Biff was basically guaranteed to win the fight against his nemesis from the get-go, given that he was his own nemesis. So if he wins, he wins…and if he wins, he wins. And if he loses, he still wins. Even if he also loses, even if he wins. When people say that overcoming yourself is the hardest struggle, they’re probably referring just to how confusing that kind of reasoning can get. >_>

Of course that is only the big-picture view. If you look closer, you begin to see that Biff actually isn’t quite himself in this context. There are two distinct flavors of Biff involved here – old/new Biff, dumb/smart Biff or however you want to distinguish them. The smarter Biff uses the brains/brawn dichotomy, so let’s go with that, giving us brains!Biff vs. brawn!Biff. I’m not sure which dichotomy brawn!Biff is using, since it’s possible he hasn’t actually noticed the similarities to begin with. >_>

Anyway, brains!Biff’s simulation of the hypothetical match-up against his nemesis results in a pretty typical result: brawn wins, but then brains finesses the results into the opposite. It often ends that way – brawn has advantages when it comes to winning the battle as such, but it tends to be out of its depth when it comes to the exploitation phase, and that’s where brains has a chance to get back on top. Sun Tzu says that supreme generalship consists in winning without fighting, but Biff proves that winning by losing also works – although the pain involved still makes the “without fighting” option more attractive.

More on Thursday.