Happy Holidays

By Shamus Posted Sunday Dec 23, 2018

Filed under: Notices 118 comments

Statistically speaking, you’re not reading this. I suppose that’s technically true for most writing. Given the ratio of available reading material to the amount of time people spend reading, the vast majority of all writing is only read by a tiny sliver of the population. Harry Potter is the best selling book series of all time, yet the first book has sold a pathetic 120 million copies. Which means that JK Rowling’s culture-wide smash hit has been read by less than 2% of the world’s population.

Which means that, on average, nobody reads anythingIf you disagree, please attempt to prove me wrong by buying my book..

I suppose it’s not fair to say that nobody reads this site. I mean, someone must be leaving all these comments. But even if we’re comparing the readership of this site to the readership of this site as of last week, it’s still pretty low. Odds are, you’re on break from school. Or you’ve taken some days off of work. Or you’re traveling to visit relatives. On the off chance you are still working, you’re probably too busy to check on my site because everyone else went on holiday and left you with all the work. The jerks. Whatever the reason, you’re not following your usual routine and thus you’re not here.

On Saturday December 22, 2018, there were exactly two comments. All day. On the entire site. That’s crazy. The site usually gets more than that an hour. When a popular post goes up, we’ll get about that many a minute.

As a result, I’m not eager to put up a ton of content right now. There’s no point in posting something if nobody’s around to discuss itBut then why am I writing this post?. I think I’m going to change up the publishing schedule for the next couple of weeks. If something goes up a bit late or appears on a different day from what you’re used to, that’s why.

If it helps, this week you’ll get an extra-long, super-informal Christmas Eve Diecast. I know that nothing gets me into the Christmas spirit like a couple of nerds talking about BattleTech, Rimworld, Hitman, and Starcraft.

 

Footnotes:

[1] If you disagree, please attempt to prove me wrong by buying my book.

[2] But then why am I writing this post?



From The Archives:
 

118 thoughts on “Happy Holidays

  1. Thomas says:

    Quick! Commenters are asleep, post about TLJ

    1. Lino says:

      Man, don’t even joke about that :D The last time someone brought it up, it became a madhouse (for this site’s standards – by Internet standards, it was just a slow Tuesday)!
      But yeah, I guess everyone’s out celebrating. Personally, I was just reading some old entries, because I’m not following your Spider-Man articles (I’m PC-only, and I tend to not read about games that I have no means of playing).

      1. BlueHorus says:

        I dunno. So sure, the comments were a bit more lively than usual…but it didn’t seem that bad? To me, at least…
        No-one got called a Beta Cuck or SJW Feminazi as far as I saw, and there were almost as many warnings about flame wars as there were posts that might lead to flame wars.
        There were even some…good discussions and agreements to disagree!*

        But then again it’s not like I have to do the moderating. It’s Shamus’ site, so his call.
        Still want to hear his take on TLJ.

        *On the Internet of all places! Madness!

        1. Lino says:

          Which is why I said “for this site’s standards”.

    2. Dreadjaws says:

      Alright, then, I’ll post my opinion on TLJ: I think he’s a very good actor, but frankly his role as Two-Face in Batman Forever couldn’t be saved.

    3. Abnaxis says:

      Why would an adventure game from 1999 cause that much controversy?

      1. Nimrandir says:

        I never did finish that. I think it was installed on my old computer, though, so I’d have to start from scratch.

      2. Phil says:

        I suppose someone could complain about how Chapters was released episodically, or how we’re still waiting for Home.

      3. Geebs says:

        I don’t think there’s enough money in the world to make writing a defence of the rubber duck puzzle worth anyone’s time.

    4. Zeta Kai says:

      Posting about The Last Jedi was my knee jerk response to reading this post, as well. If that doesn’t start a flame war on Christmas Eve Eve, then nothing else will. Since the joke has been made, I shouldn’t bother, and I don’t want to actually initiate a dumpster fire, but I still have opinions about it, so…

      TLJ was a breath of fresh air, defying my expectations and making me actually feel like anything could happen in a way that gave me hope for the future of the franchise that I haven’t felt ever before. Cool things happened, themes resonated, and narrative arcs occurred that weren’t even trying to copy those that were told in previous Star Wars movies. Overall, a solid, beautiful film…

      But the whole casino planet subplot was a long and pointless waste, killing the pacing of the overall film while doing surprisingly little to move the plot forward and giving boring characters too much screentime without making me care about them or their journey. Also, Rey is not nearly as annoying as some would say, but her super-skills with everything, especially combat this time, are just not credible, and her lack of perceived challenges makes her arc less interesting. Overall, still a solid, beautiful film, but not without flaws.

      Feel free to burn my effigy at your leisure.

      1. Richard says:

        To a close approximation, I pretty much agree with you.

        Now watch while the Internet explodes.

        1. eaglewingz says:

          boom

      2. Kyle Haight says:

        Never watched it; consequently don’t have an opinion on it.

        1. Syal says:

          …I don’t follow.

      3. Spivak says:

        While I disagree mildly on a few points (I still think Finch has potential, despite his backstory, so ripe with possibilities, being criminally underused for the past two movies and the shifty criminal actually turning traitor without being redeemed on the next scene was an interesting – if controversial – touch), your general opinion matches mine pretty well.

        Overall I see TLJ as an interesting, yet flawed, movie. It tries to depart from the typical Star Wars mainstays and do new stuff with the franchise, and while it misses a couple of times, I still prefer it to sticking to the formula and giving us repackaged versions of the original trilogy. Star Wars IV – VI were great! Truly a landmark in the history of movies. But that trilogy is over. Give us new stuff. The road to that might be less safe, but it’s better than revisiting the old stuff again and again.

        1. Hector says:

          The thing is, though… it really didn’t. It’s not a “new” story, just a remix of the old story. And not a very good one, as every new element ends up going precisely nowhere. It destroys every character, smashes every interesting plot hook, circles around to the exact beginning so the entire thing was largely pointless, and yet still didn’t do anything but rehash old ideas.

          1. Lino says:

            No, it did so many amazing things! It constantly subverted your expectations, and… and… yeah, you summed it up perfectly – TLJ was a complete failiure not only as a Star Wars story, but as a story in general.
            But, hey, at least we still have the original movies, as well as the good parts of the Expanded universe…

            1. DeadlyDark says:

              +1

              I’d add one thing. One bad movie doesn’t destroy the universe. We still can replay KOTOR, or Jedi Outcast, or X-Wing. And enjoy them a lot.

      4. Thomas says:

        I didn’t mean to actually start the conversation. I’m frustrated with TLJ because I like almost everything it tries to do, I just found the way it did it immensely irritating. I’d be trying to get into a good emotional scene and they’d interrupt it for a cringey bathos joke.

        I loved Leia using the force – but the effect / framing made the cinema laugh. And I don’t know how you shoot a scene about protecting the ones you love whilst putting a death laser blowing up said friends base in the background without realising how silly that looks.

        Luke tossing his lightsaber away was really interesting. But did it have to be shot like a dumb joke instead of the drama?

        Can’t we build a future without spitting on the past? If TLJ had been really smart, it would have brought old and new star wars fans together. Instead it’s really just spread hate. I’ve read so many reviewers who spent half their review hating on Star Wars fans without even realising that fundamentally theyre talking about people and being dicks about it – and never mind the other side of the debate.

        It might seem silly to put that on the film, but the text was there. Noone needed to see Luke milk a gross alien.

        1. Geebs says:

          It wasn’t milk, it was actually yoghurt! EXPECTATIONS SUBVERTED.

          P.S. I was mostly just replying to say I agree with you.

      5. baud says:

        narrative arcs occurred that weren’t even trying to copy those that were told in previous Star Wars movies

        Hum, there’s a least three from SW V: rebel ships being pursued by ships from the evil empire, the rebels doing a desperate defense on a planet before escaping and the young jedi seeking a older master, who then teach her.
        I mean, the arcs goes to different places but, they are still copied.

        For me, it was a fun sci-fi movie, with the things that I’m mostly looking in a SW movie being present (planets showing various pieces of scenery, some space action and a lightsaber fight). But things were not perfect and I was annoyed with most of the characters.
        But the discussion around it has soured it for me.

        (Disclaimer: I watched it for free at a recruitment event)

      6. Joe Informatico says:

        But the whole casino planet subplot was a long and pointless waste, killing the pacing of the overall film while doing surprisingly little to move the plot forward and giving boring characters too much screentime without making me care about them or their journey.

        Man, good thing other Star Wars movies don’t have scenes that technically add nothing to the narrative, like say R2 and 3PO wander across Tatooine for half an hour, or everybody getting stuck in a garbage compactor and Luke nearly getting eaten by a space tentacle, or Han and Leia scraping Mynocks off the hull of the Falcon while they’re in the belly of a giant space slug.

        Rey is not nearly as annoying as some would say, but her super-skills with everything, especially combat this time, are just not credible, and her lack of perceived challenges makes her arc less interesting.

        Yeah, not as annoying as that farm kid whining about power converters who somehow became an ace pilot and blew up an enemy installation by using a space magic he just learned existed two days before.

        I keep hearing these arguments over and over and over again, and every time I just ask myself “Have these people ever watched a Star Wars movie before?” Because the only thing TLJ did that no Star Wars film did before was be thematically coherent.

        1. DeadlyDark says:

          That kid was shown during the movie that he’s a skilled pilot and racer. You can argue that these skills too dissimilar and I wouldn’t disagree, but in the context in the movie they were treated as a same thing.

        2. baud says:

          Yeah, not as annoying as that farm kid whining about power converters who somehow became an ace pilot and blew up an enemy installation by using a space magic he just learned existed two days before.

          Not as annoying as a person who’s never handled a lightsaber before fighting to a standstill a trained sith

      7. DeadlyDark says:

        The way I see it, the fact that TLJ tries something new, isn’t a plus on itself. Every movie must try new, it’s a given. If a movie does something similar – that’s a minus. And even TLJ trying something new, it’s still ended up mashing ESB and ROTJ scenes in it, so it’s failing even being original as well.

        Most frustrating part of TLJ (there are others, but then it would be too long), for me, is how it completely ruins every potentially good scenes with either out of place joke or some really dubious reasoning. Opening space battle and conversation between Poe and Hux. Telephone and yo mamma joke. Now I don’t consider Hux and Em… First Order as a credible threat anymore if something stupid like that worked on them. I can continue, but I’ll stop

    5. kikito says:

      I much prefer The Last Jeneration to The Original Seasons. Jean-Pierre Allard is more 3-dimensional character than Jay Quirk, although I prefer Speck to Sata.

      1. BlueHorus says:

        Eh, I prefer Bisko, Bax, and the rest of their crew. The darker tone and lack of moral surety appealed to me more than Allard or Quirk. Just my opinion, thou-

        …wait a minute, this is the Internet!
        Clearly any disagreement is proof that you are PROVABLY WRONG and JUST THE WORST and naturally you HATE KITTENS AND LOVE TERRORISTS!

        If discussion of TLJ does get out of hand, its always worth pointing out that it’s basically Skub

        1. DeadlyDark says:

          Yeah… I think the reason Big Space Bean worked so well, is that there were almost no exploration. Captain Bisko had no choice but to deal with consequences of his actions, while Quirk and Allard just moved to other planets and screw their lives instead

  2. DGM says:

    I’m only commenting because I have no life.

    Well, that and the fact that holiday crunch time is over for me. Figures you’d cut back on content just as I have free time to actually read it again. :P

    1. Lino says:

      The same thing happens to me whenever I buy games – 90% of the time, the day after I buy it, it goes on sale :D

  3. I am here. I accidentally flipped my sleep schedule so day is the new night, baby!

    Doing this on the solstice makes it even weirder, because everybody else’s days are getting longer and mine are . . . getting shorter again but at the same time inexplicably brightly lit.

    1. Lino says:

      Which means that, from my point of view, you’re one of the few Americans who posts comments at reasonable times (here in Eastern Europe we’re about 7 hours ahead of you guys).

  4. Yerushalmi says:

    I’m Jewish.

    1. baud says:

      It reminds me a discussion at work last year, a Jewish colleague was explaining that he was celebrating Christmas because he was just celebrating the anniversary of another Jewish person (Jesus, son of Joseph); it was a bit of a stretch, but hey, if someone want to celebrate Christmas, who am I to judge (also please note that here in France Christmas is mostly a non-religious holiday).

      1. Abnaxis says:

        Meh I’m atheist but we still all gather together for extended family time and gift exchanging. If I only ever celebrated the holidays where I gave 2 craps about their origins life would be really boring.

        Although I suppose some of that is also because my wife and I are the only atheists in our extended families, but you get used to that

        1. Kathryn says:

          I’m the only practicing Christian in my family or friend groups (well, I do have one Christian friend), so yeah. This is one of the good years – no one scheduled Exmas stuff on top of my Christmas observances :-)

          (Last year: “Let’s do Sunday brunch!” “Great, I have church at 8 so I can get there by 9:30-10 no problem.” “Sounds good!” *cut to Saturday evening* “We want to eat at seven-thirty. Can you get here by seven?” “Uh…”)

          1. Richard says:

            Weird. 7:30 isn’t brunch by any stretch of imagination.

            1. Bubble181 says:

              Yeah, anyone inviting me for brunch before 10am is inviting me for breakfast.

              1. Nimrandir says:

                I would have to call shenanigans on any early bird claiming 7:30 AM qualifies as a brunch.

        2. Bubble181 says:

          There’s Yule, and Agnostika, and a goody of other similar Christmas-time holidays for everyone.

      2. Liessa says:

        Same here in the UK; lots of us who aren’t religious still celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. Happy Christmas / holidays to everyone!

      3. baud says:

        Also, thinking some more on this, I think it was told on the tone of a joke or at least half-seriously (I don’t know this colleague very well).

    2. Nimrandir says:

      My wife had a Jewish boss several years ago, and she made her a Hanukkah tree.

    3. Kyle Haight says:

      I think of Christmas as two distinct holidays that happen to fall on the same day. One is religious, the other is secular. I’m not religious so I only celebrate the latter.

      1. baud says:

        I get this, I’m mostly celebrating the religious holiday with family, but that’s cool that everyone can enjoy Christmas.

      2. The secular one is called Yule. I try to use the word yule for everything to do with yuletide, but it is difficult when every other piece of media insist on “Christmas”.

        1. Abnaxis says:

          I honestly don’t see the point in trying to correct it. At least as far as I’m concerned, everyone who mattress knows what Christmas means, trying to call it “Yule” would just be annoyingly pedantic

    4. Confanity says:

      Wait, have I seen you on Reddit? I am also Jewish and was considering making a relevant comment!

  5. Raion says:

    Spending my vacation time playing Hitman 2 all day (when I’m not interrupted by things like family wanting me to show up to events and the like, the jerks). So yeah, less time for reading.
    Just took a lunch break and checked my RSS feed while eating, then it’s back to Hitman and podcasts.
    … this is the life, man.

  6. Sean says:

    Totally getting a Marvin the Paranoid Android vibe from this post. LOL

    Two comments Saturday, eight so far today. It’s a Christmas Miraculum!

    Happy Holidays, folks!

    1. Wolf says:

      The reverse psychologie of commenting on a post about low amount of comments compells me to post this comment.
      It’s a Psychology Miraculum!

      Happy Holidays from me as well!

    2. bubba0077 says:

      Likely because Douglas Adams made the same joke to say the population of the galaxy (or was it universe?) is zero.

      1. Kyle Haight says:

        Averages are fun. Most weekends are longer than average, and most people have a larger than average number of limbs.

  7. Redrock says:

    Back in Mother Russia we only celebrate New Year’s Eve on the 31st and the Orthodox Christmas on January 7th, and many don’t really bother with that last one, really. So the Russian hackers amd trolls will be hanging around, don’t you worry.

    To be honest, the way life just seems to stop in the West come Christmas time always baffled me a bit. I remember coming to Helsinki on the 25th and basically finding a ghost town. I mean, Russians love celebrating New Year, but it isn’t as all consuming, I think. Mostly because the family aspect, that “go back to your hometown” theme isn’t as pronounced, perhaps.

  8. Christopher Wolf says:

    I bought your book as a Christmas present and I love reading your stuff. However, if you want a couple of weeks of vacation, feel free to take them. Everybody needs to decompress sometimes.

  9. Happy Xmas to you too Shamus!

  10. Christopher says:

    Hey, merry christmas, and happy holidays!

    I spent yesterday playing through the last Spider-Man DLC. I think they’re pretty good, all told, if a bit “more of the same” compared to the standout pieces of DLC like ME3’s Citadel.

  11. Dreadjaws says:

    Well, your last post before this one was the Spider-Man one, and since I still haven’t played that game I’m avoiding that series right now. I read the first couple posts because I knew they’d be spoiler free but now I don’t want to ruin it. Usually your retrospectives are about games that have been out for a while, so more people have had chance to play them and the readership is higher.

    Also, that was Thursday, so since there weren’t any new posts until today, that plays a role in the low comment ratio. Though yeah, surely the holidays have a lot to do with it too.

    Also, still in the middle of your book, so I am reading your stuff. Enjoying it immensely, but due to non-holiday related circumstances I’ve had very limited reading time this last week.

  12. baud says:

    Merry Christmas and happy holiday! (I think I’ll try to finish your books during the break)

  13. WWWebb says:

    My wife, the librarian would like me to point out that book sales do not equal readers. Between libraries, family members, and re-sales, books have a good cultural multiplier.

    1. Forty-Bot says:

      FWIW I read the entire Harry Potter series (as well as most of the books I’ve ever read) from the library.

  14. tmtvl says:

    I’m quite sure that at least 10% of people reading this are reading this.

    1. Shamus says:

      I’m going to need to see a proof of this.

      1. Nimrandir says:

        First, I need a brief summary of the axiomatic structure under which the proof should be written.

        1. Shamus says:

          I was gonna write one, but then I realized nobody would read it.

          1. Nimrandir says:

            But how can you know?

            Kidding aside, merry Christmas and happy New Year to you and your family!

    2. Dev Null says:

      I’m not.

      Don’t you hate people who chime in with entirely anecdotal “evidence”?

  15. MadTinkerer says:

    Silly Shamus. Yesterday was the last Saturday to go shopping before Christmas. That’s what everyone was doing instead of reading your blog.

    Including me.

  16. krellen says:

    Ah, so does this mean you gave BattleTech a try? I’m excited to hear about it!

    1. Shamus says:

      It gets a whole section of the Diecast tomorrow!

  17. Lino says:

    By the way, back in the day, I remember a commenter by the name of Daemian Lucifer. He used to comment on every single blog entry (he was often the first one to leave a comment). Whatever happened to him? I hope he’s OK…

    1. Shamus says:

      I was wondering the same thing. DL has been around since 2009 and he vanished this September. It’s fine if he just got sick of my site, but when someone vanishes abruptly like that you do worry that “something happened”.

      1. MelTorefas says:

        Wow, I *just* realized he hasn’t been commenting. o.o I also hope he is okay!

        1. Nimrandir says:

          I, too, had noticed his absence and hope things are okay.

          1. Thomas says:

            :( I hope things are okay with him. Hopefully life just took him down a different path

            It’s a bit scary that with internet people, if anything happens, you’ll never know.

        2. I was actually intending to make a snarky ‘It’s okay. You can say Damien Lucifer, Shamus.” comment before I saw the comment above and realized that yeah, he hasn’t posted in the forums since September either and he was arguably even more prolific in there than here…if that’s possible.

          1. Mortuorum says:

            He’s not the only old regular that’s MIA. Among others, “Wide And Nerdy” (whose comments I always found insightful) hasn’t posted in a while either.

            1. Thomas says:

              He had a really nice open approach to talking.

            2. Lars says:

              And MichealG is missing. Although he was more active in the programming posts. And programming posts vanished month ago, when pixel city redux was left unfinished.

              And by scrolling down, I found a comment from him. Good thing.

    2. Christopher says:

      Shot in the dark but maybe I wouldn’t wanna hang around either if my comment was the trigger that lead to all of Spoiler Warning leaving. I figured that’s the deal rather than anything else.

      1. Nimrandir says:

        If that’s the case, he took a pretty long while to make his exodus.

    3. Redrock says:

      Huh, I was thinking about saying something for a couple of months now. Glad I’m not the only one who noticed. I miss DL. I am at that age when, well, things do start to happen to people I know. I mean, that’s completely irrational and has little to do with DL, but one does worry. I hope he’s alright.

  18. CrimsonCutz says:

    Wait, so if I didn’t read this article, how did I know to reference a concept brought up within it? How did I even know the concept was brought up? How did I even end up in this comment section?

    It’s a damn shame you’ll never read this or maybe I’d get some answers

    1. eaglewingz says:

      It’s ok.

      Statistically, you don’t even exist, much less read.

      So no worries :p

      1. Richard says:

        On the bright side, statistically you’re living now or in the far future, depending on whether humanity wipes itself out in the next century.

        Merry Christmas!

      2. Nimrandir says:

        Mathematically, each of us is a set of measure zero, so while we exist, anything we do can be safely ignored.

  19. Noah says:

    Makes sense. If we aren’t here to read anything, there’s no reason to say it to us. It’s our fault for not being here, I say!

  20. Carlos García says:

    Damn, that paragraph there makes me want to post a strip from Mafalda, but I don’t find it anywhere on the net.
    Another character tells her off about reading newspapers: «The newspapers don’t tell about half of what happens and if we add that half of what they tell is false, we get that newspapers don’t exist!»

    I wish Pathfinder: Kingmaker was less buggy, I’m not stuck as loading an area ends in an error. I may start a new save. The game is great, if it has the damned making you the boss of a fort, in this case it makes you baron of lands you can expand. The only thing I don’t quite like is that it’s yet another RPG where you’re given political/military power. I want an RPG where that is left for the end if it tells what happens after you’re done all you’ve done.

    Though what really annoys me in any RPG is when they try to make me identify with the character. For me an RPG is about seeing the story of someone who isn’t me, that what gives it replayability. I am not my character and I don’t want the game to try pull me into the skin of the character. I want to make someone wh’s LG and with paladinish ideals and see what happens to him/her in the world and story. Then make a CN bard who despises any form of authority or obligation and see how things look for him/her. “Whatever background of story, you are…” bye bye, Steam refund me this (no, I don’t actually asks refunds for that reason, just exaggerating how I dislike the voice off addressing the player instead of referring to the character).

  21. Ramsus says:

    You are correct, I am not reading this. Or rather that thing you wrote? I guess by the time you’re not reading this I won’t be reading either? Um…? Argh. Well whatever, happy holidays.
    (This post was actually quite amusing to me as I was too busy to read the blog for the last few weeks and just got caught up in the last several days. So I was late for all the things you assumed I was reading on time and on time for the thing you assumed I wasn’t.)

  22. Gothmog says:

    Merry Christmas to you and yours, Shamus! And to the rest of the twentysiders to boot, whatever your beliefs. I have read your new book and it was very enjoyable, Shamus. Here’s hoping for more stories in that world?

  23. Karthik says:

    Don’t forget the lurkers, Shamus! I keep up with the site using the RSS feed and diecast using a podcast app, and have been kinda burnt out on commenting in general for a couple of years now, exceptional as the atmosphere here is. Not sure I’d show up in the statistics.

    Anyway, glad to see this section isn’t as empty as you thought it was. Happy holidays.

    1. Jack of Spades says:

      To paraphrase the wizard, not all who read are commenters.

      Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

      1. Nimrandir says:

        Wasn’t the wizard quoting the hobbit there?

  24. Gabriel says:

    Sorry, I skimmed past this post and instead clicked on 5 Reasons Millenials Are Killing Blog Comments – Number Four Will Surprise You! Have you considered replacing the comment section with an emoji reaction board?

    1. Retsam says:


      (( ____
      (( _____
      ((_____
      ((____ ----
      / /
      (_((

      (Odds of this not getting caught in the spam filter are pretty low…)

  25. Leipävelho says:

    Pfft, who needs christmas when you have Decemberween!

  26. Moss says:

    Merry Christmas, Shamus!

    And everyone else of course.

  27. Mistwraithe says:

    Sorry, I was busy washing the car on the 22nd. Extrapolating out, I assume everyone else was too.

    1. Bubble181 says:

      Oddly, I was.

  28. Ninety-Three says:

    I am here and moderately surprised that a holiday slowdown affects blog comments of all things. I’d expect taking time off work and school to mean more time spent on comments sections, unless the primary demographic of this blog is people slacking off at work and in lectures.

    I’m willing to believe my intuitions are wrong, but also, comments are kind of a weird metric to use, since each article’s comments section only tends to live for a few days, and Saturday is in the drought period. Were your pageviews in as much of a slump as your comments? Then again, maybe we should expect the same drought effect on pageviews since the site regulars don’t bother coming back on Saturday, knowing that there’s no new content. Analytics is hard.

  29. Aaron B Wayman says:

    I saw Battletech. You wrote BattleTech. I may actually force myself to listen to this one. Happy Christmas and all that.

    PS Hurry with the epub version, I really want to read the book.

  30. Wangwang says:

    Shamus once wrote about plot-holes, and the general idea is that plot-holes only matter when you did not enjoyed the movie in the first place. So at much as people talking about plot-holes in TLJ like lightspeed ramming, tracking device, or Leia-Poppin, etc, they only really thought about that when they started to disagree with the the way the movie going.
    But the problem with that kind of thinking is it’s all down to personal opinion. That’s mean if I enjoy Batman & Robin than it’s a good movie, critic score be dammed. We can not argue about movie like that. So we have to bring up plot-holes, structure, tropes, and best of all, guity-pleasure, to justify talking about movie in a professional way.

    1. DeadlyDark says:

      I thought about that a little. I think it works this way.

      If movie is engaging enough, during the watch, you won’t notice it. Good for movie. Now, that its gone, you can think about it with, this would matter less, so possibly during that period you can find logic problems. And then rewatch movie and since first impressions are gone, see new things in it.

      Also, there aren’t just plot holes that pulls you out of the movie. There plot contrivances, and… I don’t know the name of it. But it’s when technically it’s not a mistake, but since not enough information wasn’t telegraphed, you spend time reconstructing it. It’s like in Dark Knight Rises, Bruce travel between his prison and Gotham without money or documents wasn’t shown. You can infer, that he used some old tricks that he picked up during the first parts of Batman Begins. But that still pulls you out of the movie. (I had that experience recently watching Tomorrow never dies, asking myself how Michelle Yo found sunken ship at the same time as Bond)

      I agree with the last point. You should show (scary word ahead) objective information, like facts from the movie and possible interpretations of said facts. These facts can include plot holes (based on information presented in the movie), contrivances, goofs, etc. And then you can say, that’s that minor thing (show your personal bias, since the impact of said fact is fully personal thing; e.g. in Predator name of the found dog tag is CH Hopper, and Arnold says “Jim Hopper”, it’s an error, but you can live with this). It’s both informative for me as a reader, and most honest way talking about these things.

      1. DeadlyDark says:

        To add a small point. While I remember that Shamus basically told “It’s all just my opinion” about his work, I’d disagree. Shamus mines a lot of facts to support his opinion, presents possible counter arguments, so no, it’s not just Shamus’ opinion.

        1. BlueHorus says:

          Well, it is, fundamentally. Yes, Shamus does put a lot of effort into an informed opinion, and he explains his opinion well. But for some things there just isn’t anything objective to fall back on.

          Related: Shamus seems to genuinely love computer programming and blogging about it, which to me is just baffling. Man, are those posts boring.
          But hey, if he likes it, he likes it – and a lot of his audience do too, apparently, so what’cha gonna do?

          (not read the programming posts, obviously)

          1. Vi says:

            It’s fun for me to read, even if I don’t always understand what he’s talking about, because I crave his world-creating powers. They may not be meatspace worlds, but it’s an amazing power all the same, and the theoretical possibility of developing it for myself is really tantalizing. If someone said they gained the ability to fly or throw buses around through sheer logic, and here’s how, I bet the whole Internet would pay attention!

        2. Wangwang says:

          I agree. And one more thing I like about Shamus writing, is that i can ‘feel’ that he respect different opinions. ‘Feel’ is the operative work. Many people talk like they respect other opinion, but i ‘feel’ that they’re just saying “ok, I respect your opinion even though it’s stupid.”

  31. Maryam says:

    Hey Shamus, on your About page your links to buy your books are broken. Also, is that the only way to find them outside of blog posts?

    1. MichaelG says:

      They’ve been broken for years, I think. I’ve mentioned it to him, but I guess they work for him or something.

  32. Bubble181 says:

    Happy holidays for you and yours, and all commenters and lurkers around here, too!

  33. Chad says:

    I did stop listening to the diecast, not because I didn’t care to, but because I got frustrated trying to get the RSS feed to work and gave up.

  34. PatPatrick says:

    I rarely comment on anything here because I live in Eastern Europe (Belarus), and when a new topic appears here – I’m usually already sleeping :) And when I finally wake up – there are already 100+ comments here :)

  35. John Robey says:

    I didn’t read this post.

    I also didn’t leave any comments.

  36. Jamey says:

    While you probably don’t recognize the name (as I comment maybe annually? Twice a year?), FWIW I read every post but only occasionally skim the comments and only occasionally-occasionally chime in. But I’m here :)

  37. pdk1359 says:

    Well, I popped in, and since (Mexican accent) I’m a mouse and I’m stirring (/accent), I though I’d comment and add to the pile of 110 that were already here. I didn’t read the others, tbh, but here’s another (and if you read this, and got the reference, you rock).

  38. Galad says:

    The start of the post seemed uncharacteristically nihilistic for you, Shamus. Shrug. Holiday blues only, I hope.

    I never noticed DL went missing. We never figured out his age, did we? Afaik we don’t blame him for the Spoiler Warning exodus, since if it wasn’t him, it would’ve been someone else.

    Anyway, I got the Hearthstone bug again, beat the Rumble Run twice and I think I’ve had enough. I’ll do another arena or three probably an quit HS again, for another half an year. Life’s good. :)

  39. Joe says:

    Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!

    By Rommel I meant Shamus.

    By ‘read your book’ I meant ‘got it for Christmas’.

    And by ‘magnificient bastard’ I meant exactly what I wrote.

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