Originally posted by SunRazer
I've got enough difficulty comprehending that there was a time when that was the mainstream opinion. 🙂
Was there ever? Every time a new Valkorion amp comes out the TOR brigade comes on and starts to uber-wank Valk but it always quickly settles back to the regular order of things.
Originally posted by SunRazer
You're making an awful lot of thin complaints. You do realise the multitude of quotes in of themselves practically negate any point in making minor nitpicks about them, right? They correlate far too strongly for individual questions of reliability to matter. It would only be valid if you seriously believed that all of these quotes referred only to his time frame and not all of history, which of course isn't true.Most of these, if not all, have nothing to do with Lucas, so I don't know why you're constraining them to his time frame. Even the Insider quotes are clearly mentioning all of history. How does the one with Zaarin only focus on the present moment when it literally states "the galaxy has [b]ever
known"? Complaints about it being a historian or something (which is just to provide the source with an identifiable lens) are always blown out of proportion. At best, you show that the quote is fallible, not that it is wrong, and the fallibility issue is again irrelevant due to the sheer quantity of sources reiterating the same point: that Palpatine is the most powerful Sith Lord in history.The "Sith Master" complaint is ludicrous. Vitiate counts as a Sith Master, as he trained Exal Kressh from the comics. And I know English is not your first language, but that's some seriously poor reading there. Most powerful Sith Master "who ever lived" suddenly only applies to the movie era because that's when Sidious lived? What? "Who ever lived" means just that; who ever lived in the history of Star Wars, be it Nihilus, Revan, Vitiate, Tenebrous or Plagueis.
There's no such thing as "outdated" quotes, unless they've actually been retconned. Quotes aren't milk cartons with expiry dates, in the same way that feats aren't. Until an actual contradiction arises, they stand perfectly fine. By your logic, every time a new Sith character is introduced, every single quote about being the most powerful (whether it be Sidious, Vitiate, Plagueis etc.) is instantly discarded, which fails to construct any degree of continuity, which is what I am to achieve when debating SW. Sequels would instantly decanonise their prequels; again, continuity could never be constructed. So I don't consider that a valid approach. [/B]
You know that I have nothing against Sidious as a character. And this is available for any character regarding accolades, not just Palpatine. You keep using accolades as if they are the holy graal of versuses and contain the absolute truth.
Tell me something:
If a character doesn't stand up to their accolades and claims, are those still "valid"?
It's a logical question.
And if you still like to go with accolades(which I believe is dumb as f**k in a versus) then you should know that Yoda has been established as the most powerful light side avatar alongside Sidious in the ROTS novel, IIRC. So that means it is 100% true and Yoda>Luke. But we all know, by using feats, this isn't true at all. That's why I am of the philosophy that feats>accolades. Accolades of a character do not take account of potential new stories and characters, you know. That's because they are written by people like us. There's no way any writer can predict what's gonna happen in the future.
And when I talked about those most sources as being Lucas' canon. I meant as in they had the purpose of expanding Lucas' limited world and the view of his world(continuity: the movies) in the Expanded Universe's canon.
Take this for example:
In 4999 BBY Tenebrae is regarded as the history's most powerful dark side master when he absorbed Medriaas' Force energy.
But we have older accolades before the appearance of Vitiate where it says the Exar Kun is the darkest or greatest power in the galaxy and he was the most powerful Sith Lord.
See the inconsistency? Why accolades s**k?
Or you want to say that Exar Kun>post-Medriaas Vitiate based on accolades?
Accolades do not determine the power of a character; the power of a character determines whether the particular accolades are true or not. This is not mathematics. This is common sense.
The powerscaling goes like this:
[list]
[*]By near the end of the Plagueis novel, Darth Plagueis is powerful enough to replicate the sorcery of the ancient sith *by sheer force of will* despite lacking the natural affinity for sorcery - compare this to Darth Bane, who admits he can't do a lot of sorcery due to a lack of natural affinity, yet is still powerful enough to mentally dominate Andeddu's spirit. Revan himself is implied to still need rituals and prep to do his stuff.
[*]Darth Plagueis at some point reaches the title of "most powerful sith who ever lived".
[*]Before the end of TPM, Darth Sidious is already described as the most powerful sith of all time, implying that he has surpassed Plagueis.
[*]On Plagueis's death, Sidious gets a power boost that rearranges the balance of the Force in Star Wars to what appears to be an even greater extent than what Sidious and Plagueis with intense concentration could do *together*.
[*]Sidious then presumably grows more powerful through to RotS.
[*]Sidious intensively studies all aspects of the Force for two decades, accomplishing numerous insane feats like burying a super star destroyer, mentally dominating the entire imperial military from across the galaxy on a constant basis, reading every thought in Vader's mind and bringing him to his knees from across the galaxy, etc.
[*]Sidious grows even *more* powerful through to Dark Empire, by which point he's a walking Force nexus who can destroy moons and telepathically dominate Luke Skywalker.
[/list]
What's more, we can see from his RotS novelization feat with Mace that Sidious's lightning can bend lightsaber blades, so Revan probably can't just block that with his own. If he tries tutaminus, Yoda's struggle to do that against Palpatine in RotS suggests that the power disparity needed to overpower someone with lightning isn't that high. Given that Yoda is described in multiple sources to be the most powerful Jedi who ever lived up to his time, and RotS -> DE Sidious has more evidence for a massive power growth than KotOR -> SoR Revan, there's no reason to think that Revan can deflect his lightning even if we ignore the fact that Palpatine has better feats by orders of magnitude.
(E.g. Revan needs rituals and tech to replicate a small fraction of what Sidious can do on his own with Force storms)
Originally posted by Freedon Nadd
You know that I have nothing against Sidious as a character. And this is available for any character regarding accolades, not just Palpatine. You keep using accolades as if they are the holy graal of versuses and contain the absolute truth.
I use them as evidence to construct my case the same way a detective would use fingerprints, hairs, blood stains and witness statements to construct a case for the crime scene. They're building blocks to construct a larger, more cohesive narrative. I don't read them like some sort of Bible.
Tell me something:If a character doesn't stand up to their accolades and claims, are those still "valid"?
It's a logical question.
I've answered that already. If the accolade proves to be sufficiently unreliable or inaccurate, then it's invalid. But in this case, it hasn't. Palpatine has never really come close to exerting maximum effort with respect to any of his powers, hence the idea of comparing feats is flawed. The actual accolades remain unchallenged.
So the answer to your question is yes, but that's not the case here. It's only your interpretation that it doesn't stand up. To me it stands up fine.
And if you still like to go with accolades(which I believe is dumb as f**k in a versus) then you should know that Yoda has been established as the most powerful light side avatar alongside Sidious in the ROTS novel, IIRC. So that means it is 100% true and Yoda>Luke. But we all know, by using feats, this isn't true at all. That's why I am of the philosophy that feats>accolades. Accolades of a character do not take account of potential new stories and characters, you know. That's because they are written by people like us. There's no way any writer can predict what's gonna happen in the future.
Firstly, RotS was written after the NJO and DNT books. Regardless, it doesn't need to be written after them to include Luke.
The reason it doesn't include Luke is because it's in-universe and therefore only goes up to the time of RotS, when Luke has yet to be born. The same goes for Vitiate's supremacy quotes from the codex and encyclopedia. They don't go any further. Sidious' in-universe quotes only go up to his time, but surprise, that includes the likes of Nihilus, Vitiate, Plagueis etc. as they all came before him. You can argue those that came after like Caedus and Krayt aren't bound by such quotes if they're in-universe, though to my understanding he's got out-of-universe quotes to say much the same thing and in the case of Caedus and Krayt, he has them bested in terms of feats as well.
And when I talked about those most sources as being Lucas' canon. I meant as in they had the purpose of expanding Lucas' limited world and the view of his world(continuity: the movies) in the Expanded Universe's canon.
But "most" of them don't, so I don't understand what you mean. They're entirely designed to consider the EU.
Originally posted by SunRazer
I use them as evidence to construct my case the same way a detective would use fingerprints, hairs, blood stains and witness statements to construct a case for the crime scene. They're building blocks to construct a larger, more cohesive narrative. I don't read them like some sort of Bible.
👆
Originally posted by The MerchantThat's why nobody is going strictly by feats. NOBODY here is going by feats only, we're going by feats>accolades. There is a monumental difference, which you and many others on this forum seem incapable of understanding.
Brakiss would be the strongest SW character going by feats.
Originally posted by darthbane77
That's why nobody is going strictly by feats. NOBODY here is going by feats only, we're going by feats>accolades. There is a monumental difference, which you and many others on this forum seem incapable of understanding.
Well, the thing is that while a feats-only ranking system produces insane results, an accolades-only ranking system actually mirrors the forum consensus pretty closely.
Originally posted by darthbane77
That's why nobody is going strictly by feats. NOBODY here is going by feats only, we're going by feats>accolades. There is a monumental difference, which you and many others on this forum seem incapable of understanding.
So you mean accolades only matter when they align with your bias?