Freedom Force Tier List

Freedom Force and Freedom Force versus the Third Reich are two games centered around a superhero universe (mostly inspired by the Silver Age). The games feature a central team of superheroes called The "Freedom Force". In the first game the Freedom Force, the titular team had 16 or 17 (it's strange you'll see) members and in the second game 7 additional members were added. This is my attempt to tier how strong these characters would be against each other in a massive battle.

Generally, an FF member can defeat multiple members of the tier below them but can't solo the tier. An FF member can solo everyone in a tier 2 below them however.

Bottom Tier:

Let's get this out of the way quickly. The Golden Age Heroes are both gameplay wise and story wise weaker then the later Heroes. This is done because the thematic point of the Golden Age Heroes was to show their bravery to fight an energy-x powered Nazi Germany without any superpowers themselves.

23: Tricolor

Origin:

"Sabrinne Tricolette is a formidable fencer. Donning the flag of her native France, she now fights for freedom as Tricolour!"

Powers:

• Skilled Swordswoman (3 Time Olympic Gold Medal Winner)
• Can use her sword to blind people 
• Has a danger sense

Placement:

Not really much to say. Tricolour is fast for one of the Golden Age Heroes and she has good melee but has essentially no ranged options and isn't particularly physically strong compared to the others.

22: Sky King

 

Origin: 

"Ace Gunner gave up the easy life of a movie-star hero in order to become a hero in reality. Now Sky King flies for the Allies!"

Powers:

• Flight
• Resistance to Mystical Attacks (Via willpower I guess)
• Armored Suit (Bulletproof)
• Chain Guns on his Wrists
• Can use explosive jet fuel to create sonic boom or to fuel his punches
• Grenade Launcher

Placement: 

Sky King's a lot tougher in his armor then Tricolor is and has a lot better abilities. Even though he's slow, even in the air, he's a relative tank for the Golden Age Heroes. 

21: Blackjack

Origin:

"Jack St. John Spade spent his hours at the institute brooding over the plight of England's soldiers and playing cards with his friend and mentor - an innocent man that he was later forced to destroy to preserve crucial war secrets. Now, his cards are on the table and the Allies have a new trump card in Black Jack."

Powers:

• Proficient Brawler
• Pistol Fire
• Can move faster then the eye
• Very Precise
• Creates a duplicate decoy capable of fooling even Mentor's supernatural detection
• Playing Cards tipped with acid (highly accurate)
• Grenade of blinding light
• Grenade creating a loud panicking sound
• Binding Wire

Placement: 

Blackjack vs Sky King is an interesting one. Sky King is a lot tougher and has more raw power. That said Blackjack is faster, stealthier, and is accurate to get the exposed part of Sky King's face with one of his acid cards or a pistol shot. Unless they're in a wide open space, I think Blackjack could take Sky King, especially if he bound him with wire, used his decoy to draw fire away from him or caught him off-guard with one of the grenades. 

D Tier:

All Members from this point have drastically superhuman stats. I will indicate when a hero has particular advantage in an area.

20: Liberty Lad:

Origin: 

No official bio but in-game his backstory is: Nick Craft was originally Freedom Force's biggest fan before taking a bullet for Minuteman from Pinstripe. A blood transfusion from Minuteman gave Liberty Lad a dash of superpowers of his own.

Powers:

• Danger Sense
• Accurate
• Superleaping
• Agile
• Proficient Brawler
• Can taunt enemies, enraging them
• Stun Grenade
• Energy Grenade
• Proximity Grenade
• Can change the molecules in inanimate objects until they explode

Placement:

Liberty Lad is one of two "sidekicks" in the series and he is arguably weaker then the other. He's plenty mobile but he's relatively fragile against raw power and his grenades while they can be decently powerful or somewhat linear. 

19: Sea Urchin:

Origin:

"As a stowaway on Man O' War's trawler, Merry Mason had finally escaped her troubled home life, when a blast of Energy X gave the pair of them powers linked to their maritime location. Merry took the name of Sea Urchin, and decided to help Man O' War safeguard the lives of children."

Powers:

• Resistance to Electricity and Acid
• Melee is Electrically Charged
• Agile
• Flight
• Fast Melee
• Sonic Ranged Attack that can ignore obstacles in the way and stun enemies
• Power Nullification-Can neutralize the usage of energy x for the target for a limited time
• Acidic Homing Projectiles
• Bubble Shield against crushing attacks
• Can redirect electricity attacks towards others
• Can shoot sticky bubble gum at enemies that immobilizes them

Placement: 

Sea Urchin is the other sidekick character, and has a lot more varied powers then Liberty Lad. In a fight her flight basically makes most of his powerset useless and she has a number of ranged attacks that can do him in. Even at melee while he's better at it, her electrical melee attacks combined with her bubble shield could give her the win. 

18: Iron Ox:

Origin:

"Alfred "Iron Ox" Jenkins spent much of his youth traveling around England, boxing in exhibtion matches. But as the thrill of the fight faded, Alfred retired to America, seeking new fortunes. When struck by a beam of Energy X, Alfred found himself invigorated, and ready to fight once more!"

Powers:

• Minor Physical Powerhouse
• Naturally Hard Skin, can be hardened further 
• Superleaping
• Resistance to Mental Attacks
• Can break enemy shields
• Can create shockwaves of physical force

Placement:

While strong enough to overpower the sidekick characters, able to get around Sea Urchin's shield, Iron Ox's tactics are rather linear and he has to rely pretty much strictly on physically overpowering most of his enemies, not helped by being on the slower side.

17: Blackbird:

Origin:

"In and out of jail for burglary, Cassandra Calloway realized that crime truly did not pay, and consigned herself to a life of misery. But when she was bombarded with Energy X, she decided to turn her life towards preventing crime, rather than perpetrating it. Thus, Blackbird was born."

Powers:

• Flight
• Resistance to Mystical and Mental Attacks
• Beautiful-Enemies of opposite sex without resistance to mental attacks can be hypnotized
• Bird talon attack can be very fast and can cause blindness
• Feathery cape can protect her
• Can unleash a bird call that can confuse, or create a painfully cold air
• Explosive projectiles that disorient
• Weakness: Vulnerable to Acid and Radiation 

Placement: 

Blackbird's talents lay in controlling others and harassing the lower tiers with various denial abilties. Against a lot of raw power and a chaos she would be taken down relatively quickly, but against the lower tiers she's relatively hard to stop.

C Tier:

16: Law/Order:

Law and Order are a dual entity. Law can swap places with Order at any time, and vice versa. As such they have the same place.

Origin

Powers-Law:

• Danger Sense
• Shielded from melee attacks
• Skilled Swordswoman
• Can transfer life-energy into other people or can balance them evenly between the two people
• Cures Status Effects
• Shield against Elemental Forces
• Disappears, replaced with Order
• Weakness: Blind

Powers-Order:

• Minor Physical Powerhouse
• Big Mallet
• Superleaper
• Can make the ground quake with a swing of his hammer
• Can cause panic to all nearby
• Can enter a berserker rage

Placement:

Law and Order are fairly versatile due to having both their talents to rely on, and have some interesting abilities. Their main weakness is a lack of ranged attacks.

15: Eve:

Origin:

"Eve first appeared in a park clad in nothing at all, and armed with a decidedly deadly bow. She is able to fire her bow with pinpoint accuracy, shows some limited control over plant and animal life, and has a hypnotic effect on human males. Eve is extremely quiet, almost never speaking to the public, and hardly to the team. It is uncertain if her abilities are driven from Energy X. She aids the team in defeating Deja Vu."

Powers:

• Limited control over plant and animal life
• Beautiful Trait
• Extremely Skilled Archer
• Resistance to extreme heat and cold
• Living Arrows that hone in on target
• Acid Arrows
• Can shoot a swarm of arrows at once
• Her kiss has a change of causing hypnosis, even on females
• Can summon a swarm of leaves and vines to hinder enemies
• Forced Empathy Hax

Placement:

Eve is a bit of the fragile archer trope. Her hypnosis ability is nice but only rarely works so generally she relies on binding enemies down and overwhelming them with an arrow swarm to the vital organs. Also while she isn't very weak, meaning she can be killed relatively quickly by a lot of firepower, her forced empathy does mean that is the only real way to kill her since grinding her down would grind her enemies health as well. Generally in order to defeat Eve, most FF members need either a way to avoid a massive amount of arrow fire or be really tough.

14: Bullet:

Origin:

"Very little fazes the Bullet. A career military man, he has a deep-rooted and selfless concern towards innocents caught in the crossfire of any conflict. Formerly a pilot in the USAF, the Bullet became imbued with fantastic powers of speed after the fighter jet he was piloting was struck by a bolt of Energy X. He is always the first into any battle when he is called upon. He is approached about joining the team by Minuteman on a peaceful afternoon before Deja Vu begins his reign of terror upon Patriot city. After this he becomes full fledged member of the team."

Powers:

• Can run faster then the speed of lightning (only Green Genie is comparable to Bullet in speed, and even she is not as fast as him)
• Can punch at super speeds
• Regen (Low-Mid)
• Can speed up the regen of others
• Can energize others
• Can spin so fast projectiles bounce of him
• Can release electromagnetic bursts
• Can create a whirlwind
• Weakness: Energy, Acid, Radiation

Placement:

Freedom Force's Premier Speedster. The others can generally react to him but their certainly outpaced by him. That said outside the whirlwind he mostly has to stay at close range and be vulnerable to getting snagged by an area attack and is weak to some of the most damage types. Bullet has to play the game of attack and retreat over and over lest he get caught bad by something. 

B Tier:

13: The Ant:

Origin:

"The Ant hates those who prey on the weak or defenseless. Imbued with the powers of, and control over, ants, he is doggedly determined when it comes to besting an opponent. When not rounding up criminals he tends to be quiet and introspective, as he doubts his place in the team. His lack of self-confidence is his major weakness."

Powers:

• Agile
• Can climb walls
• Can control ants
• Very strong relatively
• Acid grenade
• Absorbs Acid and Radiation
• Can burrow into the earth and travel around underground
• Can release an ultrasonic squeal that stuns everyone near

Placement:

The Ant is a terrifying force to fight. He can burrow underground and just pop up anywhere with a sudden super strong shove, or an acidic grenade. At the same time he can control massive swarms of ants to blind, distract and disorient. Enemies distracted by his ants will find he can just pop up behind them and attack or stun to leave them helpless.

12: Supercollider:

Origin:

"Supercollider appeared on the scene seemingly out of nowhere. Is he a visitor from another world, stranded on our planet? Or maybe a secret government project gone wrong. Whatever the case he seems to be here to help, albeit in a monosyllabic and destructive manner."

Powers:

• Physical Powerhouse
• Resistant to Physical Force
• Can create giant shockwaves
• Can shrug off most status ailments
• Proton Shield that protects against energy, fire and cold damage
• Can release a super roar that panicks nearby enemies
• Weakness: Mental Attacks

Placement:

Supercollider is the physical titan of the Freedom Force and getting into melee is asking to be ripped apart to most opponents. On the other hand, most of their other options would do very little due to his powerful resistances, proton shield, and generally durability. Even getting near him would allow him to shockwave crush most foes. 

11: The Bard:

Origin:

"When Harry Holmes' obsession with the works of William Shakespeare cost him the love of his life, he hurls away his lute in frustration, unwittingly striking a nearby cannister of Energy X. The resultant explosion imbues him with the power of the muse, transforming him into the Bard."

Powers:

• Beautiful Trait
• Agile
• Superleaping
• Blinding shot of ink from his pen
• Can hurl an exploding skull
• Can cast a charm protecting against mental and mystical damage
• Can sing a charm that blanks an enemies mind making them wander aimlessly
• Can hypnotize
• Can revive the fallen to fight on his side

Placement:

The Bard early on is physically vulnerable, though his mental abilities is very potent and he has defense against mental and mystical, the two most dangerous types of powers. However in a battle royale scenario he makes a very powerful late game pick as he can revive the fallen to fight for him. He can also blind and use a moderate attack just to boost him a little further. 

10: Man O' War:

Origin:

"With his business failing, Hank Waters was taking his fishing trawler out for one last trip. Horrified to catch a stowaway on board, Hank was in the middle of berating her when the pair are caught in a shower of Energy X. Hank's powers extend from his time with the ocean, and he has sworn to use them to protect the children of the world."

Powers:

• Water Manipulation
• Can control his own density
• Flight
• Electrically charged melee
• Can shoot lightning bolts or homing ball lightnings
• Can punch with the pressure of the deep ocean
• Can deflect projectiles and electricity
• Has skin as tough as kraken's scales
• Can throwing a binding net
• Can fire a high intensity water jet
• Can create a massive whirlpool all around him
• Weakness: Cold

Placement:

Man O' War has a strong mixture of offensive and control abilities, able to keep a good control of the battlefield and do massive damage at the same time, flooding the area to keep the land-based enemies off their toes and chucking lightning through the air to threaten the flying foes. His defense is also not bad, able to protect against a lot of the common damage types. His cold weakness is not that bad since there's not many high-tier cold users in the FF.

9: El Diablo:

Origin:

"Growing up in the barrio, Ricardo Ramirez thought he knew it all, heading up a gang of thugs and miscreants. With the sudden bestowment of Energy X powers, his viewpoint was changed for good. Now using his amazing control of fire, he seeks to make up for lost time - and to give a little back to the city he grew up in - as El Diablo."

Powers:

• Flight
• Fire Manipulation
• Proficient Brawler
• Can project a fiery aura that melts and evaporates projectiles before they reach him
• Can fight with fiery fists
• Can absorb heat and fire
• Can shoot blasts of fire, and can make them explode in massive fiery blazes
• Can shoot hellfire which bursts into a number of smaller fires
• Can cause inanimate objects to explode and set things nearby on fire
• Weakness: Hot-Headed
• Weakness: Not very Accurate

Placement:

El Diablo is one of the four founding members of Freedom Force, and the weakest, though still clearly very strong. His main tactic is just to overwhelm the battlefield with massive fires. He's not that durable but it doesn't really matter when he is the only one immune to fire attacks and can absorb it to regain health. Most people below on this list would just get overwhelmed by the massive spreading fires. That said he's a bit reckless and not very precise in his powers which keeps him from getting into one of the higher tiers. 

A Tier:

8: Minuteman:

Origin:

"Mortally wounded while attempting to foil a Communist plot, Frank Stiles' powers were given to him by an Energy X imbued statue of the patriotic Minute Man. Taking on the name and mantle of this historic figure, he became Minuteman, and seeks to fight crime whenever it threatens the day-to-day life of honest Americans."

Powers:

• Minor Physical Powerhouse
• Superleaping
• Resistant to Mental Attacks
• Skilled Melee Fighter
• Can briefly boost his power up to 300%
• Has a change of deflecting projectiles
• National Guard Shield which reflects all projectiles
• Can launch a "Minute Missile" an energy missile attack that takes the shape of an American Eagle
• So Heroic that he has two extra hero points and can give a boost to all his fellow FF members, curing them of mental attacks

Placement:

Minuteman is also one of the four founding members of Freedom Force. His arsenal is basic, but effective. His National Guard shield and mental protection basically forces opponents into melee, which most often gives him the advantage. He can also superleap in and out of opponent range and can use minute missile against other physical powerhouses. 

7: Microwave: 

Origin: 

"In an alternate future, robots rule the Earth, and human beings are a nuisance to be hunted and destroyed. This is all that Microwave can recall after Mentor accidentally erased his memory banks while trying to subdue the savage robot. With a clean slate, Microwave has turned his radioactive powers towards fighting crime."

Powers:

• As a Robot, Microwave is heavily armored against physical force and has no brain to be mentally affected.
• Microwave is heavily resistance to radiation
• Microwaves's melee is charged with electricity
• Can shoot irradiating beams and irradiating cone
• Can cause an atomic meltdown irradiating all entities nearby, even behind obstacles 
• Can supercharge fists with energy
• Can displace self in time, making Microwave invulnerable but unable to attack
• Teleportation
• Can cause genetic damage to targets, reversing their resistances and weaknesses
• Can Clone Self
• Weakness: Slow

Placement:

Microwave's arsenal kind of speaks for itself. Using radiation means his damage is lethal against almost any other hero, and even if not his genetic attack can mess with their resistances anyway. He can also displace himself to avoid powerful attacks or clone himself to create a squad of himself. He also has access to energy and electrical attacks, both of which are extremely potent attack types. His atomic meltdown basically means that just being in his vicinity will be enough to KO most heroes quickly. He might be slow but he's tough to bring down and if he needs to go fast he can teleport anyway. 

6: Green Genie:

Origin:

Young Jani Al-Majani was taken to Patriot City to be sold off in an arranged marriage. While making her escape, a bolt of Energy X transformed her into the giggling glamour-girl of Freedom Force - Green Genie!

Powers:

• Flight
• Agile
• Fast (Comparable to Bullet, albeit not quite as fast
• Resistant to Energy Damage
• Can polymorph enemies into helpless things, most often a vase of pretty flowers
• Can control the elements, most especially wind
• Has a small chance of deflecting all projectiles
• Joy Buzzer
• Weakness: Fragile
• Weakness: Vulnerable to raw force and to mental attacks

Placement:

My favorite FF Member, Green Genie is like if someone mixed the best parts of Bullet's speedster strategy and El Diablo's fragile glass cannon strategy. She can zip across the battlefield, using flight and massive superspeed to the extent that only Bullet can keep up with her and polymorph her enemies into helpless objects to be broken after being flung by the wind. Outside of protection against mystical, which is rare the only way to protect againt her polymorph is being able to naturally shapeshift, which is basically just Law-Order and Quetzalcoatl. This gives her one-shot capacity against almost the entire rest of FF. 

5: Quetzalcoatl

Origin:

"Johnny Azotl used to scorn the traditions of his ancestors - until the power of Energy X combined with an ancient staff to reawaken the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl!"

Powers:

• Physical Powerhouse
• Flight
• Beautiful Trait
• Shapeshifting
• Can transfer life-energy to others
• Can cure physical ailments
• Can cure mental ailments and resist mental attacks
• Can energize and heal others
• Acidic Melee Attack
• Can curse the foe, making them susceptible to bad luck
• Can summon a giant serpent to kill enemies
• Can protect against fire and radiation attacks

Placement:

Quetzalcoatl as a god, is one of the most physically powerful of the Freedom Force and can protect against a number of types of attacks allowing him to physically rip apart most enemies. His acidic melee can be quite potent and his giant serpent summon is quite potent. However he is not quite hax enough to make S Tier.

S Tier:

4: Alchemiss

Origin:

"Believing in little besides her ability to make men drool, Catherine Larchmont-Price wandered through life disdainful of the beliefs of others. All that changed when the Goddess came to her dreams one night, blessing Catherine with mystic powers and transforming her into the Alchemiss. Before her transformation to Alchemiss, Catherine was the most pretty and popular girl at City University. she enjoyed playing with the affections of men but hated that her roommate, Emily, was the most un-popular girl in school. Emily was often seen praying to her "wise Goddess of the East" which Catherine would make fun of her for. That night though Energy X enters Catherine's room as she is sleeping and gives her the powers of the Goddess. And after waking from a strange dream where the Goddess appeared to her there was a knock at Catherine's door. A drunken college boy then attempts to force himself on Catherine, hurting her. However, before anything can happen her powers manifest themselves and Catherine sends the young man flying through her window with a powerful bolt of energy. She then vows to use her power for good as Alchemiss."

Powers:

• Flight
• Resistant to Mental and Mystical Attacks
• Can fire bolts of mystical energy or a giant arcane blast
• Can ward off most mystical attacks with the Blessed Aegis
• Can knock opponents away or upwards
• Can curse the enemy causing them bad luck
• Arms of the Goddess shield protects against physical projectiles
• Can forcibly stun opponents
• Can banish opponents to another plane of existence temporarily
• Psychic Visions
• Can absorb the powers of others, even once absorbing some of the power of Time Master to become the multiversal reality-warper embodiment of all Chaos, Entropy. 

Placement:

Alchemiss is the strongest spellcaster of the FF, and it's easy to see how. Her power-draining could threaten most members alone, but she buffers it with powerful knockback, allowing her to control distance, being able to banish people to other planes of reality, causing bad luck, and shooting powerful magical blasts. She has a mixture of magical power and hax.

3: Man-Bot

Origin:

"Initially introduced as a womanizing playboy, Ted Taylor's car is struck by a bolt of Energy X that leaves him with very dangerous powers. He seeks out the help of his scientist brother, who designs the Man-Bot suit for him. Though Ted at first refuses to wear it, his powers manifest in his brother's lab leading to an explosion that kills him. Guilt ridden over killing his own brother, Ted takes the suit and becomes Man-Bot, vowing to serve the people of Patriot City while also searching for a cure for his extremely dangerous energy bursts. "

Powers:

• Flight
• Heavily Armored and Durable
• Resistant to Stun
• Randomly triggers devastating bursts of energy x
• Absorbs Energy and uses it to use his own attacks
• Physical Powerhouse
• Can energize others
• Powerful energy beams
• Can disrupt the molecules of other objects, making them explode
• Can energy-drain enemies around him
• Can release a burst of energy x. Mentor has said that this burst is releasing the infinite energy within him, and this burst has seriously wounded the multiversal reality-warper Entropy. His energy has powered the celestial clock, the source of all movement and change in the multiverse. 
• Weakness: Really Slow (to the point he can't dodge)

Placement:

One of the four founding members of the Freedom Force, The Man-Bot is an unstoppable juggernaut. He has the most hitpoints, is super hard to damage, and if he gets close he can use release which can annihilate any other FF member. His long range attacks, while inaccurate, and still pretty good. His stamina is high and especially when compared to his energy-drained opponents. Alchemiss has a chance with her mystical damage and her ability to siphon energy away, but she became stunned and pained trying to control Time Master's internal energy, and even he has less then Man-Bot. There's a reason Man-Bot was central to the defeat of the main villain of both Freedom Force games. 

2: Tombstone

Origin:

"When Nathan Graves discovers the body of his wife, he is wrongfully convicted of her murder. But as he is executed, a freak blast of Energy X strikes his corpse, dragging his spirit back from the afterlife to seek justice and punish the wicked - as Tombstone!"

Powers:

• Made of Raw Energy so Intangible
• Heavily Durable
• His mind is dead and so immune to mental attacks
• Superleaping
• Cold Melee
• Can Melee with the energy of vengeful spirits
• Electrical Pistol Shots
• Can absorb the energy x of his opponents into his being
• Can possess enemies
• Can revive the dead as zombies to serve his will
• Shadow Shift: Teleportation
• Soul Manipulation
• Can cause animals to wither in his presence

Placement:

Tombstone was conceived as a homage to the darker anti-heroic entities of the Bronze Age. His intangibility makes it impossible for most FF members to do anything to him and the few who can, mostly mystical ones, would still struggle. He can absorb their energy, always dangerous and if someone gets the edge over him, he can possess them. He has numerous one-shot methods and his shadow shift and superleaping gives him a commendable mobility. He's almost as durable as Man-Bot but is nowhere near as slow. And as a late-game fighter he's still great able to resurrect the dead to fight for him. 

1: Mentor

Origin:

"While he is responsible for the founding of the original Freedom Force, Mentor was once an alien from another dimension, living in harmony until "Lord Dominion" took over his race and turned it into the dreaded "Domain". One day he spied on Lord Dominion's plan to unleash their "Energy X" onto earth 's worst miscreants to bring the puny planet to its knees. Determined  to stop his foul plot "Mentor" forcefully hijacked the carrier hauling the Energy X. As Preatator alerted Lord Dominion about the hijack, Lord Dominion angrily commanded multiple star ships to hunt him down before he can reach earth and deliver it to earth 's hereos to help him stop the Domain. Mentor almost reached earth as one of the Domain's star ships shot mentor's and knocked the supplement of Energy X out of the carrier. The Energy X canisters were luckily caught into earth 's gravitational orbit and struck both multiple do-gooders and miscreants. As mentor landed on earth he followed "Minute Man" until he was able to inform him about Energy X and build up the Freedom Force."

Powers

• Supergenius Intellect (Created the Freedom Fortress and all it's advanced technology)
• Resistant to Mystical and Mental Attacks
• Levitation
• Mental Manipulation (Highly Potent, can cause rage, mind blank, confusion, hypnosis, mental calm and so forth)
• Can enter the minds of others
• Mind-Reading
• Likely FTL Reflexes (Can pilot Domain ships, which can cross a star system in hours)
• Powerful but slow energy melee attack
• Can shoot an electron beam
• Can create a mental forcefield against physical attacks
• Can create an irradiating cone
• Can maintain people's presence through time at will 
• Can telepathically link people
• Can "with the greatest of efforts" maintain his mental presence while the multiverse was being erased and would maintain 3 more FF Members after the multiverse was nigh-erased
• Can create a mental seal capable of for a limited time holding in the multiversal level lord of time, Time Master

Placement:

Mentor was one of the four founding members of Freedom Force and is the team's....mentor. His psychic powers are so advanced, that the only Freedom Force members with a shot of defeating him are the ones with a mind; Microwave and Tombstone. Tombstone would be by far the hardest fight for Mentor. Tombstone can kill Mentor, and Mentor has very little that can affect Tombstone. He could seal him away as he did Time Master, but eventually his hold must break and he would have to use his vast intellect to invent something fast that can affect a being of pure energy (though this is not fully outside the realm of possibility since Mentor's race created canisters that can contain pure energy x). I believe he could do it, especially given his levitation and resistance to most of Tombstone's attacks. A battle royale would actually tip the scales in Mentor's favor. While Tombstone can raise the dead heroes as zombies, this would be most likely the weaker ones, the ones who fall quickly. Mentor on the other hand can control the strongest ones to aid him. All it would take is mentally controlling someone like Alchemiss or Green Genie and he would have a chance of mystically defeating Tombstone. 

If you are wondering how they actually scale, here are the relevant feats that they might scale too:

DC/Durability:

Wall Level: The Golden Age Heroes can outmelee Enhanced Nazi Gorillas called Kill-a-Rillas

Building Level: 3 Fodder Giant Worker Ants can make a giant anthole the size of a building. 

Town Level: Supervillain Nuclear Winter's mere presence drastically lowered the temperature of a Cuban town, allowing for snow there. Supervillainess Shadow caused the Earth to shake from deep underground

Island Level: The God Pan has his own floating island that he constantly keeps in the air with his godly power.

Multiverse Level: Time Master threatened the Celestial Clock that causes all motion and change in the multiverse, Entropy with a fraction of his power was warping the multiverse causing realities to disappear.

Speed:

Subsonic: Blackjack can move faster then the eye.

Massively Hypersonic: Bullet can move faster then lightning. Scales to Bullet and Green Genie's movement speed, and everyone else's reflex and attack speed.

FTL: Mentor's reflexes as he can fly the starships of the Domain. 

Sailor Moon Viewing Guide

So you want to get into Sailor Moon, aka the best franchise to have ever been made? Well this is my way of attempting to help people getting into SM.

Let me start by saying their are two main versions of Sailor Moon people talk about, the two earliest versions; The Sailor Moon Manga, and Sailor Moon Classic (the 90s anime). These two are really different, to the point that they can barely be called the same series. Every other version of Sailor Moon is somewhere between these two, which act as the endpoints. I'm gonna be honest, I am really biased towards one version. I love Sailor Moon Classic, but it can be a mess at times. The Sailor Moon Manga on the other hand is absolutely amazing...that said I'm going to try and present accurately.

First off let me say some weaknesses of the Sailor Moon franchise. If one of these are a major problem for you, you may find SM relatively unsatisfying.

1: Deus ex Machina: Probably the biggest problem to me, The Sailor Moon franchise has a bad tendency of introducing things exactly when it's convenient or maybe that episode/chapter.

2: No Moral Ambiguity: Outside of the third arc anyway. For the most part Sailor Moon villains, while some are sympathetic do not have any kind of point. They come in two varieties; genocidal monsters and normal people who are brainwashed or deceived by the first group.

3: Simple Fights: Sailor Moon is not a battle shonen series. It doesn't have very complex fight choreography. Fights are usually very short to preserve the emotional impact.

With that said, why should you watch Sailor Moon? That's hard to answer because there's so much good about this franchise. Generally speaking Sailor Moon has an amazing ability to bind the universal archetypal and the specific. Characters in Sailor Moon are both complex and potent. Plots are both emotionally and intellectually stimulating. Viewing Sailor Moon has some unknowable property about it, that seeing it uplifts everything else. It makes other series and even real life seem mysteriously deeper and more meaningful because it shows the archetypal skeleton hiding behind the specific and seemingly arbitrary.

But where do you start? Presuming you are starting with either the Manga or the 90s Anime, by far the two most popular places to start, let's talk about some of the major differences structurally in order to give a good impression of where to start.

As a general rule of thumb, the more unconventional your tastes in fiction, the more you will probably prefer the manga. The more conventional your tastes in fiction, the more you will probably prefer Classic. Why is this?

The Sailor Moon Manga was created by one female mangaka, Naoko Takeuchi for a teenage girl audience. Her writing was a radical revolutionary departure from the Magical Girl tradition up to that point in ways that are a bit complex to talk about here, but the major point of importance is that it became focused on the everygirl, and was incredibly optimistic of her.

Sailor Moon Classic was made by Toei Animation by a primarily male studio (leading to Naoko Takeuchi saying that the anime had a "slight male perspective") for a presumed demographic of young girls, and maybe any siblings or parents they had who would watch for them. Airing on mainstream television and aiming for a larger demo, attempts were made to make it more family friendly and more broadly appealing.

Most of the differences between the two series can be seen as coming from that distinction of authors.

The Sailor Moon Manga is a heavily genre-defying work, with elements of superhero comics, science fiction, urban fantasy, romance-drama, sentai, and anything else Naoko felt like. It centers around the planetary guardians (Sailor Senshi), alien entities who have taken on the form of humans in the current incarnation, and the long history of the universe's defense by the Sailor Senshi against the forces of the primordial void before existence. It has a plethora of references to all sources, both Japaneses and Global. Naoko clearly had a lot of faith in her young audience to understand a work like this.

It has a general arc structure of:
Big Bad serves Eldritch Abomination that is really dark aspect of primordial void. The Sailor Senshi get into a sequence of battles with the Big Bad of the arc's Generals who seek to restore or summon the Eldritch Abomination. Eventually Sailor Moon defeats the Big Bad and Abomination in the emotional climax of the arc. There is NO filler.

The Sailor Anime on the other hand massively ramped up the sentai elements and downplayed the estotericisms, philosophy, and general unconventional nature of the manga. The Senshi are basically normal humans in this version with some poorly defined level of superpowers, instead of cosmic beings. It's a lot more formulaic.

General arc structure is Big Bad is trying to awaken some ancient evil eldritch abomination. The Big Bad sends out generals one at a time for each sub-arc who send our goofy sentai monsters one a time. The senshi kill this with a generally bigger cooler end to each sub arc as they beat the general of the arc and ending each season with a fight with the eldritch abomination where it briefly becomes the manga. There is a LOT of filler.

In other words, the manga is like reading a strangely optimistic cosmic horror story, while Classic is like watching a female version of power rangers or super sentai except it gets really trippy at the end of each season.

Starting with the Manga:
Good choice! :P

Manga is 60 chapters, being pretty long for a Magical Girl Series. Not a single chapter (or act as the manga calls it) is filler. Act 4 is probably the closest. Still if you skip any act you will get some confusion.

There is also 10 side stories. 9 of these are the size of a normal chapter, but the Christmas special (Lover of Princess Kaguya) is really long. Only one of these ten (Rei and Minako's Girls' School Battle) is referenced in the main story and even then it was only once briefly. There's also a 16 Act Prequel called Codename: Sailor V. This is not essential to understanding the story but does contribute to it. It is a lot more filler-y then the main manga. Note all of the above could be read after reading the main manga if you like it.

If you want a chronological order in universe of the stuff:
First Arc Starts
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 1
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 2
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 3
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 4
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 5
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 6
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 7
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 8
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 9
Sailor Moon Act 1
Sailor Moon Acts 2-4 (Could take place anywhere in relation to the following Sailor V Vol.)
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 10
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 11
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 12
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 13
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 14
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 15
Codename: Sailor V Vol. 16
Sailor Moon Act 5
Sailor Moon Act 6
Side Story: Casablanca Memories
Sailor Moon Act 7
Sailor Moon Act 8
Sailor Moon Act 9
Sailor Moon Act 10
Sailor Moon Act 11
Sailor Moon Act 12
Sailor Moon Act 13
Sailor Moon Act 14

Second Arc Starts
Sailor Moon Act 15
Sailor Moon Act 16
Sailor Moon Act 17
Sailor Moon Act 18
Sailor Moon Act 19
Sailor Moon Act 20
Sailor Moon Act 21
Sailor Moon Act 22
Sailor Moon Act 23
Sailor Moon Act 24
Sailor Moon Act 25
Sailor Moon Act 26
Side Story: Chibiusa Picture Diary 1: Beware of the Transfer Student
Side Story: Chibiusa Picture Diary 2: Beware of Tanabata

Third Arc Starts
Sailor Moon Act 27
Sailor Moon Act 28
Sailor Moon Act 29
Sailor Moon Act 30
Sailor Moon Act 31
Sailor Moon Act 32
Sailor Moon Act 33
Sailor Moon Act 34
Sailor Moon Act 35
Sailor Moon Act 36
Sailor Moon Act 37
Sailor Moon Act 38
Side Story: Chibiusa Picture Diary 3: Beware of Cavities
Side Story: Exam Battle 2: Ami-chan's First Love
Side Story: Exam Battle 3: Rei and Minako's Girl School Battle?
Exam Battle 1: The Melancholy of Mako-chan
Side Story: Lover of Princess Kaguya

Fourth Arc
Sailor Moon Act 39
Sailor Moon Act 40
Sailor Moon Act 41
Sailor Moon Act 42
Sailor Moon Act 43
Sailor Moon Act 44
Sailor Moon Act 45
Sailor Moon Act 46
Sailor Moon Act 47
Sailor Moon Act 48
Sailor Moon Act 49
Side Story: Chibiusa Picture Diary 4: The Secret Hammer Price Hall

Fifth Arc
Sailor Moon Act 50
Sailor Moon Act 51
Sailor Moon Act 52
Sailor Moon Act 53
Sailor Moon Act 54
Sailor Moon Act 55
Sailor Moon Act 56
Sailor Moon Act 57
Sailor Moon Act 58
Sailor Moon Act 59
Sailor Moon Act 60

Side Story: Parallel Sailor Moon (takes place in an alternate universe, and so doesn't fit in normal canonicity)

Starting with Sailor Moon Classic:
...you sure? :P

Just kidding. So Sailor Moon Classic is 200 episodes long. There's a LOT of filler, and then some episodes that sort of pretend to not be filler because some character is introduced or a senshi gets a new attack but aren't REALLY. I am gonna list the episodes that have plot relevance, with the italicized ones being ones that are "kind of" plot relevant most often they get a new attack or something.

Season 1: 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 19, 22-25, 26-32, 33-36, 44-46
Season 2: 47-48, 51, 58-61, 62-65, 68, 70-77, 82-88
Season 3: 90, 91, 92-93, 101-103, 106, 109-113, 115, 119-126
Season 4: 128, 130, 133, 135, 143, 148-149, 150, 151-152, 154, 158-166
Season 5: 167-174, 176, 180-182, 187-191, 193-200

Some of the filler is good but a lot is pretty average. If you wanna skip to the plot: well there you go.

In the same continuity are the 3 Sailor Moon Movies. If you want to watch those:
Sailor Moon R: Promise of the Rose takes place sometime between episode 77 and episode 82 so feel free to watch it between those two.
Sailor Moon S: Hearts in Ice takes place around either 122, either before or after is not clear.
Sailor Moon SuperS: Black Dream Hole doesn't fit well in the timeline but most likely takes place between seasons 4 and 5.

There are also a number of shorts

Make-Up! Sailor Senshi takes place just before the R Movie and was shown in theaters just before the R Movie
The Three SuperS Specials take place sometime early in Season 4. Anytime between episode 128 and episode 148 should be fine
Ami's First Love takes place around the same time as the SuperS Specials

Starting with Sailor Moon Crystal
Crystal is the reboot anime that is closer to the original manga, though if I'm honest the parts I don't like about Crystals are mostly the diversions they DID take from the manga hmmmm

I wouldn't recommened starting with Crystal but if you want the manga experience, but want to watch instead of read it should be fine.

Starting with PGSM
PGSM (Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon) is the 49 episode (4 specials) 2003 live action series. It's got a really engaging plot and a deeper characterization then probably any other Sailor Moon Series. It's very sentai-ish but also a lot more romantic like the manga then Classic was. If you're one of the people who wants to watch a crazier soap opera, a Sailor Moon themed one this would be a fine place to start.

I have to warn though, the special effects are legendarily terrible. This series is also good if you like making fun of bad special effects.

I haven't watched the series enough times to say what is and isn't filler, but it's got less then Classic.

Sera Myu:
Sera Myu is the Sailor Moon Musicals. They're basically Sailor Moon fanservice and has stuff like Beryl and Galaxia teaming up. If you're not already an SM fan you probably aren't gonna get much extra out of it.

Also it has various timelines, like it tells the story in several different timelines. This makes it really confusing if you aren't a Sailor Moon Fan.

Sailor Moon: Another Story
Another Story is a Final Fantasy styled RPG but Sailor Moon Themed. It is set after the third arc and has elements of both the manga and Classic.

It has a fan sequel that continues the story past the fifth arc.

It does not actually tell the plot of the first 3 arcs so if you don't already know the SM story from all the other versions it's gonna be really confusing and lost on you.

If you like RPGs though you may like it, especially if you are already an SM fan.

How Imp judges Death Battles

Note that when I state what I consider the ideal, that does not mean I suggest it has to be that. Things closer to that are my preference, and the further from it, usually the less I like. That doesn’t mean I don’t like at all, but that the closeness to the ideal demonstrates my personal enjoyment.

Follow these principles religiously, slavishly, and you will see why I feel how I do about every single Death Battle released. There is no exceptions, there is no deviations from the standards outlined here.

There are 4 parts to each Death Battle and I will explain my ideal for each type.

Part 1: Premise:

-The Premise should be even

-The Premise should be interesting (IE if one of them is just immune to 99% of the other’s powers it might be “even” but not very interesting to watch)

-The two should optimally compliment each other and draw out each other’s personalities, showcasing both characters via contrast

-To be honest I don’t really care about it being thematic but I try and match thematics because some people apparently care

-Obviously, if it’s characters I know there is a slight boost there since I am naturally more familiar with them.

Part 2: Pre-Fight Analysis

-Should be informative

-Should spend optimally a well-proportioned time on the fighter’s abilities based on how important they are to the character and fight. Spending a notable amount of time on a one-off ability or weapon is usually a poor sign.

-Should not be leaving deliberate ambiguities to be exploited for later (IE should explain degrees of powers and not giving vague descriptors)

-Should be one of the episodes where they allow scaling. Disregarding scaling is a really big negative to me.

-Should be funny to some extent.

-Information optimally would be conveyed in an efficient manner.

Part 3: Fight Scene

-Fight should display the character’s abilities in interesting creative ways

-Fight should be optimally realistic

-Minor point but I tend to like magic and fantasy fights over science-fiction ones. That’s a really minor point, I just like magic more.

-Characters should be in-character, obviously.

-Ideally should be really fast, like to the point that it becomes difficult to see everything and get what’s going on. Most series in general seem to move way too slow to me and I want it to ideally be fast-paced and constantly changing.

-I like when a fight has a distinctiveness to it, something different from other Death Battles.

-So this might seem strange but this point is the common theme in all my most hated episodes: They should not be presuming who I should root for. I HATE when people presume to speak for me or presume to know what I think. If a Death Battle jut assumes I’m gonna be rooting for or against a certain character I get really annoyed. The worst episodes to me all share the property where they seemed to just want one character to win and assumed the viewing audience would definitely be on their side.

-Related note, I hate when it seems DB seems to specifically wants one character to win or one character to lose. Every character is someone’s favorite and you should be trying to present all the reasons a character is a cool or fun character when you are presenting them, ESPECIALLY if you kill them.

-I really do not like references to outside works. If you are having two characters fight, it should be focused on them specifically, and throwing in outside things is really annoying to me because it’s distracting. My favorite episode is Strange vs Fate and the thing I most disliked about it was the outside references.

-I do not like meaningless repetition.

-I don’t like sort of meaningless explanations. In other words, I don’t like when a series tries to explain something and then gives an explanation that doesn’t really explain it but it’s just assumed you will go along with it because it leads to something you presumably want to see. Not only does it presume again what my mindset is but it’s intellectually lazy.

-To be honest, I don’t care about the music for a fight. Like I don’t have an ear for music so usually it makes absolutely no difference to me. I could watch it silent with subtitles and get pretty much the same experience as I would otherwise.

-Also the animation quality itself is not a huge concern for me. Obviously I prefer it to be better when possible, but it’s not a deal-breaker for me per se, outside of when it detracts from one of the above points (like if it’s really slow or it’s repetitive and doesn’t show their abilities and personalities well). If something doesn’t look right (like water effects or whatever), I probably won’t care.

Part 4: Post-Fight (Verdict):

-I don’t like when the character that would lose is given the victory

-I really don’t like when they display a feat and then completely ignore it for a verdict or handwave it aside with really dumb logic

-I like when their verdict makes sense, and especially if the verdict uses information that was displayed prominently in the Pre-Fight Analysis. IE they’re not hiding information till the end that is crucial to know who would win. They’ve stopped doing that recently and I think it’s all the better for it.

-They’ve also stopped showing only one of the two fighters which I also think is for the best. Certainly didn’t hype me at all to only know one fighter, it was just annoying.

Conclusion:

The ideal Death Battle fight to me is an even matchup between two characters who can draw out each other’s personalities and powers well. The pre-fight analysis in the ideal Death Battle is time efficient and explains their power sets completely adequately and is moderately entertaining and humorous. The ideal Death Battle fight to me is a constantly changing magical fight that involves the forces of nature and reality bending and shifting all around, with constant change, focused exclusively on the two characters and personalities colliding, their personalities and what makes them great characters being demonstrated in all the cool things they are doing, with it clear that the fight writer and animator loves both these characters and wants both to win. It blurs and shifts in ways that are incredibly fast-paced and hard to keep track off but are evocative and powerful using imagery from nature, cosmology, mythology and so forth to create impressions. The ideal Death Battle fight verdict is logical and makes sense, using information already presented to explain their reasoning, and is consistent with the characters and animation.

Again, this is the ideal to strive for. It is not what I need each time though Strange vs Fate was definitely the closest. It is merely what the optimal is. Every deviation makes it feel worse to me.

Also you will notice that my preferred character winning…not a factor. I don’t have room for another factor. I don’t care if my preferred character wins or loses. I can showcase examples of that and with every DB I can showcase exactly what I like and dislike about it using these principles.

Fiction exists in two worlds

This is just a pondering if you will about what makes fiction great (IE transcending a singular person’s tastes and becoming an experience that can be shared by a multitude, an experience that can resonate far beyond the original author). Or at least a critical component. I wished to discuss the relation between the personal and impersonal.

It is one of our first revelations that this world we observe is seemingly divided into dualities. Light and Dark. Hot and Cold. “I” and “Not I”. Any story must neccesarily happen at the boundary of a duality. There is a division that exists in my faith between the human and the spiritual, the world we observe, and the hidden world of kami, a division I have tried to replicate in English with “personal” and “impersonal”. Perhaps this guides my thinking, but I would like to state my hypothesis:

The greatness of fiction requires an interplay between the personal and the impersonal.

I would hasten to not conceptualize this as a spectrum with personal at one end and impersonal at the other. That would suggest that to increase one would be to decrease the other, and that does not quite fit. Rather it could better be understood as two separate spectrums of personal-ness and impersonal-ness.

The Personal deals with persona, personalities, and most often with humans. The personal is the goals, motivations, actions, achievements, and failings of the human experience. The personal is the humanity of the piece.

The Impersonal by contrast deals with the abstractions that must be dealt with. In Shinto we would recognize these as the kami, the spirits. The impersonal is the guiding principles that determine the nature of things that the personal must cope with in some way.

It is perhaps obvious that these two must both be present to “some” degree. The personal without the impersonal becomes a canvas of shallowness, an emptiness and meaningless without any pursuit for the persona to act or react towards. It is a flatness without depth. The impersonal without the personal becomes a philosophical tract without emotion, an unchanging void out of space and time, a philosophical point perhaps infinitely deep, but without height or width (lacking any resemblance to reality).

Having an ill-developed one of either is better but still creates the conditions of bad fiction. The personal with an ill-developed impersonal, has barebones story, themes, and so forth and so becomes a mess of cliché. The impersonal with an ill-developed personal is filled with pretension as the characters act as mere stand-ins for the abstractions the author really means to speak off.

In short, ill-developed personal makes caricatures of the characters. Ill-developed impersonal makes caricatures of the plot.

The universe can be looked at as matter with energy defining the matter or matter defining the energy. The universe can be looked at as a set of nouns/things of which there is a different set each second accounting for actions/verbs. Or it can be looked at as a set of actions/verbs that create persistent patterns we call nouns/things. So too it seems is the nature of fiction. Fiction is an interplay between the impersonal and the personal, and any good fictional story theoretically could be looked at a set of personae and their struggles towards the impersonal, or a set of impersonal principles manifesting as a set of personae.

If you are a westerner, you may see this in the perspective of the philosophers Plato, with his pursuit of the realm of the perfect forms, and Aristotle, who looked to develop a science based on the empirical around him. In each duality, I can see a shadow of the divide between the personal and the impersonal.

There seems to be a most universal metric of quality of fiction, and upon observing much of what is considered the greatest, it appears to be the union of the realms of the personal and the impersonal. This seems to transcend genre, medium, and artistic milieu.

Help me figure this out

I need help figuring this out. I really don’t get a certain dissonance between my views and the views of a select other group of people that seems surprisingly large. I ask for this help because some people seem to state things that are not just at odds with my opinion but seems so fundamentally at odds with to me things that seem axiomatic and necessary that I presume either there is some mistranslation or that there is a massive psychological difference between us.

Let me begin with a simple premise that surely anyone can agree with; consistency is good.

What I mean by this is that it is better for things to align correctly then to be misaligned. This to me is the very…. the foundation of cognition and thought. Rationality requires that the rules of reality do not suddenly shift. Ethics require that morality does not suddenly shift. We presume that there is a constancy to how things work.

I can honestly say that I judge primarily all things by a single metric, everything and that metric is the metric of elegance, or unity you could translate it. It is the metric of Anti-Chaos.

What do I mean by that? When I say “elegance” I refer to the synching up of elements that are disparate. Again “Unity” may be another good translation for the concept I intuit. Let me give examples from fiction and perhaps it will make this more concrete.

If a character acts one way but then goes out of character acts contrary to their nature, that would be a de-synching of character’s past and character’s present and is therefore an inelegance that is bad. It is a disunity, a lack of stability in the fictional universe’s rules. The same would apply if a character acts irrational in a way that is not internally consistent. That is a desynching of the character and reality and thus is an inelegance and bad.

There is a sort of…. semi-ontological and semi-spiritual aspect to this…it is the grandest realization to me that everything is one…that all things are derived from primordial principle that the laws of the reality trace backwards more and more fundamentally until one reaches origin. The ideal fiction, or anything really, is derived similarly, as the elegant extension of what is.

Perhaps it would be easier to explain what seems at odds with elegance. Other people seem to not only not mind but outright enjoy what I would describe as inelegance. Disunity. Arbitrary-ness. Often, they will describe it something like “quirky” or the like and I don’t…. I can’t intuit that idea as except as being in opposition to the elegance that is vital. Things that are seemingly random or are added without purpose are shallow, meaningless and detract from the unity. It’s difficult to even speak of this because it’s so intuitive and all-encompassing in my mind. The pursuit of coherence, elegance, and unity, I can say without exaggeration, makes up every action, thought and feeling that I have. The avoidance of discord, arbitrariness, and disunity.

Very popular series will often put things together that don’t go together, and this in itself is supposed to be taken as enjoyable to witness…and I don’t get it. I legitimately feel no enjoyment from watching disparate elements act out of concert with each other.

Even with my favorite series in fiction, I don’t get any enjoyment from things that are disunified or inelegant. The absolute ideal work of fiction, one which is impossible for humanity to actually achieve but is the sort of platonic ideal of what should be, is I would imagine a work where everything is so perfectly elegant and unified that every moment of it is exactly what it ontologically must be, and each part works in perfect unison towards the whole. Again, this is not something that can ever be, but it is the platonic ideal to me that shows what should be good. What’s weird to me is I will sometimes hear people suggest things in this direction, but they will not take it to it’s logical extreme.

I become somewhat uneasy when people act in opposition to this because it is so central to how my mind works that if other people truly do not feel it, then it suggests their minds are very alien indeed.

I cannot overstate how… central this is to all my thinking. Everything I think, even what seems to be agreed on with others, is derived from the notion of the central elegance and unity of the cosmos, and on it’s goodness and desirability. Everything I believe and have stated, I can defend as being derived from the notion of the underlying unity to all things, and I do all I can to try and purge my mind of inconsistency. A and Not-A absolutely cannot both be true. This is the basis for which all truth must be understood, that the antithesis premises can not both be true, ignoring semantic word games. From this, I have done my best to derive my view, consistent with the notion that the universe does not contradict itself.

That so many others do not share this notion, is a deeply troubling notion to me, for it suggests a relative isolation of the self.

So please help me figure this out; why do others not just tolerate but enjoy a deliberate creation of disunity, a deliberate inelegance.