15 hours ago, JJ48 said:

But I don't agree that it was "as all cadets have it". The way he talked about it, it was clearly his primary function during that assignment, not something he occasionally rotated into.

Here you go. "As cadets they had additional duties aside from their training." and "They mopped the floors. They emptied the trash."

As for the officer material, which you also for some odd reason contested, there are plenty passages that really single him out. Not only his leadership, but also his skill as soldier. He is the best of an already exemplary class.

Edit:

and the clip where he says he worked sanitation.

edit 2: and from the visual dictionary

"As part of his training rotation, FN-2187 also logged many hours on sanitation detail, dirty work that nonetheless needed doing. "

Why was that necessary?

So the book is in direct contradiction to the movie. Interesting.

20 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

So the book is in direct contradiction to the movie. Interesting.

No, the book is in direct contradiction to your understanding of one sentence in the movie.

I‘m surprised that you keep so stubbornly at it. What is at stake here? Because I don‘t see anything

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

No, the book is in direct contradiction to your understanding of one sentence in the movie.

I‘m surprised that you keep so stubbornly at it. What is at stake here? Because I don‘t see anything

What's at stake is simply whether that line in the movie makes any sense or not. If, while at Starkiller Base, sanitation is something that all cadets are doing among training and many other chores, then Finn offhandedly responding "sanitation" when asked about what his job was is flat-out incorrect. His response, in that instance, should have been, "I was a cadet."

I suppose it's possible that the events in the book aren't Starkiller Base at all, but if that passage is meant to fit with and explain Finn's response in the movie, then the author completely misunderstood the line.

7 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

What's at stake is simply whether that line in the movie makes any sense or not. If, while at Starkiller Base, sanitation is something that all cadets are doing among training and many other chores, then Finn offhandedly responding "sanitation" when asked about what his job was is flat-out incorrect. His response, in that instance, should have been, "I was a cadet."

I suppose it's possible that the events in the book aren't Starkiller Base at all, but if that passage is meant to fit with and explain Finn's response in the movie, then the author completely misunderstood the line.

Listen again to what he is asked:

“What was your JOB when you were based here?“

Not his rank, not his position, not his general course of training. Han asks what Finn has actually been doing while on SKbase.

You keep ignoring contexts. The reason Han asks is to figure out why Finn knows these things, to gauge his trustworthyness. That is also why he reacts so harshly when he finds out that Finn was working in sanitation.

You keep trying to find reasons why everyone else, including an official author working with the story group, is wrong. Just to maintain your misunderstanding.

It is ok to be wrong.

3 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Listen again to what he is asked:

“What was your JOB when you were based here?“

Not his rank, not his position, not his general course of training. Han asks what Finn has actually been doing while on SKbase.

Exactly my point! According to the novel, Finn could have mentioned training (his primary duty), maintenance, armory, or KP duty just as easily. If the novel is correct, sanitation wasn't his job; it was just one of many things he did when he wasn't training. In the movie, the way Finn just off-handedly and immediately responds indicates it's more than that.

15 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

It is ok to be wrong.

Tell that to the novel's author.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

Listen again to what he is asked:

“What was your JOB when you were based here?“

Not his rank, not his position, not his general course of training. Han asks what Finn has actually been doing while on SKbase.

You keep ignoring contexts. The reason Han asks is to figure out why Finn knows these things, to gauge his trustworthyness. That is also why he reacts so harshly when he finds out that Finn was working in sanitation.

You keep trying to find reasons why everyone else, including an official author working with the story group, is wrong. Just to maintain your misunderstanding.

It is ok to be wrong.

There's some impressive mental gymnastics going on here to rationalize the contradiction, but I have to give you a 6 on the landing.

21 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

There's some impressive mental gymnastics going on here to rationalize the contradiction, but I have to give you a 6 on the landing.

Why must an explanation be considered rationalization? I keep hearing this objection when anybody tries to explain a solution to a problem and it’s a rather lame, no effort criticism that could be applied to the other side as well. How about more concrete counter points, eh?

11 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Exactly my point! According to the novel, Finn could have mentioned training (his primary duty), maintenance, armory, or KP duty just as easily. If the novel is correct, sanitation wasn't his job; it was just one of many things he did when he wasn't training. In the movie, the way Finn just off-handedly and immediately responds indicates it's more than that.

Let me clear it up a bit. What we know:

1. All cadets have extra duties besides their training. Finn was a cadet, so he, too, had extra duties.
2. The novel is right before Jakku. Finn had been to Starkiller Base before the lines in the novel.

What you are inferring but we don't know is that all the additional things (maintenance, armory) and sanitation were happening at the same time.

But it is 100% possible that Finn was at some point on Star Killer Base and at that time he was only doing the extra duty of sanitation with a large portion of his time. (Visual dictionary: "logged many hours"). At other times during his training, on ships or other bases, he was doing other duties. Whether an extra duty was always focused on one at a time, or whether their time was being split is unknown. But there is no contradiction here that I can see.

28 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

There's some impressive mental gymnastics going on here to rationalize the contradiction, but I have to give you a 6 on the landing.

Throwing out "contradiction" and "mental gymnastics" is just a lazy evasion. What is the contradiction, what are the gymnastics, and how do you read the texts so that it is a rationalization instead of the black&white we see?

12 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

But there is no contradiction here that I can see.

If that's so, then I honestly don't know what to tell you. In the words of a Great (some may even say Grand) Moff, "This bickering is pointless." I do like the new movies, and really don't want to end up hating the entirety of the new material just because one author is inconsistent. So, I think I've gone as far as I reasonably can with this discussion, and I'm out. May the Force be with y'all!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my job of Garbage Collection. (And by that, I of course mean emptying my cubicle's trash once a week, in addition to all my other duties.)

Sure, I get that. But all you had is your understanding of a single line. It is astonishing to me that you think it is less likely for you to have misunderstood than for everyone else including the story group and the author of a book to have misunderstood it. An author of a book that was released on the same day as TFA, before the line was ever questioned by anyone. It's not a rationalization, it's the writing of Finn.

What is fact: Finn was abducted, trained to be a soldier, and at some point stationed on starkiller base where he had sanitorial duties. You don't know whether he was trained during that time or whether that was all he did during this time there. Whatever the amount, it had Finn believe that telling Han he was working sanitation is the most relevant thing he has to say about his time on that base. But most of his life he was trained to be and excelled at being a soldier. These points are just fact, based on the sources posted above.

We can fill in blanks and call that rationalization, or we can search for interpretations where it would be contradictory. But it's very surprising that such a small point, so well supported by canon material, can lead to so much discussion. Why?

50 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Sure, I get that. But all you had is your understanding of a single line. It is astonishing to me that you think it is less likely for you to have misunderstood than for everyone else including the story group and the author of a book to have misunderstood it. An author of a book that was released on the same day as TFA, before the line was ever questioned by anyone. It's not a rationalization, it's the writing of Finn.

What is fact: Finn was abducted, trained to be a soldier, and at some point stationed on starkiller base where he had sanitorial duties. You don't know whether he was trained during that time or whether that was all he did during this time there. Whatever the amount, it had Finn believe that telling Han he was working sanitation is the most relevant thing he has to say about his time on that base. But most of his life he was trained to be and excelled at being a soldier. These points are just fact, based on the sources posted above.

We can fill in blanks and call that rationalization, or we can search for interpretations where it would be contradictory. But it's very surprising that such a small point, so well supported by canon material, can lead to so much discussion. Why?

Let alone that we don't even know (that I can remember) for how long he was stationned on Starkiller base. For all intent and purpose, it could be for only 3-4 months. To refer to him as an ex-Janitor instead of an ex-Stormtrooper could be like refering to a lawyer as an ex-Mc Donald employee because he worked in a McDonald during his studies. It's technically true, but odd.

But more importantly, why do we care in the first place? I certainly hope so that it is not a real complaint against the new trilogy. Is there something wrong with Finn working in sanitation for a part of his life? Was there something wrong with Luke being a farm boy? That he worked in sanitation doesn't remove the fact that he is a trained soldier from birth with excellent skills. If people really want to call him an ex-janitor, why should we care? As long as they also acknowledge that he is a trained soldier, there is no real problem with that. If they don't, given all the material we have, they are simply in denial, in which case there is really no point arguing with them.

If people think there is something wrong with working in sanitation, I suggest going to talk to this guy:

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

and at some point stationed on starkiller base where he had sanitorial duties.

Don't forget he also mopped floors on Supremacy.

It's really telling just HOW incompetent the First Order is that even the janitorial staff have full access to their top secret super technology that no one is supposed to know exists...

3 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

Don't forget he also mopped floors on Supremacy.

Thank you for confirming it.

26 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

Don't forget he also mopped floors on Supremacy.

It's really telling just HOW incompetent the First Order is that even the janitorial staff have full access to their top secret super technology that no one is supposed to know exists...

Interesting... it could actually explain why it's their soldiers doing the sanitation.

Obviously, someone has to clean it up. A military organisation will not hire a subcontractor to do the job, specifically for the reason you said. You need a staff you can trust. No officer will do it, so why not used your fully brainwashed soldiers to do it? Bonus point for teaching them some discipline.

Thanks for pointing it out!

I wonder if someone did a study similar to this and declared that the majority of the TLJ supporters were NPCs if it would get the same traction?

14 minutes ago, McFoy said:

I wonder if someone did a study similar to this and declared that the majority of the TLJ supporters were NPCs if it would get the same traction?

Hm, I don't know, mindlessly echoing the same 3 phrases seems like something a lot of TLJ detractors are fond of...

7 minutes ago, McFoy said:

I wonder if someone did a study similar to this and declared that the majority of the TLJ supporters were NPCs if it would get the same traction?

The problem with both this study and your suggested one just provide a label to throw out to negate a point of view. I don't think any of the users who have posted in this thread about their dislike for TLJ are Russian bots, thus should not be ignored as such. Even if the conclusions of the study that sparked this thread are correct (I don’t know, I have not looked into it myself), there still are people out there who dislike TLJ and they shouldn’t have their opinions thrown away because bots were programmed to echo a similar sentiment.

And this is all still true when you switch sides with your suggested study. There would still be non-“npc” Defenders who also should not be dismissed for the labels of others.

Thus we are left with two group who disagree, which is what we started with. The studies might be interesting, but both are, in my opinion, ultimately useless.

1 hour ago, Red Castle said:

Interesting... it could actually explain why it's their soldiers doing the sanitation.

Obviously, someone has to clean it up. A military organisation will not hire a subcontractor to do the job, specifically for the reason you said. You need a staff you can trust. No officer will do it, so why not used your fully brainwashed soldiers to do it? Bonus point for teaching them some discipline.

Thanks for pointing it out!

The US Military does exactly this. It hires out the sanitation portion and sometimes the cooking portion to contractors. This is also true while deployed in middle eastern camps.

I was deployed on multiple occasions to multiple countries in the region to know this.

Sanitation duties isn't a career field in the US military but it appears to be for the FO. All military members are trained to fire an M16 annd must qualify annually but they are primary trained to work a career field( mechanic, nurse, cook, SP, fireman, IT, combat controller, pilot, etc.)

Finn's primary job must of been Sanitation since he emphasizes this point. Of course he's trained for combat too, he's just not very good at it. We see evidence of this early in TFA since he is easily unnerved in the brief combat as a trooper. Plus he tries to flee from combat in both movies leads me to believe his combat experience is limited and he spent most of his time in FO doing his primary job of Sanitation.

In reality, Finn should of died a few times in the movies but being a "hero" and having plot armor is a thing too.

2 minutes ago, Zarovichx said:

In reality, Finn should of died a few times in the movies but being a "hero" and having plot armor is a thing too.

While this is true, this has been a thing in Star Wars since the beginning.

2 minutes ago, Zarovichx said:

Finn's primary job must of been Sanitation since he emphasizes this point. Of course he's trained for combat too, he's just not very good at it. We see evidence of this early in TFA since he is easily unnerved in the brief combat as a trooper. Plus he tries to flee from combat in both movies leads me to believe his combat experience is limited and he spent most of his time in FO doing his primary job of Sanitation.

In reality, Finn should of died a few times in the movies but being a "hero" and having plot armor is a thing too.

... was what you obviously would have said if you had no opportunity to read the text excerpts I posted on this very page.

Now after you had the opportunity, you know of course that this is flat out wrong.

6 minutes ago, Zarovichx said:

Finn's primary job must of been Sanitation since he emphasizes this point.

Exactly. What the visual guides and novelizations say frankly doesn't matter for 80-90% of the audience, all THEY know is what the films say. TBH this is why Lucasfilm had the right idea compartmentalizing the old EU from the films.

6 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Now after you had the opportunity, you know of course that this is flat out wrong.

No, it sounds to me like he's discarding something that directly contradicts the PRIMARY SOURCE, IE the FILMS. He was in Sanitation on Starkiller Base. He mopped the floors aboard the Supremacy. He's not saying his unit had sanitation detail while on garrison duty. He's outright saying several times throughout the FILM that he WAS the janitor.

1 minute ago, Ambaryerno said:

No, it sounds to me like he's discarding something that contradicts the PRIMARY SOURCE, IE the FILMS.

But as you implied yourself here:

5 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

TBH this is why Lucasfilm had the right idea compartmentalizing the old EU from the films rather than trying to make it all canon.

That’s not how Disney does it.

30 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

No, it sounds to me like he's discarding something that contradicts the PRIMARY SOURCE, IE the FILMS.

Again: it does not contradict the movie. Finn says himself he was raised to do one thing. Do you think he was raised to be primarily a janitor or a soldier?

The only reason I went to additional canon sources was because you guys misunderstand what Finn is saying. And now that we have those sources, we know 100% how the lines were intended. So even if you misunderstand them, we now know how they were supposed to be understood. If everyone misunderstood then the dialogue was badly written. But that would still not change that Finn never was a janitor.

Edit: If you could stop editing in more without marking it that would be great. Luckily I quote your whole post, but still