Authority.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority." - John Dalberg-Acton

Never have I ever meet someone in a position of authority that was truly deserving of respect. It doesn't matter how small the power they have been given, the result is always the same. As a child, I saw this over and over, and at the time I didn't know why this was the case. As an adult I now know it is the weakness of the people that seek to have control.

It started with my father. He was a terrible man. He desired to control every action and thought of everyone around him. Self-centered, narcissistic, bullying, he has always been my example of what kind of man not to be. However, this was an early warning of what to expect of people that might hold authority over you, and sadly I have yet to be disappointed in this.

My second lesson in the nature of authority came from school. It was here I found that teacher are sad, bitter, self-hating people, that take every ounce of their misery out on the children in there care. I get that teaching is not the first choice for anyone, but there unfulfilled dreams aren't the fault of the children. It seems that at some point they start seeing hope and they feel they must crush it. As a child, I didn't know what I might do in the future, but I knew I couldn't become like these poor bastards.

Now as an adult you deal with less direct authority, but you still deal with it. The cop that got 34 "C-"s in high-school. The middle manager that knows he will never advance. The guy at the any government office. The moderator on any given internet forum.

The Highest Praise You Can Give... Vol 1

What is the highest honor you can give something? It almost certainly must vary from thing to thing. As the highest praise you might give a song will undoubtedly be different for a movie, or a television show, or a person. This also will most definitely be different from person to person. However, here I will tell you the highest praise I can give to various things.

Music. While I am not huge into music, I do know what I like. And the highest praise I can give a song is staying in the car to hear the end of it. I have already reach my destination, but I enjoy this song so much that I will let the car run a few more minutes to hear it till the end. This doesn't happen often for me.

Video games. I am a collector of games. Whatever the system, I tend to amass large libraries of games. However, I will almost never buy a game for more than one platform (of the same generation). Yes, it does happen with remakes across hardware generations, but I am not talking about that. Hollow Knight has received this honor from me, as I first owned it on Steam, but liked it so much that I bought it again on Nintendo Switch, so that I could play it on the go. Payed full price for it the second time too.
 
A person from the internet. Ever meet someone on a forum, or a comment section, etc? How often have you been interested enough in that person to stay in contact with them out side of that website? Well for me, only once. I won't name them here, but there is one person that having meet online, I have gone out of my way to stay in contact with them.

There are of course many other things that need praise. However, I can only handle so much positivity at one time. So, this will serve as the first part of a series.

Retrofitting a story.

So Borderlands 2 tells is meant to be a direct sequel to Borderlands. Except, all the story elements, and personalities of the characters are pulled from no where. Which is fine, it is used to make the game more interesting, and make the player care about the situation.

If you play the original Borderlands, it is made clear that all playable characters are only here for money. They have little to no personality, we get a few words of backstory, and now they are "vault hunters" and are here for fame and fortune. It is not exactly deep. The various antagonists get much more in the way of story and personality, but they are all dead by the end of the game.

Then you start Borderlands 2, you have 4 new characters, this time with backstory and personality out the ass. Which is good. However, you the meet all the playable characters from the first game (now as NPCs), and suddenly they are acting far different then what you would expect. Now the old characters have distinct personalities, and apparently are not just here for money, they want to protect the poor people of Pandora. Where did this come from?

No where. These personalities came from no where. There wasn't much to work with to base a sequel on after the last game, they had to make some up. The second game was more popular, and many of its players never played the first game. So, they get a pass on this.

Link's Awakening Questions.

I did a play through of Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening recently. It is a game I have played through many times, and is likely my favorite of the 2d Zeldas. While playing I got thinking about what is happening in this game, and how there are many unanswered questions concerning the events of the game.

We are told through the course of the game that the island it take place on is a dream of a being known as the "Wind Fish". The rules of this dream are unclear. We are told that all that exists (other than Link) are all parts of this dream. The bosses at the end of each dungeon all mention being part of this dream, and work toward keeping the "Wind Fish" asleep. However, none of the people (or talking animals) of the island mention any knowledge of being part of a dream. So do these people actually breed, and age, and die? We see children as well as old people, there is a graveyard to be found, but did all of these things just appear when the dream started, or did they develop over time?  Have the children all been children for possibly hundreds of years as the "Wind Fish" took its nap?

More over we see ruins on the island. Here again, have they always been ruins, or have there been civilizations they have risen and fallen over time on this island? In one ruin we find literal writing on the wall that the island is a dream of the "Wind Fish". Did the first people as part of the dream know this, and write it down, or did this ruin materialize with the message already in it?

We also see an odd level of civilization on this isolated island. We see a guy running a shop with a huge mechanical arm that gives out prizes, but no where else do we see this level of technology. We see that there is a library, and telephones throughout the island, but we see no evidence of any carpenters or electricians.