Talya wrote:
Do you believe Qui-Gon's fictional lightsaber skills have anything to do with him being a pussy?
Then you are lost, Anakin. (Alternate replacement for this line: "Do you think that's air you're breathing?")
Besides, "Meta" is everything. This is true of all ridiculous internet "vs." debates. The answer to the argument of whether Superman or the Hulk would win is "What does the writer want to happen?" There is no logical answer that applies. There are no set of consistently defining characteristics that can be used to accurately determine the answer to these geeky questions. It all depends on "What matters to the plot?"
No, meta is not everything - it's in fact absolutely nothing at all.
And yes, there are at least some characteristics that can be applied. We can observe what these characters do and make estimates and guesses of their overall abilities and then come up with hypothesis about what might happen if they actually existed and actually did have a fight. There is no "plot" in the case of these hypothetical conflicts; what we are doing is a mental exercise of "if we take this observed set of capabilities and put it up against THAT set of observed capabilities, what would happen?"
That can, in fact, be done in a logical fashion, and there are communities of people that do precisely that for fun - and yes, they are intelligent educated people that understand both logic and science just fine, often better than the Glade average.