diff --git a/_site/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage/index.html b/_site/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage/index.html index 731099c0..e9d7f1ed 100644 --- a/_site/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage/index.html +++ b/_site/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage/index.html @@ -394,11 +394,11 @@

It has been five months since Hbomberguy released his "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" video essay on 2 December 2023, which set off a YouTube plagiarism scandal, with another YouTuber James Somerton being the main focus of Hbomberguy's video essay. I do not write this post to recap or rehash the entire James Somerton debacle. Instead, I want to talk about something personal related to one of James Somerton's videos — James Somerton had used one of my video game footage in one of his videos without crediting me or asking for my permission.

On 5 November 2021, James Somerton released a video essay on his YouTube channel titled "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay". As of this writing, the video has been made private, but Somerton's videos have been archived on the Internet Archive, so you can still watch "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" directly on the Internet Archive. Alternately, you can watch the video through one of the Wayback Machine snapshots.

I first discovered "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" through a Dragon Age fan blog on Tumblr shortly after the video was published. The video piqued my interest because LGBTQ+ representation in video games is relevant to me as a queer, non-binary lesbian gamer, and the video games discussed in Somerton's video included Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, which was also relevant to me since I used to be a huge fan of BioWare games. As a result, "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" ended up being the first and only James Somerton video I have actually watched.

-

Before finished watching it, one thing from "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" that caught my attention was when Somerton talked about Juhani from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, who was the very first confirmed gay and lesbian character from both BioWare games and the entire Star Wars franchise, including the old Expended Universe, the Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) footage shown on screen in the video included one of my KotOR footage about Juhani and her romance with the female player character.

-

The clip from Somerton's video at the timestamp from 12:09 to 12:13 was actually from my 5 March 2016 video footage of Juhani's love confession with the Juhani Romance Enhancement mod, specifically at the timestamp 0:10 to 0:16.

-

Here is a comparison between the clips from my original footage and Somerton's video respectively, proving the clip from Somerton's video was originally from my footage:

+

Before finished watching it, one thing from "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" that caught my attention was when Somerton talked about Juhani from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, who was the very first confirmed gay and lesbian character from both BioWare games and the entire Star Wars franchise, including the old Expended Universe, one of the Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) footage shown on screen in the video included one of my KotOR footage about Juhani and her romance with the female player character.

+

Specifically, the clip from Somerton's video at the timestamp from 12:09 to 12:13 was actually from my 5 March 2016 video footage of Juhani's love confession with the Juhani Romance Enhancement mod, specifically at the timestamp 0:10 to 0:16.

+

Here is a back-to-back comparison between the clips from my original footage and Somerton's video respectively, proving the clip from Somerton's video was originally from my footage:

-

I immediately recognised my clip through the appearance of the female player character and her outfit, which was from the Segan Wyndh Jedi Armor mod. Furthermore, there are not many videos about Juhani's romance out there, so the player character's appearance, which can vary depending on how the player customises their character in the character creator or with mods, in Somerton's video only stood out to me even more. My video footage was part of my Juhani romance and conversation video series, to compliment my Juhani romance guide, which I am still proud to say is the most comprehensive guide about Juhani's romance on the internet.

+

I immediately recognised my clip through the appearance of the female player character and her outfit, which was from the Segan Wyndh Jedi Armor mod. Furthermore, there are not many videos about Juhani's romance out there, so the player character's appearance, which can vary depending on how the player customises their character in the character creator or with mods, in Somerton's video only stood out to me even more. My footage of Juhani's love confession was part of my Juhani romance and conversation video series, to compliment my Juhani romance guide, which I am still proud to say is the most comprehensive guide about Juhani's romance on the internet.

To be honest, even back then, I was already a little disappointed that James Somerton used my footage in his video without a single word about the clip's source, both in the video itself and the video description, nor had Somerton ever reached out to me about using my footage in his video (on a related note, Somerton and I never had any direct interactions). I do not own the intellectual property of Star Wars or KotOR, but capturing video game footage requires one to actually play through the game, which takes time, especially role-playing games like KotOR. In addition, I had spent a great deal of effort on promoting Juhani's romance, including writing a guide and recording video footage about it because Juhani's romance is also infamous for being buggy and tricky to successfully complete, to the extent many KotOR fans were not even aware that Juhani can actually be romanced by the (female) player character.

However, I did not dare to say a word about Somerton's usage of my Juhani romance footage, because Somerton was already a fairly popular YouTuber with 138K subscribers by the time the video was released (at least according to the Wayback Machine snapshot of the video at the time), while I do not even consider myself a YouTuber, since my YouTube channel only consists of video game footage I recorded myself without commentary. I did not bring up Somerton's usage of my Juhani romance footage because I did not want to come across as trying to start a drama or gain attention. I also tried to look at the positives by considering it an honour that at least my Juhani romance videos get noticed by a popular YouTuber.

As for Somerton's "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" video itself, my initial thoughts after watching were that it was an interesting take on queer representation in Video games. I elaborated my thoughts when I shared the video with a friend:

diff --git a/_site/feed.xml b/_site/feed.xml index 90890559..4ee26b87 100644 --- a/_site/feed.xml +++ b/_site/feed.xml @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Leilukin's personal website. - 2024-05-15T05:46:07Z + 2024-05-15T05:53:03Z https://leilukin.neocities.org Leilukin @@ -31,11 +31,11 @@ <p>It has been five months since Hbomberguy released his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ">&quot;Plagiarism and You(Tube)&quot;</a> video essay on 2 December 2023, which <a href="https://trending.knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/whats-up-with-hbomberguy-setting-off-a-youtube-plagiarism-scandal-the-internet-historian-and-james-somerton-controversies-explained">set off a YouTube plagiarism scandal</a>, with another YouTuber <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/hbomberguy-vs-james-somerton-plagiarism-scandal">James Somerton</a> being the main focus of Hbomberguy's video essay. I do not write this post to recap or rehash the entire James Somerton debacle. Instead, I want to talk about something personal related to one of James Somerton's videos — <strong>James Somerton had used one of my video game footage in one of his videos without crediting me or asking for my permission</strong>.</p> <p>On 5 November 2021, James Somerton released a video essay on his YouTube channel titled &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot;. As of this writing, the video has been made private, but Somerton's videos have been <a href="https://archive.org/details/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03">archived on the Internet Archive</a>, so you can still watch &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; directly <a href="https://dn720001.ca.archive.org/0/items/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03/20211105%20TQNKEkrPEfI%20Video%20Games%20and%20the%20Choice%20to%20be%20Gay.mp4">on the Internet Archive</a>. Alternately, you can watch the video through one of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNKEkrPEfI">Wayback Machine snapshots</a>.</p> <p>I first discovered &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; through a <cite>Dragon Age</cite> fan blog on Tumblr shortly after the video was published. The video piqued my interest because LGBTQ+ representation in video games is relevant to me as a queer, non-binary lesbian gamer, and the video games discussed in Somerton's video included <cite>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic</cite>, <cite>Dragon Age</cite> and <cite>Mass Effect</cite>, which was also relevant to me since I used to be a huge fan of BioWare games. As a result, &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; ended up being the first and only James Somerton video I have actually watched.</p> -<p>Before finished watching it, one thing from &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; that caught my attention was when Somerton talked about Juhani from <cite>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic</cite>, who was the very first confirmed gay and lesbian character from both BioWare games and the entire <cite>Star Wars</cite> franchise, including the old Expended Universe, the <cite>Knights of the Old Republic</cite> (<cite>KotOR</cite>) footage shown on screen in the video included one of my <cite>KotOR</cite> footage about Juhani and her romance with the female player character.</p> -<p>The clip from Somerton's video at the timestamp from 12:09 to 12:13 was actually from my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E">5 March 2016 video footage of Juhani's love confession</a> with the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbHl0ODFBR2pJLURxcXNxcWI3ZXRPaFgycFhLUXxBQ3Jtc0tudjNVQ0ctakdDM3YxYVB5eEt2Umo3Q2tLR2prQ2JMOWRlSDNjUnB1RFMzdU53LW1YX0dfRG84d1JnRjMzMHBKdG1VWl81VFlxNEkycm5DajZfLXNCQ3FnWHRWem80VXVDZ0ZwM09iLXdVdHF4ejFBWQ&amp;q=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadlystream.com%2Ffiles%2Ffile%2F772-juhani-romance-enhancement%2F&amp;v=oFQDmmRUx4E">Juhani Romance Enhancement mod</a>, specifically at the timestamp <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&amp;t=10s">0:10</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&amp;t=16s">0:16</a>.</p> -<p>Here is a comparison between the clips from my original footage and Somerton's video respectively, proving the clip from Somerton's video was originally from my footage:</p> +<p>Before finished watching it, one thing from &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; that caught my attention was when Somerton talked about Juhani from <cite>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic</cite>, who was the very first confirmed gay and lesbian character from both BioWare games and the entire <cite>Star Wars</cite> franchise, including the old Expended Universe, one of the <cite>Knights of the Old Republic</cite> (<cite>KotOR</cite>) footage shown on screen in the video included one of my <cite>KotOR</cite> footage about Juhani and her romance with the female player character.</p> +<p>Specifically, the clip from Somerton's video at the timestamp from 12:09 to 12:13 was actually from my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E">5 March 2016 video footage of Juhani's love confession</a> with the <a href="https://deadlystream.com/files/file/772-juhani-romance-enhancement/">Juhani Romance Enhancement mod</a>, specifically at the timestamp <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&amp;t=10s">0:10</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&amp;t=16s">0:16</a>.</p> +<p>Here is a back-to-back comparison between the clips from my original footage and Somerton's video respectively, proving the clip from Somerton's video was originally from my footage:</p> <p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCuwNaOEZW8</p> -<p>I immediately recognised my clip through the appearance of the female player character and her outfit, which was from the <a href="https://deadlystream.com/files/file/90-segan-wyndh-jedi-armor/">Segan Wyndh Jedi Armor mod</a>. Furthermore, there are not many videos about Juhani's romance out there, so the player character's appearance, which can vary depending on how the player customises their character in the character creator or with mods, in Somerton's video only stood out to me even more. My video footage was part of my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5z8DZr8LSLHZkdhBxGadvvaHlolKa-Vd">Juhani romance and conversation video series</a>, to compliment my <a href="https://leilukin.neocities.org/shrines/starwarskotor/guides/kotor-juhani-romance-guide/">Juhani romance guide</a>, which I am still proud to say is <em>the</em> most comprehensive guide about Juhani's romance on the internet.</p> +<p>I immediately recognised my clip through the appearance of the female player character and her outfit, which was from the <a href="https://deadlystream.com/files/file/90-segan-wyndh-jedi-armor/">Segan Wyndh Jedi Armor mod</a>. Furthermore, there are not many videos about Juhani's romance out there, so the player character's appearance, which can vary depending on how the player customises their character in the character creator or with mods, in Somerton's video only stood out to me even more. My footage of Juhani's love confession was part of my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5z8DZr8LSLHZkdhBxGadvvaHlolKa-Vd">Juhani romance and conversation video series</a>, to compliment my <a href="https://leilukin.neocities.org/shrines/starwarskotor/guides/kotor-juhani-romance-guide/">Juhani romance guide</a>, which I am still proud to say is <em>the</em> most comprehensive guide about Juhani's romance on the internet.</p> <p>To be honest, even back then, I was already a little disappointed that James Somerton used my footage in his video without a single word about the clip's source, both in the video itself and the video description, nor had Somerton ever reached out to me about using my footage in his video (on a related note, Somerton and I never had any direct interactions). I do not own the intellectual property of <cite>Star Wars</cite> or <cite>KotOR</cite>, but capturing video game footage requires one to actually play through the game, which takes time, especially role-playing games like <cite>KotOR</cite>. In addition, I had spent a great deal of effort on promoting Juhani's romance, including writing a guide and recording video footage about it because Juhani's romance is also infamous for being buggy and tricky to successfully complete, to the extent many <cite>KotOR</cite> fans were not even aware that Juhani can actually be romanced by the (female) player character.</p> <p>However, I did not dare to say a word about Somerton's usage of my Juhani romance footage, because Somerton was already a fairly popular YouTuber with 138K subscribers by the time the video was released (at least according to the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211105165815/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNKEkrPEfI">Wayback Machine snapshot of the video at the time</a>), while I do not even consider myself a YouTuber, since <a href="https://www.youtube.com/Leilukin">my YouTube channel</a> only consists of video game footage I recorded myself without commentary. I did not bring up Somerton's usage of my Juhani romance footage because I did not want to come across as trying to start a drama or gain attention. I also tried to look at the positives by considering it an honour that at least my Juhani romance videos get noticed by a popular YouTuber.</p> <p>As for Somerton's &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; video itself, my initial thoughts after watching were that it was an interesting take on queer representation in Video games. I elaborated my thoughts when I shared the video with a friend:</p> diff --git a/src/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage.md b/src/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage.md index ae4df84c..2cd53489 100644 --- a/src/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage.md +++ b/src/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage.md @@ -11,15 +11,15 @@ On 5 November 2021, James Somerton released a video essay on his YouTube channel I first discovered "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" through a {% cite "Dragon Age" %} fan blog on Tumblr shortly after the video was published. The video piqued my interest because LGBTQ+ representation in video games is relevant to me as a queer, non-binary lesbian gamer, and the video games discussed in Somerton's video included {% cite "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" %}, {% cite "Dragon Age" %} and {% cite "Mass Effect" %}, which was also relevant to me since I used to be a huge fan of BioWare games. As a result, "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" ended up being the first and only James Somerton video I have actually watched. -Before finished watching it, one thing from "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" that caught my attention was when Somerton talked about Juhani from {% cite "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" %}, who was the very first confirmed gay and lesbian character from both BioWare games and the entire {% cite "Star Wars" %} franchise, including the old Expended Universe, the {% cite "Knights of the Old Republic" %} ({% cite "KotOR" %}) footage shown on screen in the video included one of my {% cite "KotOR" %} footage about Juhani and her romance with the female player character. +Before finished watching it, one thing from "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" that caught my attention was when Somerton talked about Juhani from {% cite "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" %}, who was the very first confirmed gay and lesbian character from both BioWare games and the entire {% cite "Star Wars" %} franchise, including the old Expended Universe, one of the {% cite "Knights of the Old Republic" %} ({% cite "KotOR" %}) footage shown on screen in the video included one of my {% cite "KotOR" %} footage about Juhani and her romance with the female player character. -The clip from Somerton's video at the timestamp from 12:09 to 12:13 was actually from my [5 March 2016 video footage of Juhani's love confession](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E) with the [Juhani Romance Enhancement mod](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbHl0ODFBR2pJLURxcXNxcWI3ZXRPaFgycFhLUXxBQ3Jtc0tudjNVQ0ctakdDM3YxYVB5eEt2Umo3Q2tLR2prQ2JMOWRlSDNjUnB1RFMzdU53LW1YX0dfRG84d1JnRjMzMHBKdG1VWl81VFlxNEkycm5DajZfLXNCQ3FnWHRWem80VXVDZ0ZwM09iLXdVdHF4ejFBWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadlystream.com%2Ffiles%2Ffile%2F772-juhani-romance-enhancement%2F&v=oFQDmmRUx4E), specifically at the timestamp [0:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&t=10s) to [0:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&t=16s). +Specifically, the clip from Somerton's video at the timestamp from 12:09 to 12:13 was actually from my [5 March 2016 video footage of Juhani's love confession](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E) with the [Juhani Romance Enhancement mod](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/772-juhani-romance-enhancement/), specifically at the timestamp [0:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&t=10s) to [0:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&t=16s). -Here is a comparison between the clips from my original footage and Somerton's video respectively, proving the clip from Somerton's video was originally from my footage: +Here is a back-to-back comparison between the clips from my original footage and Somerton's video respectively, proving the clip from Somerton's video was originally from my footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCuwNaOEZW8 -I immediately recognised my clip through the appearance of the female player character and her outfit, which was from the [Segan Wyndh Jedi Armor mod](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/90-segan-wyndh-jedi-armor/). Furthermore, there are not many videos about Juhani's romance out there, so the player character's appearance, which can vary depending on how the player customises their character in the character creator or with mods, in Somerton's video only stood out to me even more. My video footage was part of my [Juhani romance and conversation video series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5z8DZr8LSLHZkdhBxGadvvaHlolKa-Vd), to compliment my [Juhani romance guide](/shrines/starwarskotor/guides/kotor-juhani-romance-guide/), which I am still proud to say is *the* most comprehensive guide about Juhani's romance on the internet. +I immediately recognised my clip through the appearance of the female player character and her outfit, which was from the [Segan Wyndh Jedi Armor mod](https://deadlystream.com/files/file/90-segan-wyndh-jedi-armor/). Furthermore, there are not many videos about Juhani's romance out there, so the player character's appearance, which can vary depending on how the player customises their character in the character creator or with mods, in Somerton's video only stood out to me even more. My footage of Juhani's love confession was part of my [Juhani romance and conversation video series](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5z8DZr8LSLHZkdhBxGadvvaHlolKa-Vd), to compliment my [Juhani romance guide](/shrines/starwarskotor/guides/kotor-juhani-romance-guide/), which I am still proud to say is *the* most comprehensive guide about Juhani's romance on the internet. To be honest, even back then, I was already a little disappointed that James Somerton used my footage in his video without a single word about the clip's source, both in the video itself and the video description, nor had Somerton ever reached out to me about using my footage in his video (on a related note, Somerton and I never had any direct interactions). I do not own the intellectual property of {% cite "Star Wars" %} or {% cite "KotOR" %}, but capturing video game footage requires one to actually play through the game, which takes time, especially role-playing games like {% cite "KotOR" %}. In addition, I had spent a great deal of effort on promoting Juhani's romance, including writing a guide and recording video footage about it because Juhani's romance is also infamous for being buggy and tricky to successfully complete, to the extent many {% cite "KotOR" %} fans were not even aware that Juhani can actually be romanced by the (female) player character.