Revan Reborn vs FOTJ Darth Krayt

OK, dropping in again to respond to this mess. My attempt to be really polite and friendly wasn’t met with the same, so I’ll loosen that up a little – just a little. This is ultimately just a debate about fictional characters on the Internet, so it seems weird for anyone to get triggered over it.

I have written up a more meta-critique of some other issues, but I’m holding off on posting it for now.

Besides that discussion, I sense this really consistent, almost paranoid obsession with all anti-Krayt arguments being “nitpicking”. I’ll leave it for the reader to decide whether these arguments, right or wrong, are in their scope actually any different from what is typically used in vs. debates (by ILS included).

Re: Letters From an Anti-Sage

Given all of these points of contention, let’s make something clear: Krayt has to win on ALL of them, or else his scaling completely breaks. If Luke’s injuries at the end were psychological, the entire analysis being based on their relative damage soak breaks. If the fight took place on a ridiculously strong dark side nexus, the entire analysis breaks. Etc.

Do Luke’s previous injuries matter?

tl;dr: Luke was severely injured going into the Beyond Shadows fight.

ILS wrote:then it's kind of hard to argue that some vague wear and tear, which was nowhere near as hurtful to his essence, leading up to the fight would really matter.

Let’s apply your repeated lectures about muh reading comprehension! to recognize that you didn’t even respond to the point that you were actually quoting:

It’s relevant to the question of whether Luke being near-death (in terms of his physical body since you brought up the case of Luke's physical body being brain dead) is scalable, since if Luke had other injuries that would exacerbate his, it would not be an even comparison.

The line of conversation you were responding to originated from your “Luke’s physical body was brain dead” argument. I was not making the case that Luke’s injuries directly affected his performance Beyond Shadows, but rather that they affect the level at which his physical body was already injured. If his physical body was already injured, you can’t use the fact that it was briefly brain dead after the fight, because those injuries would be added on top of those he already had.

I suspected that this conflation would occur, so I went out of my way to specify the point of contention that was being discussed multiple times in my reply.

Without any major injury cited on your end, I have to assume the main thing bothering Luke from fighting Abeloth was fatigue.

Well I cited several major hits Luke took from Abeloth, but you decided to ignore them.

Now, considering that 17 year old Maul is, putting it lightly, a mere fraction of the Force user Luke is, I also have to assume that he would recover far more slowly than Luke.

Since when did Luke have several days of rest? We’re talking about someone who had a very long ways to grow (17 year old Maul) vs. someone with a far more matured power level (Luke), not to mention someone who has a ridiculously high damage soak as a matter of his character (e.g. surviving TPM, walking through lightning). It doesn’t line up at all.

Meanwhile, I provided several comparisons that went completely unaddressed and are far more analogous, including direct examples of Luke’s earlier incarnations.

Yes, I wouldn't mind seeing citations just for my own curiosity, although part of me doubts it's going to matter given the above.

Citations were literally provided in the post that you were replying to.

Was Luke “near-death” after the fight for psychological reasons?

tl;dr: The entire foundation of the Krayt scaling is that Luke was near-death after the fight...but that was explicitly psychological.

He had ample time to recover from a state that was likely closer to death than mere exhaustion.

??? Your reply doesn’t remotely address the psychological factor in any coherent manner. If Luke was in a state that was close to death largely due to psychological factors, then you cannot use that state to gauge his power relative to Krayt’s. Luke was not near-death due to a lack of power; he was near-death due to a transient psychological condition, as explicitly shown in the text. He feels like he's about to die, wants to join Mara, then gets motivated and the text literally describes the energy rushing back to him, after which he stands up just fine and is completely different.

The obvious indication of this is how quickly he went from “near death” to standing up and talking fine (with no more mention of being near death) – a conversation that would’ve lasted maybe a minute. He didn’t use a healing trance or anything either. Yet we can look at, say, FotJ: Abyss where he had far longer to recover from a much less injured starting point (he was badly weakened after going Beyond Shadows but could still stand and walk and didn’t think he was about to die), and yet was still more weakened at the end of it. That minute or so of short dialogue between his exhaustion and standing is less than the recovery time someone could get after a long workout.

And speaking to your own sudden fixation on authorial intent, the entire point of the conversation with Mara and the part about energy coming back to him was precisely that.

So as I quite clearly and thoroughly demonstrated earlier, your claim that there was a long time-lapse for Luke to recover is nonsense. He had a few short lines of dialogue, and the recovery happened right after he felt a rush of energy fill him purely from deciding to live.

Uhh, the text states that Luke did not feel comfortable allowing Krayt to return to the galaxy, and that's considering the fact Krayt told him to his face that the Sith were on the rise again. The text also states that "was in no better shape to fight than Luke", so all of the potentially valid concerns you raised about Luke wanting to survive seem to not be mentioned anywhere.

This point debunks itself. Luke had been willing on multiple occasions, including this one (he didn’t know Krayt would be there), to fight Abeloth alone. As you put it yourself, he’s been willing to risk his life multiple times…so the fact that he didn’t attack Krayt can’t reasonably be attributed to hesitation over Krayt’s power (since at most the text suggests that they’re in comparable shape, if it even does that). If you want to complain about people reading too much into things that aren’t there, here is a great example. You claim that the text doesn’t mention any of the factors that I’ve brought up, but it doesn’t mention anything about Luke considering Krayt’s relative power and that being the reason why he didn’t go after him.

There’s actually a pretty simple alternative explanation: Luke doesn’t tend to start fights with people, not even Sith. He deals with various Lost Tribe Sith throughout FotJ, and never once does he just sweep in and start attacking them. While he had initially viewed Krayt’s drain as a betrayal, he explicitly realized that Krayt wasn’t betraying him. Krayt had been a temporary ally who then decided to walk away; it isn’t clear where it would fall under the Jedi Code for Luke to pursue him. Just think about all the times in LotF where Luke could’ve crushed Jacen, but didn’t, because he didn’t think he had grounds to do so yet. Luke had never fought Krayt before, nor had he seen Krayt fight anyone. He had indeed encountered Krayt earlier in the book…and didn’t attack him.

If Luke had considered going after Krayt but stopped because he was apprehensive about his power (despite having just fought Abeloth), why did we get no inner monologue about it?

Luke has put his life on the line countless times as you well know, and each of those times Ben's safety, the Jedi Order and "etc" were also on the line, yet this has never stopped Luke from putting his own life at risk.

Exactly. He’s also put his life on the line to go up against foes stronger than himself, let alone someone you think is modestly weaker.

What about the text makes you think Luke was "a pretty long away from involuntarily dying"?

…because he stood up just fine a few seconds after he decided that he wanted to?

Again, the text describes at length about the bloodcurdling death scream he let out

Screaming means he’s near death?

This is less a debate about Star Wars than it is basic reading comprehension.

Yes.

So seeing as how you can’t even gauge how injured Luke was beyond the psychological factor, except that:

1. He can stand up just fine.
2. Luke doesn’t drop right away from Abeloth’s last attack, but Krayt does.

The entire rest of this discussion becomes pointless, since it’s all based on comparing how injured they were in the end.

Did Luke contribute more than Krayt?

tl;dr: Luke was the "tank" who actually fought Abeloth head on while Krayt relied on a specific dark side technique over a long period of time while letting Luke take the brunt of the assaults.

Again, basic reading comprehension –

…yes. You acknowledged that direct damage and fatigue were different, but then proceeded to judge the effects of fatigue using the same metric as you would damage (e.g. essence leaking out).

If someone went and made a small poke on Luke’s shoulder Beyond Shadows, that would leak more essence than DE Sidious arm wrestling him for hours. Likewise, if you got a paper cut, you’d bleed more than you would from weight-lifting for an hour, but the latter would drain your energy and fighting ability far more than the former.

Likewise, I’ve already shown you that there are factors that matter which don’t correlate to essence-leaking, one of which was the psychological factor that you acknowledge existed after the fight, yet influenced Luke’s state enormously despite him not magically rematerializing essence.

So no, Luke’s wrestling didn’t cause as much essence-leaking because it was a different kind of hindrance, not because being wrestling with someone that you yourself claimed was astronomically stronger than him for a timeless amount of time would somehow be a negligible factor. Qui-Gon didn’t bleed from his <1 minute fight with Maul, yet was absolutely exhausted afterwards despite not having an Abelothian power disadvantage.

I also provided several comparisons that you decided to ignore. For example, Luke’s power in TUF dropped dramatically, a drop specifically due to exhaustion, due to fighting a group of Vong that Abeloth would’ve annihilated, to the point where Luke was losing to a single Slayer after having gone through a dozen of them.

BTW, after all the repeated attempts to lecture me on “reading comprehension” throughout your post, I really don’t think you should be playing the “you’re being condescending!” card the next time you need an excuse to flame someone.

notice that every mitigating point you want to bring up for Luke (obviously ignoring any one could mention for Krayt in order to make the comparison as lopsided as possible) is rarely given any importance by the text but is purely the result of your own speculation.

The text has to state that Luke’s condition at the end of the fight might be dependent on him wrestling with her for hours?

Have you noticed that the text itself gives us nothing but comparisons between Luke and Krayt, e.g the lightning "blasted straight through" Krayt then to Luke,

…what? WTF do you expect the text to say; “the lightning blasted straight through Krayt and then to Luke, but Luke didn’t take as much damage because he scales above DE Sidious”?

BTW, your idea that there’s a gigantic gap between Plagueis and Luke, which I agree with from an in-universe vs. scaling standpoint, is quite laughably incompatible with the intent of the writers of FotJ (which you are trying to emphasize) anyway. Throughout the entire series we see Luke fighting various Lost Tribe Sith on multiple occasions, and he doesn’t always stomp them or show more dominance that you think he would over Plagueis. The in-universe explanations we give, like Luke holding back, aren’t mentioned in the text, which to you means that they aren’t major factors. Yet the clear intent here is not that Galaan or whoever is a DE Sidious tier threat, which is what he would be if he were really fighting that closely with 100% FotJ Luke. But I guess you seriously think the authorial intent is “huhuhuh Plagueis would get no-scoped by Abeloth in the first paragraph”?

You don’t apply this authorial intent argument when it doesn’t suit you even elsewhere, anyway. You apparently lowered Caedus’s standing because you bought that the amped Jaina who was suggested by every single indication in LotF: Invincible to have been given Luke’s power was actually a very weak version of Luke, and Caedus was just delusional about his uncle’s power despite analyzing it on multiple occasions, and that Luke’s direct fight with Caedus was not an indication of any sort of parity because the “authorial intent” of that fight was actually that the enraged Luke was actually secretly super hindered by enough for him to be below Plagueis. Strangely, these factors were never mentioned in the fights, which to you apparently discounts them. Indeed, Jacen’s near-parity to Luke is a far more convincing point with multiple direct confrontations and power comparisons than you trying to argue that “the lightning went through Krayt to Luke” indicates intent.

So if you want to commit to authorial intent, then commit to it fully, or give a nuanced explanation of the conditions in which you think it should apply. Until you’ve shown that you have an epistemology for it beyond “whenever it suits my favorite character”, I am going to argue on the basis of what transpired in the text.

Your analogy is a false equivalency for a number of reasons, reasons I'm unsure why I would need to explain to anyone who had given the fight a cursory overview.

1. Krayt was in melee range of Abeloth the entire time, his arm was embedded inside her. He had to expend energy to keep it there and to keep himself rooted against Abeloth's blast. Moreover, the text told us that while Abeloth was struggling to break free she was trying to take swipes at either Luke or Krayt, as the three of them had become something of a mass of energy.

You are mentioning a single part of the fight where Abeloth launches a TK blast and swipes for a bit. That doesn’t at all change the fact that Luke was doing the melee for the entire rest of the fight. You yourself have argued that it’s very difficult to TK a prepared foe even with a large power disparity, e.g. the “can Sidious ragdoll Maul in the TCW fight?” topic.

2. As I noted already, and as you chose to ignore, Drain is an extremely taxing ability at the best of times –

Yes. But as I said (far from “ignoring”), Dooku would much rather drain Sidious while Sidious fights with someone than fight Sidious directly for the same amount of time.

Note that Luke said the drain was hurting Krayt as much as it was Luke, not that Krayt was getting hurt as much by the essence and then getting hurt more by the drain overall because of its wear on him. Using your own vibe of authorial intent, the point is clearly that the drain is break even for the two of them.

When Nihilus' drain on the Exile failed he was left so weakened he lost to her and could not even kill her non-Force sensitive teammates, despite the fact, as Ant has enthusiastically shown us many times, in leaked extra content Nihilus can release a passive way of energy sufficient to disintegrate about a dozen non Force users with ease.

The Exile was a wound in the Force; that’s not just a matter of exerting himself (since he could drain entire planets and not die).

Vitiate, attempting one of his rituals, was left so horrendously weakened afterwards that even with plenty of time to recover, and a dark side nexus backing him, he lost in single combat to the Act 3 HoT, despite the latter fighting an army and expending energy saving others before this fight.

You are now trying to use a ritual designed to consume the entire galaxy as a point?

Actually, since you brought it up, ask yourself; would it consume more of Vitiate’s energy to drain a planet / galaxy, or to fight an entire planet / galaxy at once? What if Nihilus fought all of the Jedi on Katarr at the same time?

Regardless, your attempt to compare draining with directly wrestling is your burden to establish. You’ve earlier acknowledged that Krayt would not be able to fight Abeloth toe to toe the way Luke did on multiple occasions, but he can drain her.

Krayt was not receiving anything in return from Draining Abeloth. He was instead being damaged by her essence while maintaining the drain.

It doesn’t say he wasn’t receiving anything in return; the essence going into him is separate from the energy transfer of the drain itself (since he was transferring from Luke without that essence moving).

It is idle speculation on your end to claim that there is a significant difference between what Krayt and Luke were doing.

?? That’s on you, not me. You are the one trying to convert apples to oranges. As will be discussed more below, arriving at the answer “it’s ambiguous” does not default to “they’re comparable”, but rather to the prior, which is that Luke is far stronger.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Krayt's actions made such a large difference to the fight that Abeloth can go from being so powerful she can damn near choke Luke to death at will, or stomp him physically/break free of him within seconds, to actually being restrained and mortally wounded.

And as I’ve mentioned, you are conflating how much they contributed in different roles and techniques to how much damage they should’ve taken or how powerful they were.

As you yourself have noted in previous conversations, it is only Luke that has shown the ability to fight Abeloth directly, unsupported for extended periods of time. Krayt does not have to do this at any point in the fight except for briefly in the end (where he gets stomped before Luke comes in). And as I cited in my previous post, and you ignored, Luke’s original plan was to fight Abeloth alone! He even suggests that it is Abeloth who should be afraid. He was confident that he could win (though perhaps he himself would die). So the amount that Krayt pushed Luke over the edge from “could win” to “ended up winning” need not be that high.

Basically:

Luke without Krayt could at least fight Abeloth
Krayt without Luke gets stomped in seconds (like the only time he has to do that in the fight)

Occam's Razor dictates that the split was closer to 50/50 than 80/20,

No, it doesn’t. Occam’s razor’s statistical justification relates to conditional probabilities. In that case, you have a “prior” probability that is the probability that something is true without the new information. The “prior” probability that Luke would contribute more than Krayt is basically the question: “if this passage didn’t exist, how would you rank the two?” And you are well aware that outside this fight, even if you think Krayt has otherwise impressive feats, there is no coherent basis for putting Krayt at Luke’s level, and so the prior probability is that Luke would contribute is much closer to 80 than 50.

Analogously, if I heard that you and Lebron James both beat another pair in a 2 v 2 pickup game, the probabilities would not dictate that I assume you = Lebron.

The key here is that ambiguity leads us to side with Luke. You are confusing ambiguity with “they’re equals”.

Moreover, I already addressed this idea: given that Abeloth was unable to single Krayt out at all,

That’s a point against Krayt’s parity, not for it.

and his presence alone caused her to "stand off defensively" and "counterattack" with Force Lightning in order to weaken Luke and Krayt, despite her being at full strength at the start of the fight, it seems extremely unlikely that Krayt is, by your estimate, a quarter the strength of Luke. Because indeed, seeing as the effort pushed Krayt and Luke to their limits, if Luke did contribute 80% of the effort, then the last 20% would have been contributed by the skin of Krayt's teeth, meaning that he indeed is a quarter the strength of Luke. That would also make him much weaker than Darish Vol, who even with "much" the strength of Luke is basically fodder for an Abeloth who is not wasting time trying to kill him. So, were Krayt to be that pitifully weak compared to Darish Vol, let alone Luke, and let alone Abeloth herself, how is it that he had a snowballs chance in hell of causing her to fight so standoffishly rather than be dispatched like the fodder he should be?

???

1. An 80/20 split in contribution doesn’t mean Krayt has a quarter of the “Force units” that Vol has, and that this never-seen unit is employed by Abeloth when she mused that Vol has “much the power of Luke” to mean >50% Force Units rather than a turn of phrase. It’s well studied in, for example, employment that there’s a non-linear relationship in which the more productive employees in most industries contribute a massively larger amount than the average employees; that Bill Gates contributed more than the average software engineer in the factor of tens of thousands or more doesn’t mean that he’s literally tens of thousands of times smarter by some metric. (Regardless, the exact numbers chosen of 80/20 aren’t the point)

2. Where does it say that Vol is “fodder” to Abeloth? Their fight happens off-screen, where Abeloth had lured an unsuspecting Vol into an isolated meeting.

(Funnily enough, if Krayt had been given the exact same passage of him fighting Abeloth via TP that Vol had, you would’ve framed it over your bed.)

...yeah, except Luke doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of soloing Abeloth based on all the available evidence.

Except for the fact that you ignored the passage I provided where Luke indicated that he was going to fight Abeloth beyond shadows alone and felt that Abeloth would be scared, or the passage where Luke was destroying Abeloth in their first encounter with just some fodder Lost Tribe sith that were spending as much time attacking him as her. Have you read FotJ?

It’s also funny that you simultaneously claim this, and claim that Luke wrestling with Abeloth, who you say would stomp him, for an extended period of time isn’t a very big deal in weakening him.

If by "interesting" you mean "potentially a good way to evade dealing with the substance of ILS' argument", then it certainly is.

It’s literally just seeing if your claim is falsifiable.

For my money, Krayt's feat here kicks the shit out of anything TPM Sheev or Plagueis have done just on the basis of raw power alone, and since that's usually how we evaluate who wins fights, rather than going into extremely tedious and pointless tangents rife with speculation and nitpicking because we just can't totes be sure what the feat means because there's totes so many confounding variables so let's go with the lopsided interpretation I like best, I reckon it's as simple as saying that Krayt is closer in power to FotJ Luke than Plagueis, and thus he would obviously kick his ass in a fight.

This has nothing to do with what you were responding to. How would the fight have gone differently had another character been in his place? How do you determine that Plagueis could not have done the same?

What is it that Krayt did that required the parity you claim it did? All that he did:

- Affecting her with Force drain over an indeterminate period of time
- Sticking his hand in her gut while she was distracted
- Surviving a single lightning attack
- Holding onto her while she made an aimless TK attack (right after having a hand stuck in her gut, and while Luke was wrestling with and striking her)
- Surviving her final tentacle attack of perhaps a few seconds, but being completely unable to break from it and falling to the ground immediately (note that Luke doesn’t fall right away) until Luke comes in and breaks through the same attack.

There is nothing on this list that requires some sort of amazing parity. You could make the case that TCW Maul could do every single one of those things to Sidious.

This seems like a good time to point out something you not only know full well, but have talked about recently: any argument can have holes poked in it. That goes for everyone, every character, every methodology. We are all using imperfect tools in our pursuit for truth. The trouble is, your handling of the Apoc fight has been so blatantly dishonest, evasive, speculative and dismissive - especially in regards to the topic of metaphysics, which due to being potentially complicated would require honest inquiry to make sense of - means that to the casual observer who doesn't want to be an expert in every micro detail of Beyond Shadows mechanics and the events surrounding the fight, it is extremely easy for someone of your ability to muddy the waters. In other words, it is far easier to throw a thousand shitty, poorly thought out nitpicks (I wouldn't even call them counter arguments because that would imply evidence has been raised or salient points made) than to construct and maintain a single argument against said nitpicks - at least, it is far easier if your goal is to muddy the waters enough to cast a shroud of doubt over the casual observer. For my own satisfaction, my interpretation of the Apoc fight has been strengthened to new heights by your incessant attempts to lowball Krayt's contribution and muddy the waters, so regardless of how our debates are perceived, there's certainly going to be a part of both us which knows who had the stronger arguments. And that's a hell of a lot more satisfying than getting the last word in.

You’re accusing me of “nitpicks” while you literally were just pretending that Abeloth saying “much the power of Luke” referred to some exact measurement of Force power that could be converted to a unit scale and measured against the % contribution of the two in a fight, and that Abeloth being “dozens of times stronger than Luke” refers to that same literal scale?

The point being that you nitpick quite a lot too, and I could look into all sorts of recent arguments you’ve made about various characters and find hilariously specific micro-analyses of the specific wordings used in sourcebooks and how they were arranged. Please stop pushing this “nitpicking” complaint.

And yes; most arguments can have holes poked in them. Any legitimate analysis should be able to withstand such scrutiny; you seem to want nobody to actually question yours with anything but broader, intuitive points, despite your entire argument being founded on micro-analysis.

Was Krayt on a nexus?

tl;dr: Krayt was on a super-super-super nexus.

Sorry, but the burden of evidence is still on you. Sith Spirits anchor themselves to physical locations or objects abundant in living Force energy, because they no longer have a body to tether themselves to. Sometimes, like in Krayt's own case, his spirit embedded itself in his own corpse to persist. Beyond Shadows, in quite opposite fashion, relates to the spirit de-tethering itself from the physical universe, which would include what we call a "Force nexus", maintaining only the loosest connection to their physical bodies. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that the concept of a physical Force nexus strong in living Force energy giving more energy for a physical being to channel through their physical midichlorians would apply to spiritual beings in a purely metaphysical environment where all of the usual concepts related to a Force nexus are completely irrelevant. Your argument, then, can be summed up as well, it seems kinda similar to me, and since I like it, I guess it's true, huh! And seeing as you've tried for over a year now to push this idea (another idea the text fails miserably at drawing any special attention to), I'm not expecting you to come up with any better evidence for it any time soon.

…once again, your reply has zero relationship to the thing you were quoting. I literally just showed you that Luke CAN feel nexuses Beyond Shadows, because he feels two of them and identifies them as nexuses. And as you sort-of realize, they are not completely untethered to their bodies Beyond Shadows, given that their condition Beyond Shadows leads to damage in their physical bodies.

If you want to complain about “nitpicking”, trying to get around the most straightforward conclusion that there was a nexus with this babble is the epitome of “nitpicking”.

While you're obviously just trying to shift the burden of proof to me here,

I was trying to ask you a good faith question. BTW, my question doesn’t “shift the burden of proof” at all (even if it were meant to be adversarial); asking you where you place Krayt relative to Plagueis in a conversation about Krayt vs. Plagueis where you are making the claim that Krayt is definitely superior (and I was just questioning whether Krayt was “definitely” anything) doesn’t in any way violate the heuristic (which comes from the idea that the set of things that are not true outnumbers the set of things that are true, given some other assumptions). You keep trying to throw accusations involving occam’s razor, burden of proof, etc. and they almost never have anything to do with what anybody is saying.

Am I to assume you were just trolling here, then, when you claimed you weren't sure if Reborn Krayt could even defeat BoTPM Sidious - you being one of the proponents that the "post-boost" Sidious is much stronger than "pre-boost" Sidious? Or can we abandon all pretense and go back to our original discussion - which is you doing everything in your power to lower Krayt as low as you can, and me pointing out how silly your attempts have been?

The “original discussion” was about FotJ Krayt, not Krayt Reborn.

Allow me to put your mind at ease, then. As noted already, Vol took a clean shot at Abeloth's mind with the equivalent of a psychic chainsaw, pouring every ounce of his strength into the attack, and Abeloth responded by shunting him out of their shared mindscape and getting so angry she melted a city. Vol's main claim to fame in that instance was merely holding on as Abeloth tried to blast him off of her.

??? Once again, your response has nothing to do with what you were quoting. I didn’t say that Vol had parity to Abeloth or even bring up their TP fight in what you were quoting; I just noted that Abeloth killed Vol off-screen.

and other basic concepts like Occam's Razor,

You incorrectly applied occam’s razor on multiple occasions.

because I know you are completely unwilling to reciprocate.

Except for the part where I asked you to place Krayt in an attempt to diverge from the adversarial process, and you just accused me of trying to “shift burden of proof” (even though it had literally nothing to do with the burden of proof)?

Except for the part where I provided several extensive citations and you deleted them from your reply while accusing me of not having citations?

Except for the part where you obsessively dismiss every objection as a “nitpick” while then trying to micro-analyze whether “much the power of” refers to >50% of the “power” by some unnamed unit of Force energy?

Even though you have used such holistic or authorial-intent based arguments in the past when it suited Luke.

When in remotely recent times have I used that in a vs. debate?

And again, the “authorial intent” in FotJ is clearly not that Krayt would stomp Plagueis. It’s not even the authorial intent that Luke could stomp Dooku, given that they have Luke pushing himself against various random Lost Tribe Sith who show up in one book and are never mentioned again. You keep trying to invoke authorial intent in one sentence and patch it together with large scaling chains completely divorced from them in another.

What if we use authorial intent?

Your entire case for why Krayt must be far above Plagueis is based on there being a massive gap between Luke and Plagueis. But the same authors you love to cite (who also lumped Caedus in with Luke and Krayt) repeatedly have rather small combative gaps between characters in the FotJ series. We don’t see Luke going out and ragdolling Workan, and the authorial intent is probably not that some minor character is actually stronger than the master of Darth Sidious. It’s just a different medium.

So how can you arrive at the conclusion that Plagueis would be worthless in that fight? Do you seriously think that if Troy Denning got told to put Plagueis into the final fight, he’d have him getting ragdolled and discarded right at the start? Give me a break.

Or is it that you think there’s some sort of hybrid model between authorial intent and in-universe scaling that we can use? You’re welcome to outline your case for it.

Summary

- Luke was severely injured going into the fight.
- The fight was on an uber-uber-uber dark side nexus.
- Luke was initially planning to face Abeloth alone, and expected Abeloth to be afraid.
- Luke is the only one who actually took Abeloth face-on while Krayt did more one-sided attacks on her from the side and through prolonged Force drain.
- There is no way to compare the two’s injuries after the fight in any precise way, and Luke’s condition was temporary and psychological.
- Luke got the first meaningful TK hit in, he then got on her first, and he was the one to get past her final attack while Krayt was immobilized by it.
- How much Krayt contributed through a specific force drain technique isn’t the same as how powerful Krayt is relative to Luke.
- Ambiguity favors Luke; in the absence of conclusive evidence, we default to the rest of their body of work, which everyone knows doesn’t favor Krayt.
- Appeals to authorial intent would dismiss the Luke >>>>>>>>>>> Plagueis scaling chain too.

Krayt smacks the ever-living crap out of him. He's just far more powerful, arguably more knowledgeable, a better swordsman and overall just more impressive.

hett literally smashes him like hulk

@The Ellimist:

I think Elm just channeled Gideon's spirit holy shit

I think ILS just felt firsthand how his anal fetish makes people feel with that post.

Also, FOTJ is a series that does feature massive combative gaps, E.G. Cilghal vs Sonthais Saar.