Originally posted by Selenialthis presents a bit of a paradox. If author quotes dont mean anything and this is based off of an author quote does that make his quote saying they're meaningless, meaningless itself? And if thats the case and author quotes are meaningless then his quote about them being meaningless would be meaningless and therefore legitimize author quotes. And so on
😊Best possible reply from Drew, "author quotes don't mean shit" basically. Which luckily was what I emailed him in the first place wanting to hear 😖hifty:
I expect Ant will have them all taken from his RT by the end of the day 👆
It does not present a paradox, because when he says, "Author quotes don't mean shit," to use Selenial's phrasing, he means, "Stop asking me to rate characters, because my opinion on ratings doesn't matter. That and I'm tired of being asked by you people." He is not saying an author's opinion on virtually everything is pointless, only on one specific subject, power levels and skill.
Originally posted by FreshestSlicei was just joking around. But i appreciate the explanation. Maybe a clever smiley on my part could have avoided this regrettable confusion. 😄
It does not present a paradox, because when he says, "Author quotes don't mean shit," to use Selenial's phrasing, he means, "Stop asking me to rate characters, because my opinion on ratings doesn't matter. That and I'm tired of being asked by you people." He is not saying an author's opinion on virtually everything is pointless, only on one specific subject, power levels and skill.
Originally posted by DarthAnt66
Avellone specified he was specifically referring to the Exile and Revan he worked on, not later incarnations as seen in TOR:Revan.
And Drew obviously meant Meetra and Revan as of his work, The Old Republic: Revan. Also, as you've told me in the past, Drew played KotOR II before writing his novel. If that's really the case, he'd probably have a solid understanding of what the Exile was like, as opposed to Avellone, who, to my knowledge, never played the original KotOR, and admitted to "writing in the dark" at first.
Avellone never worked on Revan to begin with. All he did was jump on the hype train and deliver Revan a stream of poetic hyperbole as he did with Nihilus in KotOR II. He definitely gave Revan some stuff, but regardless, he never actually had Revan as a character in any of his works. And Avellone's depiction of things definitely didn't line up with the rest of the EU, which only further diminishes his credibility in comparison to Drew, despite the fact that I admit to disliking Drew and his writing style in general.
He changed his answer to "it's a tie." Surik isn't better, lawl.
Surik vs Revan being a tie isn't relevant to "the Exile is probably a more skilled duelist", because very clearly, Revan far and away exceeds the Exile in the Force (or in certain areas, at least).
If Drew meant this in relation to dueling, then fair enough, but you should've specified that.
He says this about every ****ing character. Why don't you understand that?He said the same thing in regards to Darth Revan vs Darth Vader vs Darth Bane.
He said the same thing in regards to Anakin Skywalker vs the Hero of Tython.
He said the same thing in regards to Anakin Skywalker vs Revan, too.
To be fair, all of these are close matches. If we're applying similar circumstances to this matchup, then Surik frankly isn't very far from Revan, which again contradicts "Revan would kick the Exile's butt". And it really doesn't matter what he says about other match-ups. If he "doesn't know" with regard to Revan vs Surik, the point is that there's not a very gaping disparity, so Revan stomping isn't a possibility in his mind.
Anyway, I'm not intending to just butt into your debate with Sel, but the point is that there's no reason to be jumping up and down with Avellone's quote and then suddenly slap down Drew's quote on the grounds of his general uncertainty with regards to these sorts of things. And we don't "even out the quotes" to find the average.
In the end, Surik's saber skill will probably always be a point of contention and is ultimately subjective. Her feats are typically interpreted with a wide level of diversity, and as it appears, author opinion is also divisive on her. When Avellone created the character, he did not intend for her to be combatively comparable to Revan - just a unique Jedi. Yet when Drew started authoring her, he intended her to be a potentially more skilled duelist than Revan - which, even if it's not the case, implies rivalry. Drew has greater credibility than Avellone because his works line up with continuity more (despite contradictions here and there), and because he actually wrote for both characters, not just one.
I definitely don't support the notion of the Exile being more skilled than Revan, but regardless of how you hit on Drew's credibility because of his past history, he simply reckons that the Exile is about equal with Revan as a duelist or possibly more skilled. In short? It's obviously not a stomp, as Avellone suggested, and Drew is the more believable and recent source. So by forum logic, his opinion is the one you'd take.
It doesn't mean he's correct, of course, for reasons that have already been brought up, but his idea of their skill level as he wrote them in the novel is still very clear - Revan isn't stomping the Exile in sabers, which dispels both that and Avellone's quote. My take on that matchup is that Revan is somewhat more skilled, but not by a very distant margin, and certainly not a stomp.
Sorry for the huge wall at the end, lol.