Use accurate words about private videos and correct spelling of Verity's name
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<p>It has been five months since Hbomberguy released his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ">"Plagiarism and You(Tube)"</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>
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<p>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, Somerton's channel had disappeared from YouTube, but his 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 "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" 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>
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<p>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 <a href="https://archive.org/details/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03">archived on the Internet Archive</a>, so you can still watch "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" 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>
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<p>I first discovered "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" 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, "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" ended up being the first and only James Somerton video I have actually watched.</p>
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<p>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</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>
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<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&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbHl0ODFBR2pJLURxcXNxcWI3ZXRPaFgycFhLUXxBQ3Jtc0tudjNVQ0ctakdDM3YxYVB5eEt2Umo3Q2tLR2prQ2JMOWRlSDNjUnB1RFMzdU53LW1YX0dfRG84d1JnRjMzMHBKdG1VWl81VFlxNEkycm5DajZfLXNCQ3FnWHRWem80VXVDZ0ZwM09iLXdVdHF4ejFBWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadlystream.com%2Ffiles%2Ffile%2F772-juhani-romance-enhancement%2F&v=oFQDmmRUx4E">Juhani Romance Enhancement mod</a>, specifically at the timestamp <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&t=10s">0:10</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDmmRUx4E&t=16s">0:16</a>.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>That said, I did not bring up the fact that Somerton used my <cite>KotOR</cite> footage to my friend.</p>
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<p>As mentioned above, "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" was the first and only James Somerton video I have ever watched. I did not subscribe to Somerton's channel, nor did I have the time nor enough interest to watch any other Somerton's videos. No YouTubers I followed referenced Somerton's videos or were associated with him, and no one in my social media circles talked about him either. Therefore, after watching "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" in November 2021, Somerton simply went off of my radar until his plagiarism scandal broke out in December 2023.</p>
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<p>After the James Somerton's plagiarism scandal broke out, it was revealed that "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" plagiarised a paragraph of Robert Grosso's article <a href="https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/queer-characters-in-gaming-brief-history">"Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History"</a> on TechRaptor and ripped off Verily Ritchie's (also known as verilybitchie) video essay <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGkxUTbDqw">"Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes"</a></p>
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<p>"Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" was not covered in Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" video, so I did not realise that Somerton's video essay about queer representation in video games was also largely built upon other queer creators' works without credit, until one day before I began to write this post, when I searched about the video myself and discovered the sources through the website <a href="https://tustin2121.github.io/James_Somerton_Transcripts/videos/TQNKEkrPEfI">James Somerton Transcripts</a>. This led to me watching Verily Ritchie's original video as well as listening to and reading their <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/james-somerton-3-94126743">Patreon post and podcast episode about Somerton ripping off their video</a>, realising that the main framework and talking points from Somerton's video was actually from Verily's video.</p>
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<p>I felt guilty about giving Somerton credit for Verily's takes about queer representation in video games. I was not aware of Verily when I discovered Somerton's video in 2021, but I became aware of Verily and their YouTube channel in early 2023, after discovering their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI">"The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter"</a> video, which I included and recommended checking out in my <a href="/articles/anti-harry-potter-jk-rowling-masterlist/">Anti-Harry Potter and Anti-J. K. Rowling Masterlist</a>, so I recommend fellow queer gamers to check out Verily's "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes" if you are interested in the topic of queer representation of video games.</p>
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<p>The final push for me to write this post, was seeing Verily crediting the source of the gameplay footage featured in "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes", as well as listening to them and Ada Černoša talking about Somerton's lack of gameplay footage in "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay", doubting the gameplay footage in the video are his own, and that recording gameplay footage take time and effort. This made Somerton's usage of my video game footage without credit leave a more sour taste in my mouth, enough that I decided to, at last, talk about this and confirm that James Somerton had indeed used someone else's gameplay footage without credit or permission, with I being at least one of that someone else.</p>
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<p>After the James Somerton's plagiarism scandal broke out, it was revealed that "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" plagiarised a paragraph of Robert Grosso's article <a href="https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/queer-characters-in-gaming-brief-history">"Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History"</a> on TechRaptor and ripped off Verity Ritchie's (also known as verilybitchie) video essay <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGkxUTbDqw">"Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes"</a></p>
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<p>"Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" was not covered in Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" video, so I did not realise that Somerton's video essay about queer representation in video games was also largely built upon other queer creators' works without credit, until one day before I began to write this post, when I searched about the video myself and discovered the sources through the website <a href="https://tustin2121.github.io/James_Somerton_Transcripts/videos/TQNKEkrPEfI">James Somerton Transcripts</a>. This led to me watching Verity Ritchie's original video as well as listening to and reading their <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/james-somerton-3-94126743">Patreon post and podcast episode about Somerton ripping off their video</a>, realising that the main framework and talking points from Somerton's video was actually from Verity's video.</p>
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<p>I felt guilty about giving Somerton credit for Verity's takes about queer representation in video games, although I still firmly stand by what I said about the importance of supporting indie queer developers and their work instead of relying on mainstream video games for queer representation. I was not aware of Verity when I discovered Somerton's video in 2021, but I became aware of Verity and their YouTube channel in early 2023, after discovering their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI">"The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter"</a> video, which I included and recommended checking out in my <a href="/articles/anti-harry-potter-jk-rowling-masterlist/">Anti-Harry Potter and Anti-J. K. Rowling Masterlist</a>, so I recommend fellow queer gamers to check out Verity's "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes" if you are interested in the topic of queer representation of video games.</p>
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<p>The final push for me to write this post, was seeing Verity crediting the source of the gameplay footage featured in "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes", as well as listening to them and Ada Černoša talking about Somerton's lack of gameplay footage in "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay", doubting the gameplay footage in the video are his own, and that recording gameplay footage take time and effort. This made Somerton's usage of my video game footage without credit leave a more sour taste in my mouth, enough that I decided to, at last, talk about this and confirm that James Somerton had indeed used someone else's gameplay footage without credit or permission, with I being at least one of that someone else.</p>
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<p>I do not expect anything from writing this post. James Somerton has destroyed his own reputation and internet career at this point without my help, so I merely just want to get Somerton's uncredited usage of my video game footage off my chest after being hesitant to being it up since 2021,</p>
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<ul class="blog__post--nextprev"><li>Previous Post: <a href="/blog/posts/2024-04-27-lesbian-visibility-day1-year-anniversary-of-cassette-beasts/">Happy Lesbian Visibility Day and 1-Year Anniversary of Cassette Beasts</a></li>
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<subtitle>Leilukin's personal website.</subtitle>
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<link href="https://leilukin.neocities.org/feed.xml" rel="self"/>
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<link href="https://leilukin.neocities.org"/>
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<updated>2024-05-14T18:23:19Z</updated>
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<updated>2024-05-15T05:46:07Z</updated>
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<id>https://leilukin.neocities.org</id>
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<name>Leilukin</name>
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<updated>2024-05-14T00:00:00Z</updated>
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<id>https://leilukin.neocities.org/blog/posts/2024-05-14-james-somerton-my-vide-game-footage/</id>
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<content type="html"><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>
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<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, Somerton's channel had disappeared from YouTube, but his 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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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</blockquote>
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<p>That said, I did not bring up the fact that Somerton used my <cite>KotOR</cite> footage to my friend.</p>
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<p>As mentioned above, &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; was the first and only James Somerton video I have ever watched. I did not subscribe to Somerton's channel, nor did I have the time nor enough interest to watch any other Somerton's videos. No YouTubers I followed referenced Somerton's videos or were associated with him, and no one in my social media circles talked about him either. Therefore, after watching &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; in November 2021, Somerton simply went off of my radar until his plagiarism scandal broke out in December 2023.</p>
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<p>After the James Somerton's plagiarism scandal broke out, it was revealed that &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; plagiarised a paragraph of Robert Grosso's article <a href="https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/queer-characters-in-gaming-brief-history">&quot;Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History&quot;</a> on TechRaptor and ripped off Verily Ritchie's (also known as verilybitchie) video essay <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGkxUTbDqw">&quot;Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes&quot;</a></p>
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<p>&quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; was not covered in Hbomberguy's &quot;Plagiarism and You(Tube)&quot; video, so I did not realise that Somerton's video essay about queer representation in video games was also largely built upon other queer creators' works without credit, until one day before I began to write this post, when I searched about the video myself and discovered the sources through the website <a href="https://tustin2121.github.io/James_Somerton_Transcripts/videos/TQNKEkrPEfI">James Somerton Transcripts</a>. This led to me watching Verily Ritchie's original video as well as listening to and reading their <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/james-somerton-3-94126743">Patreon post and podcast episode about Somerton ripping off their video</a>, realising that the main framework and talking points from Somerton's video was actually from Verily's video.</p>
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<p>I felt guilty about giving Somerton credit for Verily's takes about queer representation in video games. I was not aware of Verily when I discovered Somerton's video in 2021, but I became aware of Verily and their YouTube channel in early 2023, after discovering their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI">&quot;The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter&quot;</a> video, which I included and recommended checking out in my <a href="https://leilukin.neocities.org/articles/anti-harry-potter-jk-rowling-masterlist/">Anti-Harry Potter and Anti-J. K. Rowling Masterlist</a>, so I recommend fellow queer gamers to check out Verily's &quot;Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes&quot; if you are interested in the topic of queer representation of video games.</p>
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<p>The final push for me to write this post, was seeing Verily crediting the source of the gameplay footage featured in &quot;Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes&quot;, as well as listening to them and Ada Černoša talking about Somerton's lack of gameplay footage in &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot;, doubting the gameplay footage in the video are his own, and that recording gameplay footage take time and effort. This made Somerton's usage of my video game footage without credit leave a more sour taste in my mouth, enough that I decided to, at last, talk about this and confirm that James Somerton had indeed used someone else's gameplay footage without credit or permission, with I being at least one of that someone else.</p>
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<p>After the James Somerton's plagiarism scandal broke out, it was revealed that &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; plagiarised a paragraph of Robert Grosso's article <a href="https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/queer-characters-in-gaming-brief-history">&quot;Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History&quot;</a> on TechRaptor and ripped off Verity Ritchie's (also known as verilybitchie) video essay <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGkxUTbDqw">&quot;Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes&quot;</a></p>
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<p>&quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot; was not covered in Hbomberguy's &quot;Plagiarism and You(Tube)&quot; video, so I did not realise that Somerton's video essay about queer representation in video games was also largely built upon other queer creators' works without credit, until one day before I began to write this post, when I searched about the video myself and discovered the sources through the website <a href="https://tustin2121.github.io/James_Somerton_Transcripts/videos/TQNKEkrPEfI">James Somerton Transcripts</a>. This led to me watching Verity Ritchie's original video as well as listening to and reading their <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/james-somerton-3-94126743">Patreon post and podcast episode about Somerton ripping off their video</a>, realising that the main framework and talking points from Somerton's video was actually from Verity's video.</p>
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<p>I felt guilty about giving Somerton credit for Verity's takes about queer representation in video games, although I still firmly stand by what I said about the importance of supporting indie queer developers and their work instead of relying on mainstream video games for queer representation. I was not aware of Verity when I discovered Somerton's video in 2021, but I became aware of Verity and their YouTube channel in early 2023, after discovering their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI">&quot;The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter&quot;</a> video, which I included and recommended checking out in my <a href="https://leilukin.neocities.org/articles/anti-harry-potter-jk-rowling-masterlist/">Anti-Harry Potter and Anti-J. K. Rowling Masterlist</a>, so I recommend fellow queer gamers to check out Verity's &quot;Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes&quot; if you are interested in the topic of queer representation of video games.</p>
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<p>The final push for me to write this post, was seeing Verity crediting the source of the gameplay footage featured in &quot;Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes&quot;, as well as listening to them and Ada Černoša talking about Somerton's lack of gameplay footage in &quot;Video Games and the Choice to be Gay&quot;, doubting the gameplay footage in the video are his own, and that recording gameplay footage take time and effort. This made Somerton's usage of my video game footage without credit leave a more sour taste in my mouth, enough that I decided to, at last, talk about this and confirm that James Somerton had indeed used someone else's gameplay footage without credit or permission, with I being at least one of that someone else.</p>
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<p>I do not expect anything from writing this post. James Somerton has destroyed his own reputation and internet career at this point without my help, so I merely just want to get Somerton's uncredited usage of my video game footage off my chest after being hesitant to being it up since 2021,</p>
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It has been five months since Hbomberguy released his ["Plagiarism and You(Tube)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ) video essay on 2 December 2023, which [set off a YouTube plagiarism scandal](https://trending.knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/whats-up-with-hbomberguy-setting-off-a-youtube-plagiarism-scandal-the-internet-historian-and-james-somerton-controversies-explained), with another YouTuber [James Somerton](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/hbomberguy-vs-james-somerton-plagiarism-scandal) 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**.
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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, Somerton's channel had disappeared from YouTube, but his videos have been [archived on the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03), so you can still watch "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" directly [on the Internet Archive](https://dn720001.ca.archive.org/0/items/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03/20211105%20TQNKEkrPEfI%20Video%20Games%20and%20the%20Choice%20to%20be%20Gay.mp4). Alternately, you can watch the video through one of the [Wayback Machine snapshots](https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNKEkrPEfI).
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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](https://archive.org/details/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03), so you can still watch "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" directly [on the Internet Archive](https://dn720001.ca.archive.org/0/items/james-somerton-youtube-2023-12-03/20211105%20TQNKEkrPEfI%20Video%20Games%20and%20the%20Choice%20to%20be%20Gay.mp4). Alternately, you can watch the video through one of the [Wayback Machine snapshots](https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNKEkrPEfI).
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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.
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@ -34,12 +34,12 @@ That said, I did not bring up the fact that Somerton used my {% cite "KotOR" %}
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As mentioned above, "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" was the first and only James Somerton video I have ever watched. I did not subscribe to Somerton's channel, nor did I have the time nor enough interest to watch any other Somerton's videos. No YouTubers I followed referenced Somerton's videos or were associated with him, and no one in my social media circles talked about him either. Therefore, after watching "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" in November 2021, Somerton simply went off of my radar until his plagiarism scandal broke out in December 2023.
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After the James Somerton's plagiarism scandal broke out, it was revealed that "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" plagiarised a paragraph of Robert Grosso's article ["Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History"](https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/queer-characters-in-gaming-brief-history) on TechRaptor and ripped off Verily Ritchie's (also known as verilybitchie) video essay ["Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGkxUTbDqw)
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After the James Somerton's plagiarism scandal broke out, it was revealed that "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" plagiarised a paragraph of Robert Grosso's article ["Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History"](https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/queer-characters-in-gaming-brief-history) on TechRaptor and ripped off Verity Ritchie's (also known as verilybitchie) video essay ["Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZGkxUTbDqw)
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"Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" was not covered in Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" video, so I did not realise that Somerton's video essay about queer representation in video games was also largely built upon other queer creators' works without credit, until one day before I began to write this post, when I searched about the video myself and discovered the sources through the website [James Somerton Transcripts](https://tustin2121.github.io/James_Somerton_Transcripts/videos/TQNKEkrPEfI). This led to me watching Verily Ritchie's original video as well as listening to and reading their [Patreon post and podcast episode about Somerton ripping off their video](https://www.patreon.com/posts/james-somerton-3-94126743), realising that the main framework and talking points from Somerton's video was actually from Verily's video.
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"Video Games and the Choice to be Gay" was not covered in Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" video, so I did not realise that Somerton's video essay about queer representation in video games was also largely built upon other queer creators' works without credit, until one day before I began to write this post, when I searched about the video myself and discovered the sources through the website [James Somerton Transcripts](https://tustin2121.github.io/James_Somerton_Transcripts/videos/TQNKEkrPEfI). This led to me watching Verity Ritchie's original video as well as listening to and reading their [Patreon post and podcast episode about Somerton ripping off their video](https://www.patreon.com/posts/james-somerton-3-94126743), realising that the main framework and talking points from Somerton's video was actually from Verity's video.
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I felt guilty about giving Somerton credit for Verily's takes about queer representation in video games. I was not aware of Verily when I discovered Somerton's video in 2021, but I became aware of Verily and their YouTube channel in early 2023, after discovering their ["The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI) video, which I included and recommended checking out in my [Anti-Harry Potter and Anti-J. K. Rowling Masterlist](/articles/anti-harry-potter-jk-rowling-masterlist/), so I recommend fellow queer gamers to check out Verily's "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes" if you are interested in the topic of queer representation of video games.
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I felt guilty about giving Somerton credit for Verity's takes about queer representation in video games, although I still firmly stand by what I said about the importance of supporting indie queer developers and their work instead of relying on mainstream video games for queer representation. I was not aware of Verity when I discovered Somerton's video in 2021, but I became aware of Verity and their YouTube channel in early 2023, after discovering their ["The Consumerist Dystopia of Harry Potter"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBftW7FzOVI) video, which I included and recommended checking out in my [Anti-Harry Potter and Anti-J. K. Rowling Masterlist](/articles/anti-harry-potter-jk-rowling-masterlist/), so I recommend fellow queer gamers to check out Verity's "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes" if you are interested in the topic of queer representation of video games.
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The final push for me to write this post, was seeing Verily crediting the source of the gameplay footage featured in "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes", as well as listening to them and Ada Černoša talking about Somerton's lack of gameplay footage in "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay", doubting the gameplay footage in the video are his own, and that recording gameplay footage take time and effort. This made Somerton's usage of my video game footage without credit leave a more sour taste in my mouth, enough that I decided to, at last, talk about this and confirm that James Somerton had indeed used someone else's gameplay footage without credit or permission, with I being at least one of that someone else.
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The final push for me to write this post, was seeing Verity crediting the source of the gameplay footage featured in "Hοѡ Biѕeхυаlity Chaոɡeԁ Video Gaⅿes", as well as listening to them and Ada Černoša talking about Somerton's lack of gameplay footage in "Video Games and the Choice to be Gay", doubting the gameplay footage in the video are his own, and that recording gameplay footage take time and effort. This made Somerton's usage of my video game footage without credit leave a more sour taste in my mouth, enough that I decided to, at last, talk about this and confirm that James Somerton had indeed used someone else's gameplay footage without credit or permission, with I being at least one of that someone else.
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I do not expect anything from writing this post. James Somerton has destroyed his own reputation and internet career at this point without my help, so I merely just want to get Somerton's uncredited usage of my video game footage off my chest after being hesitant to being it up since 2021,
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