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SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

January 24th 2020, 12:24 pm
Congratulations Memepants, you've successfully persuaded to temporarily return to these forums in order to write a rebuttal to you (note: I won't be forum posting, but I will, however, be working on a post for this).
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SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

January 30th 2020, 10:50 pm
My post is done. I'll probably spend this weekend editing it, and maybe add a couple of things, but nothing too major. I hope to have it out by next week.
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SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

February 24th 2020, 12:13 am

Final Post: The End


1) The “Hypocrite” Strikes Back


As I have foreseen, you've ignored large swathes of my arguments to focus on nitpicks for some cheap wins.

I didn’t ignore “large swathes” of your argument, every point I missed is either:

A) Not a particularly relevant point for me to refute and my argument can stand without going over it.

or

B) Something I accidentally ignored while responding to your post.

Apparently those are classed as “concessions” but every time you ignore a point it’s classed as me merely scoring a “cheap win”. I will admit, it’s a neat attempt to handwave away any points I win on - playing a big picture game - but it doesn’t work. On several big points (e.g. SK’s lack of mastery) you outright conceded virtually your whole argument, which I consider a tad more than a “cheap win” - it’s definitely more in line with you “ignoring large swathes of my arguments”. This isn’t the only time you accuse me of standards you’re guilty of either - throughout the post you:

A) Ignored several of my arguments when refuting points, and then berated me for supposedly doing the same

B) Strawmanned me while claiming I was strawmanning you.

The fact that you have the nerve to do the above and then keep a count of my “concessions” is genuinely frustrating to me. Actually, speaking of the concession counter...

Don't worry though, I'll be keeping a concession counter. You'll see this regularly, and it's easy to spot.

...do you even know what the word “concede” means? Concede means, per Google: “Admit or agree that something is true after first denying or resisting it." Me not contesting a point isn’t a concession, in order for it to be one I would have to first deny it, which in several of these supposed “concessions” I didn’t do. Keep this point in mind, as I’ll probably refer back to it while going over each of these points I supposedly conceded.

2) Performance against an Emperor


I agree, Sidious was desperate… from a certain point of view. That point of view being Galen's, since the passage you're referring to is from his POV. There isn't necessarily a problem with POV perspectives, but the problem here for you is that the total aggregate of sources override what Galen thought he saw.

This at least gives us a solid basis for starting with. You agree that there is nothing wrong with POV quotes, and seem to think that the reason this one is invalid is due to the mountain of evidence against it - not the nature of the quote itself - but the underlying problem is that the quote I cited shows the clear narrative intent of the novels (as I’ll elaborate on below), so like with Witwer’s comments, any contradictions you’ve supposedly found probably aren’t actually contradictions.

In other words, your entire argument literally hinges on Galen being correct about Sidious being desperate, but virtually every other piece of information we have points in the other direction.

My argument doesn’t “hinge” on anything. I fully acknowledge that if the evidence from the Oneness blast feat and DS ending supported your claims (hint: they don’t), you’d have a more legitimate case than me.

Consider only moments before, Sidious had been toying with Galen, pretending to lose and prostrating himself as a weak, old and defenceless in order to turn Galen to the dark side.

That doesn’t mean he was doing so at the later point when the stakes are that the rebels could escape if he didn’t finish Galen quickly... Just look at the later passage, it does not remotely suggest Sidious was feigning weakness - in total contrast to this earlier instance where the fact that it was a sham orchestrated by Sidious is made fairly self-evident. This is Galen’s pivotal moment of self-sacrifice where he “clings to his consciousness with a feverish will” and faces down Sidious in order to protect the rebels from him, yet you're arguing that this fact was emphasised for absolutely no reason and that Sidious could have just one-shotted Galen then destroyed the rebels if he chose to. Apparently, the ultimate takeaway of this final passage is that the rebels escaped because of Sidious’s errors (not emphasised), and it had almost nothing to do with Galen’s strength (emphasised)... Moreover, if Sidious was “prostrating himself as weak” in comparison to Galen in this instance, then why is it that he:

A) Makes it clear his lightning reflecting back on him is an enjoyable experience that does not negatively affect him in the slightest (he howls with lascivious pain as noted later in your post) rather than acting like a defenceless old man.

B) Nearly knocks Galen out with his Lightning. Arguing this was all part of some grand plan to goad Galen into giving into the Dark Side by making himself appear inferior to him totally ignores the rather obvious point that Sidious nearly wins the fight. He can hardly be feigning weakness if his attacks are on the verge of rendering Marek unconscious and would have done so if not for Galen’s willpower.

Your argument just doesn’t align with the text - you’re destroying the significance of the moment to the novel’s plot and Galen’s character arc, and ignoring the obvious intent of the passage in question.

The fact of the matter is - Galen resists Sidious in the instance you’re citing - there’s no reason for Sidious to think he can turn Galen to the Dark Side after Galen has already said no. We outright see a similar scenario play out with Luke in ROTJ, where after Luke rejects the Dark Side Sidious tortures him and accepts Luke can’t be turned:


During the subsequent confrontation, Sidious throws his head back and howls in an overtly sexual way (lascivious by definition is an overt sexual display). We don't see this in any other confrontations where his life was on the line, like his battle with Yoda or Windu. Sure, he enjoys himself in the sense of how a Sith would, but when push came to shove in the Force battle Sidious didn't look like he was getting his dick sucked by a twi'lek stripper, he was worried.

We do see this in other fights involving Sidious though, namely his fight with the Maul brothers where he is straining under their strength, yet grins with a “terrible pleasure”:

Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy wrote:Maul stared up at his Master’s face. He saw the strain as Sidious called upon the Force to keep the brothers at bay. But there was something else there too – a terrible pleasure. Sidious began to grin.

I never claimed Galen’s display was indicative of parity with Sidious, and that in their fight Sidious’s “life was on the line” in a similar manner to his fights with Yoda and Mace Windu - so drawing comparisons is pointless - just that his display of defending against Sidious’s Lightning for up to 30 seconds and pushing him into desperation was impressive, and doesn’t point to the level of disparity between them you’re arguing for. Nothing more, nothing less.

Harkening back to my original argument, Sidious found the time to gloat against Plagueis when he was in control, but that tune changed very quickly when he considered the prospect that Plagueis could return in a position to threaten him.

The context of which has already been discussed in this debate. Don’t worry, I’ll get to your rebuttals on this later.

Coming back to the topic, Galen wasn't mitigating Palpatine's attack or defending against it. As soon as he stepped in front of the Emperor it immediately tore through any defence he did have up, "Without hesitation, he stepped between Kota and the Emperor, taking the full brunt of the Sith lightning into his own body."

Uh, what? The quote you posted doesn’t indicate it tore through Galen’s defences, merely that the Lightning impacted on Galen’s body - he’s taking the Lightning instead of Kota. You’re going to need to point me to where this quote remotely supports what you’re arguing.

So it was more like Galen having a moment of oneness that allowed him to retain consciousness through the pain.

Yes, Galen’s willpower allowed him to deal with the pain, but you’re ignoring the rather obvious fact that Sidious’s power would ordinarily incinerate Galen if his defence couldn’t mostly mitigate the attack. The fact that all Sidious’s lethal Lightning did was cause Galen intense pain indicates Galen blocked the brunt of it.

The only reason why Sidious was coming into contact with his own lightning was due to Galen literally walking up to him and joining hands, "Another staggering, painful step and the Emperor was within the apprentice's reach. With shaking fingers, he took the old man's bony shoulders in his hands and gripped them tight. The Sith lightning spread to engulf the two of them, fueled by both their desperations. The Emperor tipped back his head and howled in lascivious pain." So Sidious only suffers his lightning after Galen comes into contact, after which the Emperor starts enjoying himself sexually.

I never denied this and I honestly don’t see the relevance. Galen isn’t Yoda or Mace, he doesn’t have parity with Sidious (in Yoda’s case), nor a Vaapad superconducting loop (in Mace’s case), so naturally he couldn’t turn Sidious’s own energies back on him. However, he did show the power to largely mitigate it, which is extremely impressive and definitely does not show the rather extreme gap you’re arguing for.

To conclude, you have no inherent basis to assume Sidious was holding back, it’s not stated, nor implied and the text itself - similar instances, and logic go against it as well.

3) Galen’s Potential


A) Oneness Galen vs Sidious


ONENESS BLAST


Then, Galen goes into oneness and blows up right in front of the Emperor, causing literally no damage to the Emperor except for a light singe on his face.

And no, the "muh omnidirectional" argument doesn't convince anyone. A blast is at its most powerful at the centre, the resulting wave is merely the energy moving outwards from the central point and dissipating. If a nuclear bomb has x megatons of power, when it detonates it releases that x megatons at the centre point, from which it moves out, weakening. Sidious was literally on that blast, so he took 99% of it.

This paragraph is totally pointless, because Sidious wasn’t at the centre of the blast... He was close, but the energy would still need to radiate outwards in order to hit him, and thus by the time it impacted on Sidious it’d be nowhere close to the brunt of the the attack - it’d be a mere fraction of it given that it spread out in all directions.

Sidious no sold Galen's oneness mega blast at point-blank range without injury (didn't go beyond body's potential either) and it's stated that Galen was "ultimately no match for Darth Sidious", which would include the entire fight and the oneness blast.

I’ve pretty much addressed all of this already - besides the “no match” quotes which I’ll respond to below. However, I feel the need to question one point (underlined): Why exactly do we assume Sidious didn’t go beyond his body’s potential? Do you have any evidence for this? I proposed the idea that he potentially could have last post, and mysteriously received no reply - all I’ve been given in this post is your claim that Sidious didn’t do so, with no actual proof. This is despite the fact that you lectured me in your post repeatedly about how I have to provide evidence for my claims, double standards much? It’s a pretty important point as well, given that the entire argument for the Oneness blast is about proving Sidious’s potential > Galen’s, but if you can’t even substantiate why Sidious didn’t draw beyond his potential against Galen’s Oneness Blast then all of your arguments are rendered completely redundant. I accept your concession.

NO MATCH QUOTES


Are you calling quotes from Vehicles and Starships and The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia "candy bar quotes"? We follow the guidelines set on the forum, and quotes from these two sources are perfectly legitimate.

You’re taking a joke I made way too seriously. I know the rules - I typed them out when creating this thread.

And I don't see why these don't include Oneness Marek, "ultimately" kind of seals it. All things told, from start to finish, Starkiller was no match for the Emperor, even in Oneness.

Why would they include Oneness Marek? In TCSWE’s case it references how Galen was “ultimately no match” for Sidious, and then goes on to talk about his Oneness indicating it wasn’t included in the aforementioned statement, given that the summary is clearly chronological in nature (it references him facing Vader then proving no match for Sidious’s power/being bombarded by Force Lightning, then talks about Oneness). Moreover, it writes about how Galen “did not fight back” within Oneness and instead caused a distraction to allow Juno and the rebels to escape - it clearly doesn’t view the Oneness section as part of the fight…

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 Starki11

...which makes sense. Galen’s Oneness isn’t part of the combative engagement (i.e. the Lightning clash), it’s a suicide to save the rebels and make sure they escape, it’s not an attempt to bring Sidious down (the fact that it was released omnidirectionally is a testament to that). Ergo, there’s no reason for the sources to compare Oneness Marek to anyone combatively. The Vehicles and Starships collection views it this way as well:

The Official Vehicles and Starships Collection wrote:Juno found Starkiller, and the two travelled to where the first Death Star was being constructed. Leaving Juno behind, Starkiller battled through the station to rescue the rebels, defeating Vader, and duelling the Emperor to give the others time to escape. He was no match for Palpatine, sacrificing himself -- or so they believed -- in a massive blast of Force energy.

Like with TCSWE, the summary is chronological - it references Juno finding Starkiller, them travelling to the Death Star, Starkiller leaving Juno behind, fighting through the Death Star forces, beating Vader, facing Sidious and coming out on the losing end, then sacrificing himself in a massive blast of energy - meaning the “no match” quote explicitly isn’t referring to Oneness Galen (which makes sense given that, as I said above, he explicitly didn’t fight Sidious). I think - at the very least - the quotes are ambiguous, and can’t really be used to scale Sidious above Oneness Marek, as it’s unclear whether Oneness Marek would be included given that in both quotes he’s mentioned after the “no match” part.

To add to all of the above, sourcebook quotes are generally just summaries and don’t tend to add new information. In this case, Sidious being stronger than Oneness Galen isn’t supported by any material within continuity and the fact that Base Galen contended with Sidious explicitly contradicts it. On top of all of that, Witwer’s comments make it clear the original thematic intention of TFU was not to have Sidious possess greater potential than Galen. In other words, these candy bar quotes are totally bunk.

B) Was Galen’s state of Oneness his true potential?


TRUE POTENTIAL QUOTE


The quote is straightforward: at some point after his early apprenticeship he manifested his true potential by unleashing the Force.

I agree this quote is very straightforward which makes your interpretation of it even more baffling.

When factoring the other material that's all available in my last post, it clearly means his oneness moment and exploding himself.

To quote you later in your post: “Saying ‘it doesn't prove anything’ after I link various sources and exposition throughout my posts isn't an answer. That's another concession.” I wrote out an entire explanation on why it isn’t referring to the Oneness blast in my last post, and you have the audacity to respond with, “well, yeah it clearly is" with absolutely no further elaboration. Here’s the explanation for everybody who’s forgotten:

I wrote:The quote is attempting to provide a timeframe for the segment of the game it’s referring to Galen in, which means it can’t possibly be referring to the time where Galen died lmao. Your interpretation of the quote is literally:

“These stats represent Galen fairly on in his apprenticeship, before he died.”

The second part is totally irrelevant - a no-brainer - and doesn’t help elaborate on the first point. The more realistic, non-hyper literal interpretation - where we don’t conclude “true potential” is literally referring to his full Force Potential - is that it’s referring to Galen’s development throughout the novel (outlined in my first post) wherein he finally unleashes his raw power, hence the terminology ‘true potential.’ That’s a much more plausible interpretation and helps to back up the prior statement from the quote.

Despite waffling about my post being filled with supposed silent concessions you consistently ignore points I made throughout my second post. I accept your concession.

The Vaylin quote isn't sufficient proof; getting "a taste of her full capabilities" isn't the same as "manifesting your true potential".

How isn’t it? Both if we take them hyper-literally they mean full potential - Vaylin couldn’t be at her “full capabilities” if she hadn’t maxed out her potential. Obviously Vaylin hadn’t hit her full capabilities though, so I don’t see why we should assume Starkiller had either.

Note that, I wrote out an explanation as to what the quote could be referring to in my second post (which was reposted above): "The more realistic, non-hyper literal interpretation - where we don’t conclude ‘true potential’ is literally referring to his full Force Potential - is that it’s referring to Galen’s development throughout the novel (outlined in my first post) wherein he finally unleashes his raw power, hence the terminology 'true potential'."

CELLS IN SHOCK


I've already explained this in my last post, and I'm not repeating myself. Go back to my previous posts and read it, then address my arguments rather than asking me to repeat my stuff. The sensation of bursting apart and its relation to overloading the body's midichlorians has been my core argument throughout this entire thing, and I went into it in quite a lot of detail. Address those points, because I'm directly tying that to the exact same sensation Starkiller felt.

How does anything you posted previously indicate Galen hit his biological Force Potential? His midichlorians could have been overloaded by intense use of the Force, which you have stated yourself can be a cause of damage to the body. Per TCSWE, Galen released “all the power within him”, so it’s no surprise his body’s midichlorians were overloaded, he effectively allowed everything he had to flow through him at once, which I’m pretty sure I’d consider as an “intense use of the Force”.

C) Sam Witwer


SHADE THROWING/SIDIOUS’S POV


I never "put shade" on Witwer's credibility, I was merely relaying that other sources that have more authority than him contradict what he's said, thus making his comments extremely unlikely. Verbatim from my post: "The actual authority Witwer has as an aside, the claims that he has the potential to be the most powerful Force user ever is explicitly contradicted in the continuity."

Well, firstly the start part of statement you cited (underlined) doesn’t exactly suggest you’re endorsing his opinion - you question his authority even if it is an aside. It is only after that you relay that other more important sources (i.e. the continuity) contradict him. Moreover, you consistently mention throughout your post that I seem to think author quotes are acceptable, and then utilise three against me without saying you agree (one of them is even from Witwer!). It reads like you’re trying to trap me, it doesn’t read as though you legitimately accept my position, hence why I used the terminology “put shade”.

Again, other sources contradicting him is obviously your main argument, but as an aside you don’t seem to think he has any authority and don’t agree with my usage of him as a source, so I felt the need to clarify why his statements are useful as evidence. This is all the more supported by you contesting his usefulness as a source in this post.

I then go on to provide two sourced arguments for why Sidious has more potential than Starkiller; one of which you addressed and one of which you completely ignored. You stated "According to Sidious Galen’s full potential is at least comparable to his own, he stated Galen could have been his “successor,” his “equal.”" To which I showed via a collection of sources, including big daddy Lucas himself that Sidious never intended to have an equal, only a puppet to help him rule the galaxy as his weapon, meaning that whatever Sidious tells Starkiller in the DS ending is just a lie (wow, Sidious being manipulative?).

The latter one wasn’t an argument for why Sidious has more potential than Starkiller, it’s an argument against one of my quotes that I used to show Starkiller > Sidious in potential. That’s not the same thing, and it does nothing to help your Sidious > Galen in potential case - that’s all contingent on the Oneness blast feat which I addressed in my post. The argument was a secondary point and my case can function perfectly fine without it - my case was primarily based on Witwer’s quotes.

Regardless, the rebuttal to your argument would simply be the one you proposed: “In case you’re planning to rebut with ‘but Lucas said Sidious wanted someone more powerful than himself to help him’, consider that Lucas is likely referring to people like Maul and Anakin, who have potentials beyond Sidious’ own, unlike Starkiller.” Sidious offers these promises of power to people who have greater potential than him to hook them to his cause. Note that, as I said above, the case is not based on this argument - it’s supporting evidence - so addressing it in a vacuum is pointless.

As for me missing it, that was completely by accident. I skipped and decided to come back to it, and I wrote a note reminding me which I later deleted, and thus forgot all about it. I wasn’t intentionally ignoring your argument.

NARRATIVE INTENT


Prove it? You've yet to provide factual evidence that the clear narrative intent of the game/novels is Galen having Luke Skywalker-tier potential in the Force, especially since subsequent licensed content explains on multiple occasions that Galen was "ultimately no match for Darth Sidious."

Seriously? In order to argue that’s not the intent of the writers, you’d have to argue Witwer went completely off the rails and just stated something that absolutely no one working on the games/novels believes without prefacing it’s just his opinion (like basically all authors do) when the content was officially published. That’s not really believable at all. Witwer is clearly speaking for the writers and trying to convey information about the game, he’s not just pulling shit out of his ass. Furthermore, there’s no reason to assume cereal box quotes which can easily be interpreted as talking about Base Marek would inform us of authorial intent.

Witwer was also talking about how Vader was to be stronger than SK in TFUIII, how's that for intent?

There’s a fundamental difference between the quotes. One is published (mine), one is not (yours). One of them is a clarification on the intent for a game that was released, the other one is clarification of the intent of a game that was never released. I do not care about the intent for a game that was never made especially when it’s contradicting established material that was released (e.g. the TFU 2 Novel). This was all stated in my second post and you completely ignored it: “There’s a fundamental difference between unpublished/unofficial quotes from Witwer on a game that was never released, and published/official quotes from Witwer clarifying the intent of material that was released.” I accept your concession.

WITWER’S AUTHORITY


That doesn't make them any more credible. The opinions of the voice actors published in Insider don't have the same canonical authority as OOU quotes.

Lol, half of this debate has been me attempting to debunk the premise that continuity material clarifies Galen is sub-Sidious in potential, so Witwer’s comments still stand. If you had actual evidence that contradicted him then sure I’d agree with you, but as it stands you don’t.

D) Early Novel Galen vs Vader and Galen’s Training


Yet this training has had zero impact on your argumentation so far, it's all about his power.

I did make note of the relevance of his training in my opener, you just chose to ignore it. I brought up how Luke challenged Vader in ESB after a few weeks of training, and thus Galen with similar potential and massively superior training must be able to outdo that to a ridiculous extent once Vader’s conditioning is removed which I showed happening in my opener:

I wrote:In summary, Galen’s a mega prodigy with Sidious+/Luke Skywalker tier potential who was trained relentlessly for like 15 years straight to maximize his potential and have incredible raw power. Considering Luke himself after a short spell on Dagobah was capable of giving Vader a relatively solid fight (he pushes him back and tags him on the shoulder), the amount of raw power Galen is boasting should certainly be immense.

I then used his ragdolling of Vader, and re-directing of an ISD as proof of his immense power he must have built up from his intense training and incredible potential. You’ll find if you look back on the debate that my arguments were well substantiated and that all of my statements tie together.

Not to mention Plagueis' training is vastly superior anyhow, so it doesn't matter regardless.

The point isn’t about how his training stacks up to Plagueis’s, but rather how his training stacks up to Luke and the ramifications of them having similar potential. Moreover, Plagueis’s training being better is unsubstantiated (once again you lecture me for not supporting points and then don’t do so yourself), so this argument falls flat.

Finally, you didn’t actually respond to the point you quoted (i.e. me pointing out you completely missed the point of my opener, and wrote out an irrelevant rebuttal to my point), so I assume that’s a concession: “Did you miss the part where I basically admitted Galen’s applicable power is shit? The point wasn’t to hype up Early-Game Galen who lacks any control of his powers, but rather to hype up End-Game Galen who finally gains control of the power he’s built up over 15 years of rigorous training. Despite constantly mocking my first post on Discord you seem to have missed a few key details.“

E) Galen vs Luke: Vader Comparison


TFU 2 GALEN VS VADER: EXHAUSTION


It's time to educate you on the "exhaustion argument". You can't handwave the entire fight and claim Starkiller would just "decimate" Vader, but couldn't because he was exhausted yet also regaining his strength.

I never tried to handwave this entire fight and claim SK could “decimate” Vader solely because he was exhausted - I said that his exhaustion is an explanation as to why Vader gave him such a good fight, and that other evidence suggests he’d utterly destroy Vader at peak. You never actually addressed SK’s fight with the army of Starkiller Clones who could have “easily overpowered” Vader. The impact of this is that there’s utterly no reason to think the two share parity, because SK’s destroying threats far superior to Vader, and there’s a plausible explanation for the fight. Keep this in mind as I go through your rebuttals.

Galen has never felt so exhausted, yet he is also regaining his strength, feeling "simultaneously cleansed and poisoned". The problem with applying this exhaustion to the rest of the duel is problematic because, of course, Galen is regaining his strength as well.

So…? SK regaining strength doesn’t mean you can handwave away his exhaustion. If I had just finished running a marathon, for example, I’d start “regaining strength” after, but that doesn’t mean my fatigue is automatically gone, and I’m suddenly somehow able to perform tasks just as easily as I would do normally.

Consider that Dooku hits exhaustion in his duel against Anakin and Obi-Wan on the Invisible Hand, yet manages to rejuvenate himself and fight on, "He no longer even tried to strike back. Force exhaustion began to close down his perceptions, drawing his consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping him within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room around him..." (ROTS:N). Briefly after, he uses "his last burst of dark power" to incapacitate Kenobi with a kick, following it up with another surge of energy to accelerate Kenobi's limp body. He then proceeds to take a boot to the face from Anakin and uses his "dark power" yet again to cushion his landing off the balcony, all while exhausted.

Dooku was able to maintain his gap between Kenobi both before and during his exhaustion ("Greydolling" Kenobi both times), we don't see Dooku's normal combative performance drastically weaken when he's exhausted, in fact, he keeps it up as Anakin is getting even stronger.

This is a total false equivalency. Dooku explicitly uses power far beyond his base in this instance, he's clearly drawing on deeper reserves. The quote states this was Dooku's "last burst of dark power" indicating he wouldn't be able to replicate this same performance afterward meaning it definitely requires an abnormal amount of energy, as if this was his standard combative performance/a casual feat there's no reason why he wouldn't be able to perform it again. This is supported by the quote you cited from the novel using the word "burst” to describe the power he used to incapacitate Kenobi. “Burst” means, per the Cambridge Dictionary: “A sudden increase in something, especially for a short period.” So, basically Dooku’s power was “increased” only for only a “short period”, essentially confirming my theory - Dooku can't keep it up for long and it's a step above his regular performance. This is reflected in him going from buckling under Anakin's strength and backpedalling to flooring him with a kick for 5 seconds while ragdolling Kenobi. That doesn’t translate into SK somehow being able to keep up his standard combative performance for a protracted duel against Vader, he’d only be able to do so for a momentary period, and in order to do so, he’d need a sufficient amount of reserves to use up all at once, which it’s up to you to substantiate he had. While it is up to you to substantiate the claim, I will comment that it seems unlikely Starkiller had the reserves left to replicate something of this nature given that Starkiller had unleashed his full potency twice over without resting in an incredibly short span of time - once in destroying The Salvation, and once in wiping out the army of Starkiller Clones - with the result being that he felt more exhausted than when he’d spent 13 days wasting away Force Energy.

To add to the fact that this example doesn’t support your conclusion that exhaustion doesn’t massively hinder combatants, I’d like to point out the irony that this example actually supports my position. Per your own quotes, Dooku’s enhanced perceptions begin to dim, and he no longer even attempts to strike back - due to fatigue - and in order to keep up his base performance he needs to use all he has at once, so yes, exhaustion absolutely has a negative impact on a character’s ability to fight.

Then, he washes the exhaustion away, "He pushed this aside, drawing once more upon the certain knowledge of his personal invincibility to open a channel to the Force. Power flowed into him, and the weight of his years dropped away."

Dooku augmenting himself in order to wash away his age and physical fatigue isn’t remotely the same as recovering depleted Force reserves which SK would need to do in order to bring himself back to peak. As I stated previously his reserves were almost empty which is clearly reflected in his TK being massively weaker (he struggles to lift a relatively small ship: https://youtu.be/MhOMe5NPfeI?t=590), and I see no reason why this wouldn’t translate over to his augmentation. Overall, you don’t really have an argument here, it’s contingent on a false equivalency to an example that doesn’t match Starkiller’s.

This isn't the only example; we also have Qui-Gon displaying incredible stamina despite being exhausted.

Since when has someone displaying incredible stamina been relevant to establishing that someone who has almost no reserves left will have his combative prowess not massively decrease?

On Tatooine, he was fully exhausted from his 40 second fight with Maul, yet on Naboo, Qui-Gon fights Maul with Obi-Wan for "several brutal minutes" (The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi) while taking the "brunt" of Maul's assault relative to his apprentice (Darth Maul Journal).

So…? I don’t get your comparison here, Jinn had backup on Naboo that he didn’t have on Tatooine, just because he took the “brunt” of the assault relative to his apprentice, doesn’t mean that Kenobi’s involvement automatically loses its weight - he’s still a valuable asset that can take on a significant part of Maul’s assault.

At the tail end of this duel, the two Jedi are separated, and Qui-Gon faces Maul alone, "By the time Obi-Wan had recovered, Qui-Gon was in pursuit of Darth Maul, following him down the catwalk toward a small door at the far end of the power station. The Jedi Master went swiftly, legs and arms pumping, lightsaber flashing. He was worn and battered by now, close to exhaustion, but the Sith Lord was on the defensive at last, and he did not want to give him a chance to regroup." Several minutes are a lot longer than 40 seconds, yet Qui-Gon is still fighting all-out to keep Maul pressured. Sidious remarks "I suspect he [Qui-Gon] surprised Maul with his stamina."

I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to prove here. Why is any of this important when discussing SK vs Vader? We know Maul was in control the entire time and wasn’t remotely attempting to launch a counterattack, for starters:

The Wrath of Darth Maul wrote:Maul leered again at Qui-Gon. You think you're driving me back. You have no idea that I'm in control. You don't know where I'm taking you.

There’s no reason to assume Jinn wasn’t decreasing in combative performance, as our only measuring stick was barely even trying. The most you can say is that Jinn didn’t let up his assault, and didn’t collapse, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t significantly hindered.

Moreover, Jinn isn’t actually even exhausted - he’s “close” sure, but he’s still not tired to a high degree yet - which makes comparisons with Galen totally pointless, because Jinn still has a decent portion of reserves left, whereas Galen is practically running on fumes. To re-state from my last post, Galen was more emptied of reserves than when he spent 13 days in a pit wasting away Force energy, and when he struggled significantly to lift a reasonably small ship.

When the laser gates are up, Qui-Gon meditates for a few minutes, which allows him to replenish his reserves "He had found a fresh reserve of strength during his meditation..." (TPM: N) After pressing on Maul for a period of time, he begins to slow, "But he was beginning to weary now from carrying the battle alone. His strokes were not so vigorous as before his face bathed with sweat and taut with fatigue." (TPM: N) Despite exhausting rapidly, Qui-Gon holds his own for an extended period of time, and Maul ends up killing the Jedi with a hilt bash that even Nick Gillard, the choreographer of the fight, admits was underhanded (Link), implying Jinn could have held his own for a lot longer.

There is a very clear decrease in Jinn’s performance, he goes from being the aggressor (2:21 - 2:32) to getting pushed back, and then cut down by Maul rather swiftly (2:35 - 2:55) - 20 seconds is not an extended period of time. Jinn very clearly massively decreased when fatigue set in (the text even emphasises his blows weren’t as vigorous), and you have absolutely no evidence his fatigue was as significant as SK’s.

As for the hilt bash, no that doesn’t affect things at all. Maul successfully outmaneuvered Jinn, just because he didn’t stick to traditional swordsmanship rules doesn’t mean his victory is illegitimate, and that we should ignore it then conclude Jinn could have held out for significantly longer when no evidence supports he could have. All his bashing of Jinn with his hilt shows is that Maul is willing to use any means necessary to win (like Sidious taught him).

Not to mention that Jinn's exhaustion and his inability to keep up with Maul is referenced an insane number of times in the source material, yet he keeps up in a high-intensity life-or-death lightsaber duel for several minutes and more, most of the time while exhausted and still kept up with his opponent, who's better than him in pretty much every way.

This insane number of times that you’ve failed to provide citations for.* The rest has been refuted above.

What's the difference in TFU2? Galen was exhausted from his fight with the clones, but he's also regaining his strength before his fight with Vader. This exhaustion is never referenced anywhere else in the source material, be it the novelisation or anything else for the rest of the protracted duel. The only other point of reference for Galen's physical condition is this: "His heart was pounding, and his lungs burned." But this is at the very tail end of the duel after a very protracted fight. I'm not convinced that an exhausted Starkiller regaining his strength scales down to Vader's level rather than the exhaustion making an impact on his peak performance.

I’ve pretty much addressed all of this, but regarding the underline why would that be relevant? The author doesn’t need to consistently re-emphasise every single point he makes on the fight - that would just make for repetitive writing. The circumstances for why Vader can compete have been laid out, there’s no reason for the author to go over them again, and again.

To summarise this section:

-Galen explicitly can decimate Vader as per his fight with the Starkiller Clones which you completely failed to address throughout this post. His exhaustion also clearly does impact his Force Abilities (see him struggling to lift a reasonably small ship), and your examples to prove otherwise are false equivalencies as they don’t match Starkiller’s situation.

-Regardless of the above, Jinn and Dooku both massively decreased due to exhaustion. Jinn was beaten by Maul in 20 seconds flat after fatigue set in and he went from being the aggressor to retreating. Exhaustion caused Dooku to barely be able to sense his surroundings alongside not wanting to strike back against Anakin, and he only kept up his usual performance against Kenobi through increasing his strength via drawing on deeper reserves - only for a short period keep in mind - which you can't substantiate SK had.

VADER “KNOWING THE MEASURE” OF STARKILLER


Vader fighting more cautiously =/= gearing his fighting style to defending against Starkiller.

I wasn’t pointing to the “cautiously” part of the quote - I probably should have clarified. I was talking about Vader improving his armour to deal with SK’s Lightning - he’s explicitly been preparing for this fight, improving his armour and modifying his fighting style, so he can adequately defend against SK.

The second quote says Vader learned from his "mistake", are we to take it the mistake was not knowing Galen's fighting style? That doesn't make sense.

No…? His mistake was obviously moving too slow to block Galen’s blade, which can be corrected by knowing how Galen fights, and explicitly making sure to get ahead of Galen’s movements, which is what he does in practice: “Vader's defenses were impenetrable; his lightsaber seemed to arrive a split second before Starkiller's, every time.” Vader gearing his fighting style to defend against Starkiller is inferred from the next sentence.

Again, this doesn't really give off the impression that Vader has tooled his style specifically against Galen. Consider that Maul does the same with Qui-Gon "He found it on Tatooine, and there duelled with Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Though Jinn escaped, Maul was content that he had the measure of the man." (V&S) We wouldn't take that as meaning Maul geared his fighting style to counter Qui-Gon in the next duel. I don't find the quotes you've provided as compelling proof of your claim.

Well, if you “have the measure of someone” you “understand what they’re like and know how to deal with them”. In this case, Vader knowing how to deal with Starkiller is explicitly cited as the reason his Lightsaber “seemed to arrive a split second before Starkiller's, every time”, ergo him being a step ahead of Starkiller is due to his understanding and knowledge of Starkiller, he’s made sure to take into account how Starkiller fights when he’s defending against him. There’s a fundamental difference between that and Maul thinking he knows what Jinn is like - one is a thought, one is shown to happen in practice. Also, debate tip #1, if you're going to make an opponent deny a proposition by offering a counter proposition, make sure that it has relevance to the point at hand. Even if the quote was an OOU declaration, I can happily admit Maul specifically modified his style to deal with Jinn - it wouldn’t hinder my argument at all - and you’ve provided no tangible reasoning to why “we wouldn't take that as meaning Maul geared his fighting style to counter Qui-Gon in the next duel”.

Furthermore, wouldn't it go both ways? Starkiller should have a really good idea of how Vader fights, which the novel actually says "He may have defeated Vader before, but Vader had learned from that mistake. He knew the measure of his former apprentice now. But the same was true in reverse." Look who's "blatantly omitting" context now.

You’re fundamentally missing the point. I didn’t go into detail on Starkiller’s knowledge of Vader because it’s entirely irrelevant to the argument I’m making. Vader stonewalling Starkiller is specifically credited to him knowing the measure of SK. Just because SK has knowledge also, doesn’t mean Vader’s isn’t allowing him to predict Starkiller’s every move. Intimate knowledge of the other between two fighters extends a fight and makes it harder for one to gain the edge over the other irregardless of whether they have that knowledge as well.

VADER STONEWALLING GALEN


I never claimed Vader stonewalled Starkiller, the fight goes back and forth multiple times. Stonewall meaning "delay or obstruct (a request, process, or person) by refusing to answer questions or by being evasive." (Google translate); "to be uncooperative, obstructive, or evasive" (Merriam-Webster). In the case of the SW universe, I would take stonewalling as meaning delaying someone as long as possible, as Bondara did against Darth Maul. Never did I claim Vader stonewalled Starkiller, only that Galen was unable to gain the advantage until he created an opening with his lightning.

And here is where we have the fundamental problem. This is your take on stonewalling, not a definitive one. My take on stonewalling is that stopping your opponent from gaining any advantages is a stonewall (I use the term more loosely than others I guess) which is coincidentally exactly what you argued: “Until that point, Galen was unable to gain an edge against Vader, and admits he the best he could do is create a stalemate.” Just because I used different terminology doesn’t make my argument a strawmann, and trying to desperately play it off as such by citing your own take is dishonest as hell. Moreover, I like how you quoted what I wrote and argued it was a strawmann, without acknowledging that strawmann or not it still disproves your argument. You claimed SK didn’t get the advantage against Vader in the fight until he tricks Vader into lowering his guard and hits a gash in his chestplate caused by Juno, which isn’t true if Starkiller defeated Vader earlier in the fight. Either way, my rebuttal stands. That’s a concession.

STARKILLER OVERPOWERING VADER IN OTHER MEDIUMS


I never defer to other versions of the game in order to contradict the novelisation/s, I only use them as corroborating, secondary evidence. I'll take the novelisation as primary evidence.

Then why is it that you cited dozens of gifs and comic scans in your second post that basically all contradict the novelization? Given that premise, you should have no difficulty accepting all of the sources (that contradict the novel) which show Galen beating Vader fair and square.

THE PRIMA GUIDE: VADER > GALEN


Vader is already a better duelist than Starkiller in TFU2. The Prima Guide says Vader is an "unparalleled duelist"; this logically includes Starkiller. Considering the combatants are in the same ballpark in terms of augmentation, this confirms that Vader is the most skilled of the two.

This accolade is obviously hyperbole - I fundamentally disagree that we should take a quote from a Prima Guide trying to hype up its bosses as an authority on anything. If taken literally it would place Vader above Sidious in Lightsaber combat which we know isn’t true given that a post-prime “shadow of his former self” (Insider #62) Kenobi is canonically equal to Vader (1) and holds his own against him for over a minute in Lightsaber combat (link) with Vader not making any headway. Comparatively, there is an “enormous” (Nick Gillard: Duelling Jedi) gap between the tier 9 Sidious and the tier 8 Obi-Wan Kenobi:

Nick Gillard, The Making of Revenge of the Sith wrote:As they approach the end of the climactic battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin, Gillard explains how he's rated the various swordsmen: "On Attack of the Clones, I had to give them levels," he says. "Sidious is a level nine[out of ten]. On this film, Obi is eight-he's moved up-Anakin is a nine; Mace is a nine, Yoda is a nine. They're up with Sidious.

But if you really want to take it as placing Vader > Sidious in sabers, be my guest, it places SK close to Sidious in sabers at least - given that SK competes with Vader in TFU 2 - which works all the better for my case, especially against a character like Plagueis who lacks saber accolades.

ESB LUKE VS VADER


It's like you didn't even read and take in what I wrote. Compared to TFU2 Vader, this Vader has more mastery over himself, the Force, is freed himself of the pain of his suit (and its limitations), and is a better lightsaber duelist (see previous post for sources).

It’s like you’re totally ignoring my arguments. Yes, Vader is significantly stronger than he was in ANH, but this is utterly irrelevant given that Luke explicitly did not match Vader in ESB - he wasn’t even close as elaborated on in my last post. Even Lucas agrees, he calls the fight “one-sided” making it very clear that the fight wasn’t just a victory for Vader, it was a decisive one - which is pretty self-evident within the material. While Lucas does preface the statement with “slightly” that has no bearing on my argument as even if it is only “slightly one-sided” it is still ultimately “one-sided” which is not a positive summary of Luke’s performance in the duel under any context and does not even remotely imply parity. Meanwhile, despite him being exhausted beforehand and Vader having significant knowledge on how he fights Starkiller still defeated Vader in The Force Unleashed 2. Re-stating your original argument doesn’t constitute as a rebuttal.

Luke challenges this new and improved Vader to such an extent that the fight is "long and trying" for both men.

Luke gives Vader a struggle, sure - the fight wasn’t easy for Vader - but that’s about as much credit as Luke will get. Again, the fight was one-sided and Luke is virtually about to collapse from exhaustion after the exchange in the Carbonite freezing chamber, whereas in the final segment of the duel Vader comes on “twice as powerful as before” (ESB Junior Novel) indicating he’s not close to burning out (Luke is though), and he’s consistently portrayed as the dominant force throughout. The gap between Vader and Luke in ESB can easily be as big as the gap between Vader and his ANH self, who Starkiller was superior to.

Lucas, who per the rules of this debate is de-facto rule of law describes the fight as only "slightly one-sided", and Insider confirms "It is only Vader’s much greater experience that gives the Dark Lord the dominant edge in the battle." (Insider #62) This is saying that the only gap between Luke and Vader is Vader's experience, which indicates Luke's skill is already ~ Vader's, and thus >> Starkiller's.

I already addressed the Lucas quote above. As for the Insider quote, have you ever considered that his experience may grant him greater skill? I don’t exactly get how you jump from Vader’s experience being his edge (no shit it’s all that gives him the advantage - if their experience were equal Luke would crush Vader given his superior aptitude), to Vader ~ Luke in skill.

ROTJ LUKE VS VADER


You're also missing the point that ESB Luke is only the stepping stone for ROTJ Luke, the Luke you conceded as being Vader's equal in the Force and as a duelist:

Since I've already debunked your claims RE: exhaustion scaling a ">>>>>>>>>>" gap in your words to ~ TFU2 Vader, we thus find that ROTJ Luke's parity with a far stronger Vader is of course entirely relevant.

I’m not missing the point. You were doing a growth comparison between Marek and Luke, so I decided to point out potentially mitigating factors regarding ESB Luke vs Galen (which is relevant to Luke’s growth). I fully acknowledge that if you prove parity between Galen and Vader circa TFU your case stands due to ROTJ Luke’s parity though.

Note additionally that Vader has never felt as powerful as he did shortly before his confrontation with Luke on the Death Star, "His power was great, now, greater than it had ever been. It shimmered from within, and resonated with the waves of darkness that flowed from the Emperor." (ROTJ Novelisation).

This is entirely irrelevant to cite. How much stronger did he grow? Did he actually grow to the extent where it’s at all relevant to note in your scaling chain?

ROTJ Luke = ROTJ Vader > ESB Vader ~/> ESB Luke > TFU2 Vader ~ Starkiller.

The gap between ROTJ and ESB Vader is completely unquantifiable, and thus is barely worth mentioning. ESB Luke isn’t at all ~ ESB Vader or necessarily even > TFU 2 Vader. You utterly ignored all of the rebuttals I wrote to that point in my previous post, and then just re-cited all of your quotes without remotely explaining why they debunk my argument - that’s a concession. Finally, your arguments against Galen’s exhaustion consisted of citing examples that weren’t comparable to Starkiller’s situation which even then still showed the negative impacts of exhaustion in combat. You also utterly failed to address my claims that Starkiller overpowered Vader and that Vader stonewalled Starkiller because of prior knowledge on how he fights.

E) Galen vs Luke: Sidious Comparison


DE LUKE VS SIDIOUS


And even ROTJ Luke was merely yet another stepping stone in my argument which led to DE Luke. Considering you had nothing to say regarding my actual argument for Luke's growth up to DE, I'm assuming you're conceding it. Luke has exponentially more growth than Galen, indicating a greater Force potential.

*CONCESSION COUNTER: 2

I responded to the whole comparison by contesting the claim that Sidious can stomp Galen which is what your entire argument is based on - I don’t need to address Luke’s fight with Sidious to debunk your argument. Me not addressing Luke’s own fight with Sidious isn’t a concession, because as I stated in the opening section of my post, I would first need to deny the notion and then agree to it for it to be counted as me conceding.

TFU DS ENDING: GALEN VS SIDIOUS


Yes, Galen gets his revenge on Vader, then instantly regrets it "Faced with a critical choice, the secret apprentice faltered. Rather than save his friend Rahm Kota, he gave in to his hatred and destroyed his old master, Darth Vader. When he realized what he’d done, he regretted his decision." (TFU1 Wii Prima Guide). Thus, his subsequent attempt to kill the Emperor isn't based on hatred (the Dark Side). On the contrary, he regrets killing Vader out of hate, then attempts to trick the Emperor.

This quote states that Starkiller regrets leaving Kota at the mercy of Sidious in order to get his revenge on Vader, it in no way necessitates that Starkiller regretted the act of getting revenge on Vader by itself.  Moreover, this quote further reinforces my point that Starkiller would have felt guilty about leaving Kota at the mercy of Sidious, and in case you didn’t notice, this would hinder him even in an LS mindset (per the HK-47 quote I posted) which you utterly failed to address in your rebuttal. That’s a concession.

There's no evidence that Galen wasn't "enlightened", or rather convinced that he was wrong to think killing Vader out of hatred was the best way. The Galen who tried to backstab the Emperor by lulling him into a false sense of security isn't "DS Starkiller". The only reason it's called the "Dark Side Ending" is that Galen has a moment of weakness and kills Vader out of hate, then regrets it instantly (and of course becomes a Dark Sider after Sidious mutilates him).

Galen is visibly seething when he attacks Sidious (Sidious had just tortured Kota and then asked Galen to kill him, why wouldn’t Galen be angry?), and given that he was totally willing to kill Vader he clearly hasn’t beaten his anger as enlightened LS Starkiller did. My rebuttal still stands.


Last edited by The Dragon Of The West on February 26th 2020, 11:54 am; edited 8 times in total
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SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 Empty Re: SS - Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3)

February 24th 2020, 12:15 am

4) Vader Scaling


A) Galen vs Vader


STRAWMANN


This is ironic because you omitted the last sentence of my paragraph when you quoted it:

The underlined is what you omitted. You've claimed that I "blatantly omitted the whole passage in favour of a single citation to favour Vader", then explained how Vader was only competing until Starkiller discovered a better way to kill. Except... that's exactly what my paragraph says. If you read closely, my argument on why Starkiller isn't more powerful than Vader isn't tied to the opening of the duel, it's part of a larger argument. Consider that the opening sentence of my next paragraph is "So does this prove that Galen is more powerful than Vader to the point where he can outright ragdoll his former master?" You've examined my paragraph in a vacuum and argued a strawman. I describe the onset of the duel, followed by a power boost from Galen that allows him to ragdoll Vader. You omit the part about the power boost and ragdolling, then claim I've omitted context to favour Vader over Galen (which isn't what I'm arguing).

I never acted like you didn’t acknowledge the ragdolling and Galen’s mid-fight boost. The problem lies in the fact that we clearly interpret the “boost” differently. Here’s what you claimed: “Galen is free of his master’s conditioning on Raxus Prime, and thus also in his confrontation with Vader. Despite this and a further boost in power during the duel, he still isn’t more powerful than Vader.“

Refer to the underlined. You argued that Galen broke his conditioning and then achieved a further boost in power on top of that, yet still wasn’t more powerful than Vader. Ergo, you don’t view the boost as Galen starting the fight hindered and overcoming that hindrance, you view the boost as him starting the fight at base, and stacking another power increase on top of that. To which I responded:

I wrote:The rest of the passage clarifies the context which allowed Vader to compete, that being that Galen doesn’t understand how to kill without drawing on his rage/desire for revenge (he only does so at the end of the fight) which he’s explicitly resisting in this instance, ergo he’s not fighting at his best - when he does he dominates Vader.

The context that Galen was hindered is specifically highlighted by me. Ergo, Galen doesn’t stack another amp on top of his breaking conditioning boost, he starts the fight hindered and jumps up to his base power.

Also, I didn’t blatantly omit anything - I literally quote the section where you acknowledge Galen’s boost later in my post - I split this part off specifically for reasons I will elaborate on below.

What my paragraph actually says is that Vader and Galen are fighting "relatively evenly", then Galen has his power boost and ragdolls Vader.

Which is precisely the problem. Note again:

Despite this and a further boost in power during the duel, he still isn’t more powerful than Vader. At the onset, the duel is relatively even, “Darth Vader fought brilliantly, never employing anything less than a killing stroke. His intention was lethal. All he needed was one slip, one tiny gap in his opponent's defences… The apprentice vowed not to give him one. He whirled and danced around his Master's defences, testing them to their limits.” Both men are struggling to gain an advantage over the other.

You state that despite breaking his conditioning he still isn’t more powerful than Vader, and then go on to describe how the two fought equally. How I’m not meant to interpret that as you supporting your claim that Galen after breaking his conditioning isn’t more powerful than Vader when that was the previous topic is beyond me. If you legitimately weren’t intending to argue that then fair enough, but miss me with this, “oh, he strawmanned me, I’ve got him now” bullshit, when your post is worded so poorly. Perhaps, rather than raving about the men of straw you should be considering how to better word your own post, so I don’t make these errors in interpretation.

The issue of my argument isn't on who was winning/losing the duel, it was focused on Galen's TK. Not at one point did I argue that Vader was the superior duelist to Galen in TFU 1; especially since the second half of the quote I provided from the novelisation talks about how Galen was testing Vader to his limits before the power boost. Nice strawman.

Your argument was centered around Galen’s power/TK sure, but given that it was in the same section as and jumbled up between a larger argument about how Galen’s potential isn’t ~ Luke’s, I assumed the first part (i.e. claiming Galen is equal Vader after breaking his conditioning) was intended to be a comparison drawn between SK and Luke in regards to potential, so I split it off from the rest and addressed it in that section of my post. This is reflected by me saying after my rebuttal to it: “So trying to dismiss his insane potential based on comparisons to Luke in ESB, is completely and totally pointless.”

Bear in mind that my assumption wasn’t made without reason, in the ESB section of your post you reference Vader’s “fights with Galen Marek, “So, overall, his combative deadliness and power in the Force have increased dramatically since his fights with Galen Marek. This is the Vader that Luke Skywalker in ESB faces off against, and he does extremely well considering his extreme deficit in training and experience.” and in general during the ESB section, you’re not particularly clear which fight you’re referring to - the only other comment you make is this: “So, Luke holds his own against Vader at the height of his powers, in a state 'far more formidable' in combat than what Galen Marek faced - all with a bare minimum of training."

Overall, I viewed it as though you were arguing Galen despite removing his conditioning fought equally with Vader and only won when he stacked another power boost on top of that which is fairly comparable with Luke’s fights with Vader in ESB and ROTJ which were accomplished by Luke with far inferior training, and far less time spent doing so. This isn’t unreasonable, however, given the way your post was laid out and it certainly wasn’t intentional on my part.

TK SAVANT


Probably not. That's not my problem though, I'm merely referencing official source material that as practically as canonical as the game. That material says Galen's TK is disproportionately more potent than his base power level. That's not a bad faith assessment, it's just using the guidelines agreed to in the debate to point out a fact.

I never said you citing potentially mitigating factors, and highlighting quotes was bad faith - I was specifically addressing the fact that you said there’s no reason to believe Starkiller is vastly more powerful than Vader, even though as I explained here that was probably the intent. It’s okay to contest the specific ragdolling but acting as though this fight was written with the intent that Vader isn’t considerably less powerful is very dishonest.

We don't ignore his feats with TK, he can do them whenever. That's not the point I'm trying to address, so let's stay on topic.

What I meant was we don’t just assume that none of his TK feats can be used to gauge his base power level, and ignore them entirely.

I wholeheartedly agree; I also do not believe that Starkiller's TK or lightning is insanely more potent than his base Force power at all, but you're missing the point, which is that Starkiller's power in the Force relative to Vader is unquantifiable. He might only be mildly more powerful than Vader; combine that with savant abilities in TK and you can appear to be a lot more powerful.

Right, but the kind of gap here we’re discussing is significantly greater than something like this...

Sidious equalling Yoda (link) who can decisively beat Dooku (2), who can (while fighting Anakin) beat Kenobi in seconds (link), who can outclass Maul, and take on Maul+Savage (link).

...the reason being that despite this Sidious cannot directly breach Maul’s Force Barrier (he only manages to blast Maul with TK by “pouncing” with a “snarl” on the tiniest opening from Maul), whereas Galen can pretty much effortlessly rip through Vader’s and utterly dominate him with TK.

Darth Maul: Shadow Conspiracy wrote:But strong as he had become, Maul found himself in awe of Sidious. The Sith Lord was astonishingly fast and efficient, and the Force flowed through him effortlessly. His sabers stabbed and slashed through the smallest hole in an opponent’s guard, his movements never carried him a millimeter out of position, and he could sense every attack Maul and Savage made before it developed.

Maul tried to slash past Sidious’s guard, only to find his Master had given ground, causing Maul to extend his arms too far and leave himself slightly unbalanced. It was the smallest stumble, easily corrected, but Sidious saw it—and pounced before Maul could draw himself back. Snarling, he reached out with the Force and slammed Maul against the wall, leaving him lying stunned in a heap.

If Starkiller’s Telekinesis isn’t insanely more potent than his base power as you’ve conceded then there’s no reason to even think it’s close to creating anything close to the above gap between Starkiller and Vader when under your assumption the latter is only “mildly” more powerful. Again, Starkiller is clearly vastly stronger than Vader which was the main point here.

Moreover, according to TCSWE, as a general precedent, it requires multiple Force Users to break the “nearly impenetrable” Force Barrier of an opponent indicating that the gap is potentially a 3:1 ratio in favour of the defender, yet you’re telling me SK can circumvent this immense disparity in power required from both forces, so it’s only a “mild” gap, by being a TK savant even though his TK power isn’t insanely more powerful than his base power? That’s some suspect insight.

SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 Tcswe_11

You’re also forgetting the reason why I cited the ragdolling in the first place:

I wrote:Overall: Vader>>TCW Mace Windu>>TPM Mace>Jedi Dooku>Darth Maul.

So what is the relevance of this? Well, it’s rather simple based on showings from Plagueis probably can’t replicate this feat due to the scaling above.

To elaborate, Sidious grew extensively from TPM (by which point he was already better than Plagueis) to TCW (elaborated upon in later section), yet he couldn’t ragdoll TCW Maul whereas Galen can ragdoll TPM Maul’s significant superior without effort.

You’d have to argue that Starkiller’s TK (which isn’t vastly greater than his normal power according to you) can alongside Maul’s growth from TPM to TCW make up for:

1) Sidious’s own power boost at the end of the novel, and 10+ year growth between TPM and TCW (i.e. the gap between TCW Sidious and Plagueis).

2) The significant gap between TPM Maul and Vader.

3) The vast difference in performance between Galen and TCW Sidious.

It doesn’t seem very likely that these two variables can make up for those gaps especially when you’ve admitted one of them isn’t that significant (i.e. Galen’s savant TK abilities).

VADER’S INJURIES


Why is this relevant? Because we don't even know if Enlightened!Starkiller could have ragdolled a fresh TFU1 Vader. Consider that in a universe where one lightsaber wound typically means the end of the fight, Vader suffered three wounds, all "deep" cuts, "Vader's lightsaber moved too slowly to block a blow to his chest, allowing the apprentice's blade to slash deeply across his armored throat...a second scored a deep wound across his black-clad shoulder. A third stabbed deep into his thigh." He's then literally shaking and can't even hold his lightsaber straight "Darth Vader reeled backward, servos whining in his injured limbs and lightsaber shaking." Not exactly an indication that Vader is putting up the best defence. It's only after this that he's ragdolled. So Enlightened!Starkiller dominating a deeply wounded and shaking Vader is not proof that he can ragdoll Vader at will; he needs to beat Vader down first.

You have not at all substantiated that these wounds at all hindered Vader’s abilities to draw upon the Force (it’s not stated anywhere in the passage you posted). After all Vader’s fully armoured, so there’s no reason to believe these wounds were debilitating enough to seriously impact him especially given that DS users can draw upon pain from less crippling wounds to feed their strength. Plus, Galen is glad later when he throws a generator at Vader that “finally some real blood was flowing” which doesn’t make sense if he’d done excessive damage and massively weakened Vader prior. When you actually have a quote saying he was hindered let me know, but until then I have no reason to think he was. The actual rationale given as to why Galen can ragdoll Vader is pretty clearly stated in the passage - and it has absolutely nothing to do with Vader being injured - it’s made clear that it’s because Vader’s “power over the apprentice was gone”.

Consider also that the opening that started it all was a surprise to both of them, "Instead of pressing the attack, the apprentice stood his ground. Despite himself, he was as surprised as his former Master clearly was."

The quote you posted doesn’t necessitate that it was the opening, they could have been surprised by Starkiller’s new strength which utterly dominated Vader. Neither Vader nor Starkiller had no reason to be shocked that he could land a hit when Vader was massively backpedalling prior.

This is despite base Starkiller already having a speed advantage over Vader, then receiving his boost in power; and even then Vader still actually reacted to the blow as well "Vader's lightsaber moved too slowly to block a blow to his chest, allowing the apprentice's blade to slash deeply across his armored throat."

Relevance??? Vader reacting to a strike doesn’t add anything to the discussion on whether there’s a ragdoll gap between the two, I have no clue why you’re citing it.

OTHER STUFF RE: GALEN VS VADER


And this is where I couldn't agree with you more, "That doesn’t mean his other powers are vastly below his TK and Lightning though..."; since this further shows that Starkiller is inexorably tied to Vader. You cannot prove that Starkiller could ragdoll a fresh Vader in TFU1 because when he did ragdoll Vader, it was after Vader had fought on for a period of time, then suffered three wounds and was shaking (weak defence). Whittling down someone then ragdolling is not the same as being able to just outright ragdoll at the start of the fight. So if Starkiller's TK and Lightning aren't that much better compared to his other powers (which you have argued), and he can't ragdoll TFU1 Vader, that means it's unlikely he's even much more powerful than Vader at all. He's better than Vader, but he also can't ragdoll him either, whereas we know Plagueis can because he's approximately as powerful as Sidious (who can ragdoll any incarnation of suit Vader without going beyond his body's potential).

Most of this is summary, but there are three points you didn’t make before which utterly baffle me:

Red text: Vader may have fought for an extended period of time, but there’s no reason to assume he was tired when it’s never stated. Moreover, you’re completely ignoring the fact that Galen was in the exact same duel as Vader and even backpedalled at a point throughout due to Vader’s powers redoubling partway through. There’s no reason to assume Galen wouldn’t be tired as well. Also, remember that the comparison I’m drawing here is between Galen ragdolling Vader and Sidious being incapable of ragdolling TCW Maul without an opening, and if you look at the fight I’m drawing a comparison to, Maul had fought for an extended period of time as well.

Violet text: Even if your points about Vader being injured hampering his Force abilities were correct that doesn’t mean Galen needed to injure Vader, just that he chose to. As you already cited, Galen is initially surprised by his newfound strength allowing him to stomp Vader meaning he explicitly didn’t believe it to be as strong as it was, so him not ragdolling Vader when he initially gained that strength isn’t proof he couldn’t. After that, he’s enraged and just attacks Vader madly with the intent to cut him up which once again doesn’t prove he couldn’t ragdoll Vader. You’re jumping to conclusions based on literally nothing.

Green text: You didn’t go into detail as to why Sidious can ragdoll Vader here (not that it’s relevant given that Plagueis doesn’t share parity with Sidious), but you do later in your post (in a completely unrelated section?), which I’ll address below:

But this is all meaningless anyway; I've already demonstrated that there's no proof Enlightened!Galen could ragdoll TFU1 Vader off the bat, yet we know that the Emperor can rapidly incapacitate a "far more formidable" Vader "at the height of his powers" with no trouble or sign he needed to go all-out to do so, as we see from his Force equal Luke Skywalker being utterly incapable of fending off Sidious' lightning. Thus, Sidious could ragdoll Enlightened!Galen anyway, and since Plagueis is on approximately the same power level, so could he.

You’re baselessly assuming overpowering someone with Force Lightning is as difficult as ripping through their Force Barrier. It clearly isn’t, Force Lightning vs Tutaminis appears to be 1-1 - Yoda and Sidious clock out at the same time (3) and are canonically equally powerful (4), Revan despite only being marginally inferior to Vitiate (he renders him limp with TK (5), and gets within striking distance (6) during their fight) gets downed by Vitiate’s Lightning (7), etc. In fact, you even argued (fairly recently I might add) that the attacker has an easier time than the defender in other threads (link): “Force lightning and barriers are not inherently difficult abilities, whereas tutaminis is. It would then logically follow that the one on the defense in a tutaminis-lightning lock is always at a disadvantage.” In total contrast, you need to be much more powerful than your opponent to break a Force Barrier. For example, Sidious is utterly incapable of breaking Maul’s Barrier without creating an opening first, despite clowning Maul and Savage, and TCSWE emphasises that on average multiple Force Users are required to breach an opposing Force Users Barrier. You have no proof Plagueis could ragdoll Vader.

B) VADER VS ASAJJ VENTRESS


This is the bit I'm gonna focus on, because it's where your argument breaks down. Of course, the quote doesn't mention whether they ever became a threat because the whole point of it was to simply explain that they were not trained to become a threat. That's the entire point of the quote; it's not all-inclusive.

You’re completely missing the point. The source wouldn’t talk about how Sidious’s adepts weren’t given the training necessary to challenge him or Vader, and then list an example of an adept who could challenge him despite their training deficit lol. Your interpretation of the quote is literally: “These guys weren’t trained enough to be threats to Vader or Sidious even though they were.” That doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Indeed, the source calls her “only a Sith adept” as mentioned in my last post indicating she falls into the established criteria. Ventress clearly isn’t a threat to Sidious (nor Vader) circa her fight with Mace Windu - Sidious only disposes of her due to her growing strength as of TCW S3.

My argument isn't contingent on Sidious sucking at all, he really couldn't have known about Dooku's extra training.

And this is when you realise MP hasn’t been keeping track of the points being made in the debate… In my opener, I explicitly acknowledge Dooku’s extra training, but state that it happens after Ventress’s fight with Mace Windu:

I wrote:The feat I will cite clearly happens in the events before Yoda: Dark Rendevous during which Ventress had yet to be taken on as Dooku’s apprentice, and had only learned “scraps, lesser arts.”

Ergo, by her fight with Windu, she was not trained to be a threat to Palpatine (which was the main achievement I cited for her), so yes, your argument is absolutely contingent on arguing Sidious sucks at keeping his adepts in check.

And considering Ventress leaves the service of Dooku and therefore Sidious during the Clone Wars, then proceeds to become stronger, she doesn't really fall under the quote even if it said what you're wanting it to say, which is that "Vader > Ventress"; whereas the quote is simply saying "Vader > Ventress in Sith training". That's literally it.

What…? You’re completely losing track of the scaling chain once again. I cited the Ventress quote to prove Vader’s superiority over Ventress at the time she fought Mace Windu (i.e. before she leaves the Sith Order). I couldn’t care less about proving his superiority to her even during her training by Dooku, and certainly not by the time she leaves Sidious’s service. My whole argument has been based around a specific iteration of Ventress not Vader > Ventress in general. Once again, you have completely failed to pay attention to the larger context of my arguments - I’m legitimately beginning to question whether you’re even reading what I’m writing.

Sidious didn't intend for agents other than his Sith apprentices to be trained enough to challenge him or his apprentice, not mutually exclusive with them ever becoming a threat. Thus, you're scaling remains incorrect.

You said this last post as well, but I’m honestly failing to see how Ventress can become a threat to Sidious despite not being trained to.

5) The Power of Darth Plagueis The Wise (or lack thereof) Continued


A) Fear


OMITTING TERRIFYING ENERGY


I'd rather clarify what is and isn't in dispute. Sidious' decision to kill Plagueis was on-the-spot, "Again, his eyes darted around the room, and the dark side whispered: Your election assured, the Sun Guards absent, Plagueis unsuspecting and asleep... And he moved in a blur." In fact, it's heavily insinuated that it wasn't even his decision, but the dark side whispering to him, since just beforehand he was considering killing Plagueis, but decided against it: "A few meters distant, Sidious came to a halt, gazing at Plagueis for a long moment, as though making up his mind about something. Then, blowing out his breath, he set his own glass down and reached for the cloak he had draped over a chair. Swirling it around himself, he started for the door, only to stop shortly before he reached it." The clear intent here is that Sidious doesn't believe he can defeat Plagueis, or considers it too much of a risk, even when Plagueis is highly intoxicated, sleeping for the first time in two decades with none of his guards around to protect him. This, combined with the quote in discussion - that two years before TPM Sidious describes Plagueis as omitting "terrifying energy" and could contain "the full power of the dark side" - implies that Sidious was never seriously considering challenging Plagueis; only a specific set of circumstances allowed for it to happen, and even then he dismissed it until the Dark Side whispered for him to do it.

Yes, Sidious wasn’t seriously contemplating challenging Plagueis, but as mentioned in previous posts that’s both due to Plagueis being comparably powerful and potentially having aces up his sleeve (i.e. esoteric abilities he hadn’t taught Sheev) to utilise against him. The latter factor isn’t actually proven to be the case though, which makes you using this scan of Sidious being afraid to attack Plagueis - to substantiate your suggestion that Sidious’s egotistical speech on having greater power than Plagueis isn’t indicative of his true views - somewhat suspect. While your other quote about terrifying energy is obviously referring specifically to power, you’ve utterly failed to explain why this means Sidious doesn’t view himself as more powerful than Plagueis as of TPM despite me asking you to do so in my last post. Overall, you’ve substantiated Sidious didn’t want to challenge Plagueis not that he doesn’t view himself as more powerful which is utterly inconsequential to my argument.

SEEMINGLY OMNIPOTENT


This is a red herring. I was responding to your claim that "Sidious’s fear of Plagueis is largely based on the fact that Plagueis potentially could have become immortal." The purpose of the quote was to give an idea of how Sidious is feeling about Plagueis approaching TPM, and ties into my other points. This shouldn't be analysed in a vacuum (which you seem to be fond of).

What? Reminder to everyone that this is the point I made in response to MP’s claim that Palpatine views Plagueis as “seemingly omnipotent”:

I wrote:Right, so the sole reason Sidious views Plagueis as seemingly almost omnipotent is that he escaped the devastation of Sojourn due to a tip-off from Jabba alerting him of the bombing before it happened (not a display of Force Power). You’re essentially arguing Sidious is like, “Wow, Plagueis flew away from a bombing in an invisible ship due to receiving a warning about it just prior, that makes him really strong in the Force.” which doesn’t make any sense in the slightest. The more logical take is to assume that this quote has nothing to do with Force Power and that Sidious stating Plagueis is omnipotent refers to him having almost unlimited allies and resources at his disposal.

How on earth does your response address the fact that the quote is very clearly not referring to Force power, therefore making it completely irrelevant to your argument? It’s not relevant to denote in a discussion entirely about Sidious’s view of Plagueis as a Force User that Sidious (around TPM) felt Plagueis had a great amount of resources at his disposal. I’m not analysing it in a vacuum, the fact that it doesn’t refer to Force Power makes it totally inconsequential in any context - even as supporting evidence.

SIDIOUS’S SPEECH


Because Sidious (bar perhaps a few arguably similar) is pretty much the most egotistical and self-centered person in the SW universe. If you check out my last post, I linked a part from the ROTJ novel where he literally associates himself with the void of space.

Sidious being egotistical does not make his speech inaccurate of his actual views. Yes, he’s arrogant and thinks a lot of himself, but that doesn’t mean his grand moment where he reveals how he really feels and how he manipulated Plagueis doesn’t come from his heart. His speech may not be accurate compared to the real truth of their respective power levels (due to Sidious's arrogance), but that doesn’t mean it’s an inaccurate depiction of his POV, as stated previously. Remember, this argument started because I’m trying to prove that Sidious’s commentary on Plagueis post-boost is obviously circumstantial, and not based on power as he clearly views himself as the more powerful of the two even prior to his massive boost in power.

He goes from deciding against killing Plagueis, to doing it because the Dark Side whispered to him, to making a vain, egotistical speech, to being in abject fear for his own safety.

Absolutely none of this makes Sidious’s POV unreliable. His fear has been addressed, and him deciding to kill Plagueis after hesitating prior just shows that he doesn’t make decisions lightly, and can change his mind - it doesn’t make his opinion on him vs Plagueis invalid.

I don't agree with using his speech as 100% accurate. Plus of course he claims to be more powerful than Plagueis yet also equally powerful to Plagueis in that same speech, so.

False. Sidious wasn’t talking about his current self when he called them equals, he was referring to the time where Plagueis started trying to turn him into a messenger - he grew more powerful since then.

SAM WITWER VS JAMES LUCENO


Perhaps, to an extent.

That’s a concession. This isn’t a response to my argument that Witwer’s comments are accepted/official whereas Luceno’s aren’t - a vague “perhaps” doesn’t constitute as a rebuttal - and thus I have absolutely no reason to accept Luceno’s quote as a product of accepting Witwer’s. However, Luceno’s quote doesn’t even favour your argument, so even if I did accept it I wouldn’t be forced to agree to your argument.

But as I discussed above, just because Witwer had his opinions on Starkiller's potential published in Insider doesn't mean those comments are treated as factual, especially when G-canon and other sources contradict him.

G-Canon never contradicts Witwer. The only argument you made in relation to Lucas was that he said Sidious wanted to rule the universe - not have a successor - which has absolutely no relation to Witwer’s comments on Galen’s potential vs Luke’s. The rest of the sources that supposedly contradict Witwer have already been addressed.

LUCENO ON PLAGUEIS VS PRE-BOOST SIDIOUS


Plagueis and Sidious are quite comparable, so of course Plagueis doesn't have a definitive 10/10 win chance, I've already made this clear.

Wait so you’re arguing Plagueis is simultaneously comparable to pre-boost Sidious and post-boost Sidious at the same time? That’s some suspect insight, but I’ll address the flaws of doing so in due time.

I don't find his use of the term "undermining" as particularly hindering. Dooku may "undermine" Ventress because he taught her, just like any Sith master would take advantage of specific weaknesses they know of/have deliberately developed in their apprentices. The fact that Plagueis may be able to undermine Sidious in a duel means that his inside knowledge may give him the ability to work against Sidious' style.

Seeing as you already conceded my premise I’m not sure exactly why you’re choosing to nitpick this specific point. Anyway, Luecno’s statement is that Plagueis could have found a way to undermine Sidious, which doesn’t suggest he was already aware of ways to weaken him. Again, the fact that Plagueis would have to find a way to gradually weaken Sidious in order to beat him, and only “may have” succeeded doesn’t show a decisive gap between the two (Luceno didn’t just flat out say Plagueis wins) unlike between pre-boost and post-boost Sidious.

PRE-BOOST SIDIOUS VS POST-BOOST SIDIOUS


Moreover, you've failed to substantiate this claim:

In total contrast, post-boost Sidious is much more powerful than pre-boost Sidious

Where's the evidence for this? This is a very big claim, "much more powerful". Since you fail to prove it, I'll consider it as a concession.

*CONCESSION COUNTER: 3

Me not providing evidence for a claim, because I thought it would be self-evident isn’t a concession. But really, seeing as you asked so nicely, I’ll bite.

The descriptions used in the passage do not remotely imply a small power up - as noted in my second post “filled to bursting” is commonly used to indicate an abundance of something and in this case Sidious is “filled to bursting” with Force Power i.e. he’s suddenly been juiced up with energy. Moreover, the Force is apparently so strong within him that he feels like he’s going to disappear into it which isn’t language that implies a small boost - I very much doubt Sidious would suddenly go from feeling completely normal to feeling like he’s about to dissolve into the Force from a tiny boost in power, that makes 0 sense - he’s clearly utterly overwhelmed by this sudden and dramatic intake. Plus, Sidious felt like he’d been “anointed” by the Dark Side and that this boost constituted a new “beginning”. Once again, Sidious would not feel this way about an insignificant moment wherein absolutely nothing of note happened besides him receiving slight Force upgrade. I could go on all day, but anyone wishing to come to reasonable interpretations about the material will recognize Sidious’s boost massively increased his power. At the very least, the boost is unquantifiable creating an unknown gap between Plagueis and post-boost Sidious, which isn’t at all beneficial to your argument given that your entire case has been contingent on arguing parity between the two when there is a gap between them that you can’t quantify.

Anyway, you seem to be basing your entire rebuttal on this point, and your commentary on Sidious’s fear of Plagueis post-boost has dropped dramatically between this post and the last - you didn’t even address my commentary on Sidious being scared of Plagueis possessing esoteric techniques, so I assume that’s a concession. Now, before we dive into your lazy rebuttals against the immortality and other fear related points let’s look at the state of things:

-Sidious’s POV shows himself > Plagueis in power (pre-boost), so there are obviously circumstantial reasons why he’s afraid of Plagueis (i.e. esoteric abilities and Plagueis potentially having become immortal).

-You originally contested the idea that esoteric abilities would have contributed to Sidious’s fear, but I refuted your rebuttals and you haven’t offered a response meaning your case for parity via Sidious’s fear is dead in the water - even if you successfully refute the immortality argument which I’m doubtful you’ll be able to do - you concede there’s context to that fear.

-Your entire rebuttal to everything seems to be contingent on arguing it’s up to me to prove post-boost Sidious is vastly more powerful than pre-boost Sidious ignoring the fact that even if I couldn’t the gap would be unknown/unquantifiable, and you still wouldn’t be able to prove parity between Plagueis and post-boost Sidious anyway, so your case still falls.

Yeah, this argument is looking increasingly unsalvageable...

IMMORTALITY


Fair enough, my bad.

So, you criticise me for strawmanning you throughout your post and then in that very same post admit to strawmanning me? Oh, the irony! So, not only is your response utterly unsalvageable you’ve now admitted to strawmanning me on top of that. This keeps getting better and better.

You're the one arguing post-boost Sidious is significantly more powerful than Plagueis, so why should Plagueis being able to live on through death be a threat to him if Sidious is far more powerful? You've backed yourself into a corner here.

Plagueis’ immortality can easily make up the gap. If Plagueis had actually survived being deprived of air (which he’d have to have done in order to survive) he’d be practically invincible in Sidious’s eyes - how is Sidious supposed to incap a being who won’t die even when suffocating? His power advantage becomes irrelevant because he can’t actually do anything with it against someone who possesses immortality. Moreover, despite admitting to your strawmann, you don’t seem to have learned from it - you’re analysing Plagueis’s immortality in a vacuum. I didn’t even argue in previous posts that Plagueis’s immortality alone makes up the gap, I’m arguing that in combination with esoteric abilities he might not have taught Sidious he could potentially make up the gap - at least enough to make Sidious feel threatened. All of these points were stated in the text you quoted which you seem to have completely ignored, that’s another concession: “If he had advanced MM to the point where he became immortal he’d be virtually impossible to incapacitate. Add on the fact that Plagueis potentially hadn’t taught Sidious everything and had some tricks up his sleeve, plus his own incredible power, and you definitely have reasonable cause for Sidious to be scared. Also, if Plagueis had become immortal that also proposes the question to Sidious: What else can he do with MM?”

Pretty much the same as what I said above. Why should Sidious, who according to you is "much more powerful than pre-boost Sidious" - and you said that pre-boost Sidious and Plagueis are comparably powerful - be concerned about a significantly weaker Force entity without a corporeal form?

See above. As for your statement that apparently immortal surviving Plagueis wouldn’t have a corporeal form what the hell is that based on?

He didn't seem worried about "a power greater than himself" after he'd confirmed that Plagueis couldn't threaten him from beyond the grave in a combative sense.

I’ve covered all the beats regarding Sidious’s fear of Plagueis above. Plagueis’s ability to threaten him isn’t solely power related.

B) Potential


QUOTE 1


Okay, let's post the quote again:

Beyond the vision of the Jedi Knights, somewhere within the darkness, the greatest master of evil ever to use Sith power bides his time. As his strength grows, his plans begin to shape the course of the galaxy, and his snares await the unsuspecting.

And let's remember your original point:

Quote 1: Self-explanatory. It notes Sidious “bides his time” and only “as his strength grows” do “his planes begin to shape the course of the galaxy” i.e. Sidious is biding his time and gathering strength before he initiates his plans. Why would Sidious bide his time in order to gather strength if he’s only going to use that power in extreme moments given that it will severely damage his body, and it isn’t even necessary for said plans?

He's simply biding his time, his strength (force power, political dominance) and his plans are beginning to the shape the galaxy. It's simple, and like the Vader/Ventress quote, you're invoking stuff desperately when they don't actually say what you want it to say. You have no evidence that the quote is saying "Sidious was biding his time until his Force power was enough to enact/finish his plans", or whatever weird argument you're implying.

Underlined: This is a concession. You went from arguing the quote is likely referring to political power - not Force Power - to saying his growing strength includes Force Power.

As for the rest, this rebuttal is essentially just a repeat of your second rebuttal in post 2 which I already refuted and you responded to below, so there’s nothing to refute here other than to just deal with your response. Again: “Your interpretation doesn’t really fit with the reading of the quote, you're arguing that it randomly denoted his strength grew alongside his plans despite that being completely irrelevant to the subject matter (if we accept your take). The quote makes so much more sense if we interpret it as Sidious only finally unleashing his plans when he’s strong enough, and it fits with the text noting just prior Sidious is waiting for the opportune moment to initiate his plans.”

If he's waiting for the opportune moment to initiate his plans, then how can he also be waiting until he's strong enough? How will he be sure his plans will line up with reaching his desired power level? You're just overcomplicating this.

…the opportune moment could be when he’s strong enough. Did you ever consider that or did you just immediately jump to the conclusion that I’m “overcomplicating” this? Because it definitely seems like the latter.

QUOTES 2 AND 3


It's not an active power. Nowhere have you substantiated that.

Sidious is utilising it to cloud the Jedi’s minds, so it clearly is active power as I stated in my second post. It’s not inactive/passive power, if he’s actively using it lmao.

Okay, because why? Saying "it doesn't prove anything" after I link various sources and exposition throughout my posts isn't an answer. That's another concession.

*CONCESSION COUNTER: 4

The sources you linked were all explicitly post-ROTS or ROTS sources meaning they have no relevance to an argument about TPM Sidious and Plagueis. Refer back to the point I made in section 1, me not contesting every single point isn’t a concession - in order for it to be one I’d have to first argue against your proposition, but I haven’t.

Regarding this quote, it is the only quote you’ve cited regarding TCW, and it’s clearly referring to Dark Side degradation not Sidious having power beyond his potential that’s damaging his body - that’s stated absolutely nowhere.

Yoda is merely saying that since the dark side cloud is unprecedented in terms of how it's limiting the Jedi, it must stand to reason that the Sith were also stronger since that has never happened at that level before.

Sure, that’s what Yoda thinks, but he came to this realisation based on how strong Sidious was in his fight with him. As I already stated, the clear intent of the quotes in question is that Sidious grew in active/combat applicable power. The author wouldn’t randomly denote how the Sith have grown stronger when it has no relevance to the fight at hand.

Yes, other explanations that you've failed to substantiate.

Sidious could have suffered from more deformations as a result of the massive orb of energy exploding in both his and Yoda’s faces...

When did I claim he was doing it for the full fight? Why do I need to provide evidence for that?

(Insert strawmann image)

I never claimed that you said Sidious was drawing beyond his biological Force Potential for the full fight, so that’s not a strawmann. Do you know what is a strawmann, though? You saying I did.

I was merely suggesting that seeing as there’s no evidence Sidious was drawing beyond his potential for the whole fight (it’s pretty much contradicted as well, I’m sure we’d see serious visible impacts on screen if he was), there’s no reason to assume he did so right at the start of the fight (i.e. when Yoda muses Sidious must have grown in power) when he wasn’t in any danger especially since Sidious as far as I can tell your argument is that Sidious would only draw beyond his potential in extreme circumstances which were not present right at the beginning of his duel with Yoda. Thus, it was Sidious’s base power that increased, not power he can’t utilise without damaging himself.

Sidious did end up winning though, "The Emperor proved too powerful to defeat." (Source: The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia); "The Jedi Master and the Sith Lord dueled in the Senate chamber, but Sidious was too strong for Yoda to defeat." (Source: Databank: Coruscant History Gallery); and "A fierce duel commenced. Yoda and Darth Sidious each used his side of the Force to try to defeat the other. But the Sith Lord's powers were too strong." (Source: Revenge of the Sith Junior Novelization). I see no reason why Sidious couldn't have drawn beyond his body to get an edge on Yoda.

The argument that Sidious could have potentially drawn beyond his body’s potential at the end of the fight to get an edge on Yoda is utterly irrelevant to my argument given that the quote happens right at the start of the fight, not at the end. Moreover, Sidious being “too powerful to defeat” for example, doesn’t necessitate he’s stronger than Yoda, it can easily work under the context that they’re equals which is stated by several OOU quotes, and reflected by their stalemate in the Lightning Clash.

Not relevant. I'm looking at the Legends continuity regarding this topic on the whole, and this quote happens to conform with the position.

The quote doesn’t conform to your position. Anyway, I argued authorial intent as an aside, I fully acknowledge that if Sidious hit his full potential as of TPM, and if the Yoda quote was worded in such a way that explicitly contradicts the material then the intent should be dismissed.

FILLED TO BURSTING


And I've already explained that there's no reason to take this as hyperbole when other material supports the idea that he hit his potential. Considering you've failed to actually deconstruct one of my core arguments supported from various materials and eras on reaching/abusing the body's Force potential, I see no obligation on my part to repeat myself.

And I’ve already explained that there’s no reason not to take this as hyperbole when other pieces of writing have used this exact same phrase.

You’ve provided 0 reasons for why we shouldn’t dismiss it as hyperbole given that it’s a commonly used English phrase other than spamming examples that just don’t line up with Sidious’s situation. Again, the novel according to you attempts to convey Sidious hit his full potential with a single phrase (despite the obvious ramifications on the rest of the EU) when in virtually every other example extended descriptions are given. Let’s choose:

1) Sidious didn’t hit his full potential - the writer used a common hyperbolic English phrase rather indifferently to convey Sidious got juiced up with power.

or

2) Sidious did in fact hit his full potential, but the writer spent less than a sentence (a single phrase) dwelling on it - despite the fact that every other time something of this nature has happened considerably more extensive descriptions have been given - and didn’t make it clear enough to the reader (otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion) even though it has massive ramifications on Legends.

Which seems more likely?

Don't know about you, but if a container is filled to bursting, it means it has been filled until the container is gonna burst from the pressure. You're just playing a semantics word game here.

No shit, that’s in a literal sense, however, it’s not commonly used literally. Refer back to the examples in my first and second post, in absolutely none of those had the thing in question hit its maximum capacity/been about to burst apart. It fits more with the passage as well, which uses a shit ton of hyperbolic prose to describe Sidious's boost in power, and never once supports the idea that Sidious was going to literally burst apart. To re-state from my second post: “I think it’s pertinent to note that the phrase is exaggeration and commonly used to convey there is an abundance of something rather than something literally hitting its maximum capacity.”

It's not my main argument, you're taking that phrase in a vacuum and ignoring all the other materials and quotes I've provided to substantiate the point - which you've failed to address at all in this SS.

There’s no reason for me to address quotes that refer to Sidious as of/after ROTS - they’re utterly irrelevant to his TPM self. The entire case for Sidious hitting his full potential as of TPM is the filled to bursting quote, nothing else, so it’s the thing I addressed.


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February 24th 2020, 12:17 am

6) Midichlorian Manipulation


A) HChee Legend


I'm sorry, what? Are you saying I'm not allowed to use Legends continuity materials? We take all the sources and reconcile them, not throw-out sources that don't conform with the game novelisation. As per the rules of the debate, I'm perfectly within my right to invoke a comic scan, which falls under C-canon and is perfectly legitimate. I wasn't aware that per the rules, we can only stick to one version of the fight. You're missing the point of these gifs anyway, but we'll get to that now.

I never said you’re not allowed to use other sources. I’m saying you’re not allowed to cherry-pick materials from different mediums that all contradict each other to stitch together the scans most favourable for your argument, and then ignore all of the ones that don’t. As a product of that, I proposed we treat the novelization as the definitive source, and only allow others in the case of non-contradiction. This is reflected by me accepting one of the comic scans you posted when it doesn’t explicitly contradict the novelization. That’s very distinct from arguing a complete novel only policy where we chuck out every other source.

B) Starkiller’s “Inconsistencies”


RAHM KOTA VS GALEN


You mean the Starkiller you hyped up in your first post? Let me post some quotes you cited in that opening post regarding specifically to the Starkiller that fought Kota:

more powerful than many Jedi Knights had been during the Clone Wars



among the most powerful Force-users in the galaxy.



learned to wield many fearsome dark side powers



all but perfected the fine art of lightsaber combat.

But this guy gets the "he never fought a real Jedi before"?

Galen is powerful and skilled, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that the most he’s done is fight PROXY, and a holding back Vader - he’s never actually fought the real thing. As I stated, Kota explicitly comments on SK not having fought a real Jedi before after successfully utilising TK on Marek indicating that he came to this conclusion based on that event. Posting a bunch of quotes isn’t a rebuttal to this point at all.

What about Maul? He never experienced this problem.

This is another point you’ve failed to substantiate. Besides, I’m not certain, and I’m no Maul expert, but I’m pretty sure Maul’s first fight against a Jedi was against Siolo Ur’Manka - a recluse - who he got his ass kicked by, so he didn’t “never experience this problem”.

NOVEL ONLY POLICY


I also like you're enforcing a "novel only" stance whilst also having used the comic various times in your opening post. Case and point: him killing Shaak Ti with a Force repulse. So, you're allowed to give comic scans of Galen using the Force against Shaak Ti or Kota as examples, but I'm not allowed to because the scans I post aren't convenient to you? At this point, I'm not going to indulge every single rebuttal, considering most of it is "meh, I'm only interested in novel only." You've just blatantly contradicted your own standards.

As aforementioned, my entire reason for suggesting novel only is because you posted multiple contradictory scans, and cherry-picked from the medium most favourable to your argument for each fight. Meanwhile, the Shaak Ti scan was part of a much larger argument where I referenced numerous novel passages, one of which was the novel fight of the Shaak Ti duel! I didn’t cherry-pick, I posted passages/scans from multiple different mediums that all explicitly aligned. You, on the other hand, posted scans from mediums that contradict each other heavily and ignored all of the evidence that didn’t support your argument.

SPECIFIC SCAN REBUTTALS


Besides, this is all irrelevant given that you conceded to almost all of the scans you posted, so your entire argument has pretty much collapsed. I cannot believe you lecture me about silent concessions, and then go on to basically concede a full section of your post, and around half a dozen individual points. Here are all of the rebuttals you missed:

I wrote:Scan 3: This is a direct continuation of the previous attack (from scan 2) on an already floored SK, I have no clue what you’re trying to prove by citing it. And like the previous scan, it does not line up with the novel.

---

Scan 4: A Shadow Guard surprise attacking Galen does not prove he neglects his own defences in combat - he wasn’t even in combat when the Shadow Guard pushed him. It also once more, does not align with the novel.

---

Gif 1: It's likely Starkiller was hindered when Vader ragdolled him, given that Starkiller states Vader's plan by killing Juno was an attempt to destabilise him:

The Force Unleashed 2 Novelization wrote: This was what Darth Vader had wanted all along. He had been right to fear that Juno was in danger, but not just from clones like him-from Vader, who would use her death to destabilise Starkiller and lead him headlong back to the dark side via anger and despair.

Generally, when a Force User has been destabilised (emotionally compromised), their ability to use the Force is diminished as is noted by HK-47:

HK-47 wrote: Generally, this was done by broadcasting strong emotions while thinking about something else. It was a curious technique, but it seemed to be effective in blinding Jedi. Whether guilt, lust, fear - they act as mental interference, making finding the true intentions of the broadcasting meatbag difficult. Obviously, a Force Sensitive broadcasting such emotions puts themselves at risk of not using the Force "properly," since to use it seems to require an inner calm that most meatbags do not possess. As much as the Jedi could not use such a technique, the Sith Lords cannot use it for much the same reasons - such passions as guilt, lust, and fear are rarely strengths to the Sith code.

If you read the novelization, you'll find that SK was exhibiting all the underlined emotions, making it clear Vader's plan to destabilise him worked.

Guilt: "Horror and self-reproach filled his mind. He hadn't seen her crawling for the lightsaber; he hadn't sensed her desperate plan until the very last moment-and it was his alarm that had alerted Vader, he was sure of it."

Fear: "Instead, he had thought only of saving Juno-a plan, he feared, that might always have been doomed to failure . . . He had been right to fear that Juno was in danger, but not just from clones like him-from Vader, who would use her death to destabilize Starkiller and lead him headlong back to the dark side via anger and despair."

Overall, Vader breached the defences of a hindered Starkiller, this is not proof SK neglects his own defences in battle.


Gif 3: As per the Prima Guide, when Vader draws in Juno with the Force, SK’s “focus wavers, and he seizes the opportunity”, ergo Vader hit an unfocused SK with TK. This isn’t proof SK neglects his own defences in combat, there was a specific reason for his momentary defensive lapse, one which will not be available in this matchup for Plagueis to exploit.

---

Gif 4: Per the VG and the Prima Guide, Galen just prior had used “Force Rage” to “strike a savage blow to Darth Vader and his minions (11:47 - 11:56)." After Galen has struck the “savage blow” against Vader, however you can clearly see he’s no longer in Force Rage (his Force Rage meter is reset and the red around the edges of the screen fades), meaning he would have been “drained of huge amounts of energy”, as that is what happens when one exists Force Rage. You cannot conclude SK neglects his own defences in combat because Vader ragdolled him while he was heavily weakened (in this state he was most definitely far inferior to Vader).

---

Gif 5:  According to the novelization, Galen let himself get disarmed so he could beat Vader when the latter lowered his guard (12). Now, obviously Vader doesn’t lower his guard in the VG and Galen ends up having to do things the hard way, but that doesn’t mean the original reason why he let himself get disarmed still wasn't there. Note that if you attempt to argue that the scene in the VG is different from the novel so I cannot apply SK’s motives from there to it that would mean the scene itself is contradictory (Vader disarming SK legitimately obviously never happens in the novel), and according to the canon policy we’re using gameplay mechanics are S-Canon, whereas the novelization is C-Canon meaning if the scene contradicts the novelization depiction of events it is rendered N-Canon (this is also reinforced by my previous arguments for novel supremacy). Either the disarm never happened or SK let him do it. Either way, the scene is illegitimate and does not prove SK doesn’t focus on his defences in combat.

So, let’s see… Even if your Rahm Kota point stands and no one finds my rebuttal convincing, you’ve only got 4 legitimate scans:

-The Rahm Kota example, obviously.
-Shaak Ti Force Pushing Galen.
-Vader Force Pushing Galen.
-Vader Force Choking Galen.

Which isn’t a bad track record for Galen at all given the number of fights he’s been in.

GENERAL SCAN REBUTTALS


Sure, he lacks mastery relative to his opponents.

Since when does getting tagged once in combat equate to lacking mastery relative to your opponent? I’m not following.  As an example of a fight that shows Galen doesn’t lack Mastery, the end of The Force Unleashed 2 depicts Galen overpowering Vader without getting tagged by a legitimate Force attack once (see previous sections of my post for details). Your argument isn’t really supported in the novels.

And here we reach my main point: that SK is getting thrown around consistently across various sources in a very short period of time. The point of my gifs was to illustrate that this guy gets knocked around by people he's superior/equal to quite frequently.

You conceded like almost all of your scans lmao. You have at best 4 instances compared to all of the instances where he doesn’t get tagged, so no, it’s not “consistent”.

It's not the best track record for Force mastery.

It’s not the best track record for Force Mastery to get tagged like a normal fighter? Even the 80 year old “consummate” (Yoda: Dark Rendevous) duellist in Dooku with a near perfect track record gets Force Pushed by Savage Opress in their duel during TCW S3 (link)* - all fighters are fallible.

*Note that, while some may think Savage is overpowering Dooku with strength he clearly isn’t. Savage has failed to replicate this feat against characters weaker than Dooku (e.g. https://youtu.be/NYv_gHAKp1I?t=104), and if you listen to the audio cue, you can hear it’s a Lightsaber blow combined with a Telekinetic attack.

7) The Force Unleashed 2/Lightsaber Combat


Yeah, this is impressive and all, but what relevance does this have when considering his power next to a Sidious level being?

Sidious is given a fairly decent fight by Maul and Savage - he strains under their strength (cited previously), gets pushed off the balcony (2:12 - 2:25) with a TCW magazine claiming the brothers “initially gained the upper hand” (link), etc - so it’s not hard to see how Galen performing a number of impressive Force feats in a row including overpowering beings who could “easily” overpower Vader and defeating Vader himself places him high, and perhaps on the same tier as Sidious in terms of raw power.

You've failed to prove why Starkiller's exhaustion (that he gets rid of immediately just before fighting Vader) is relevant to the fight or why it makes him ">>>>>>" Vader.

As explained Starkiller destroys a force that could have collectively “easily” overpowered Vader, which is something you totally failed to address throughout your post, and you literally quoted my words, so it’s kind of hard to buy that you missed it. Again, I’m not saying the mention of exhaustion itself creates an >>>>>>> gap, just that other evidence supports it being that way, and the exhaustion is a suitable explanation for the fight.

Touching briefly on lightsaber dueling, I see no reason why Plagueis wouldn't be able to utterly dominate Starkiller in a duel. His augmentation is on par with post-boost Sidious, he's comparably skilled to Sidious as well given he taught Sidious lightsaber combat, and there's no evidence that his skills would have atrophied greatly enough to significantly affect his performance (Sidious is a perfect example).

1) As already substantiated, post-boost Sidious and Plagueis are not comparable in power, so therefore, Plagueis does not possess augmentation on par with him.

2) Since when has teaching someone Lightsaber combat been indicative of parity with them in skill? You may know all the same techniques they do due to having taught them, but swordsmanship is very much a practical experience - it’s about balance, precision, you’re ability to create openings, and capitalise on your opponents mistakes etc, all of which you get by training/sparring, and none of which you can achieve via instruction. Your teacher’s impact while important is ultimately not the deciding factor of what makes a good swordsman. Someone can teach you how to do all the moves, but putting yourself in practical application is totally different, and some people are just inherently better at it than others. Plagueis may know every technique Sidious does in saber combat, but that doesn’t mean he can pull them off with nearly the same efficiency.

Starkiller mastering lightsaber combat doesn't mean anything when pre-prime Vader was his superior as a duelist.

-which you’ve failed to tie to Plagueis in any way. Regardless, this has already been refuted.

As for my own case, I’d say Starkiller “all but perfecting the fine art of Lightsaber combat” and stomping Sidious tier Vader (your words, not mine) are better Lightsaber accolades and feats than anything Plagueis has to his name (i.e. almost nothing).

8) Conclusion


You've ignored various rebuttals of mine (including not addressing some of my core arguments), showed yourself to be a hypocrite by using comic scans of fights as evidence and then saying I can't because we can only use the novelisation (double standards), strawmanned me at least four times, tried to scale Vader over Ventress because a quote says Sidious didn't want her trained as a Sith, argued that Sam Witwer's opinions on Galen's potential should be treated as fact simply because they were published in Insider - and much more.

You have no substantiated why Starkiller can contend with a Sidious tier being.

All of this has been addressed in my post. To summarise:

-Sidious and Plagueis aren’t comparable, Sidious’s fear is based on Plagueis’s immortality which you’ve not addressed sufficiently, and esoteric abilities which you’ve outright not addressed at all.

-Sidious did not hit his full potential circa TPM - your odd interpretation of a hyperbolic English phrase aside.

-Sidious is not more powerful than Oneness Galen - he was badly burned from taking the barest fraction of his power, and the “no match” quotes refer to Base Marek.

-Sidious did not prove massive superiority to Galen in the DS ending of TFU - Galen was hindered by both his anger and his grief.

-Only an exhausted Galen shares parity with Vader, Base Galen explicitly does not as shown by him (despite being exhausted) being able to overpower an army of clones that could have “easily” beaten Vader.

-Authorial/developer intent supports Galen having Luke Skywalker level potential, your attempts to prove otherwise are weak. As a side note, you’ve spent vast quantities of your post addressing Galen’s potential and training, but they’re not nearly as important as the end result, and you’ve utterly ignored all of the environmental feats I’ve cited which demonstrate Galen’s power. Even if you somehow did address Galen’s potential successfully it really wouldn’t matter that much. Speaking of environmental feats...

-Galen’s potential, plus extreme training allowed him to build up the power necessary to re-direct a falling “vast million ton” Imperial Star Destroyer.

-Galen ragdolled a Vader who was superior to TCW Windu (as shown by comparisons to Ventress) who can beat TPM Darth Maul, whereas Sidious can’t ragdoll TCW Maul.

-Galen defended against a “desperation fuelled” Sidious’s Lightning for up to 30 seconds showing immense power. This Sidious is a major power boost+two decades of growth away from Plagueis.

-The Starkiller clone in TFU 2 is stronger than the original Galen Marek, and as a result, can atomise half of a 300m frigate, defeat a fighting Force that could have “easily overpowered" Darth Vader (despite being exhausted from the aforementioned feat), and then beat Darth Vader himself in the face of exhaustion greater than he’d ever felt before.

Overall, Starkiller’s raw power is on another tier entirely from Plagueis’s. He wins.

9) Sources


1:

Spoiler:

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Spoiler:

2:

Spoiler:

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Spoiler:

3:

Spoiler:

4:

Spoiler:

5:

Spoiler:

6:

Spoiler:

---

Spoiler:

7:

Spoiler:
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February 24th 2020, 1:32 am
Great post. Wish u didn't shit on Vader like that, but still a good post
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February 24th 2020, 6:37 am
Outstanding HP.
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February 24th 2020, 6:48 am
Starships and vehicles number 3 quote is forged.

Like it legitimately doesn't exist, I have that argument screencapped, hit him hard mp, ask someone for the real quote.
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February 24th 2020, 8:24 am
Dooku lifted Obi-Wan in a choke-hold, simultaneously kicking Anakin out of the way and hurling Kenobi across the room, bringing down a section of walkway to trap him there. However, in expending all his energy to dispatch Kenobi, the Count was left helpless before Skywalker's rage.

Yup, this doesn't exist.

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February 24th 2020, 8:50 am
@ISV

Starships and vehicles number 3 quote is forged.

I wouldn't know, I don't own The Starships and Vehicles Collection. I got the quote from an old Comicvine thread, which I can link when I get home from school (can't rn, CV is blocked on the school computers) - the quote wasn't forged by me.

Like it legitimately doesn't exist, I have that argument screencapped,

I can hardly edit it convincingly when numerous people have already seen it and can verify such. Regardless, given that it's a genuine mistake I feel no reason to.

hit him hard mp, ask someone for the real quote.

It's not even debilitating to my argument. The whole thing can stand without the quote, and once I get home and substantiate that the quote wasn't forged by me, MP will hopefully let me edit my argument accordingly.


Last edited by The Dragon Of The West on February 24th 2020, 12:00 pm; edited 1 time in total
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February 24th 2020, 8:51 am
@Azronger: See above.
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February 24th 2020, 9:03 am
I know it wasn't forged by you.

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February 26th 2020, 12:29 pm
Clarification on the forged quote: MP has given me permission to remove it from my post, and modify my argument accordingly which I have done. The post is now perfectly eligible for viewing (if you have the patience to read a massive wall of text).
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March 8th 2020, 10:08 am
@Meatpants: Reminder that you have 15 hours to complete your finisher.
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March 10th 2020, 11:59 pm
Message reputation : 100% (2 votes)
Please take into consideration that since I will be writing the first conclusion, HP will ultimately have the last word; both in the final post and the conclusion. I’m asking that this be taken into account when reading and considering my own performance. Throughout this debate, HP has outright ignored some of my main arguments/pieces of evidence. We covered a lot of things, and it will be impossible for me to respond to everything he’s written in the last post with 5000 characters, so I’ll recap the main points that matter.

--

SIDIOUS’ BIOLOGICAL POTENTIAL

Sidious reached his biological Force potential in TPM upon killing Darth Plagueis. I presented a multi-faceted case to support this premise, but my opponent chose to attack only one of these with a semantics game. “Filled suddenly to bursting” does mean virtually full capacity, or at the very least extremely close to it. The semantics game over what this meant was a mask from which to ignore the other parts of my argument, like how Luke also experienced this in the same conditions (as did Starkiller and others), Sidious’ use of rituals and alchemy and most importantly, the direct proof during his fight with Windu where he goes beyond his body, using the dark side “unrestrained” which causes an instantaneous deterioration of his body.

SIDIOUS’ FEAR

I argued that Sidious’ abject and uncharacteristic fear of Plagueis even after receiving a boost of power was indicative of approximate parity in power between the two. The responses from my opponent revolved around Sidious not knowing for sure whether Plagueis had become immortal, which is irrelevant if Sidious was decidedly more powerful than him. It would not prevent him from incapacitating him, nor would Plagueis be able to touch him. If Plagueis is only roughly comparable to Sidious in power, and Sidious reached his biological potential, AND Sidious didn’t go beyond his potential in TFU, then Starkiller would be “no match” for Plagueis, even when blowing himself up and point-blank range.

VADER

My opponent’s scaling for Vader was based entirely on the quote about Asajj not being trained as a threat. This quote in no way says that Vader > Asajj Ventress, there’s a huge disconnect there and it’s a poor argument.

STARKILLER

A large portion of HP’s opener and subsequent posts went towards arguing Galen has comparable potential to Luke Skywalker. This was based on (1) a Sam Witwer interview (which he claimed to be binding to continuity despite it being an interview); (2) Sidious saying Starkiller could have been his successor and (3) appealing to the unsubstantiated and vague “clear intent” of the developers. The same developers who have said everything which way about the dynamics between Vader and Starkiller. Witwer’s interview doesn’t bind to continuity and Lucas plus a myriad of other sources confirm that Sidious didn’t view Starkiller as his successor or his “equal” at all. He didn’t for Luke, why would he for Starkiller? There’s no factual basis for Starkiller’s potential being even close to Skywalker’s. I further substantiated my debunk by comparing Luke’s growth, which runs laps around Galen. After a brief session with Ben and some time with Yoda he’s already duelling at a better level of augmentation in ESB than Galen was in either of the TFU game, thanks to Vader’s considerable growth from these two points.

TFU

I’ve addressed the two TFU duels, which are both quite controversial. However, I’ve presented a case that takes into account both sides fairly, and the conclusions I’ve come to make sound logical sense. From my last post, “So Enlightened!Starkiller dominating a deeply wounded and shaking Vader is not proof that he can ragdoll Vader at will; he needs to beat Vader down first.” Even then, Vader was still reacting to Starkiller’s blows, and the gap in his defence surprised both of them. There’s clearly not a massive gap, and more importantly, there’s no factual evidence that this Starkiller could outright tear through a fresh Vader’s defences.

In the second duel, it’s fair to say that both combatants are in the same ballpark. The “exhaustion argument” presented by my opponent doesn’t hold up. To sum up, verbatim from my post: “I'm not convinced that an exhausted Starkiller regaining his strength scales down to Vader's level rather than the exhaustion making an impact on his peak performance.”; and “I'm not denying that Starkiller undertook a series of impressive showings that exhausted him before fighting Vader, but I also don't believe that the whole time he's fighting he's running on fumes and that if he was fresh he'd "decimate" Vader.”

---

That’s about as much room as I can deliver on the important points. Where I’ve presented various pillars from which to prove Plagueis’ superiority, my opponent has chosen to attack only some of these, many in a vacuum when they rely on others for corroborating evidence. We also have HP strawmanning me multiple times (even if unintentional in some cases), saying I can’t use comic fights for details on fights when he did, that I can only use the novel fight and scaling Vader from a quote sayng Ventress wasn’t trained to be a threat to the rule of two (not mutually exclusive with her becoming a threat, which she clearly did).

Plagueis wins.
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March 11th 2020, 6:52 am
I vehemently disagree with one thing and I genuinely don't think you should be allowed to argue it, either way good post otherwise
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March 11th 2020, 7:51 am
> Korriban wrote:I vehemently disagree with one thing and I genuinely don't think you should be allowed to argue it, either way good post otherwise

What's that?
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March 11th 2020, 8:11 am
MP wrote:I argued that Sidious’ abject and uncharacteristic fear of Plagueis even after receiving a boost of power was indicative of approximate parity in power between the two. The responses from my opponent revolved around Sidious not knowing for sure whether Plagueis had become immortal, which is irrelevant if Sidious was decidedly more powerful than him. It would not prevent him from incapacitating him, nor would Plagueis be able to touch him. If Plagueis is only roughly comparable to Sidious in power, and Sidious reached his biological potential, AND Sidious didn’t go beyond his potential in TFU, then Starkiller would be “no match” for Plagueis, even when blowing himself up and point-blank range

It's not that I don't think fear is impressive, it's just that Sidious sweating bullets after killing his lifelong master and father figure doesn't really imply power in my opinion. He's in an emotionally vulnerable state, but either way it's not my place
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March 14th 2020, 5:37 am
In addition, it's explicitly mentioned that what Sidious feared was that he would "disappear into the Force" during the boost:

At the quake’s epicenter stood Sidious, one elegant hand vised on the burnished sill of an expansive translucency, a vessel filled suddenly to bursting, the Force so strong within him that he feared he might disappear into it, never to return.

Afterwards, it looked like he was just being careful, to be certain Plagueis hadn't tricked him or left any traps, and wouldn't somehow avenge himself.
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March 24th 2020, 11:05 am

Introitus


Here's some music to listen to for this post:



I will continue to link pieces of Requiems for my posts since they signify the death of all the misconceptions about Starkiller Plagueis. This whole debate is a requiem to the old Starkiller Plagueis, the Starkiller Plagueis who has more raw power than Sidious comparable power to Sidious, who can compete with the likes of Dooku or Windu, who can ragdoll Vader at will. These are all false, and this post will begin to unravel these misconceptions in depth.

Finisher


Seriously though...

Let’s start with the pro-Plagueis arguments. In summary, MP’s main argument is that “Sidious reached his biological Force potential in TPM upon killing Darth Plagueis” yet afterward experienced “abject and uncharacteristic fear of Plagueis” which is “indicative of approximate parity in power between the two”. This grants Plagueis scaling to Sidious’s performances against Galen - namely Galen proving “‘no match’ for Sidious, even when blowing himself up and point-blank range” & being “completely ripped apart and casually ragdolled by Sidious” in the DS ending of TFU. It also grants him Sidious’s ability to “rapidly incapacitate Vader ‘at the height of his powers’ with no trouble or sign he needed to go all-out to do so, as we see from his Force equal Luke Skywalker being utterly incapable of fending off Sidious' lightning”, making him superior to Galen as:

  • “Whittling down someone then ragdolling is not the same as being able to just outright ragdoll at the start of the fight. So if Starkiller's TK and Lightning aren't that much better compared to his other powers (which you have argued), and he can't ragdoll TFU1 Vader, that means it's unlikely he's even much more powerful than Vader at all. He's better than Vader, but he also can't ragdoll him either.”


  • “In TFU 2 Galen was unable to gain an edge against Vader, and admits he the best he could do is create a stalemate.”


To contest this, I offered several rebuttals:

(1) I stated that, “The idea that Sidious hit his full potential circa TPM relies solely on taking an obviously non-literal quote over several concrete statements.” - the quote being “filled to bursting” - & then provided several examples of it being used non-literally before elaborating that, “it doesn’t really make sense Sidious hit his full potential/was about to burst apart in that passage given that the passage itself makes note of that for a single phrase. Surely if he did hit his full potential it would be more emphasised given the obvious ramifications on the rest of the EU?”

(2) “Sidious’s fear of Plagueis is largely based on the fact that Plagueis potentially could have become immortal (which would basically make him impossible to defeat), and the fact that Sidious has no clue what tricks are up Plagueis’s sleeve. He doesn’t know what knowledge his master possessed, nor how far Plagueis advanced with Midichlorian Manipulation. Of course Sidious was scared, not of Plagueis’s power though, but the unknown.”

(3a) “Given that Sidious was in ‘desperation’ just prior, and Marek has just become considerably more powerful, I’d say it’s not unreasonable to assume that Sidious drew beyond his biological Force Potential - why exactly do we assume Sidious didn’t go beyond his body’s potential?”, (b) “The wording doesn’t preclude the ‘no match’ quotes from referring to Base Marek and not Oneness Marek.”, & (c) “He tanked the barest fraction of the power of Galen’s Oneness blast as it was omnidirectional.”.

(4) “I’d say it’s incredibly likely Galen was weakened in the Dark Side ending of TFU, and far from at his strongest. [...] Jedi can be weakened by negative emotions, like guilt and fear and Galen would feel guilty about taking his revenge on his Master and leaving Kota and the rebels at Sidious’s mercy. [...] Galen was clearly feeling angry when he fought Sidious which in combination with other emotions generally leads to an absolute shit show.”

(5a) “Force Lightning vs Tutaminis appears to be 1-1 whereas you need to be much more powerful than your opponent to break a Force Barrier.”, & (b) “That doesn’t mean Galen needed to injure Vader, just that he chose to. As you already cited, Galen is initially surprised by his newfound strength allowing him to stomp Vader meaning he explicitly didn’t believe it to be as strong as it was, so him not ragdolling Vader when he initially gained that strength isn’t proof he couldn’t.”.

(6) “Citing this fight is useless because Starkiller was exhausted when he fought Vader - at his peak, he’d decimate him” as just prior he’d managed to “blast away an army of Starkiller clones that could have ‘easily turned upon their creator (Vader) and overpowered him.’”

Here’s why I think my arguments still stand:

(1) MP didn’t address the point that if Sidious had legitimately hit his biological Force Potential it would have been more emphasised, nor did he explain why the phrase isn’t hyperbolic. The most he did was bring up the fact that the phrase can be used literally, but that’s ultimately irrelevant to my point as the majority of the time it isn’t, as shown in my examples in post 1.

(2) MP responded to my arguments for Sidious’s fear being caused by esoteric abilities in Plagueis’s possession, but I addressed his rebuttals, & he completely ignored the topic in his final post leaving me no reason to believe his Sidious ~ Plagueis argument. Regarding immortality, he addressed it in a vacuum and ultimately gave no reasons as to how Sidious is supposed to incapacitate a foe who won’t even die while being deprived of air.

(3) MP never proved Sidious didn’t draw beyond his biological Force Potential against Marek, so the whole Oneness Blast case essentially falls apart as he can’t draw parallels between Plagueis & Sidious drawing power beyond his biological Force Potential, as Plagueis is explicitly weaker than post-boost TPM Sidious. Although every point after falls under this rebuttal, I will point out that MP never gave me a solid reason as to why Oneness Marek would be included in the “no match” quotes as they are explicitly chronological in the way they tell the story, & Oneness Marek is mentioned after they say Galen is “no match” for Sidious, so the quotes are clearly talking about Base Marek. He also never gave me an adequate reason as to why Sidious took more than a fraction of Galen’s Oneness blast’s power, the most he did is point out that a blast is strongest at its center which is irrelevant given that Sidious wasn’t at the center.

(4) MP disagreed with the premise that Galen wouldn’t be operating at the same level in the LS ending as the DS ending, & cited how Galen regretted killing Vader out of hate. I pointed out that Galen regretting leaving Kota at the mercy of Sidious in order to kill Vader in no way necessitates he regretted the act of killing Vader by itself. I followed up by stating that Galen was visibly seething when he attacked Sidious, ergo he’s not at the same level of pristine clarity he was at in the LS ending. I also drew attention to the fact that MP failed to respond to my argument on Galen’s guilt hindering him, & said that he would have been hindered regardless of whether he was angry or not as a result.

(5) I believe all of my points are fairly solid here, & conclusively debunk MP’s argument, but they were made in my final post, so MP didn’t get a chance to respond.

(6) MP never addressed Galen’s fight with the army of Starkiller clones which is the crucial point to the exhaustion argument, & the reason why I claimed Galen could “decimate” Vader. Given this, there’s no reason to assume the two share parity. I can’t go over this part of the debate in detail due to a limited character count, but I don’t believe MP’s anti-exhaustion arguments provide sufficient cause to ignore the Starkiller Clones fight when no rationalisation for it was provided.

---

Now, for the pro-Galen arguments. For one, I cited several environmental feats to prove SK’s immense power, namely him being able to “move Star Destroyers with nothing but his will”, & “defend against heat comparable to ‘the outer layers of a star’ while guiding a 300m frigate, before atomising the fore section of the frigate - blowing it ‘into a billion pieces.’”. & for two, I cited combative feats, which include “telekinetically dominating Darth Vader”, “blasting away an army of Starkiller clones that could have ‘easily turned upon their creator (Vader) and overpowered him’”, & “defending against Sidious’s Lightning for 20-30 seconds”.

Each of these apart - from the environmental feats - has an explanation for why it’s beyond Plagueis:

I wrote:Vader>>TCW Mace Windu>>TPM Mace>Jedi Dooku>Darth Maul.

So what is the relevance of this? Well, it’s rather simple based on showings from Plagueis probably can’t replicate this feat due to the scaling above.

To elaborate, Sidious grew extensively from TPM (by which point he was already better than Plagueis) to TCW (elaborated upon in later section), yet he couldn’t ragdoll TCW Maul whereas Galen can ragdoll TPM Maul’s significant superior without effort. Now, while Maul obviously grew from TPM to TCW I doubt it’s enough to offshoot the significant gap between himself and Vader, Sidious’s growth, and the vast difference in performance between Galen and TCW Sidious.

I wrote:Sidious is given a fairly decent fight by Maul and Savage - he strains under their strength (cited previously), gets pushed off the balcony with a TCW magazine claiming the brothers “initially gained the upper hand”, etc - so it’s not hard to see how Galen performing a number of impressive Force feats in a row including overpowering beings who could “easily” overpower Vader and defeating Vader himself places him high, and perhaps on the same tier as Sidious in terms of raw power.

I wrote:This final one doesn't have a direct quote as it's spread across multiple different points. I established in other sections of the debate that "post-boost Sidious is much more powerful than pre-boost Sidious" and MP agreed that "Plagueis and Sidious are quite comparable" pre-boost. I then showed Sidious’s subsequent growth from TPM to ROTS, and followed up by saying: "We’ve essentially got Galen defending against energies massively more potent than those Plagueis can unleash and you think he has a shot against Galen? That’s some suspect insight."

MP contested most of these arguments in favour of Galen:

(1) Surprisingly MP didn’t contest the impressiveness of environmental feats, & while they show no direct link between Galen & Plagueis they are a testament to Galen’s power.

(2) “This quote* is merely relaying that Sidious didn’t intend for the Dark Side adepts to become a threat to his Rule of Two, hence why their training was limited. This is not mutually exclusive with them actually becoming a threat, thus rendering the rest of your Vader scaling completely moot.” *I.e. the one declaring Vader’s immense superiority to Asajj.

“Galen Marek is a TK savant, and his prodigious abilities in this area are disproportionate to his actual power level. His telekinetic feats are not indicative of his actual power - they’re stronger. [...] The power disparity between Vader and Galen is vague and unquantifiable; since Starkiller’s TK is disproportionate to his actual power level, which would explain away why he was able to ragdoll Vader via TK without deferring to Starkiller simply being more powerful.”

“We don't even know if Enlightened!Starkiller could have ragdolled a fresh TFU1 Vader. Consider that in a universe where one lightsaber wound typically means the end of the fight, Vader suffered three wounds, all ‘deep’ cuts, ‘Vader's lightsaber moved too slowly to block a blow to his chest, allowing the apprentice's blade to slash deeply across his armored throat...a second scored a deep wound across his black-clad shoulder. A third stabbed deep into his thigh.’ He's then literally shaking and can't even hold his lightsaber straight ‘Darth Vader reeled backward, servos whining in his injured limbs and lightsaber shaking.’ Not exactly an indication that Vader is putting up the best defence. It's only after this that he's ragdolled. So Enlightened!Starkiller dominating a deeply wounded and shaking Vader is not proof that he can ragdoll Vader at will; he needs to beat Vader down first.”


(3) MP couldn’t address the rationale for why this could potentially put Galen with Sidious, as the explanation was given in my final post.

(4) “The passage you're referring to is from his POV. There isn't necessarily a problem with POV perspectives, but the problem here for you is that the total aggregate of sources override what Galen thought he saw. In other words, your entire argument literally hinges on Galen being correct about Sidious being desperate, but virtually every other piece of information we have points in the other direction. Consider only moments before, Sidious had been toying with Galen, pretending to lose and prostrating himself as a weak, old and defenceless in order to turn Galen to the dark side. During the subsequent confrontation, Sidious throws his head back and howls in an overtly sexual way (lascivious by definition is an overt sexual display). [..] Coming back to the topic, Galen wasn't mitigating Palpatine's attack or defending against it. As soon as he stepped in front of the Emperor it immediately tore through any defence he did have up, ‘Without hesitation, he stepped between Kota and the Emperor, taking the full brunt of the Sith lightning into his own body.’ [...] There's no proof Sidious was using his full power, especially since he was toying with Galen only moments before.”

Here’s why I think my arguments still stand:

(2) Firstly, MP’s rebuttal to the Vader >> Ventress quote makes absolutely no sense. If the adepts weren't trained to be a threat there’s no reason to assume they became a threat - you’d have to essentially argue Sidious sucks at keeping his adepts in check. Ventress as of the time she fought Mace Windu, wasn’t given sufficient training to challenge Sidious meaning by all accounts she should be weaker than Vader. Moreover, the source wouldn’t comment on Dark Side adepts who have a training deficit, & thus won’t become a threat to Palpatine, while listing an adept who became a threat to Palpatine despite their training deficit - it doesn’t make sense given the context to do so.

Secondly, MP claiming Galen’s TK is above his base power is largely mitigated by his statement in his final post that it’s not “insanely more potent than his base Force power at all” & thus, there’s no reason to assume it makes for any of the gaps in my chain, nor the disparity in performance between Galen & TCW Sidious. Ultimately, even if it did somewhat mitigate the comparison, as long as the links in my chain still hold it isn’t really enough to wave away any sort of closeness between Galen & TCW Sidious.

Thirdly, MP’s rebuttal that Vader was injured doesn’t hold as he ultimately failed to prove that these injuries hindered Vader’s ability to use the Force. Vader is fully armoured after all (so, he’s not a normal character that will collapse after a single Lightsaber hit), & the injuries are never made out as some dreadful hindrance by the text.

(4) MP’s response is utterly unconvincing. He tries to force his own one-shot gap into the text when the passage in question was clearly not written with that intent. It is never emphasised that Galen was only surviving because Sidious wanted to have a laugh & toy with his opponent (the earlier instance isn’t relevant as we see Sidious try to goad Luke into joining the Dark Side, yet opting to kill him when Luke refused in ROTJ - this can also hold true for Galen). In fact, it’s made clear Galen was surviving because of his own strength, & his ability to “cling to his consciousness with a feverish will”.

---

Summary: Plagueis has no link between himself & Galen (MP spent this entire debate trying to prove he does, & put all his eggs in one basket), meanwhile Galen has multiple links, & incredible environmental feats to go along with them. The winner of this fight is clear.


Last edited by NotAA3 on April 23rd 2020, 1:31 pm; edited 2 times in total
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March 24th 2020, 11:23 am
@DarthAnt66 @MasterCilghal

Both of you agreed to judge the debate, so here's a tag to let you know it's finished. If either of you are no longer able to judge - for whatever reason - let me know, and we can find someone else.
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March 24th 2020, 12:02 pm
Good finisher
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March 24th 2020, 12:05 pm
SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 2864379292

AA3/HP won.
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March 24th 2020, 12:10 pm
ScionOfSkywalker77 wrote:SS -  Darth Plagueis (Meatpants) vs Galen Marek (ArkhamAsylum3) - Page 4 2864379292

AA3/HP won.

Inferior twin supporting his chad brother, how sweet
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June 21st 2020, 12:21 pm
Message reputation : 100% (2 votes)
Before I start, I would like to congratulate with @NotAA3 and @Meatpants for making this one of the most enjoyable debates I’ve ever read on this site. The debate itself was very much evenly matched, so much so that I went back and forth multiple times on who should be the victor. Third, keep in mind that in HP’s case I had to account for the fact that he got the last word. And lastly (this is for MP and HP) take this as opportunity to learn and improve. That said, let’s start.
There were several points of contention for the rest of the debate, but they ultimately all related to the main arguments raised, so I’m gonna examine those and which one I found to be the most convincing of the two: 

1. Sidious hitting his full potential in TPM: This argument proposes that Sidious hit his biological potential at the end of the Plagueis novel, after obtaining a significant boost, upon Plagueis’ death, something that’s emphasized in other works and sources throughout the EU, citing the duel with Windu as an example, then emphasized his fear of Plagueis, and ended it by noting how Sidious did not draw beyond his body in his fight with SK. It required 3 points to be true in order to stand: Sidious actually hitting his full potential, his fear being a result of Plagueis’ power and Sidious toying, or at least not drawing beyond his body in his duel with SK. While HP did present some compelling counters, to the second and third point, the first one was turned into, as has been already said, a semantic’s game. HP merely provided a different interpretation, without acknowledging the various instances of Sheev actually drawing beyond his body. That said, the idea that Sidious after the boost was only scared of Plagueis because of his knowledge definitely has some merit and it did convince me to a degree. However, I believe both interpretations are viable and can stand, as no conclusive evidence was provided from both sides. Now as for the third, HP provided a good and convincing case for why Galen did defend from Sidious’ lightning. However, not only was I left unconvinced on whether, assuming Sidious hit his peak in TPM, the Emperor drew beyond his body but him being ultimately no match makes it impossible to determine for sure whether said feat is beyond Plagueis’ ability to replicate. Overall, I constantly changed my view with every new post, indicating both MP and HP were successfully addressing the other’s rebuttal so I think they more or less even here. MP’s argument had some gaping holes which HP pointed out, but I think it can stand. His last rebuttal was very strong, but as I said, I need to account for the fact that he got the last word. 


2. Ventress/Vader scaling: in order for this argument to work, Vader needs to be far more more powerful than Ventress and Galen needs to be far beyond Vader, given how the scaling needs to make up for the gap between TPM and TCW Maul. As for the latter, MP succeeded in somewhat mitigating the gap between the two, but ultimately I was very much convinced that Galen is indeed significantly more powerful than Vader, given his ability to downright breach Vader’s force defenses, and MP failed to convince me that Vader’s injuries were significant enough that SK couldn’t replicate his utter humiliation of Vader under normal circumstances, same with the exhaustion argument. The Ventress quote however, is where the tide turns in MP’s favor: i agree with him that the quote in an of itself in no way prevents Ventress to become a threat to Vader, even during her time as Dooku’s apprentice. This would obviously leave HP without a clear scaling chain placing Starkiller above Plagueis. 


Ultimately, as I said before, both arguments had clear holes, but I think HP’s was the weaker of the two, as the quote that served as its basis simply doesn’t prove Ventress is far below Vader. 
There was other points, such as Galen’s weak force defenses, something I think HP addressed rather well, so it doesn’t stand. Midichlorian manipulation was presented as a useful tool in Plagueis’ arsenal, but it was only touched on briefly. As for Galen’s potential, I don’t think it is all that relevant to the outcome of the debate, if anything it ties into MP’s argument, which I already addressed. 
At the end of the day, and I reiterate it again, the debate was very close and I had to think carefully before coming to a decision, but my vote goes to @Meatpants. He presented a stronger case, which while by no means without holes, his opponent failed to conclusively debunk, in contrast to HP’s main argument. 


Thanks to both for making this an opportunity for me to learn and good luck for future debates! 
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