The Anything Goes chit-chat thread (subject to tiny fine-print rules)

[Derek]

Oops. Sorry Amy!

[Linda]

Traveller wrote: ":D I was the one who made the muppet comment... yeah, I'm referring to all the furry creatures who are so like stuffed toys...

Linda, how absolutely great to see you joining our chatter again!
I h..."

I'm alive, as far as well goes......check back in 5 weeks! :P
I didn't hate the idea of Jar-Jar, just the use of the accent/pidgin in a character who was portrayed as less intelligent than the rest (reinforcement of cultural stereotypes).

[Traveller]

Hmm, though he was clearly more clumsy and more of a do-do than the rest of his tribe, but in an endearing manner, so I'm good with that. :) Such people do exist too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

...and it was done in the comical style of; he managed to do cool stuff exactly by being clumsy and a do-do. :D His battle scenes always make me laugh.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Derek wrote: "Oops. Sorry Amy!"

Just so we're clear that I love muppets!

I was seven when Return of the Jedi came out, so I loved (and love) Ewoks. (Wicket was pretty much my brother's and my favorite character in the whole series for a long time.) I recently found out that Lucas had originally planned to set Ep VI on a Wookie planet though, and I have to admit that would have been the most awesome thing to do. I still think that Star Wars as a series deserves a lot of credit for evoking these alien worlds so well. (I share your reservations about Jar-Jar, though, Linda. The whole constellation of associations he brings together makes me rather uncomfortable.)

[Traveller]

Well... tribal people aren't physically clumsy; usually quite the opposite; and he is PHYSICALLY clumsy just the way a geeky physically inept dork is usually depicted as.

So, for me, the usual stereotypes are deconstructed and mixed up enough for me to simply find him funny in a silly way.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I getcha, Traveller :-) Different perspectives. Here is an article for you: Meesa-understood: the tragedy of Jar Jar Binks

"Jar Jar was the whole essence of Star Wars. He was awkward but trying his best in a complex galaxy, pitted against vast forces of evil. Unlike the po-faced Jedi he didn't have magic on his side. He made mistakes but was capable of surprising feats under duress. He was funny and warm and slightly hapless. Meesa Jar Jar. We allsa Jar Jar."

[Traveller]

Yes, thanks, Amy. There is a little bit of all of us in Jar-jar. We are all just hapless creatures cast into a huge universe beyond our control and beyond our understanding, and we make do as best we can. :)

[Linda]

Traveller wrote: "Hmm, though he was clearly more clumsy and more of a do-do than the rest of his tribe, but in an endearing manner, so I'm good with that. :) Such people do exist too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

...and it was done ..."

Without a doubt, but it could have been equally funny without the accent. I know too many folks from Africa and the Caribbean who tire of being treated as though they´re idiots, simply because they have that accent, or speak pidgin. Very frustrating.

[Linda]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Derek wrote: "Oops. Sorry Amy!"

Just so we're clear that I love muppets!

I was seven when Return of the Jedi came out, so I loved (and love) Ewoks. (Wicket was pretty much my brother's and my fav..."

I´m with you, I loved Ewoks. Nothing wrong with an alien species that you´d love to cuddle!
See, that was my issue with this film........if Chewie is the last of his kind, because they were exterminated, and Rey grew up on this desolate station, how is it that her wonderful polyglot talents include understanding Wookie? Because how would she have had opportunity to hear it!?

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I wondered about that too (although I missed the bit about Chewie being the last). I chalked it up to her mysterious background (view spoiler)[along with knowing the island (hide spoiler)].

[Linda]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I wondered about that too (although I missed the bit about Chewie being the last). I chalked it up to her mysterious background [spoilers removed]."

I don't know where I got that from; I read a couple of the novels as a teen. And according to the Wookiepedia, I'm wrong.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I think when Lucas owned the franchise, he greenlighted (greenlit?) a lot of stuff outside the movies to be canon (in novels, games, and such) and then when Disney bought it they nixed all of that, so maybe that is what you had seen.

[Derek]

Linda wrote: "Without a doubt, but it could have been equally funny without the accent. "

Yeah, that sums up Jar-Jar entirely.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I think when Lucas owned the franchise, he greenlighted (greenlit?) a lot of stuff outside the movies to be canon (in novels, games, and such) and then when Disney bought it they nixed all of that,..."

I'd say that all seems ridiculous and unlikely... except that I've spent endless hours in argument about what is and is not Tolkien "canon" :-) [and it changes!]

[Derek]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "We allsa Jar Jar."

Riiiight. We allsa want to vomit.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Derek wrote: "I'd say that all seems ridiculous and unlikely... except that I've spent endless hours in argument about what is and is not Tolkien "canon" :-) [and it changes!]"

You got me curious. It is legit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wa...
"On April 25, 2014, following the acquisition of Lucasfilm by The Walt Disney Company in November 2012, it was announced that all previously released expanded universe content would be declared non-canon and rebranded as Star Wars Legends."

Unfortunately, Jar Jar remains canon ;-)

[Derek]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "You got me curious. It is legit"

I had no doubt...

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I am just glad that the movies are the only thing I every invested myself in. Apparently some people are pretty angry that some of the novels and games have been decanonized.

[Linda]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I am just glad that the movies are the only thing I every invested myself in. Apparently some people are pretty angry that some of the novels and games have been decanonized."

Omgoodness, champagne problems! (I had an ewok stuffie, it was a gift. And was handed down to the nieces and nephews, I forget who got it. But I did love that little guy!) My nephew had the dolls, er, action figures, and some of the toys.

[Saski]

Oh wow, there were ewoks?!? Where can I find them?

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Amazon has stuffed Ewoks. (That sounds all wrong.)

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...

[Traveller]

Oh, totally agreed about the accent. That was a poor judgment call. Pity.
They should not have given him an accent at all.

Still, in a multilingual world, what are the chances accents will differ? ..but yeah, I can see how the accent mixed with the awkwardness is a bad call. In fact what were they thinking with that? :(

[Derek]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Amazon has stuffed Ewoks. (That sounds all wrong.)"

Mmmmm! What temperature do you roast them at?

[Amy (Other Amy)]

LOL!

[Linda]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Amazon has stuffed Ewoks. (That sounds all wrong.)

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos..."

bahahaha! It does, indeed! :D

Ew..........the Disney ones are ugly, sorry (the teeth, wth?!) If you scroll down to the "vintage" Ewok from 1983, that's similar to the one I had. Had forgotten the name of my date from 1983, hahaha....

[June]

Hello everyone. How's it going?

[Traveller]

Hi June, welcome to the group. Fine thanks, and with yourself?
As you can see, we come here and chat lots, and then we disappear again for periods of time....

Do you enjoy going to the movies?

[Traveller]

...to change the subject a bit, I wonder why they (and there I suppose I mean Amazon and the GR design team - because a design team seems to have been appointed, and they seem to feel the need to justify their existence :P ) feel they have to keep fiddling with the GR UI so much.

Not only have quite a few things gone from good to worse, like for example the notifications tab which now always shows an error message for me, no matter which browser I use, but they are fiddling with things that have always worked well.

Why does Amazon not spend its time and money on actually IMPROVING the site, such as giving group tree structures an additional branch.

How do the rest of you feel about the recent changes? Has anything changed for the better for you?

[Saski]

Personally I have only noted the font change, which still catches my eye. I thought I would have gotten used to it by now.

[Derek]

Because Amazon is only interested in selling. They have zero interest in improvements to this site unless they can be seen to have a chance of increasing our purchases.

Still, I actually like the new top bar: I was already using a Stylish style that fixed it to the top of the window. And I never used "notifications" (though it all seems to work for me).

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I like the fixed bar too. I hate those awful hover menus, but Amazon seems convinced they are the greatest thing since sliced bread; they've got them all over their own site too. My notifications work fine, Traveller; if they're showing an error for you, I'd say you've got a genuine bug.

The developers have been roundly screamed at over in the Feedback group for every recent change. Maybe someday they will implement the changes people are actually asking for just to stop the hate.

[Derek]

I'm really surprised about the hover menus. It's considered a Bad Thing in interface design, because they don't work well on mobile devices, so pretty much everybody is dropping them.

[Linda]

I'm not crazy about the hover, though I can't say it's changed my usage much. Atm, I don't access GR on my phone (finally joined the rest of the world and ditched the clam shell a few weeks ago). Though I think that some things require a bit more digging (can't remember what atm, but something I was doing in the last week didn't work as usual, and I still have the old habit).

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I am too. I had heard they were frowned on in the design community, and they got bad feedback on them in the test phase. Of course, the test phase really just seems to have been a soft roll out; they have made very minuscule changes from the feedback they got (mainly to add the 'Home' button back, I think).

[Linda]

Ha! How could I have forgotten, Amy! It was probably that "home" button that I was missing!

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Lots of people missed it, apparently :-) It is their one concession to our stubborn ways!

[Derek]

LOL. They shouldn't have needed it, if their logo in the top left pointed to a Home page like everybody else's does. But no, at least right now, it's pointing to the Goodreads Blog Shakespeare post!

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Oh, wow, I had missed that! They had the logo functioning as home before. It's somehow hilarious and pathetic if they put the home button back just so they could re-purpose the logo for Shakespeare week :-)

[Traveller]

I can quite understand making changes when people ask for it; but why do some designers always have to turn the users into a kicking screaming mass?

I find the same thing with Windows designers- why re-invent the wheel when we had a perfectly good one everybody was happy with?

...and by that I'm not saying the old GR outlay was perfect- there are hundreds of pages of complaints to attest to that, and I know that they have not responded to many many of those requests. Not listening to us makes it all feel like they're acting in a very autocratic manner. Sadly ALL the book sites around these days seem to be pretty commercialized one way or another. :(

[Puddin Pointy-Toes]

Derek wrote: "I'm really surprised about the hover menus. It's considered a Bad Thing in interface design, because they don't work well on mobile devices, so pretty much everybody is dropping them."

Fun fact: the top navigation is not fixed-positioned on mobile (in either "mobile" or "desktop" view). While it's certainly true that fixed positioning is bad on small screens, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it at all. Not that I particularly like it on my desktop...

[Derek]

I'm a complete believer that most of these things should be user-chosen, but generally designers like that but maintainers hate it, because it means there are more things that could possibly go wrong.

[Yolande]

Hi everyone! I've been taking a break from discussions because I've been thrown under with work. I really miss participating in the group readings.

Since I've started e-tutoring for a literary subject and having to create discussions I appreciate our group even more because it is soooo difficult to get students to participate. Most of them are just not interested ;p These sometimes very lively discussions just don't exist there because there are too few participants. This group is awesome :)

[Traveller]

Yolande wrote: "it is soooo difficult to get students to participate. Most of them are just not interested ;p."

Yolande! I've been wondering how you're doing, but you -did- mention that work and new roommates have been keeping you away from us, so I assumed it was all good. :)

Man, I can really relate to what you're saying there...things have not been as lively around here as they used to be, sadly. :(

[Jennifer]

Just checking in, is everyone doing ok? I am off to get flowers to plant. June 1st is planting time here. I am thinking of doing some vegetables as well.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Why hello there! I'm doing well*, work is good and I'm making another go at Marie Kondo method on my apartment, so that's fun. Otherwise just enjoying the arrival of much summer sun here in Colorado.

*(view spoiler)[I feel like I can explain that more fully to the merry band of book lovers that frequent this thread. I've been fighting with a moderate depressive episode since the beginning of the year. There's very little emotional content to depression for me; it just manifests in its impact on my ability to function properly. I feel that has hit my utility to this group really hard and I feel not so great about that. The sun being out more helps a lot though, and my coping strategies are finally showing some payoff, so I am feeling pretty darn cheerful about that. (hide spoiler)]

[Linda]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Why hello there! I'm doing well*, work is good and I'm making another go at Marie Kondo method on my apartment, so that's fun. Otherwise just enjoying the arrival of much summer sun here in Colorad..."

Glad you're back! We'll take you any which way! :D

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Thanks :-)

[Jennifer]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Why hello there! I'm doing well*, work is good and I'm making another go at Marie Kondo method on my apartment, so that's fun. Otherwise just enjoying the arrival of much summer sun here in Colorad..."

You take care of yourself!!

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Absolutely. Thanks.

[Traveller]

Guys, we must have a Spring revival! Or rather, a summer revival. I'm going to do my very best to get back into the habit of visiting GR at least once a day, and use that time to work on the group, which has been criminally neglected; my bad.

I've been missing you guys, and thinking about you; I've just not had the impetus to make things more interesting for everyone, but I was thinking polls might be the answer for that. :)

[Saski]

I can't promise anything -- summer can be really busy. But I'll do my best :)