T w e n t y S i d e d
Hello there! It’s been a while since I said hi.
I know these days the only time I come in here is to sulk, and I do try not to (hence the prolonged lack of anything on my part) but I don’t like sitting here silent. So I thought i’d just talk about things. ‘Things’ being m0stly my dad. And a bit about why I personally haven’t taken part in the site for so long.
It’s a bit of a gloomfest, so if that’s not what you’re looking for this year, I wanna wish you a very happy new year right here. I’m grateful you’ve all stuck around as much as you have, you’ve been a wonderful part of keeping this site alive and we’re all so grateful to you.
Thank you.
Now onto the moping.
It’s very odd to realize it’s been over two years since dad died.
It’s gotten hard to write things for the site for a bit now. It dawned on me at a certain point this year that all the things I was chatting about were conversations I would have had with my dad. And while, thanks to you all, there’s certainly not silence, the particular kind of conversations I would have had with him are gone. The call and response is only a call. Which makes it hard to come in here and make jokes and chatter about my own projects and/or whatever aspect of RPGs he was talking about.
Not that the gloomies are the only reason I’ve not had much to say in the margins, I have a very taxing full-time job. And a life to learn to live as a young adult in a very, very complicated world. Which doesn’t leave a lot of room for writing or other projects. But the ‘I miss my dad’ thing makes it a lot harder to sit down when I do have the time and engage with the community he spent so much time fostering over the years. As much as I genuinely do enjoy writing for the blog. It’s hard to think about the reason I’m doing it, and how my uninterrupted rambling will remain just that.
Not that you guys responding doesn’t count as conversation, but talking to my dad was different. If you’ve watched his YouTube videos you might be surprised to know that’s almost exactly how talking to him went. You went to his office, sat down, and you talked about whatever the hell you were both interested in until he remembered he had work to do. Sometimes it was mostly him, sometimes it was mostly you, and sometimes it was both of you and sometimes he’d spend half the damn conversation interrupting you going on for hours about whatever topic you’d glued yourselves onto. If you want to imagine what we sounded like, just stick some of my chatter from the margins between his parts of the conversation. You’ll get the idea. We were very, very similar people.
This wasn’t really intended to become a surprise new years gloomfest when I started writing it, but rambling’s an inherited trait I’m afraid. Like I said, similar people.
I like to think he would have liked the man I’ve become, even if my life so far hasn’t ended up as creative as his. He was proud when I came out, he was proud when he found out how long I’d worked my last job for. He would have been damn proud when he heard about this one, the money I’m making, and the fact that it’s better than retail. I dunno if he would have been proud about me rambling in the margins of his website, but he’d sure be flattered.
I don’t think it ever occurred to him we would want to continue his legacy, he always lived like whatever he did next was going to be the only thing that’d be left of him. He worked with the manic energy of a man being chased by the concept of mediocrity. He told me himself once that one thing he feared was when he died was to never have done something, to never have been able to finish what he felt like he needed to do. Whatever that might have been. The goal shifted a lot, the ideas that would make him remembered never seemed to stay the same for long. He wanted to be everything at once,
In the end he expected his site to be like a memorial. As excited as he was to see us take interest in taking part however critical he might have been with some of the results; I think he forgot he was working with teenagers I don’t think he ever imagined a future where we would want to keep it alive. But here we are. Maybe it’s not as populated as he kept it, but it’s here. Still living on even when he’s not.
Maybe he never figured out what he wanted to accomplish in the end, never found a way to leave a mark in the history books like I think he wanted. But he was known, he’ll be remembered. And we’ll try to keep doing what he loved.
Have a happy new year my friends, and many, many happy returns.
Footnotes:
[1] and sometimes he’d spend half the damn conversation interrupting you
[2] however critical he might have been with some of the results; I think he forgot he was working with teenagers
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I rarely comment these days, but that’s no different than how I started on the site, I suppose? I still read most of the stuff that gets put up, I think, and I appreciate when y’all (meaning that very broadly) continue to post. I think he’d be proud of what has gone on here, for what nothing it’s worth, but I certainly didn’t know him like you did.
This wasn’t even a gloomy post to me.
Happy New Year.
Seconded.
Did you know it took me all night to realize what that intermittent banging and clattering had been? Didn’t figure it out till midnight when people started letting off actual New Year’s fireworks that the previous stuff had been people making a racket early.
If one is to deduce that we’re trying to avoid gloominess on the regular but having a moratorium on that effort momentarily, I’d like to use the opportunity to say a few words.
(Much like Peter’s post above, I don’t suppose any of the things I’m about to write will be particularly uplifting, so if you’d rather not indulge in more gloom, I recommend against reading further.)
Hardly a week goes by, even now, that I don’t still think of Shamus. I’m not a morbid kind of person, at least I don’t think, but I know I’ve always thought that death is a part of life, and as such, thoughts about death should be part of everyone’s life. Just to provide a pretty stark example of what I personally believe, whenever I come across thoughts expressed with regards to how children should be “shielded” from the very concept of death (“Oh, grandma was called back by God.”, “Your pet rabbit has gone to live at a big farm where it’ll be much happier.”, etc) I vehemently if quietly disagree. I’m fairly certain that our ancestors grew up surrounded by death and simply accepted it as something that could happen to anyone at any time, and I think that by denying ourselves (and our children) the knowledge of it in service of deferring trauma for later, we greatly risk setting them up for a bigger-than-necessary trauma later when a confrontation with mortality becomes necessary. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
I’ve encountered death quite a bit, I’m expecting my mother to pass away sometime in the next five years, and I think ahead to my own death and of how to leave things for those who’ll be left when I pass (“getting my affairs in order.”) But when Shamus passed away, it hit me like it’s rarely done before. Clint Eastwood’s character has a rather gruff couple of lines in the movie “Unforgiven” when he expresses that when someone dies, it’s not just the cessation of who they were at that moment but also of all of that which they could yet have become.
Shamus not only had very interesting and well-reflected opinions coupled with an excellent ability to express them, but also somehow the patience and thoughtfulness to foster a community where even conflicting and contradictory ideas could be freely exchanged. Whenever I came across something that made me stop and take notice, it had become second nature to think “I wonder what Twentysided will make of this”. The absence of that voice, both Shamus’ own but also of those who found his interesting (or wrongheaded) enough to feel inclined to contribute their own, is acutely felt.
And so, for whatever reason, that’s what I wanted to contribute. How Shamus’ passing drove home for me, in a manner that it rarely has before, just how much losing someone isn’t only about suddenly feeling bereft all the many things that were, but of the unimaginably myriad things that weren’t yet, but might have been. It’s a silence which feels more overwhelming even than the loudest voices that remain.
I’ve been in the same boat – I think about him almost every week. Ever since he passed away, I’ve felt a void in my life that I haven’t been able to fill.
As sad as it may sound, I spend a lot of my time online, and this community was my home away from home. Now that it’s gone, I feel adrift. I’ve spent a long time looking for someone similar to Shamus, but that is very much a fool’s errand.
So instead, I’ve been reading the archives, starting from the birth of the blog in 2005. I even do it through Archive.org so that I can fully immerse myself in the spirit of the Blogosphere back in its heyday, and the way every website was an island of uniqueness where you could really get to know someone.
I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out why I haven’t been able to let go. Why is it so difficult to fill the void left by the loss of his voice?
I usually attribute it to the depth of his analysis, his unique dry sense of humour, or the way he fostered genuine conversation. He always felt like the perfect mediator for opposing – sometimes even hostile – ideas.
It’s very difficult to find someone else who combines all these qualities. Yes, there are people who do deep analysis (mostly of movies), but they don’t have his sense of humour. There are people who know how to tell a joke, but they’re only interested in doing skits. And since social media took over, there aren’t really any online communities that allow for the type of interaction and self expression Twenty Sided once fostered.
And while those things are true, I think I’ve finally figured out the root cause for why I can’t find someone else to fill that void. For me, there were two fundamental qualities that made Shamus Young who he was.
First, was his deep capacity for empathy. His first book even has a chapter called “Empathy” – in his view, empathy is the thing that makes us human. In that same book, it was empathy that turned a merciless killing machine into the thing that may save humanity from the world’s ruthless cyberpunk corporations.
But just as important as his empathy was his endless curiosity. It’s what allowed him to be such a good moderator. Whenever he saw an opinion that fundamentally clashed with his, he didn’t immediately get defensive (like most of us usually do).
Instead, he approached the situation with curiosity. You can’t be angry and curious at the same time – your brain doesn’t work that way. This allowed him to genuinely engage with people of differing opinions and make them act in a more civil way.*
He used this technique in everything he did – from the comments he wrote to the way he wrote his articles, his books, his video scripts… Everything.
When it comes to writing, most people want to jump straight into the meat of the topic – the part they’re personally interested in and passionate about.
But Shamus didn’t do that. Instead, he spent paragraphs upon paragraphs getting people on board. Going in depth about why this topic was interesting to him and why it might be interesting to you. He used examples and analogies, data and anecdotes…
Anything, just to get you on board and interested in whatever he was curious about that day. This is what made his curiosity infectious!
And I really, really miss that.
*Did this work all the time? No, of course not. Some people on the Internet are psychopaths. And on occasion, he did get defensive – we’re all human, after all. But it worked way more often than not.
I hesitate to say “I miss him too”, because that feels like it would be making an improper claim of being alike in the ways that we miss him, or the magnitude of the loss. But I do also miss him.
I don’t know exactly when I stumbled across the site, but I must have only been mid teens, and now I’m headed into mid 30s, so the math of that would suggest I was reading his work for nearly half of my life—and almost all of the part I can actually remember. The news of his death knocked me somewhat off balance for a while; it’s a strange thing to feel so attached to someone who doesn’t know you exist. So far as I know it was the first time someone I’ve followed at length like that has passed.
His wit and insight, the variety from programming projects to comics to fiction to biography… not sure where I was going with this sentence. Perhaps rambling is infectious as well as genetic. In any case, he won’t be soon forgotten.
I know the levels in which I miss Shamus are nothing compared to yours, but yeah, I still miss him. The thing is, there was no one quite like him to visit on the web and there still isn’t. His focus on written words rather than videos, his deep retrospectives and his witty sense of humor are nowhere else to be found. Even if ocassionally I run into someone doing something similar it’s a one-off or nowhere near as interesting.
It really is like missing your favorite teacher. Nowhere as bad as missing a beloved family member, but still a void hard to fill.
Happy New Year, anyways.
As far as memorials go, I have The Other Kind of Life by popular fantasy author Shamus Young on my shelf. It has the d20 logo and everything. Maybe I should give it a re-read.
It’s weird thinking about things like, Gotham Knights came out and it was exactly as crap as he predicted and we’ll never be able to talk to him about it. Or the Suicide Squad game. He never got to know about ChatGPT (I don’t know how familiar he was with GPT-2 or GPT-3).
It’s also weird talking to people on forums, and at some point thinking “Oh, this is exactly the thing Shamus talked about”, at which point I end up saying “This reminds of article XYZ by the late Shamus Young”. Still getting used to it.
Man, I miss that goof.
I used to comment on here as Son of Valhalla and other aliases, but I wanted to let you know that I started reading the site shortly after I finished high school about 10 years ago.
I really enjoyed reading insights and thoughts and opinions from Shamus, and I’m happy you all have continued keeping his site and legacy alive.
When I was working crappy day jobs and struggling to connect with other people, I would come here to read, or I would journal extensively, or I’d play music. Whatever it was, Twenty Side was in there. Not as much as writing and music that I work on, but reading here was always comforting.
Because I’m an anomaly in my family as the compulsive writer and musician type, I had to look online to find people I could connect to.
This was beautifully written. I read Shamus’ blog posts every lunch since I was a kid. His output was so voluminous that I could have a circulation of posts I would revisit; by the time I got to a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th reading they might as well have been new.
We all miss him.
I like to think of a post he once made about plastic chairs. That the precise kind of plastic chairs he and many other remember had rarely been captured in pictures, and, due to their low quality materials, had already deteriorated away by the time anyone thought to capture the “zeitgeist”. So I think in that regard, Shamus has made a mark in the history books – small, sure, but this is not a plastic chair that’s going to crumble before it ever gets photographed. For many people it was their introduction to Let’s Plays – now a gigantic market -, coding and so many other things, so it’s kinda incredible that we can still access it – too often do these archives just go dark. I’m very sure my life at least would have gone a quite different way if I had never read his stuff.
EDIT: Oh I also wanted to mention that I was surprised just how often I talk about something in a forum only to get a Shamus Young article recommended to me. Especially on r/TwoBestFriendsPlay, a place that has a similar, though somewhat rowdier tone than Twentysided has. Mention Fable 2’s aggravating shortcomings or the Skyrim Thieves Guild and someone *will* go “I think you would enjoy reading this series…” and post a link to over here.
That was a really nice post :) and it’s comforting to know that the family’s financial situation has improved.
As for legacy, the Mass Effect series is legendary, and I have a few books on my shelf with his name on them that will no doubt outlast me. In fact while I hope I do get round to reading them sooner rather than later, that may be in a couple of decades’ time, at the rate I’m goung, which is a funny thought – legacy longevity. It’s been almost a decade since I came across this blog on my lunch breaks at work.