It's a shame that "agenda" has become a dirty word. If I pointed out that Disney has a clear and unmistakable agenda to fill Star Wars with more women and non-white people, most would assume that I'm racist and sexist and see this as a bad thing. But Disney does have such an agenda, and I see it as one of the few things they've done (mostly) right with Star Wars. (I say "mostly" because actual character development seems to be less than an afterthought in some cases.) I'm not exaggerating when I say that the lack of women and non-white people was previously the biggest flaw in an otherwise stellar franchise. And as I've grown more sensitive to these things, I've implemented the same agenda in my not-yet-published and still-evolving novel.

Some years ago, before the new batch of Star Wars movies, I proactively went through my draft and made more characters female just because it seemed like the right thing to do. My two protagonists were already female (hence the working title that will definitely be replaced with something better someday, "Space Girls"). I had no agenda in mind when I made that decision at the beginning. It was just something I tried out and for whatever reason it made them more real to me and more interesting to write than my previous male protagonists who were flat and hollow and stupid, and I did this before Rey was ever a thing, before Disney even bought Lucasfilm, but now they'll make their official debut long after that fact and I suppose it will look like I'm just jumping on the bandwagon. It never occurred to me, though, to make them anything other than white. Crossing the gender barrier was somehow more intuitive than crossing the skin color barrier.

Of course, skin color is handled differently in the non-visual medium of writing, and often glossed over altogether. Most works of fiction in the U.S. have historically been written by white people to an audience of predominantly white people who will assume that all the characters are white unless otherwise implied or specified. So in the original 1980 novelization of "The Empire Strikes Back", Donald F. Glut makes no mention of Luke's or Leia's or Han's skin color, but introduces Lando as "a handsome black man". I presume Mr. Glut didn't and doesn't have a racist bone in his body. But this kind of unconscious bias is something we take notice of and try to rectify nowadays. Contrast it with Alexander Freed's 2016 novelization of "Rogue One", the most diverse Star Wars film up to that point. Every main character is given a detailed description of his or her appearance, but with no mention of skin color whatsoever.

Just a few months ago I tried to diversify my novel in like manner. Of course, most characters are never given a level of description sufficient to justify mentioning skin color or national origin, but most of them had boring "white" names and were white in my mind. My unconscious bias was at work because I'm white and I grew up surrounded by white people - my middle and high school combined literally had like five black kids - so of course that was how I would visualize the world unless prompted otherwise. I replaced a majority of these "white" names with various Hispanic, African and Asian names. All but one of the more prominent characters were also white (or half-white, in the case of one human/alien hybrid) so I changed some of their descriptions and tweaked a few of their names to rectify that. However, I didn't feel at liberty to make such adjustments to the two protagonists. They're at the center of the story I began nearly a decade ago, and to me they were like real living breathing people that I couldn't just alter as it suited me. The most I could do was decide that one of them is half Northern Paiute.

I did not use any labels like "white", "black", "Latino" or so forth, as they seem a bit heavy-handed for my purposes. Within the world of the story, national and ethnic boundaries are all but nonexistent. People of Earth live under one overarching government and collectively regard themselves as "Earthlings". Current categories of race within the Earthling species have been supplanted by the differentiations between Earthlings and other sapient beings from other worlds altogether. "Racism" is no longer about skin color so much as the number of eyes or tentacles someone has. So I just describe Earthling skin color as "pale", "tan", "dark" or what have you, and let other contextual clues like the names or accents fill in the rest. To me this makes sense and is an ideal which we should be striving for in the real world (even though our chance of meeting other sapient beings anytime soon isn't great). "Race" is a social construct that misleads people to believe in divisions within humanity that don't actually exist. Discarding it with all its associated terminology and baggage is, of course, quite impossible at this time. But I think we should be striving toward that end.

Now if anyone has actually read this far, I can imagine some of them asking, "Who the ---- cares? Why does it matter? Why are you SJWs so obsessed with this identity politics crap?" There are at least three reasons for me to have this diversity agenda.

1. The most obvious - inclusivity. If you haven't had the experience of growing up and seeing nobody of importance in the movies or on TV or in novels who looks like you, then you can be forgiven for not grasping why it affects people so much and why they're so happy for the situation to change. Even if you refuse to try to understand, it should be a neutral thing. You shouldn't feel personally attacked by people who look different getting more chances in the spotlight.

2. A related but more selfish reason - because I find it more interesting. I never gave a second thought to growing up surrounded by white people, but now it feels like a breath of fresh air whenever I have the opportunity to be around a substantial number of people who look different than me. Diversity for its own sake is just beautiful, okay? I don't know how else to explain it. And most of the name replacements I made in my novel are objectively superior to the originals anyway. Joaquin Tolentino is a much cooler name than Jacob Collins. Sorry.

3. Because, get this, it's actually necessary if I want to be realistic (which I do). This reason doesn't really apply to Star Wars because it's a fictional galaxy altogether, but my novel is set in this one, just in the future. And in the year 2153, the United States and Europe and probably all of Earth are going to be way more diverse than they are now. From what I can gather, in fact, white people are pretty much the slowest-reproducing demographic on the planet. In just a few decades they'll probably be the smallest minority of all (and since I'm not a Nazi, I have no problem with that and I'm not complaining in the slightest, just stating a fact). So visualizing a future world that's as dominated by white people as most current American movies, TV shows and novels would actually be absurd. So this means my white and now half-white protagonists are actually minorities after all!

I would agree, however, that this shouldn't matter. No such agenda as this should be necessary. In an ideal world, movies and TV shows and novels would automatically reflect the diversity that exists in real life without requiring conscious and deliberate efforts to make them so. But we, at least in the United States, aren't at that point yet. 

I may have mentioned before that late in summer, the entire block leading up to my workplace becomes infested with demonic vampire bugs. This may have something to do with the pond next door that used to have turtles in it but doesn't anymore. It may also have something to do with the moat of stagnant, putrid water surrounding the farm across the street. Whatever the cause, though, I call them demonic vampire bugs because they're like no mosquitoes I've encountered anywhere else in my life. They don't loop around in erratic patterns and settle in carefully for a landing. They just dive-bomb me. And apparently nobody else. Some of my coworkers walk through the same area and don't seem bothered at all. They don't have to run the entire block while twisting, shouting and slapping at their legs. Apparently I'm special. It took only a couple days of perpetually itchy legs for me to fantasize about premeditated, fatal revenge.

I didn't waste much time weighing the ethics of the situation. I'm pretty sure killing mosquitoes is not a sin. And the Book of Mormon teaches that "Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies." And honestly, given that I'm 5'11" and weigh about 140 pounds, there are probably enough mosquitoes there to literally kill me, literally. But the "premeditated" and "revenge" parts gave me a bit of pause. Is it possible to take so much pleasure in killing a bug that it becomes sinful? And granted, I'm a bit of a bug racist anyway. Recently I saw a bug crawling across the kitchen counter toward me and I was like Eh, it's just a box elder NO WAIT IT'S AN EARWIG GET IT AWAY GET IT AWAY GET IT AWAY! Box elder bugs can crawl in my mouth for all I care but I hate earwigs because they're gross. And my hatred of mosquitoes now extends to not just the women, but the men, and the children too. I would kill them all if given the chance. Even if they've never bitten me, they contribute to the perpetuation of the species and I hate them for what they are.

So my heart wasn't pure, is what I'm saying. Even if Jesus killed a bug at some point, would his heart ever be in the place that mine was at this time? Would the hatred in my soul come back to bite me harder than the mosquitoes?

So I resolved that issue by not worrying about it anymore, and after visiting four stores I got one of those things that's like a tennis racket but it's electric and you hit bugs with it and they die. The device and a twelve-pack of AA batteries together cost a little over twenty dollars, and spoiler alert, they were the best purchase I ever made. Okay, so I brought the racket thing to work with me the very next day. And despite my proverbial bloodlust (not literal bloodlust because the only blood the mosquitoes had was taken from me to begin with) I was very cognizant of the responsibility inherent in carrying such a dangerous weapon. Mostly the responsibility of not hitting myself in the crotch with it. What really unnerves me is that you push a button on the side to start the flow of electricity, but aside from a little red light on the handle, there's no indication that the flow is flowing. The racket doesn't glow or hum or anything. And sometimes as I carry it I thumb the button by accident. So I took the ammunition (batteries) out until I arrived at the enemy territory.

It was as if they knew somehow. They didn't swarm me right at once. I walked half the block before a handful of them dared to try it. They were on me before I knew what was happening, but brushed them off and shooed them a safe distance away from myself and though my hand-eye coordination is godawful, the racket is a fair amount bigger than the average mosquito and it didn't take long to ensure they were all dead. Whenever I hit one, I knew because it made a spark and a crackle noise. I would have preferred something more like a tiny little voice screaming "AAAAARGH IT BUUUUURNS!" as a tiny little fireball spiralled down to the sidewalk, but the spark and crackle were satisfying too. After the first wave, they seemed even more cautious, so I found myself lingering in the shadows of trees where they lurked in greater numbers. Maybe invading their territory and provoking them to attack was slightly more sinful than waiting for them to come to me. I think there's something about that in the Book of Mormon too. But I had to get my money's worth, didn't I?

​This is how my killing spree felt (guess which one I am):

I mean, honestly, there are already so many obvious reasons I'm going to hell that this potential one seems absurd to worry about. I'm going to do it again and again and again and it's going to put a smile on my face every day that I have to work and if that makes me wrong, I don't want to be right.

Two fan films released in the same year covered the topic of a young female Jedi who gets blinded in an accident, spends some time in the woods without her bearded male master, and has to fight someone right at the end. Because I don't know how long each took to make, it's difficult to say whether or not one influenced the other. I don't care either way. They may both have been influenced by Kanan Jarrus getting blinded in the "Rebels" season finale earlier that same year, or Rahm Kota getting blinded in the non-canon video game "The Force Unleashed" a few years prior. And of course, in December "Rogue One" gave us Chirrut Îmwe, who may or may not have been Force-sensitive and may or may not have been born blind. So in summary, 2016 was a big year for that sort of thing.

​At least in the cases where the character was shown or implied to remain blind for a long time, even for life, I can only assume it was by choice. There's no way the Star Wars galaxy doesn't have the technology to fix or replace their eyes for very cheap. But those with some connection to the Force may end up deciding that blindness is a blessing. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them." Look, it's a franchise about space wizards with laser swords. It doesn't have to make sense.

Filmed in the Provo/Payson area of Utah, "Emergence" is possibly the first good thing to ever come out of there. (Kidding, kidding.) Between that and several of the surnames in the credits, I'd bet my life that most or all of the people who made it are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'd also speculate that the really cool-looking and criminally underused alien villain is a metaphor for Satan, but maybe that's going too far. What is clear (especially after it gets more or less spelled out in the credits) is the metaphor for depression and anxiety running throughout, and Aleena's battle with and triumph over them. It's perhaps even a bit heavy-handed, but there are worse messages to be heavy-handed about.

The second and slightly better of the two, "Hoshino" is similarly a tale of personal growth forced by the newly incurred disability. The title character starts out as kind of a brat. While "Emergence", from what I can tell, takes place in a day or so, a longer and more realistic passage of time is implied here as Ko's story up to and including the accident is told through flashbacks intercut with her prematurely aged, more stoic self. We don't see as much of her actually coming to terms with or learning to live with her blindness, and it's unclear how long that process took, but presumably more than a day given that the past and present portions seem to take place on opposite sides of Order 66 (if the TIE fighters and her master's absence are any indication).

If I may be so bold (though I'm hardly the first to point this out), both of these protagonists are superior characters to Rey. In very brief windows of time we see that they have obvious weaknesses and/or character flaws, and this makes them relatable and it gives us a reason to root for them. It doesn't make them any less awesome at the end of their respective arcs. Disney seems afraid to write female characters like that because it doesn't want to be sexist, so we get Rey who rarely fails at anything, never needs help, comes prepackaged with the skills to do whatever the plot requires, and undergoes virtually no trial or tribulation to earn her awesomeness. I think that's a huge wasted opportunity. Having more female leads is great. Having strong role models for little girls is great. But it shouldn't take priority over making actually good characters. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Thursday

Summerfest in Logan, Utah is a beautiful time of year when dozens of talented artists converge on the grounds of the old Latter-day Saint Tabernacle to display their beautiful and expensive artworks. Any one of their booths would be jaw-dropping on its own, but clustered together like this in a sea of beauty, only a few have any hope of standing out as special. I just like to go wander around and soak up the vibe as I look at things and pretend there's the slightest chance I might consider buying something. Kind of like my recent brief stint on the Mutual app in that regard. Also there's overpriced food and live, mostly local musicians.

On Thursday I go around to get an overview of the situation, not looking too closely because there will be time for that later, and I run into Jake from the stake and end up having a bonfire at his apartment. It's about 1/20th the size of a bonfire back home because I assume city ordinances and whatnot, but there's a great camaraderie from those assembled and I witness the birth of several inside jokes. From here on out I will be a part of these inside jokes and able to feel like I have friends. Blake from the stake lives there too, and he asks if I've been on any hot dates lately because he thinks that's an appropriate question for some reason. In fact, I haven't been on any since the last time he asked, which I think was in February. But I humor him by telling everyone present who my crush is. I trust them. They'd better not make me regret that.

Friday

The next day, I allow myself to partake a little more in the experience by getting some of the overpriced food, because after all this only happens once a year. I stuff myself on chicken legs, watermelon, chips, and a drink called the "Texas Twister" in a plastic boot. Every time someone orders or refills a plastic boot, the lady in charge yells "We've got a boot!" and all the workers have to yell "Yee-haw!" I imagine how much they must hate their job, but then I remember with a chill my time in the call center, and I realize that even if, instead of yelling "Yee-haw!" they had to wear chicken costumes and sing "What is Love" while twerking, their job would still be preferable to working a call center. They should just be grateful they can find work in this economy at all.

As seven p.m. (19:00) approaches, I walk thirty seconds over to the Utah Theatre to continue the original Star Wars trilogy. This week is "The Empire Strikes Back", the one I tried to get my coworker to come see with me, but her absence will do little to deter me from enjoying this near-flawless blend of action, drama, suspense, humor, introspection, and romance, with an incredible score that goes silent in all the right places and the greatest plot twist in cinematic history. Before the movie I watch a bit of a John Denver concert and a Warner Brothers cartoon, "Bad Ol' Puddy Tat", that ruins my hypothesis about Disney cartoons being matched with Disney movies. But hey, I'd much rather watch Tweety beat the crap out of Sylvester in self-defense than a couple of wicked rodents beat the crap out of Donald Duck to steal the food he made for himself. On top of that, it doesn't have a single racist moment. So the experience was a solid improvement over last week.

Saturday/Sunday

My coworker, for the second time, asked if I was going to the hike that her ward is doing at seven a.m. (7:00), so I once again set my alarm for 6:20. I hate hate hate getting up early, but my call center job started at seven too, so this is just like that except it's something fun instead of pure hell. And my alarm is "Hyrule Field" from the Ocarina of Time soundtrack. There are worse noises to wake up to. But oh, wouldn't you know it, my brain has decided that when I said "6:20" I actually meant "5:30", and it's not taking no for an answer. At least I'm not up before the sun this time. Still, I'm not yet convinced that the tradeoff of these hikes is worth it. They're happening every two weeks. I think two Fridays from now I'll make sure to hide from my coworker and pretend I forgot.

My old friend Christian says he'll be in town today to run some errands, so I tell him I'll be at Summerfest and he can meet me there and I can give him the bit of money I've been unable to pay him back because he's been in Europe for half a year and I can't use Venmo or PayPal because reasons. While I'm wandering around waiting for him, I run into my old classmate Stormy, whose face lights up. Stormy was in two of my classes, and she was the second best writer in my Advanced Non-Fiction Writing class (I suggested she might be the first, but she said "No, you definitely are" and I'm not going to argue the point), and after every class I asked to walk with her and she usually said yes, and I watched a play she was in and I interviewed her about her faith for an assignment. When I went incognito to my own graduation, she hugged me and told me it meant a lot that I had come out to see her, but of course I was probably there to see other people too but it still meant a lot.

So on this occasion, she's there with some friends and I run into her and she asks if I'm there alone, I say yes, and she's like, "That's great that you can just go to things by yourself and be cool with it. I love that about you. I couldn't do that. I'd be awkward." I'm startled to see her back in town for the weekend after I thought she'd left forever, he's got a temporary (I hope) tattoo on her neck and it's very distracting, but I catch enough to marvel at her implication that I'm not awkward. Still, she has a point. I learned some time ago when I went to see "The Lego Movie" by myself after several failures to find a viewing buddy that the need to not be alone when doing things is more an assumption we tell ourselves than a reality. When "The Lego Movie 2" was out, I didn't even try. I just went. And I go to Summerfest alone every year, but Logan is a small town and this is a relatively large event and I'm guaranteed to see people I know anyway. Stormy has to go follow her friends but then I meet up with Christian and pay him back and make myself right before the Lord.

Then I'm minding my own business when Blake is suddenly there asking if the big sack of Kettle Corn I bought is for him. It isn't, but I give him a little bit because I can be surprisingly generous to people who are just honest about what they want. He tries to trade his empty Texas Twister boot for the rest of my Kettle Corn, but I explain that I already have one and his friends laugh at him. I recognize some of them from the fire or the stake, and others are entirely new to me. Terrah is one of the new ones, but before I so much as know her name I'm already making jokes about her diminutive stature. Regan is the only one to hear me the first time, and she tells me how funny I am, but Stephen hears me the next time and makes sure to repeat it louder for everyone's benefit. Terrah pretends to be hurt, and truly I shouldn't have started doing this without verifying whether she'd be okay with it, and I'm kind of a dirtbag, but I just feel like we're already a big family and this is how I bond with people I care about. I'm glad she takes it in the spirit it's intended and doesn't get mad at me. I'm glad she doesn't have a short temper.

We go to Angie's, a local restaurant where I went on the first date that I ever went on, where I learned that there was nothing to be nervous about, before I learned that there was in fact very very much to be nervous about. The next year I went there on another date that amounted to much the same. But none of the bad memories are directly connected to the restaurant itself, which is good because I see its name on bumper stickers literally all the time. We go over to a section I've never been in with room for all of us. But some of the people from earlier are nowhere to be found, and as I note our seating arrangement - boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl-me - it dawns on me that I seem to have crashed some kind of group date. Oh well, there are worse things than being a seventh wheel. I'll just roll with it. And look, I won't even have to be the only one because here come the others finally, let's see, two more boys and two more girls. Well. There are worse things than being an eleventh year. I wonder what the record is. Let's go for the record. The newcomers sit boy-girl-girl-boy-me and Stephen says the gender ratio here is a coincidence, but a good ratio nonetheless.

I distinctly remember that my first time here I had ravioli, but now I'm looking through the menu and there's no ravioli nor pasta of any kind. Lots of chicken, though. I don't want anything with chicken. I had enough chicken yesterday to last a week. I don't want breakfast food either because I already got pancakes today after the hike. Reluctantly I settle for a cheeseburger. While we wait, my tablemates act like children and Sierra persuades me to take part in a game of Russian Roulette, but with packets of sugar and salt. I know how stupid it is for me to participate in this game but I want these people to like me. The mouthful of salt is worth that. Terrah asks me what I do for fun, and says that after twenty years she's just discovered books, and asks me for recommendations which I happily supply because this is my chance to inculcate her with my views of the world. I try to gauge her potential interest in "The Adventures of Tintin" by asking if she's into comics as well. She says she's occasionally read one "about a cat thing and a human thing." I'm the only one at the table who correctly guesses that she's talking about Calvin and Hobbes.

Most of us go back to Blake's place to chill, and it's already about eleven p.m. (23:00) and I've already been up too long and I know that tomorrow I'm really really going to regret staying up as late as it looks like we're going to be up, but screw it, I'm making friends. We talk and listen to music and play a card game. Somehow the topic of conversation periodically returns to my crush even though most of these people weren't at the fire. For example, Colby asks why I chose her to be my crush. I say her intellect, her maturity, her spirituality, her kindness, and she has a nice face, and she has the cutest smile, especially when she shows her teeth; she has nice teeth. They can't argue with that logic. Terrah wants to know where I would take her on a date if money and other logistical concerns were no object. I say the moon because I'm thinking in terms of what today's technology allows. With the benefit of hindsight, though, I'd like to change my answer to Saturn's moon Titan, where the thick atmosphere and low gravity would literally enable us to strap on plastic wings and fly through the air. I'm not kidding. Wikipedia says so and everything.

Also, we laugh. A lot. And not to brag or anything, but at a conservative estimate I'd say ~70% of the laughter is attributable to my dance moves and witty comments. Admittedly the bar for what consitutes a witty comment falls lower as the night wore on. Soon all I have to do is reference something we nearly peed ourselves laughing about ten minutes ago, and we'll nearly pee ourselves laughing all over again. I'm not the type to laugh out loud on my own but when other people do, even if the joke was mine to begin with, it's contagious. It's cleansing. This is great. I'm becoming so popular. I knew I was capable of being funny, but this must be the crowning moment of glory of my entire life. "The party never dies, with Chris," Terrah says. And yet, I wonder as I go to bed at almost two a.m. (2:00), at what cost? Will they invite me back every weekend, only to consistently deprive me of the ability to form a coherent thought or write an engaging blog post the following day? As with the hikes, I wonder if the tradeoff is worth it.

I wonder something else too. How is it that tonight/this morning I had seven to nine people (it fluctuated) rolling on the floor laughing for two and a half hours, yet all I can elicit from my crush is an occasional smile or giggle? Perhaps the one truly laughing at me is God.

​The Utah Theatre here in Logan regularly shows old movies, but barely registered as a blip in my consciousness until its movie posters for the original Star Wars trilogy recently stopped me in my tracks. First of all, Star Wars. Second, I had just been talking with a coworker about how if she only ever saw one more Star Wars movie in addition to the one she's seen, she should see "The Empire Strikes Back" because it's widely regarded as the best one (an opinion I share, though "Rogue One" makes me reconsider just a little before ultimately coming in second due to its lack of character development). So on Monday I invited her to go to that with me, reasoning that whether she said yes or no I could stop being nervous as soon as I asked. Because of scheduling difficulties I didn't get a definitive answer until today. I actually find that kind of comical. Regardless, I had every intention from the beginning of seeing all three of these movies in the theater with or without her. After this run-through, "Attack of the Clones" will be the only theatrical Star Wars movie I haven't seen in a theater. Oh, and "The Clone Wars", which I forgot about like everyone else.

So on Friday I went to "A New Hope" and my friend Scott went too and we could have tried to get in together with the "Date Night" package which includes two tickets and popcorn and candy for $14, and in my opinion is a bargain well worth lying about my sexuality for, but I was nervous that there would be a huge crowd and the tickets would sell out so I showed up forty minutes early. The theater was empty. So I picked out the best seats in the place and watched the Neil Diamond concert that was playing for some reason. I think it was a DVD, and periodically somebody skipped around through the scenes so that we only had to watch/hear his big radio hits. Scott showed up and we watched the rest of the concert and then, when it was time for the movie to start, the theater surprisingly didn't make us watch forty commercials and movie trailers. We only had to watch the original theatrical trailers for the next two Star Wars movies and re-release trailers for "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz". The Utah Theatre's next offerings, I presume.

Then Donald Duck's face appeared on the screen, I presume because Star Wars, for better and for much worse, is owned by Disney. And I thought it was the coolest thing to bring back that tradition of pre-movie cartoons. But I hated this one, which shall remain nameless because it doesn't deserve publicity. First of all, it ends with a non sequitir "joke" where the characters look like racist Chinese stereotypes. I certainly hope I wasn't the only person in the audience bothered by that. I was bothered by it at face value and even more so when I thought of how mortified I would be if I'd brought somebody Asian, or for that matter any non-white person (like, oh I don't know, my coworker) to see it. There's also quite a feeling of cognitive dissonance when you see beloved cartoon icons being offensive in ways they would never dream of today. It shatters their illusion of being timeless, ageless, larger-than-life figures unrestrained by the shortcomings and shortsightedness of mortality. The "old" Bugs Bunny who once wore blackface is the same character as the "current" Bugs Bunny who would never ever ever do anything like that. Yeesh.

And admittedly, I first made the uncharitable assumption that the people responsible for selecting this cartoon just didn't see anything wrong with it because they were all white and didn't have any Asian friends. Sadly, that didn't seem too far-fetched as I've heard and read more than a few complaints from minorities in Utah about the microaggressions they're subjected to by stupid white people. But I complained to the theater and they said they had missed the racist part because it's right at the end and they'll discuss how to improve their cartoon screening process and not let it happen again. So I forgive them as long as it never happens again. And that was the extent of my complaint because I realize the theater isn't responsible to cater to my personal tastes or accomodate my broken psyche, but here in my safe space I'll let y'all in on a little secret: even before the racist ending, I hated this cartoon. I mean really hated it.

It opens on a cheerful Donald Duck singing as he makes himself a whopping stack of pancakes which he intends to have for breakfast. Little does he know that Chip and Dale live on his roof. They decide they want the pancakes for themselves, and in the process of stealing every single one - amounting to several times their own combined body weight and mass - they subject him to a great deal of abuse and humiliation as he tries to stop them. Eventually, they win and he loses and I'm left feeling physically ill even without the racism factor. Scott confided, "Honestly, I was rooting for Donald Duck. I should have known better." Me too, brother. I held out hope that the furry little turds from hell would get their comeuppance at the end and Donald Duck would be compensated for his tribulation. But nope. They just abuse and humiliate him to the very end and steal all his food and we're supposed to root for them and find it funny because they're cute? I guess? I know people in the forties were idiots, but were they really that depraved that they found this storyline appealing?

Maybe on some level I'm afraid that no matter what I do or how well I try to live, someone more likeable is going to abuse and humiliate and screw me for no reason, and the universe or whoever's out there watching has already decreed that I deserve to be laughed at, not sympathized with, for no reason. Am I a Donald Duck in the story of my own life? If so, the prospect of being alive is a nightmare devoid of hope. But mostly I just feel bad for the cartoon character. Duh, he's not real, but that doesn't magically make it funny to watch him subjected to suffering he's done nothing to deserve. (In this cartoon, anyway. In some cartoons he's a jerk to somebody and then gets his comeuppance and that's fine, but those have no relevance to this instance because these old cartoons cared as much about continuity as Trump does about climate science.) Now I would pay good money to watch an R-rated sequel where Donald Duck gets his thorough and final revenge on Satan's sentient armpit hair. That would make the trauma I experienced worth it.

Cartoons, of all places, should be a world of unrealistic karma catharsis where, by the end, good or neutral characters are rewarded and bad characters are punished. If a good character just has a bad time with no reversal of fortune at the end, it needs to be something relatable that makes the audience say in their heads, "We may chuckle because we've all been there, bro, but we're still rooting for you to get back on your feet." Not "You deserve to suffer because you're not as cute as a chipmunk." And for the record, though I'm obviously supposed to, I don't find the merciless miniaturized monstrosities cute at all. Cute is as cute does. And for the record, I'm not even wild about cartoons where carnivorous animals are made out to be villains because of the instincts and physiological requirements that God gave them, but at least in those cases I can rationalize that their prey is abusing and humiliating them out of self-defense and not pure sadism. So in summary, the racist ending was just a gratuitous sucker punch to my already sick stomach.

These were not the Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip 'n Dale, Rescue Rangers that I grew up with. I don't care what anybody says. In my personal canon these demonic owl pellets are not the same characters as the noble defenders of truth and righteousness that I looked up, er, down to as a kid, full stop, end of discussion.

As for the movie itself, what can I say? It was freaking Star Wars. Even though I could have gone in blind and deaf and played along in my head beat-for-beat with the actual movie, and even though the CGI additions really haven't aged well and look like PlayStation cutscenes on a screen that large, it was every bit as magical as the last time and the next time. Scott wrote a post about it too and called it "some delightfully stupid movie about intergalactic teenage war heroes." That's as apt a description as I've ever heard for a movie whose plot basically comes down to "These are the good guys and these are the bad guys and they each have a space wizard with a laser sword, and the good guys have to shoot this hole to blow up the giant space egg." It's a very paint-by-numbers approach to the Hero's Journey, but that's exactly why people across eras and cultures love it. If Disney wants the franchise to survive it needs to break more new ground and push more boundaries let go of its incestuous dependence on nostalgia and inside jokes, but without forgetting its roots as some delightfully stupid movie about intergalactic teenage war heroes.

It's also a galaxy where, despite the apparent lack of eternal judgment and ultimate justice, the good guys always win sooner or later instead of getting abused and humiliated for laughs. Just a thought, Disney.