags: Mild Hurt/Comfort, Friendship Summary: Alfredo is the King of Backrubs.

Incredibly heartwarming, post-canon behind the scenes with this hard-working team as family/found family of culinary creatives!

Sometimes It's worth Rolling Back by anonymous (1248 words)

Fandoms: Kino no Tabi | Kino's Journey - All Media Types, Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World (Anime 2017) Rating: Teen+ No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Kino, Hermes Summary: A motorrad can't move without their rider, but their first priority is always their rider. Sometimes, these two motivations are at odds. aka If Kino wouldn't give up the Woodsman, then there was no way she'd give Hermes' up.

A thoughtful look at Hermes and Kino's friendship, as they travel challenging terrain together, and are faced with making less than ideal choices.

[thecurioustale]

My Thoughts on Jenny Nicholson and the Star Wars Hotel

I watched Jenny Nicholson's four-hour "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel" video essay that YouTube showed me recently but which till now I couldn't bring myself to construct a day around. She's in great form here, and I'm pleased to say I go back as a fan of her work all the way to her Friendship Is Witchcraft days. (Blows my mind that she voiced all Mane Six characters, and others, so well.)

Anyway, long story short, Disney built a Star Wars hotel at Disneyworld in 2022 that was themed as a voyage on a spaceship, then proceeded to charge thousands of dollars per person per night, the most expensive publicly-available Disney theme park hotel experience by miles and miles, and then closed the hotel in 2023 after having spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Jenny went into the experience as a member of the core target demographic and spent four hours talking about all the ways it was an underwhelming or outright disappointing experience.

Her video reminded me of Hasbro's own misadventures in corporate greed with Magic: The Gathering, which has suffered in recent years from price increases, disengagement from the fan community, and a huge proliferation of product spam—i.e. more products overall, more ways to buy a given product (e.g., the proliferation of different boxes, which eventually killed the original draft booster box that had powered Magic for 30 years), and more variants of individual cards within and between products.

Hasbro and Disney are very similar in the economic space they operate in, and also utilize similar business strategies. Disney is essentially the S-tier megacorporation to Hasbro's B-tier, and we have seen many of the same corporate trends play out in both companies.

When it comes to Disney theme parks, they have massively increased ticket prices over the years, well beyond the rate of inflation, and have also implemented advance-scheduling systems for faster access to rides that has made the process of exploring a Disney theme park much less spontaneous and a lot more regimented and stressful.

Disney realized, years ago, that their limited number of theme parks—they only really have two, not counting the various sub-parks: Disneyland on the West Coast and Disneyworld on the East Coast—together with Disney's entrenched status as a cultural icon with lots of goodwill and brand recognition among the public, are vastly underserving public demand, allowing them to inflate the price of a single trip almost arbitrarily, well into the four digits—or even the five-digits if you're taking the family and spending several days.

The Star Wars hotel was Disney's "Magic 30": a product so ludicrously expensive as to incur immediate and universal condemnation by their own fans. It's clear to me what Disney was doing: They'd happily turned the conventional price knob up and up and up for years. Now they wanted to experiment with a fundamentally more expensive product class, basically five to ten times more expensive. They wanted to see if the market could support it. Because the growing disparity of wealth in America, together with America's obscene wealth as a nation relative to the rest of the world, means that it's definitely possible: There are definitely millions of people out there who could book a stay at the Star Wars hotel if they wanted to. And Disney was like "Let's see if they will."

And you know what? I think it could have succeeded. Because there really is an obscene excess of wealth in this country, even though most of us don't have any access to it. And we are a culture whose zeitgeist is ever ravenous for the next big, flashy experience.

But instead the venture failed spectacularly. Why? Because such reckless corporate greed is, itself, usually a sign of deep organizational rot and incompetency among the board and executive leadership. In other words, their hotel failed for the same reason they tried building it in the first place: Disney has grown stupid.

The way it failed, going by Jenny's video, is down to two independent reasons:

An outrageous degree of "penny-wise, pound foolish" thinking;

A fundamental failure to anticipate the comfort and pleasure of the guest.

The former is the more obvious of the two, and what really stood out to me as emblematic of it in this whole boondoggle were two simple thing: 1) The hotel rooms didn't have complimentary Disney+; and 2) the free loaner umbrellas for hotel guests visiting the Star Wars Land in Disneyworld were either so worn-out or so shoddy to begin with that, unless it was a big coincidence, both Jenny's and Jenny's sister's umbrella failed while in use. This was in the context of Disneyworld's most expensive customer experience ever, by a lot, and Disney was nickel-and-diming them. Jenny's video goes into a great depth of detail on the dozens if not hundreds of corners they cut; it was basically everything but the food. The result was an antagonistic relationship between Disney and their hotel guests where almost everything interesting cost more money (usually a lot more money) while almost everything included in the main ticket price was of cheap quality or stingy in its allotment. Every aspect of the whole process, from the scammy vibes of booking a room in the first place, to the pathetic after-care for customers who reported a problem after their stay, was likely to leave a sour taste in the customer's mouth.

When you're paying the most expensive prices in the history of a product category, you really just need to be given an up-front price that includes all or nearly all of it. You'll know what you're in for, and you can make an informed decision, and then it's really just down to the host to provide an experience and level of service that matches those high dollar outlays. But instead, as Jenny pointed out, it's like you're dealing with Spirit Airlines, where you're gonna pay a fee for literally everything beyond sitting your body quietly on the airplane.

Mind-boggling hubris. Disney needs to be broken up for the monopoly that it is, and this is just one more example of how convinced of their own inevitability and supremacy Disney has become.

The other main failure on Disney's part is the subtler one.

Jenny focused on how the Star Wars themed choose-your-own-adventure game, which was at the heart of the hotels' central conceit of "live your own personal Star Wars story," was irreparably dysfunctional. Not only was the app, through which most of the "experience" was conveyed, horribly designed; and not only were the tasks delivered through this app mostly busywork to anyone other than young children, consisting of little more than walking around and scanning inanimate objects; but the storyline's entry points and decision points were completely impenetrable through reasonable means, to the point of seeming arbitrary. Jenny proactively tried and failed to get into her preferred storyline; then tried and failed to get into any storyline; then was automatically sorted into one the next morning; and ultimately ended up having only one (dubiously) interactive story experience over the whole weekend.

She talked about how the tightly-regimented and incredibly full schedule was so mentally and physically draining that on the final night she fled her dinner table fearing she would vomit and had to stand in her hotel room staring at herself in the mirror for a while, to understand her illness (which turned out to be stress-induced exhaustion) and center herself.

She talked about how she didn't get to see a much-coveted music show during dinner on her first night because she was seated behind a giant column.

Really, these things are manifestations of the larger and more fundamental failure on Disney's part to anticipate the comfort and pleasure of the guest, as I put it.

As I was watching her video, two thoughts came to me in this vein:

First was that this whole experience really needed to be "playtested," as we might say in Magic. I mean, I'm sure there nominally was, but whatever playtesting they did was completely ineffective. Good playtesting would have brought most of these issues to light.

Second was that the Disney of today has completely lost touch with the namesake of their industry: hospitality. This would never have happened at a new luxury resort by an established world-class hotelier a century ago. Because they understood the basics. Little things, like hot towels.

I could tell just from Jenny's video that this whole hotel was decided from the top-down by soulless, disconnected corporate suits who blatantly disregarded whatever good suggestions I'm sure the Imagineers® came up with. For the failures to be as expansive and ubiquitous as Jenny's video documented, no doubt the institutional rot extends down at least as far as the project manager level, if not down to individual Imagineers® and beyond, but there have to be at least some good ones, and clearly they were overruled early and often. Whenever Disney's leadership was faced with a decision between anticipating the comfort and pleasure of the guest, and saving a couple bucks on a guest who was literally laying out several thousands of dollars to be there, leadership chose the latter.

They were so arrogant that they believed, without noticing or questioning it (unless Disney's leadership is in fact cartoon evil), that they would tell the customer what constitutes a good experience, and the customer would pay top dollar for it. And so you get a guest experience where customers who are actively trying to pick a given storyline can't get any storyline and are later seated for the dinner show behind a giant fucking column.

It's sad, and we should all be glad that their hotel failed. Not that Disney is likely to learn the right lessons from their failure, but the long-term solution here is for leisure dollars to be directed toward other companies. For the several thousand bucks that Jenny paid, she could have had a true luxury vacation in most parts of the world—and for longer than two nights.

One thing that I noticed during the four hours of her video was that Disney, or at least the people in charge of developing this hotel, didn't seem to understand what constitutes an enjoyable story experience. I am forgiving of the low level of complexity in the various puzzles, since the public is famously stupid plus a lot of these guests are going to be children. But there was so little imagination in the actual plot beats: Chewie sneaks in, gets arrested, and busts out. You get to help some Resistance fighters smuggle their luggage. Like, it's insipid. I mean, ultimately, most pop storytelling is insipid, but what I mean is that the dressings were insipid too. Dressing a story up is what makes stories great, at least at the mainstream level. There was no pomp and flourish; no clever interweaving; no electric events that put people on the edge of their seats. Just walking around on your phone for two days scanning crates and occasionally being in the same room while somebody busts Chewie out of the clink—assuming you even make it to the story events in time, since they often fired early.

The whole thing smacks of rule by committee, too many cooks, and suits suits suits all the way down.

I think it's a sign of the times that this is happening. We are once again in Robber-Baron territory in this land. The big corporations and the oligarchs who run them have become so obscenely rich and so utterly disconnected from ordinary life, and their corporate cultures have become so masturbatory and so officious, that they are increasingly creating products for idealized, phantom audiences. They increasingly don't understand real people or real life.

And we can and should bring the weight of the government down on them, more to break up monopolies and allow new and established competitors to seriously challenge them than to actively punish these companies for making money, but even more so we just need to spend our dollars elsewhere. I mean, I'm speaking hypothetically here; I am poor so none of this even applies to me in the first place.

Hence why, even after inflation, this is still just my two cents.

[featherquillpen]

Yuletide Recs: The Weird Shit

Every Yuletide produces some really off-the-wall fics you never could have dreamed of. Here's some of my favorite Weird Stuff from this year's collection.

"I could have been a gem..." (Everything Everywhere All at Once)

It's Evelyn and Joy in the universe where they're rocks. It's hilarious.

The Top 5 Vacation Planets You HAVE to Visit (The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel - Jenny Nicholson)

A fic that dives into the fiction of Jenny Nicholson's terrible time at the Disney Star Wars LARP.

Unauthorized Narratives (Strange Planet - Webcomic)

You know that cute comic by Nathan Pyle about aliens? Well, even if you don't, you will surely be charmed by this story about aliens enjoying fanfiction.

Love is the Worst Cardiovascular Disease of All ("Last Christmas" by Wham!)

So what if you listened to "Last Christmas" and took the line "Last Christmas I gave you my heart" literally? You'd get this delightfully gory fic. This one's for the body horror fans.

Copper, Clay, and Correspondence (Mycanaean and Mesopotamian history RPF)

It's Ea-Nasir fic. It's Ea-Nasir shipped with Brithawon, a famously incompetent Mycenaean potter. This is so funny.

Easy as Breathing (NASA "Visions of the Future" Posters)

If you don't know the posters, have a look and then read this fic. It's both laugh-out-loud funny and a very thoughtful satirical sci-fi.

Lord of the Beans (Folgers Coffee incest commercial)

It's a Lord of the Rings AU of the Folgers incest commercial. Probably the crackiest fic of Yuletide this year. It's absolutely off-the-wall and I admire it so much.

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: May 2024

Hey it's May! Big X-Men month over here but also lots of other great stuff. Here's how I spent the last 31 days!

……….FILM……….

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Impossible to live up to my expectations, given how much I love Mad Max: Fury Road. I liked the bits with new characters, I liked the bits that felt like Fury Road, and I surprisingly liked how it tied into the previous film during the credits. It's a different beast and given it succeeds as a prequel, I gotta respect it for what it is.

……….TELEVISION……….

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Episode 1.01 to 1.06) Shockingly violent but it does a good job of setting the tone for the series in the first scenes. Love it when something fantastically (spy life) is used to highlight the mundane (stages of a romantic relationship). Big fan.

Delicious in Dungeon (Episode 1.18 to 1.22) Uuuuugh so close to the end of the season and I'm not looking forward to the wait between now and season 2.

X-Men '97 (Episode 1.08 to 1.10) Hey a really tight season of television! Maybe a little too tight at moments (strangely it feels like it could've benefited from 1 or 2 more eps in the middle there) but I really do prefer a fast pace over a slog. Now I'm gonna go read some X-Men comics.

Succession (Episode 4.03 to 4.10) Somehow avoided having the ending spoiled and it was a perfect culmination of great characters and writing. What I love about this series is how consistently it puts the core trio in the same room, and how the score is practically all just variations of the intro song. Loved it.

……….YOUTUBE……….

The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel by Jenny Nicholson I've been watching Nicholson's videos for years and it's great to see this one break out of its core community for a few reasons: 1. it shows that thoughtful and thorough art can connect and has value and 2. towards the end it becomes a scathing indictment of cynical corporations. Much like blockbuster cinema slowly dying, it confirms that the general public can discern art from content and won't support the latter. The Star Wars Hotel was overpriced content and it failed. VIDEO

……….READING……….

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (Compelte) I don't know what I was thinking when I read and disliked A Wizard of Earthsea. This and The Tombs of Atuan are so thoroughly fantastic that I feel the need to go back and reread the first book after I finish the series. Such economical and poetic storytelling.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (Complete) Big fan of the Hitchhiker's Trilogy but maybe that set the bar too high for this one. It never quite came together and if asked what the book was about, I'd have a hard time landing on something. Maybe that works for some folks and I'm in full support of the journey being the adventure, but it just wasn't for me.

House of X / Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, and Marte Gracia (Complete) Hey the new show has me in the mood to read some X-Men comics! I appreciated the series more on this reread but still find the pacing of the "reveal" to undersell the gravity of what it's suggesting. I'm keen to get into the rest of the series even though it's a convoluted jumble of multiple titles. Comics!

Dawn of X Volume 1 by Jonathan Hickman and a whole slew of talented folks (Complete) Reading single issues from different teams back-to-back really highlights individual strengths and weaknesses. I really dug some issues and was bored by others but I'm going to keep going with these collected volumes to see what sticks.

Delicious in Dungeon Vol 7 & 8 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) I really forgot most of these volumes. Izutsumi is such a good foil for the group (especially now that Marcille is barely resistant to eating monsters at this point) but I always have trouble with the moody loner types.

……….AUDIO……….

Hyperdrama by Justice (2024) You know I haven't listened to this since the start of the month. Some standout tracks but the album as a whole didn't leave me with much of an impression.

The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast (Podcast) The Lonely Island digital shorts were a foundational part of my youth and listening to how they were made, along with behind-the-scenes stuff with SNL, is a great listen.

……….GAMING……….

OZ: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) Tuesday crew is beginning to see the aftermath of their political assassination (you can read all about it here!) and the Mof1 crew is actively sabotaging a memorial to the lives lost in a catastrophic explosion they caused.

And that's it. See you in June!

[capinve]

Jenny Nicholson - The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4

According to the judgement of the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale: Not worth it.

In the "Worth it?" section, Jenny Nicholson reminded everyone that visiting Disneyland is established in American culture as a "rite of passage" that middle class families might get into financial burden to "splurge" on Disney theme parks.

In the final 2 chapters of this 4-hour video, Jenny Nicholson talked about how the Galactic Starcruiser experience was a watered down version of an immersive theme park concept due to the cost of staffing and maintenance. The existence of Galactic Starcruiser partly owes to the Disneyland's monetization strategy of (1) moving the free and "cool stuff" behind additional costs ("paywall") and (2) monetizing long line ups (FastPass).

[uncloseted]

i feel like your taste is so chic and effortlessly cool, so what are your current favorites? anything as far as trinkets, skincare, movies, foods, creators, music ect! I feel like you spend so much time giving advice that it would be fun to learn a lil more about what makes you happy lately! hope you're having a good day!!!

That's so nice of you! I've been collecting the things I've been loving over the past few days and here's what I came up with:

Clothes, makeup, and hair:

Essie Expressie Seize the Minute quick dry nail polish, which is a really nice red with blue undertones

Lisa Says Gah Museo Bianco Elizabeth Dress, which I bought secondhand off Depop. I got it for my trip to Greece but I'm worried it's a little too on the nose so I'm not sure if I'll bring it yet (still very cute though)

Uniqlo Wide Straight Jeans. They're just the right amount of slouchy

This matching set from Amazon. I've been wanting a set like this for a few months now and I ended up being so pleasantly surprised with this one. It ended up being way cuter than in the product pictures and fitting really well

Inkey List Vitamin C Serum. It's made my skin tone way more even and bright, and they're a clean, cruelty free brand

Tir Tir Red Cushion foundation. Mostly I bought it because I think the packaging looks really chic, but the product provides a really nice, buildable coverage as well

Jones Road Miracle Balm in Au Natural. This one I got as a gift and at first I didn't really get how you were supposed to use it, but now I'm really into it. It gives the nicest dewy glow without looking shiny.

Video Essays:

Jenny Nicholson's "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel". She hated the part of the experience that I worked on as much as I hated working on it, so I feel vindicated 😭. If you've ever wondered what it was like to stay at Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, this answers that question in such intricate detail that by the end of it you'll feel like you actually went

Quinton Reviews' "The Failure of Victorious" and "The End of Victorious". As you might guess from the titles, it's about the Nickelodeon show Victorious and why it was such a failure. Is this the second time I've watched all thirteen hours of this? Yes. Do I regret it? No, not really.

PhilosophyTube in general, but especially her recent video "I Read The Most Misunderstood Philosopher in the World" which is about Judith Butler's philosophy of gender.

Music:

Chappell Roan. It's Pride month, I'm a queer woman, enough said

I've been getting back into Marina lately, especially her newest album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. She's always been my pick out of the Tumblr sad girl musicians and I'm really impressed with how her music (and her public persona) has grown and changed over the years

I Only Have Eyes for You by Tashaki Miyaki. I heard this song years ago and it randomly popped into my head the other day and would not leave. It's just very vibey

TV:

Doctor Who with Ncuti Gatwa. I'm in love with him and I think his take on The Doctor is perfect.

Legion. I mostly started watching this because my girl Lauren Tsai is in the third season, but I love it. I think it's a really unique take on the superhero genre.

Bee and Puppycat. This is a show about a girl named Bee and her best friend/pet who is a mysterious creature who looks kind of like a cat and kind of like a dog. They take temporary jobs so that they can afford to buy snacks and leather jackets. It's a really special show, and I've watched it a few times now. The original series is on YouTube, and there's also a series on Netflix that expands on the original episodes.

Books:

Babel by RF Kuang. I'm reading this for a book club and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's about a child in an alternative-reality 1830s England who is adopted from China and taken to Oxford University to study the art of translation.

Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey. I've actually never read The Odyssey before because I am bad at being Greek and also at being a supposed descendant of Homer. Dr. Wilson is the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English

Games:

I just finished playing Planet of Lana, which is a really gorgeous puzzle-platformer inspired by the aesthetics of Studio Ghibli films and the gameplay of Playdead games such as Limbo and Inside. It has a great story about a girl who's looking for her sister, who has been abducted by hostile alien machines.

Places:

Wasteland secondhand stores in LA. I've been finding a lot of really great pieces there in the past few weeks, and the pieces I've found there have been around 75-90% off their original price.

La La Kind Cafe. I go to these when I need to convince myself to leave my house. They have a good vibe and the drinks are great.

Miscellaneous Stuff:

Nicola Coughlan. I've been watching all of the interviews she's doing for Bridgerton and I'm obsessed with her whole vibe. Her new dark comedy show about a woman with bipolar disorder, Big Mood, is also really great.

Earscapes. I reopened a bunch of old piercings I had and I'm having so much fun trying different combinations of earrings in them. I honestly can't believe I left them closed for so long.

Using lipstick as blush. I have such a hard time finding blush colors that work for me and then finding a blush that goes with my lipstick. So instead what I've been doing lately is putting on my lipstick, blotting it with my finger, and then using the leftover on my cheeks. It works super well and it means I can stop buying new blush products

This sardine tin makeup pouch. I haven't gotten it yet so I can't tell you how it is, but I just thought it looked so cute, and I needed a makeup bag for travel. I'll let you know if it ends up being good

Baths, just as a general concept. My old apartment didn't have enough hot water to fill up a bath, so I never used to take them, but they're so great? I got this full body bath pillow, which has made it was more comfortable to just relax there.

[cinemacentury]

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

"Here's my supporting evidence: The hotel went out of business!"

201. THE SPECTACULAR FAILURE OF THE STAR WARS HOTEL (Jenny Nicholson, 2024) - United States - Streaming - YouTube - 245 minutes. New to me #183.

[autie-j]

Nobody:

Me, worlds biggest Webby fan watching The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel: Webby cameo! Webby cameo! Webby cameo! Glowing red eyes? Evil...Webby cameo??

[stellanslashgeode]

The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel

Click for a thorough postmortem of Galactic Starcruiser, stay for a shocking explanation of the enshitification of the Disney parks.

[bookclub4m]

Episode 205 - Favourite Reads (and Media) of 2024

 It’s episode 205 and time for us to talk about our favourite reads of 2024! We discuss fiction and non-fiction books we read for the podcast, plus comics, videos, music, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

Check out Hark! Jam's holiday music podcast!

Favourite Fiction

For the podcast

Anna

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence (Episode 200 - Library Fiction)

Jam

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (Episode 202 - A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking)

Matthew

The Sixth Gun Omnibus, vol. 1 by Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, Bill Crabtree, and Tyler Crook (Episode 201 - Weird West)

Meghan

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (Episode 203 - Dark Academia)

Not for the podcast

Jam

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

Matthew

Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day: And Other Tales of the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard, narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith

Meghan

When Among Crows by Veronica Roth

Anna

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Trailer

Favourite Non-Fiction

For the podcast

Matthew

I Am the Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future by Michael Molcher (Episode 195 - Pop(ular) Culture Non-Fiction)

Meghan

Telling It to the Judge: Taking Native History to Court by Arthur J. Ray (Episode 197 - Law & Legal Non-Fiction (for the layperson))

Anna

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli (Episode 194 - Indie Publishers)

Jam

Why I Adopted My Husband: The True Story of a Gay Couple Seeking Legal Recognition in Japan by Yuta Yagi (Episode 192 - Non-Fiction Graphic Novels & Comics)

Not for the podcast

Meghan

Secret Gardens by Jennifer Potter 

Anna

Bunker: Building for the End Times by Bradley Garrett

Jam

Slow AF Run Club: The Ultimate Guide for Anyone Who Wants to Run by Martinus Evans

Matthew

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Other Favourite Things of 2024

Anna

Cats

Buldak Cream Carbonara

Go Go Town!

Jam

Diceomancer

“California” by Chappel Roan

Galway Food Tour

Matthew

The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel by Jenny Nicholson

Giant Days by John Allison, Max Sarin, and Lissa Treiman

Spy x Family by Tetsuya Endo

Matthew talked about this and Giant Days in Episode 193 - Spring Media Update

Spy x Family / Designer Chairs

Meghan

Living Small - Laura Fenton (series: Small Takes)

BBC: The Secret History of British Gardens with Monty Don

Dwell magazine

Runner-Ups

Jam

Books for the podcast

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (Episode 204 - Cozy Fantasy)

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (Episode 189 - Romantic Comedies & Humorous Romance)

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante (Episode 194 - Indie Publishers)

Picture Books

I Won’t Give Up My Rubber Band by Shinsuke Yoshitake

100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli by David LaRochelle

Games

Wingspan (both board & Switch Edition)

Crossword puzzles

Movies/TV/Video

Delicious in Dungeon

I Saw the TV Glow

Robot Dreams

Gastronauts

I Want to Tell You About My Favorite Fight Scene 

Anna

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (Episode 201 - Weird West)

Kimiko Does Cancer by Kimiko Tobimatsu and Keet Geniza (Episode 192 - Non-Fiction Graphic Novels & Comics)

Matthew

[Tumblr won't let us post the full lists because they're too long, check the podcast site to see them all.]

Video Essays

Alpha Protocol Retrospective | An Extremely Comprehensive Critique and History

Reform!

X Men Video Game Retrospective | A Complete History and Review 

DB2024 - The Taco Bell "Wedding" in Decentraland

The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

The Great Game: The Making of Spycraft

The Bizarre World of Fake Video Games

Meghan

French

Balcons by Marianne Brisebois (contemporary fiction)

Cariacou by Olivier Lussier (poetry, prose)

La véritable histoire de la maison mobile des Miller by Dave Eggers (childrens, illustrated)

Fiction

The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir (horror, translated)

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (cosy fantasy, series)

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (supernatural)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (time travel)

The Gathering by C.J. Tudor (horror, vampires)

Bride by Ali Hazelwood (supernatural romance)

The Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff (horror, series)

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante (contemporary)

Frontier by Grace Curtis (scifi, western)

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang (horror)

The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan (weird, translated, series)

The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes (scifi, spy thriller)

Roaming by Jillian Tamaki by Mariko Tamaki (graphic novel, new adult)

Nonfiction

Instructions for Travelling West by Joy Sullivan (poetry)

Island Home: a Landscape memoir by Tim Winton (essays, memoir, Australian)

Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place by Daniel Coleman (essays, history, Canadian)

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Join us again on Tuesday, January 7th we’ll be discussing the genre of Cultural Studies!

Then on Tuesday, February 4th we’ll be talking about the genre of Monster Romance!

[nicad13]

The "good, the bad, and the ugly" on Jenny Nicholson's Starcruiser video. TLDR: she did experience some legitimately bad glitches, but she didn't do her research and made stuff up about what was actually supposed to happen and presented the whole thing as journalism, which is an ethically shitty thing to do.

Of possible interest to @dindjarindiaries

[not100bees]

"The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel" is my "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" except that Jenny Nicholson is 100x more charming and funny than David Foster Wallace. So really it's just better.

[lilithsaintcrow]

"Released in 1978, this micro-budget production shot on Super 8 film spoofs the ramshackle bombast of the original Star Wars, then still playing in theaters, in the form of a thirteen-minute-long fictional trailer."

[thepastisaroadmap]

[ID: a screenshot of Jenny Nicholson's "The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel" video, about halfway through (in part 11: attractions). Jenny is wearing a large porg mascot head. End ID]

Also speaking of Jenny Nicholson I'm 100% sure she, like many video essayists, is aware that a large portion of her audience is not actively watching the video, they're drawing or gaming or doing something else while listening to it. And she takes full comedic advantage of that in how she plans her outfits. Because I cannot explain to you the feeling of being tabbed over from the video, switching back to pause it, and being looked dead in the eyes by this