MaximRecoil

SilverWook said:

That’s unusual, as the mix setting on my Panasonic industrial S-VHS decks blended them across both channels. Came in really handy for a couple projects, as I couldn’t really do any fancy audio mixing back in the 90’s.

That’s probably what mine does too. When I tried the mix setting on the other Hi-Fi tapes, it just sounded like a combination of linear and Hi-Fi. I assumed it was linear on one channel and Hi-Fi on the other, but it just as easily could have been a mix sent to both channels, which would make more sense anyway.

It’s maddening how many video labels didn’t bother with proper labeling on the audio. Only a couple studios like Universal even bothered to mention the linear audio using Dolby noise reduction once Hi-Fi was standard.

I would be willing to take a shot at a beta transfer if you want to buy a copy and send me the tape.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/THE-TERMINATOR-Schwarzenegger-on-BETAMAX-Tape-BETA-NOT-VHS/163313673890
Due to work being done on my house, it will be a few weeks before I can hook my betamax back up though.

Thanks, but before I spend any more money I want confirmation that it really is Hi-Fi. The Betamax sleeve doesn’t say Hi-Fi on it and neither does the HBO Video-labeled sleeve. The only one that says Hi-Fi is the Thorn EMI-labeled sleeve, and the copy I have doesn’t seem to have anything but a linear track.

SilverWook said:

Have you tried playing with the tracking to see if the Hi-Fi indicator lights up at all? I’ve had the odd tape where the sweet spot for the Hi-Fi not to drop out isn’t optimal for the video portion.

There’s no Hi-Fi indicator light on this VCR that I can see, but it has a switch that lets you manually select “Norm” (linear track), “Mix” (linear plays in one speaker, Hi-Fi in the other), and “Hi-Fi”. I’ve tried it with several retail tapes now, and all three of those switch positions work as expected, and the Hi-Fi sounds great in all of them except for one, Night at the Roxbury, in which the Hi-Fi track has major interference going on, like it’s not tracking properly. The linear audio works fine on it though. But in the case of the Terminator tape, it is just dead silence on the Hi-Fi switch setting, and silence in one speaker on the “mix” setting. I adjusted the tracking all the way from the left to the right and back again, and it made no difference.

Note that the version of this release which is labeled on the sleeve “HBO Video” doesn’t say “Hi-Fi” on it anywhere, which you can see here:

https://imgur.com/a/kksbArY (scroll down on that page to see all three pictures)

I assume that’s the exact same release as the Thorn EMI-labeled one, because HBO and Thorn EMI were in cahoots, and my Thorn EMI copy says HBO Video at the start of the video, and after the credits, it says “Thorn EMI / HBO Video”.

SilverWook said:

CED audio is comparable to analog LD in some ways, but the nature of the format means discs can wear down over time and develop playback issues. Later stereo players added CX noise reduction.
Here are the specs from cedmagic.com
Audio Signal-to-Noise Ratio: >50dB (USASI), 70 dB (with CX)
Audio Bandwidth: 15KHz
Stereo Separation at 1KHz: 26dB
Dynamic Range Mono: 50dB
Dynamic Range Stereo: 70dB

Thanks for the information. Those specifications look pretty good, at least with CX noise reduction.

I’m not sure why some Thorn/EMI Beta titles don’t have Hi-Fi indicated on the cover. Any title released around or after 1983 should have it though.
Here’s a Thorn/EMI beta of Volunteers from 1985, and you can make out the Hi-Fi on the back.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Volunteers-BETA-Tom-Hanks-John-Candy-Rita-Wilson-1985-Thorn-EMI/392118623440

On the flip side of the same coin, I’ve seen the Hi-Fi logo used on Laserdisc covers. 😉

I got the VCR I ordered today, and it works fine (though the heads were quite dirty). However, this Terminator Thorn EMI VHS tape doesn’t have Hi-Fi audio, despite “Hi-Fi” being printed on its sleeve. When I set the selector switch to Hi-Fi I get dead silence. I tested a different tape that I have, which also has “Hi-Fi” printed on its sleeve, and the Hi-Fi track works fine on it, and has noticeably better sound quality than the linear mono track.

So, either Thorn EMI lied about this being Hi-Fi, or this is a bootleg tape that someone dubbed and swapped the sticker labels. The labels don’t show any signs of tampering, but that’s not conclusive proof that they weren’t swapped. With help from a hair dryer, you can sometimes get stickers off cleanly. I did notice that the record tab has very obviously been broken off. Normally, with pre-recorded retail VHS tapes, they never had that tab to begin with.

Edit: I just checked every retail VHS tape I own, and most of them never had a record-protect tab to begin with. However, three of them did have one that was broken off: Batman (1989), A Night at the Roxbury (1998), and Total Recall (1990).

Does anyone here have the Thorn EMI VHS release? I’d like to know if other copies have Hi-Fi audio.

According to lddb.com, the Thorn EMI LaserDisc (the one that has the “Chace mix”) only has an analog audio track:

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/30336/2535/Terminator-The

That explains why, in the project discussed in this thread, it was an analog capture instead of a digital rip.

That means that the best available source of the Chace mix is VHS Hi-Fi or Betamax Hi-Fi, both of which are superior to LD analog audio, or at least they are on paper. As for the Thorn EMI Betamax release, I’ve looked at a picture of its sleeve, but it doesn’t seem to say “Hi-Fi” on it anywhere. Its sleeve is practically identical to the VHS sleeve, except, in the spot where the VHS sleeve says “Hi-Fi”, it has the catalog number instead:

So if the Betamax release isn’t Hi-Fi, that leaves VHS Hi-Fi as the [theoretically] best quality source. And even if the Betamax release is Hi-Fi despite not being labeled as such, it would only be ~equal to VHS Hi-Fi, with any significant differences there may be coming down to the other variables involved.

Thorn EMI also released The Terminator on CED VideoDisc, which presumably has the Chace mix as well…

https://www.lddb.com/ced/01755/TE16340/Terminator-The

… but I don’t know anything about the sound quality of CED.

crissrudd4554 said:
I didn’t actually capture it myself. A friend who used to copy tapes for my dad and I did it for me. Anyways the disc is actually at my other place so I’ll have to pop over there sometime this week to grab it.

Okay, thanks.

crissrudd4554 said:

I actually have the Thorn EMI VHS saved to a DVD if you’d like me to just pull the files.

Thanks for the offer. I plan to watch it on an actual VCR connected to my old standard definition CRT TV, and I want to capture the audio either way, but if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to have the one you did as a point of comparison. If it turns out that the audio you captured sounds better than my stab at it, I’ll keep your version.

nedmerrill said:

I don’t know why you’d need to rip the VHS audio if u have the LD audio. It sounds pretty good as is for mono.

I’d like to have all of the released versions of the mono track, which is why I also ordered the Hemdale/Image and MGM DVD releases.

crissrudd4554 said:

The Thorn EMI tape has what has been called the Fake ‘Chace’ mix. This was apparently an early attempt to mix the film in stereo using the original mono elements. Some of the differences show such as the dialogue in the Police Station shootout being noticeably more louder and clearer. However the biggest letdown of the mix is the audio is the wrong pitch. By the early ‘90s this mix was dropped and they reverted back to the original mono until the surround mix was made for the Special Edition DVD. I know someone on FanRes had taken the Fake ‘Chace’ mix and synced it to the BD and had also pitched correct it. I don’t have the track myself but here’s a link to the thread.

https://forum.fanres.com/thread-589.html?highlight=Terminator+fake+Chace

Thanks for the information and the link. Converting from PAL speed/pitch to NTSC speed/pitch is no problem. Also, it sounds like that particular LD audio rip (actually, it sounds like it was an analog capture rather than a digital rip) had some issues:

As far as your capturing, I found it odd that the volume level on the right channel was nearly 2db higher on side A and about 1.5db higher on side B. Also, side B had some slight clipping on both channels, whereas side A had some slight clipping only on right channel. I adjusted the volume when syncing and evened the channels out but did nothing about the clipped audio.

Additionally, the capture was compressed to AC-3, which is a lossy codec.

I rented the Thorn EMI VHS tape dozens of times when I was a kid in the '80s, so it will be fun to see/hear that again when my tape and VCR arrives.

The VHS tape I ordered doesn’t show any signs of being a former rental tape, and doesn’t look like it’s been used much (no visible wear on the label or clamshell case). I plan to clean the heads, capstan, pinch roller, etc., before using the VCR. Hopefully I’ll get lucky with the transfer. Having a second copy of the VHS tape is a good idea.

I’m still looking for Zeropc’s original 44.1 kHz FLAC file. Surely someone here must still have it, either in standalone form or muxed into a video.

A few days ago I ordered two Terminator DVDs: the original Hemdale / Image Entertainment release from 1998 and the MGM release from 2001, in order to extract their mono audio tracks (according to posts on this thread there are some differences between them). I also ordered the original Thorn EMI VHS release because “Hi-Fi” is printed on the sleeve. For those who don’t already know, VHS Hi-Fi is a very high quality analog audio format:

Both VHS Hi-Fi and Betamax Hi-Fi delivered flat full-range frequency response (20 Hz to 20 kHz), excellent 70 dB signal-to-noise ratio (in consumer space, second only to the compact disc), dynamic range of 90 dB, and professional audio-grade channel separation (more than 70 dB).

The sound quality of Hi-Fi VHS stereo is comparable to the quality of CD audio, particularly when recordings were made on high-end or professional VHS machines that have a manual audio recording level control. This high quality compared to other consumer audio recording formats such as compact cassette attracted the attention of amateur and hobbyist recording artists. Home recording enthusiasts occasionally recorded high quality stereo mixdowns and master recordings from multitrack audio tape onto consumer-level Hi-Fi VCRs.

I also ordered a JVC HR-D566U Hi-Fi VCR, which was JVC’s top of the line “prosumer” VCR in 1985. It weighs about 20 pounds and retailed for $900 back then. JVC was not only the inventor of the VHS format in 1976, but also the inventor of VHS Hi-Fi in 1984, so they set the standard. Assuming the VCR “Works Great!” as the seller claims, I’m hoping to get a high quality capture of the VHS audio.

nedmerrill said:

i have the 1.1 version that was around other sites downmixed to 1.0 not sure if it was from a laserdisc

The mono mix with the LFE track added to it (it’s called “2.1” rather than “1.1” because the mono mix is duplicated on the second channel) used the file that Zeropc ripped from the LaserDisc. Whoever made it resampled the LD mono mix from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz, added the LFE track from the remastered DVD/Blu-ray 5.1 mix (which is already 48 kHz), and encoded it to DTS-HD Master Audio. In my opinion, the LFE channel does not blend well with the mono mix.

If anyone has the 2.1 mix but doesn’t want the LFE channel, you don’t want to downmix it, because that will just integrate the LFE in with the mono mix on a single channel. You want to open it in an audio editor and delete the LFE channel (which is channel 3). In Audacity you would do that by clicking the “X” to the left of the channel you want to delete:

You can also delete channel 2 if you want to, as it is merely a duplicate of channel 1, and deleting it will cut the file size in half. If you leave it as 2.0 and you have a 5.1 speaker setup, it will play in your front right and left speakers. If you delete channel 2, it will play in your center-channel speaker. If you only have a stereo speaker setup (2.0 or 2.1), it will play exactly the same regardless of whether it is 2.0 or 1.0.

Once you delete the unwanted channel(s), click File > Export Audio and save it as a WAV or FLAC (if you don’t want to introduce any loss).

In order to open a DTS file in Audacity you will need the FFmpeg Import/Export Library. Alternatively, you could convert it to WAV or FLAC before opening it in Audacity, for example, using Foobar2000 with a DTS decoder plugin. However, you’re only going to get the lossy core of the DTS file unless you decode it to WAV or FLAC using commercial software such as ArcSoft DTS Decoder.

supersonic395 said:

Hi, does anyone have the Mono mix please? (Another member was kind enough to share a 2.1 mix that contained the LFE from the 5.1 remix, but I was hoping someone would have the mono without the added LFE please?)

I would also like to have the original FLAC file that Zeropc posted back when he started this thread in 2013. I have the same “2.1” version that you have, and you can easily delete the LFE channel from it, leaving only the original mono mix, but I don’t like that it’s been processed (converted from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz). Also, it was encoded as a DTS-HD Master Audio file, which is a file that contains both a lossless (Master Audio) and lossy (core) version, but you can’t access the lossless version without a proprietary (not free) decoder. Without a decoder you just get the lossy core. I don’t know why he didn’t just encode it as a FLAC.

I PM’d Zeropc about a year and a half ago asking if he still has that file, but I never got a reply. Does anyone here still have a copy of the original file that Zeropc uploaded?

yhwx said:
Ahahahaha. Nice.

My new user title here would be “Chief Misandrist.”

Your concession is noted.

But it’s still in the dictionary.

Yes, and specifically denoted as a slang. Do you know what “slang” means? It means it’s nonstandard.

The term “Mary Sue” is used in a misogynist way, regardless of how it was originally intended

Not only has this already been proven false via reliable sources, but it’s also comically ironic, coming from an admitted misandrist.

The term is a product of the sexist society that we live in

No, it’s a product of people noting a particular character type in works of fiction, and giving the trope a name.

Try not to say Mary Sue. It’s an offensive term.

Already confuted.

Wikipedia is a great source for information, but its internal process has many problems

Wikipedia is irrelevant to this argument. This is the actual source for the paragraph I quoted - http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue30/marysue.htm

• I am not a misandrist.

Your post indicates otherwise.

TV’s Frink said:

NeverarGreat said:

TV’s Frink said:

NeverarGreat said:

TV’s Frink said:

NeverarGreat said:

TV’s Frink said:

I have heard many men call female characters a Mary Sue. The only time I’ve ever heard anyone call someone a Gary Stu is in a sad desperate attempt to defend their use of Mary Sue.

I previously linked to a good example of the term in use, but here are some pull quotes from the reviews for your reading pleasure:

Ok, now I’ve heard it once.

If you can show me that Mary Sue isn’t used far more often than Gary Stu, I’d love to see it.

I’m not a miracle worker 😉

Don’t tell your new friend Maxim, it will break his heart. :p

Whence came you by the assumption that we agree?

Sorry, I only meant that he thought you were his new friend. Entirely one-sided for sure!

Brilliant, you know, given that I’ve been arguing with him, and even pointed out that he seems to like the Rey character when I mentioned him. Reading isn’t really something you like to do, is it? You said:

“The only time I’ve ever heard anyone call someone a Gary Stu is in a sad desperate attempt to defend their use of Mary Sue.”

And I refuted your claim by pointing out that NeverarGreat had already used the term “Gary Stu” in this very thread, even though he doesn’t think Rey is a Mary Sue.

yhwx said:
Wikipedia editors can decide what sources to choose and how to interpolate that information, m’kay?

And please don’t “well, actually” me again and say how technically it isn’t allowed under the rules. The thing is, when a majority of people in a group are men, the group is going to collectively hold masculine viewpoints. And those viewpoints can be wrong and toxic.

Take your misandry somewhere else. It doesn’t make for a valid argument.

You could make an argument that eugenics is logical. It’s still toxic.

Enforced eugenics isn’t logical, because it would inherently be a human rights violation.

Sure, there’s weight given to people with especially large and coveted megaphones. But there’s still some weight given to those who have less social standing. Otherwise, slang terms wouldn’t make it into the dictionary.

Which is why it’s considered slang to begin with, because it hasn’t reached the status of a generally accepted word.

yhwx said:
If you excerpted Wikipedia, then that is the source.

No, it isn’t. The information in the opening paragraph that I quoted is all included in the sources that they cited. There is no “original research” included.

Wikipedia editors can interpolate the primary sources however they feel fit, since all writing is open to interpretation.

No, it doesn’t work that way. If you write something that doesn’t reflect the source you sited, it can be removed because it is considered “original research”, and interpolation is considered “synthesis”, and is also against policy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material

Do you believe the use of the word “decimated” to destroy a large part of something rather than to kill one out of every ten people to be a misapplication?

It depends on when it was said. Correctness of an application is relative to what’s correct at the time that it was applied. Words in the English language acquire definitions based on usage, with extra weight given to notable usage, as I mentioned in my previous post.

It has, in some parts of the Internet.

“Some parts of the internet” is meaningless. It takes more than some misapplications here and there by nobodies to establish a new sense of a term.

Gosh, you really go on about Wesley Crusher a lot.

And you ignore it a lot, due to special pleading, which is a fallacy.

yhwx said:
Holy shit, did you not read the last two sentences of that section that you just quoted. I clarified my intention there!

It doesn’t matter what you claim your intention was. The fact remains that pointing out that Wikipedia editors are primarily male is nonsensical, given that they aren’t the source of the information in the first place.

Logically, I guess, but it is still an extremely toxic attitude to take.

How can something that is logical be “toxic”?

I’d rather refer this issue to the women rather than you, thank you very much.

Since “the women” don’t define the English language, nor are they a hive mind, this statement of yours is nonsensical.

The reliable sources are based on how people generally use words.

That’s how all words in the English language are defined, with extra weight given to notable usage, such as by people like Kat Feete who is a writer, and speaks about how the term is used in the publishing world and writing community, both of which also constitute notable usage, given that it is a writing trope to begin with. Usage in e.g., YouTube comments does not constitute notable usage.

adywan said:

You keep going back to wikipedia to say we’re all wrong about how Mary Sue is a derogatory term used towards female characters, yet you seem to have ignored this one paragrpah in that same wiki entry

Wikipedia isn’t the source. I’ve only posted two excerpts from Wikipedia, both of which are sourced from other places, primarily this site:

http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue30/marysue.htm

“Christine Scodari, a researcher in media studies from gender perspective, noticed a tendency within slash fandom to label major female characters (e.g. Nyota Uhura in the Star Trek 2009 film reboot) as “Mary Sues” because the slash fans “begrudged” how the development of the female character takes away screen time from slashable male characters.[16]”

Only correct application of the term is relevant. Every word/term in the English language has been misapplied by someone, somewhere, countless times.

Like i said before, just because a word or term originated with a certain meaning does not mean that , after time, it can’t become something that becomes commonly used as a derogatory term towards a race or sex. It is more widely used as in derogatory form towards female characters that it is used in its original meaning. You only have to go on certain forums and sites to see just how many use it because they hate the “female agenda” in Hollywood as they see it. The comments section on youtube alone since TFA came out was littered with the comments using “Mary Sue” in a derogatory fashion.

The reasons given for Rey being a Mary Sue have nothing to do with her sex. And whether or not a “female agenda” resulted in the creation of a Mary Sue is a completely different argument. Rey is a Mary Sue regardless of what led to her creation. If your theory were true, people would commonly be calling all female leads in major works of fiction “Mary Sues”, yet that hasn’t happened. Additionally, there wouldn’t be any male Mary Sues, but in reality, the most famous one until Rey came along was Wesley Crusher.

yhwx said:

MaximRecoil said:

TV’s Frink said:

MaximRecoil said:

why do you even reply to me?

Given that you intentionally misquoted my post, your intellectual dishonesty is noted.

It seems like you don’t understand the concept of “joke.”

He wasn’t claiming, either implicitly or explicitly, to be authoritative and truthful in that post. I think that should be obvious. The misquote was used to make a point.

An intentional misquote is intellectually dishonest. There is no valid point to be made which requires you to misquote someone.

yhwx said:

Where does that assertion come from? I never said that they controlled those sources; I’m just saying that there’s inherent sexism in our society. Is that that hard to understand? I guess so.

You pointed out that Wikipedia editors are “overwhelmingly male”, in order to suggest bias on their part. I then pointed out that the paragraph I cited is sourced, from a female author, no less. So, unless Kat Feete is under the control of male Wikipedia editors, your point is negated.

This is the “your being offended is your fault” attitude that is extremely toxic to the underprivileged.

When someone is offended as a result of their own misconceptions, it is logically their fault.

We don’t define words by what somebody in a white paper said once, we define them by how they’re used, and now, “Mary Sue” is being used in a sexist fashion.

This is a mere assertion on your part, i.e., you have no reliable source to back it up.

It is 100% reasonable to be offended by the use of the term Mary Sue.

False. It is never reasonable to be offended by a term that doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Try asking a woman about it sometime.

Which woman gets to redefine the English language? To find out the meaning of words, you don’t ask a random person, you look to reliable sources. You haven’t provided any reliable sources which supports your assertions, and that’s because there are none. A Mary Sue is a character type, and the sex of the character is not part of the definition. Again, prior to December 2015, Wesley Crusher was the most famous Mary Sue. Were you trying to play the “misogynistic” card then? Of course not, and you doing it with Rey is a case of special pleading, which is a logical fallacy.

TV’s Frink said:

MaximRecoil said:

why do you even reply to me?

Given that you intentionally misquoted my post, your intellectual dishonesty is noted.

An excellent question and one that I’m going to take seriously starting right now.

Good idea.

yhwx said:

They certainly can.

No, mere assertions don’t cut the mustard on Wikipedia, as I already said. Information has to be cited from a reliable source, else it can be removed.

Wikipedia’s sole goal is not truth; no, it is verifiability. You can put a wild falsehood on Wikipedia as long as it is verifiable.

Show me a wild falsehood from a source that Wikipedia editors have agreed is a “reliable source” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources.

There’s the societal issues that I’ve mentioned before (and that you have ignored)

Say what? That assertion has nothing to do with anything I said, nor with anything else I said. Once again, what do Wikipedia editors have to do with those sources? Do you think they control those cited websites?

but this Wikipedia talk is really a distraction. Like Frink said, if your words offend a large cross-section people, find different words.

The only people who are offended are people who don’t know what the term “Mary Sue” means. Logically, that’s their fault, not mine.

TV’s Frink said:
Actually, it doesn’t.

Yes, it does. A false premise inherently negates any conclusions which follow from it.

Basic common human decency suggests that even if you don’t think something is offensive, the fact that many other people think so means you should try to use a different method to get your point across.

It has nothing to do with what I think. There is a generally accepted definition of Mary Sue, which is completely at odd with your “gut feeling” of what it means. I’m not going to stop using the English language in accordance with its accepted conventions just because someone else is unwilling or unable to do their homework.

As I said and which you keep conveniently ignoring, all you have to do is argue your points about Rey being overpowered or unearned or whatever without using a term many of us find offensive. Should be simple. But nah, it’s better to attempt to prove your superiority instead with big words, right?

As Kat Feete said, “The term was coined in fanfiction, made its way from there into the publishing world, and has slowly been filtering into the writing community as a useful shorthand for a frighteningly common error in characterization.”

I should disregard useful shorthand because you “have a bad feeling” about it? If you can’t be rational about a topic, why do you even reply to it?

yhwx said:

MaximRecoil said:

yhwx said:
Well, you cited Wikipedia…

And yes, before you “well actually” me, I know there are rules on Wikipedia, but an unmaintained Wikipedia page can have tons of misinformation on it.

Comparing Wikipedia to Urban Dictionary is utterly absurd, and you trying to hang a lampshade on it doesn’t negate the absurdity. The “Mary Sue” Wikipedia entry isn’t even remotely obscure/unmaintained. Just look at its lengthy “talk” page. Also, the parts I’ve quoted have citations, which are the actual sources.

Okay, I guess. But the fact that Wikipedia editors are overwhelmingly male (by its own self-admission) probably doesn’t help that article out.

You don’t think that the members of this forum, you know, the ones arguing that “Mary Sue” is a misogynistic term, are overwhelmingly male too? The difference is, baseless assertions don’t cut the mustard on Wikipedia. Also, that summary of the definition of Mary Sue in the opening paragraph is sourced, with the primary source being:

http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue30/marysue.htm

Many of us have heard the term “Mary Sue” floating around writing communities. A Mary Sue is a character that the author identifies with so strongly that the story is warped by it. Sometimes male Sues are called “Gary Stus,” but more often the name is used for both sexes of offenders. The term was coined in fanfiction, made its way from there into the publishing world, and has slowly been filtering into the writing community as a useful shorthand for a frighteningly common error in characterization.

The author is named “Kat Feete” (female name). The other source given is:

http://www.springhole.net/writing/whatisamarysue.htm

Even if we assign some level of credence to your out-of-left-field conspiracy theory, what do those sources have to do with Wikipedia editors?

Haarspalter said:

MaximRecoil said:

Haarspalter said:

MaximRecoil said:

DominicCobb said:

Rey’s marksmanship is a perfect example of the sexist bullshit that is the Mary Sue argument. Think how common it is in movies (not just Star Wars) that a guy picks up a gun for the first time and his aim and ability is never questioned. Yet they go out of their way to show that Rey isn’t perfect with a blaster but people call it out anyway.

Name some examples. I want examples where it is established that the character has never fired a gun before, and takes place in a story where a similar established character misses a lot, even though it shows that he already owns a gun.

Ellen Ripley isn’t an example.

Because you didn’t point out a scene which established that Ripley had never fired a gun prior to the first time we see her fire one, for starters.

TV’s Frink said:

MaximRecoil said:

Your mere gainsaying is dismissed.

Sorry again Possessed, now I think Impscum, Twooffour, and this guy are all actually the same guy.

Your crystal ball is in need of repair. I’ve been “MaximRecoil”, and only “MaximRecoil”, on every forum I’ve ever posted on since 2000 when I first started using the internet.