The books are very good, but they are definitely unsettling and depressing. The story is basically about alienation and the destruction of identity, which makes them a pretty rough read.

I found the movie a lot easier to enjoy, because it’s easier to get through.

Or, and stay with me on this... acknowledging these issues can help straight white males figure out how to live in a society full of other people that are different than them.

Bloodline sorta addresses this: the Senate is so divided and fractious that it’s become utterly gridlocked after Mon Mothma retired, and Leia gets driven out of the public eye.

Re: the First Order, one of the factions in the Senate is secretly bankrolling them, yearning for a return to the Empire.

His dad is a big-wig in the Senate. Clearly he’s a Legacy admission.

It also gives an echo of Carol’s own struggles with alcoholism and failure.  The first one tends to run in families, and there’s probably a good story in her confronting that.

The setting has more than enough mutants already.

Yep, that’s Bloodline.

Ugh, I can only hope so. Duarte’s introductory “arc” was such a whiplash, it’s utterly undermined the character for me in the books. It’s still hard to take him seriously, even though they tried to go back and retroactively explain why he convinced so many to follow him in Persepolis Rising. They badly need to show…

They’ve handwaved that as the way the weapon worked causing spatial distortions. It’s stupid, but it does make clear that they’re not supposed to literally be within eyeshot of each other.  Feels like the blame for that one should lie with J.J. Abrams wanting the sequence to have visual impact for the characters, but…

Everything is bright because it’s a *racing* team.  Have you looked at Formula One or NASCAR lately?

Yeah, now that I think about it, I think it was 2040 that I saw, but it wasn’t labelled as such.  Never got very far since I was mostly watching it to kill time on a flight and fell asleep.

Sorry, I meant more that it’s the reason why the team is made up of who it is, from this bit:

There was a TON of greenery on Ahch-To.  Rey’s force montage even amplified it.

Isn’t this the plot to Bubblegum Crisis?

Yeah, that was a really unnecessary decision.  Killing off L3 likewise, especially because they had to go and taint Han stealing the Falcon by sticking Lando’s best friend’s brain in it.

I’m more annoyed that they decided he needed an open-face TIE pilot helmet or we wouldn’t be able to tell that it was Han.

It is indeed a disaster in the books.

None of that has anything to do with his choice of tools. It has to do with his perfectionism and penchant for trying to figure out tons of backstory and history and culture behind every single detail, no matter how minute. To use your analogy, he could also be writing it all with a fountain pen or handmade quill and…

Aaand I just snarfed my whiskey. Ow.

That is not at all how nuclear power works.