#Grift and Shadow

[obi-wokenobi]

Imagine being someone that complains that they get tagged as a gooner, and then they publish this very long rant about not being able to see the tits of a female bat in an "E for Everyone" rated game, such as Sonic x Shadow Generations.

Even tho I suspect that they used ChatGPT to write a whole essay about being denied getting a boner from a cartoon animal's cleavage, that shit is embarrassing either way.

Meanwhile, from SEGA to gooners:

[aemiron-main]

[godblooded]

pre work disco elysium.

[123ohwell]

LEVERAGE GRIFT TRACKER

I FINISHED SEASON 1! Shoutout to @grandma-waldo for the idea

Extra details in the parameters and the job list. I kept a list of all grifts in order they occur through season 1. If I thought about it before hand I would have draw a line between each episode but oh well hindsight and all that.

Any questions? Yes I welcome them and I'll try to answer them. Want to know why I split something? Just ask - there was definitely an overthought process to my madness. Any ideas on adjusting job titles? I want to hear it please. I invested too much in this lol but it's been fun.

Season 1 was tough in trying to decide what the jobs would be while trying to keep them broad and trying to think so I wouldn't need to add anymore come later seasons . Also me and excel nearly got into a fight.

I'm going to do the rest of the show but that will be slow coming. When I figure out how to make a master list with links, I'll make one. Since this is like my 4th post on the topic and there will be a bunch more to come

Surprises and Revelations

- Hardison grifts in intense spurts

- there was only 1 real royalty grift in season 1??? And it was hardison?? But there were 5 Southern Belle/Beau grifts

- Sophie was the first athelete?? Ik I already posted that but it still shocked me (Olympic luge)

- Parker interacts with people more than most of the team - she thieves in the shadows but she talks to people often as a misdirection

- FBI and just an ordinary person (Civilian) were the most common grifts of season 1 > not surprised since everyone played FBI in pilot part 2

- runner up was The Damsel. Plenty of times the team did the Damsel and Damsel's Knight grift together as a misdirection. But going "oh no I need help" to a stranger/mark was more popular

- Hardison and Parker were the most likely to play the Damsel card

(Sidenote: i thought about wanting to know all the scams the team calls out in the show. "Burn scam" "the cherry pie" etc. But I think someone has already made a list but I can't find it. Also my family might kill me if I restart the show - again. I was already getting side eyes for skipping back a few seconds to check out who was grifting when I wasn't paying attention)

If you've read this far! Thank you! Hope you have a great week!

[gaywineauntsstuff]

I love Jason and dick being drinking buddies who love shit talking the rest of family but also

Sometimes

When I’m craving peak

I remember that their relationship is low key messyyyy

I mean from Jason’s side Dick is the ideal son who Bruce loves, Jason saw Bruce’s absolute grief when bludhaven was nuked as red hood. As Robin he was constantly and unfairly compared to Dick Grayson bc while Jason was great. He had a normal but sad ass life while being naturally gifted and brilliant, dick was training before he could crawl, Dick had never learned to stay still while also being naturally grifted and brilliant. Jason couldn’t do the things Dick could do at 12 bc dick had been training for 11 years by that point but neither he nor Bruce really gave himself that grace. Dick is proof of the concept of child heroes, while he is kinda like proof that children really shouldn’t be on the field. Dick became this well respected, important person. He got to grow from Robin whereas Jason is still burdened by his time in the pixie boots.

And from Dicks side? Dick got out, he LEFT Bruce’s shadow and when Bruce gave his mantle to some kid? He was nice about it! I mean he was too busy with his amazing girlfriend and his team to really become hung up on it! He gave the kid his number and his OG Robin suit and goes maybe we can form a relationship. And then the kid dies and Dick is destroyed, not only did his kid brother die, his kid brother DIED in HIS legacy. And the Jason comes back. Steals his suit, and begins killing people. Nearly gets Dick killed by the cops and spends so long trying to ruin Dicks solid reputation. Not only that? But in the suit father preformed in? With the name Clark Kent gave him??? One of the men he respects most in the world? WHICH he proceeds to do again?? With their Dead Dads costume? After all the SHIT he spewed about no one giving a damn about his death. About how Bruce and his crusade killed a child. And he goes and not only hurts Tim, the brother Dick worked SO hard to build a relationship with bc the last time he got out a Kid died. But also Damian, a literal 10 year old. Dick sends him to Arkham bc when he got sent to regular prison he killed hundreds of people? And sure now?? Jason’s working with the family sometimes? But if it was just a difference in morals Dick wouldn’t have that much of an issue? He’s friends with people who have differing moral codes! Hell he’s DATED people with different moral codes. But? Jason made their beef personal and now Dicks stuck with the knowledge that his younger brother DID a lot of that to HURT him specifically. Bruce was dead for a portion of this? Did that stop Jason from trying to ruin everything dicks ever believed in? Nope.

Like Dick has to exist knowing that he loves his brother and his brother very well could and would do what he did to him again.

[cryptotheism]

I'm watching people on Reddit start praising Alex Jones for his comments on the genocide in Gaza and I feel like bashing my head against the wall. "Please do not fall for the obvious grifter's obvious grift, I am begging you".

He has changed his position on Israel more times than I've been able to keep track of. Half of his audience are anti-Israel because of the Conspiracy antisemitism, and he other half are pro-Israel because of the Christian Zionist antisemitism. He keeps doing everything in his power to avoid any deeper conversation about the topic.

Its clear he has no actual views on the topic, but is also struggling to find a line that his audience will swallow. Last time I heard him talk about it, he was taking some sorta "Anti-Israel because their government is run by the Shadow Government, but pro-israel in that their citizen militias have the right to bear arms, and they're killing arabs." Which is, and I shouldn't really have to say this, desperate nonsense.

I have an iron stomach when it comes to this type of fascist nonsense, but to be frank, hearing Alex talk about it is sickening to me. I can't even tune in to listen to him struggle. He clearly does not know or care about Palestinian history, or the sociopolitical complexities of the region. He's never fucking cared about antisemitism, or Jewish people. His opinions on the topic are depraved, hollow, and beneath every person reading this.

[ms-boogie-man]

Umm… HELLO-O!!!

Blocking me is not a win

Blocking me does not show evidence to prove your point

Blocking me does not prove me wrong

Blocking me definitely, definitely does not shut me up

Gang-flagging my posts does not stop me

Reporting me to Staff and getting my blogs terminated or shadow-banned does not stop me

Telling me to kill myself is F'n stupid yo… I am already dead

Starting a blog on another site so you can talk shiz about me behind my back is chump-worthy and just made me into a bigger rock star yo

Yes, you guys… these lunatics were raised so ineptly by their moron parents that they actually started an off-site blog about me and thought that was heroic

Mis-gendering me is hypocritical and idiotic… especially in light of the fact that while I AM a girl, you are just morons, boys parading around as female. *Note: I am very good and longtime friends on Tumblr with two cross dressers and two trannies. I use the pronouns she and her in reference to them all, out of respect, and I address them as Ms _________ (fill in the blank with their female first names)

Liberalism is a disease

Liberalism is a mental illness

Liberalism is built on lies

America was not built on the backs of slaves

Marxism is bullshit

The theory of evolution is just that, a theory; and unproven

Fossil fuel is a lie

Climate change, global warming/cooling, rising sea levels, etc, are all a grift

The Democrats are responsible for all the plastic in our oceans

Taxation is theft

All gun laws are an infringement

Free Speech means all speech

It is not our war unless We the People say it is

Fuck that shooter and the people who propped him up

Vampires aren't real because they said so

*nods

Angie/Maddie🦇❥✝︎🇺🇸

[katy-133]

I think something that has been left out of discussion that should be kept in mind if you ever wonder how James Somerton had managed to grift so much Patreon money and had been fooling so many people is that there was a point in history where, if you searched for queer readings of different works of fiction on YouTube, his videos would appear at the top. Every time. I remember this. Before the Plagiarism and You(Tube) video was released, if you keyword searched things like "video essay lgbt [insert fictional media you like]," a video from James Somerton's channel would appear first. If you were looking for queer readings, you had to scroll down to find Alexander Avila talking about queer intersectionality, or Kaz Rowe talking about gay painter JC Leyendecker, who influenced Team Fortress 2's art style.

This was because YouTube will push videos from prolific channels (read as: posts more long-ish videos) in search results in the hopes you will click on it (since YouTube gains money from ads in videos). James Somerton was able to post essay-length videos at a rate faster than the other queer media video essayists because he was stealing from them. None of the legitimate essayists could compete with him on that front because a well-researched essay takes time to fact-check and ruminate on. So every time another essayist tried to call him out on plagiarism, he'd sick his fans on the person because they were "smaller". It took Hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows to cause a dent because their channels were larger (note that Todd in the Shadows is a music review channel and Hbomberguy covers immersive sim video games--a YouTube channel covering queer essays is more "niche" than on other websites such as Tumblr or Nebula).

James Somerton didn't just weaponise his fans. He weaponised the algorithm. He weaponised queerness being considered "niche" on YouTube to silence queer writers.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

"The alliterate one was yelling at a producer after the interview." 🤔

Well of course she did 🤪

By the way, it is past time for Jane Pauley to retire. Jane couldn't see the difference between Sparry's hand & his thigh : "...and I see you touch your HUSBAND'S HAND in just the way I knew you would be looking after one another."

Someone is Off Script 🤪😂

HAPPY Meg: to speak about her fake unaliving & the tell tell: "I wasn't expecting that..." She had a SCRIPT on the ready, along w/yet another veiled threat to the BRF

ANGRY Meg: Pauley said, "the 2 of you, a modest beginning it's NOT an army (yet). What are your ambitions?" This was the 1 time Pauley went off script.

Like vinegar in Meg's mouth: "you have to start somewhere..." BUSTED!

This "network" is a smokescreen, an illusion. The Meghans are tragedy vultures who grift off the pain of parents whose children are deceased. They intend to exploit these parents to pass legislation like KOSA, to criminalize online criticism and monitor social credit scores

Tragedy Vultures

Oh look, she's latched onto another mother of a deceased child. 🤔 ⚰

Q-Where did these TRAGEDY VULTURES meet the bereaved parents?⚰

A-They met these bereaved parents in October 2023 in NYC for the 2nd annual World Mental Health Day. archeFRAUD Partnered with Project Healthy Minds (Carson Daily) to target the potential activism of this niche group of bereaved parents who experienced the unthinkable----a child gone too soon.

archeFRAUD plans to use their website and resources as an online hub of "connection" for the parent bereavement stories. The financial backers are: the radical left NAACP, Boston's radical left Fairplay, ParentsSOS, Center for Humane Technology, George Soros Open Societies Foundations, Omisyar Network, Craig Newmark Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Ford Foundation, Pritzker Family Foundation, Pritzker Innovation Fund, Parent's For Safe Online Spaces, David's Legacy Foundation, etc.

They intend to use untouchable stories of sorrow & death to bully Congress into criminalizing online criticism. This has been a longtime mission for elites like noprah, tyler perry, hollyweird stars, celebrity & political island visitors made up of wealthy elites who do illegal deeds in the shadows. These groups have been on a 20 year mission to go back to the comfort & secrecy of the pre-internet era. They are desperate for their wicked deeds to remain in the dark, but they need forward facing idiots like Meghan & Sparry to serve as their mouthpieces.

ME-gain & Sparry are tragedy vultures, grifting off the grief of bereaved families. Their mission to "raise awareness by sharing these parent stories" is to criminalize online online users for "hate speech" aka any criticism of ME-gain via the digital online town square. The NAACP is money laundering to meet the elites digital justice goals. Please contact Congress to Stop KOSA.

The October 2023 Comments under this Access Hollyweird video are GOLD!!

[getvalentined]

everyone seems to know something about James Somerton that i don't. the notes on your post are full of people saying "sigh THIS guy again", and i would like to know if he's done something other than make those queer theory youtube videos which seem extemporaneous in nature. i would google it but i trust some of you more than reddit

James Somerton was recently exposed as having completely plagiarized probably 90% of his work—from Wikipedia, news outlets, smaller queer creators, and at least two dead queer creators. (The last one is particularly egregious, in my opinion, given his extremely fucked up claim a while back that all the Cool Gays died during the AIDS Crisis, apparently including the authors whose work he stole.)

You can see the entire rundown in HBomberguy's video Plagiarism and You(Tube), which has a staggering runtime of almost four hours, a solid half of which is dedicated entirely to James Somerton. The first two hours of the video cover other cases, one in meatspace (Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova's landmark case against Paramount and ABC over the plagiarism in Future Cop) and then some smaller instances on YouTube (Filip, Internet Historian, iilluminaughtii). The second half, timestamped starting here, is exclusively about James—and while it goes over the plagiarism, touches on the misogyny and misinformation*, and briefly covers his various other grifts, it doesn't cover everything.

*For more on the misinformation aspect, Todd in the Shadows did a two hour video exclusively about that!

Assuming James Somerton's entire body of paying supporters on Patreon are at the $1 tier, that's around $3k per month. Since we know that isn't the case, it's probably closer to 5-10 times that amount. This doesn't include ad revenue from YouTube, any sponsorships, or his crowdfunding efforts to produce films that have never come into being. This man has been raking in over $100k per year, at minimum, by stealing words from other creators, pretending they're his own, and then lying every single time he's been called out for it. He claimed one person doxxed him and sent him death threats, although all they'd actually done was engaged in a firm but polite conversation on Twitter about how he needs to do more than plug in a credit at the end of a video description if he's just reading out of someone else's book.

Yesterday he posted a trash apology video where he started off by claiming he'd just gotten out of the hospital after making an attempt on his own life, talked about moving back home, referred to what he'd done as "poor citation practices," and said that he'd be reopening his Patreon and putting all his old videos back up so that he could donate the ad revenue to Hbomb's fund to compensate the authors that James himself stole from.

So yeah. Uh. Fuck that guy.

[motheatenscarf]

Amidst all the James Somerton fallout, I think it's important to remember not to moralize whether or not you or others fell for his grift.

Obviously, if you were rallied into being one of his attack dogs on social media when he put some pretty heinous hits out on people, uh. You might have other problems and should probably evaluate how you spend your time online and how you treat other people before you start caring about the rest of the points I'm about to make. Priorities, etc.

But for the rest of us, it's surprisingly easy to miss just how awful a creator can be.

If you only watched his videos that caught your interest, if you don't really follow creators on social media, if you skip livestreams because watching Some Guy talk unfiltered into a bad camera angle with shitty lighting for hours on end sounds like a fucking nightmare to you, you're not really gonna catch most of this shit. At least, you're not gonna catch most of it from any perspective but the one he tries to spin.

This is a reminder to be skeptical and to trust your gut and check sources if something sounds wrong, but also. Uh. That's still the creator's responsibility not to plagiarize and to fact check their work. You're not morally obligated to be as thorough in curating your experience as someone who is making sure they take every ethical precaution before absolutely destroying a "creator's" credibility in a video like H-Bomb's or Todd in the Shadows'. You're literally just some guy. Most people, myself included, watch these videos as background noise while doing at minimum one other task, you're not gonna google every damn thing he says, especially not on media analysis, where the POINT is to have one's own opinion. THEY'RE the ones trying to be "influencers," or, laughably, "creators." The standards are on them.

And for the isms, phobias, and misogyny, well. Frankly, for my own perspective, I gaslight myself all the damn time when I see red flags. Good Allyship™ has been telling me for years to ignore my own discomfort when someone criticizes a privileged group, especially one I'm a part of. I'm a cis asexual white-passing and probably neuroatypical woman, I am constantly trying to be aware of my own relative privilege while simultaneously doubting my own reaction to things. Despite this, I'd still liked to think I'm a skeptical person, but nobody's immune to everything. Everybody has weak spots.

If you got duped or fell for James' scam, that sucks. I feel ya. I fell for it too, I've seen probably 40% of his catalog over the last couple years and really liked what I'd seen. I recommended his channel and videos to people even if I didn't always agree with every point he made, but it felt important to at least consider what to me seemed like a unique perspective that had value or added to a conversation. There are red flags within his content, his analysis, his rate of publishing, his weird diatribes, that in retrospect, really all added up into things I should have known better than to ignore. But, for reasons I'm interrogating and am adding to my list of things to be aware of about myself, I didn't ignore them, and got grifted. I donated to his patreon a few times, probably gave him like $20 grand total over the years, about as much as I've given H Bomb. The important take away here isn't to be ashamed of the fact that you were fooled, it's to remember that you're fallible.

And it's good to recognize that about yourself. Everyone is, and the ones who say they aren't are lying. They're either gonna be the next person to feel really stupid and foolish when they fall for a scam, or are themselves the grifter.

No one is immune.

[deconstructthesoup]

When you have the realization that Leverage is essentially a D&D campaign set in the real world, there is no going back

So...

Nate: He'd obviously be a Mastermind rogue, but I think it'd be cool if he also had a few levels of paladin in there (because, y'know, Catholic boy and all). I did debate cleric for him, but really, Nate going from Oath of Devotion to Oathbreaker to Oath of Redemption throughout the story makes sense, in a way that being a cleric can't fully encapsulate. Also, he'd still probably be a human in D&D world.

Sophie: There's no other choice for our girl than a bard, and I think it'd be really cool if she's gone through a few colleges in her lifetime---she started out as a Whispers bard when she first met Nate, became a Glamour bard after she attempted to give up grifting and focus on her acting career, and after the first year or so working with the team, she settled into being a Lore bard ('cause they're all about exposing the truths of the corrupt). In the same vein, I don't think Sophie can be anything other than a changeling---why keep on burning a Disguise Self slot, when your body can just do that normally?

Eliot: Battlerager barbarian, Way of Shadow monk. And, yeah, he's a dwarf. He's short, and he has amazing hair.

Parker: Everything about her screams Arcane Trickster rogue---yeah, I know that there's an actual "thief" subclass, but considering that Parker frequently performs feats that low-key defy the laws of physics, it feels only fair to give her some magic. She also feels very tiefling-coded to me, so... yeah.

Hardison: As much as it should make sense to make the hacker-type character an artificer, his skills, to me, read way more School of Divination wizard, especially if we assume they're in a more high-fantasy setting. Hell, he could even have a couple levels of Arcana Domain cleric thrown in there, just to give him a little bit more buff. As for species, I think it'd be cool for Hardison to be an elf. I dunno, it just feels fitting.

Bonus:

Harry: I can think of no other choice for him than the most lawyer-coded class/subclass in the game, and that is the College of Eloquence bard. And, again, I think he's just human. Our Mr. Wilson is "just a guy," through and through.

Breanna: Now, as an engineer and creator of gadgets, she would be perfect as a Battlesmith artificer, no question about it. It'd be pretty cool for her to be a halfling, too---often underestimated, but insanely lucky.

[ewanmitchellcrumbs]

Seeing all these asks about Geneyen giving bitches backshots/breaking backs then taking off with panties and debit/credit cards makes me want a fic about Geneyen giving backshots taking panties and stealing debit/credit cards lol

Ask and you shall receive.

Fool Me Once - Chapter One

Warnings: Theft, smut. Word count: ~1200

Genyen awakens, sticky with sweat, an acrid taste in his mouth and a hangover lingering behind his eyes. He silently curses himself for not splurging the extra cash for a place with air conditioning, not that’d be sticking around long enough to appreciate it, but the humidity here is unbearable.

He fled to Thailand after clearing out the donations from the Buddhist centre, along with Jinba’s bank account. He has kept moving since arriving, never staying in one place for more than a week, it’s too risky to settle anywhere when he makes a living from robbing pretty, gullible tourists.

His grifting has taken him to Krabi, Pattaya City and Ko Pha Ngan. This week he finds himself in Pa Tong. No matter the city or district, the situation always plays out the same way; he dons his Buddhist monk robes, heads to the nearest beach and spins a pretty girl a line about how he’s left the monastery because he wants to experience a day in the life of a tourist. By nightfall he’s spilling himself into a condom inside of her, then rifling through her purse once she’s asleep.

He has no idea what possessed him to start tearing the ID pages from their passports. The first time it happened he’d found it as he’d rummaged through her handbag. He’d flipped to the back, curiosity leading him to want to look at her photo. Before he had time to think fully about what he was doing, he’d ripped it out, pocketing it along with her knickers and all the cash she had.

He has quite the collection now. He rolls over in the bed, draping a long, lean arm down the side to rifle through his duffel bag. Underwear of all colours, cuts and sizes is stuffed inside. He thumbs through the stack of ID pages; Sweden, Australia, South Africa, Canada.

Would be cool to have one for every country, he thinks to himself.

He pushes the passport pages and panties to the side, plucking out the wad of banknotes rolled up beside them and counts through it. Shit. Less than two thousand baht left. He’s only been in Pa Tong a few days, but partying all night, every night burns through money fast. He’s going to need to find another target today, or he’ll run out of cash.

After dragging himself out of bed, chasing painkillers with the dregs of the previous evening’s final beer, and showering, Genyen finds himself strolling the perimeter of Pa Tong beach. He is glad that his robes are relatively lightweight, the heat of the sun feels oppressive. He shields his eyes from the blinding rays, surveying the hordes of people soaking up the Thai heat.

That’s when he spots her. His eyes are immediately drawn to the curve of her arse, peeking out from a tiny pair of bikini bottoms as she lays face down. She’s immersed in a copy of The Secret. Oh, this is fucking perfect. 

He saunters over to her and she immediately looks up as his shadow is cast over her. He smiles as her eyes widen in surprise.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash on me if you’re looking for donations.” She smiles sweetly at him.

“Oh, I’m not here on behalf of Wat Suwan Khiri Wong. I’m actually trying to get away from that.”

“Really? And why is that?” She asks curiously, closing her book.

He settles cross legged on the sand in front of her. “I’ve dedicated my whole life to the monastery and practicing the teachings of Buddha. I’d like to know what life has to offer outside of that. I’m Genyen, by the way.”

“Genyen.” She repeats, eyeing him curiously. “Makes you sound important.”

He laughs softly. “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. You can call me Shawn, if you’d prefer.”

He spins her his entire lie and she falls for it. He tells her his mum passed away when he was ten, that his dad married a woman called Mary and when his dad then passed away just before Shawn was due to go to university, Mary had contested the will. She’d gotten everything, the house included. He went away to university, but had nowhere to go once he graduated, so he went travelling and ended up here, in Thailand. He was taken in by the Buddhist monks and renamed Genyen, which means ‘approaching virtue’.

She pays rapt attention, her face softening in sympathy for him, and by the evening they sit in a beach bar together, their knees brushing as she sips a strawberry daiquiri.

“So if you want to experience life outside of the monastery, why aren’t you drinking?” She says, playing with her staw.

“Better to take these things slowly, just talking to you today was a big enough step.” He lies. He knows better than to get buzzed. Drunkenness leads to sloppy mistakes.

He barely has to make an effort. Two more cocktails and her eyes are glazed as she leans in to kiss him. Her lips taste like rum and he kisses her back hungrily.

He follows eagerly when she leads him back to her hotel room. They make quick work of undressing each other. His eyes dart around the room, making a note of where she discards her bag.

It’s not long before she’s on all fours, his hands kneading the fleshy globes of her backside that he’d spent most of the afternoon admiring, as he snaps his hips against her. She clenches around him, warm and oh so tight. He can feel how soaked she is even while wearing a johnny and the sensation causes him to groan as he speeds up his movements.

She moans, arching her back, pushing against him and he slides a hand up the smooth skin of her back, grabbing a fistful of her hair, biting his lip at how this makes her squeeze him harder. She may be a dupable airhead who stupidly believes in the power of manifestation, but she is undoubtedly one of the best lays he’s ever had.

He isn’t sure if she comes, he doesn’t care. His grip on her hips is vicelike as gives one final thrust, shuddering as he pulsates and spends himself into the latex.

It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep. He lays there, waiting for the sound of her breathing to deepen and even out. Once she starts to snore softly, he creeps out of the bed. He dresses before looking through the handbag he’d seen her drop to the floor earlier. He pulls all of the banknotes from her purse, pocketing them. No cash on you? Bloody liar.

Her passport sits on the vanity table and he grabs it, flipping to the back page. He smiles as he looks at her photo, illuminated by the moonlight that streams through the window. She looks so dorky, it’s actually kind of cute. He almost feels bad for robbing her.

He tears the page out, wrapping it in her discarding bikini bottoms, then pockets those as well.

Slipping out of her room, he lets the door click softly closed behind him, walking out into the balmy night air of Pa Tong. He was going to miss her. Well, he’d miss her air conditioning, that’s for sure.

Chapter two || Series masterlist

[ellestra]

Farming content James Somerton style

Edited: I cleaned up sentences, removed typos and added some links

You've probably seen the latest hbomberguy video that highlights plagiarism problem on youtube. He gives several examples many I never heard about but I've been recommended iilluminaughtii before and watched some of her stuff before getting tired of seemingly endless volume (now I know why). But then he gets to the real subject of the video and I did watch a lot of James Somerton videos. And I liked many of them. I liked them a lot.

I didn't give him any money and, as much as it came as relief, I kept thinking how this must feel so much worse for people who did. I thought about supporting him for a moment when he posted (in April this year!) how his videos are getting less views because youtube algorithm and demonetisation of gay creators (it's a real thing so it was easy to believe) and he will be forced to stop creating if people don't sign up to his patreon. But I was casual viewer and he seemed big enough so I didn't. It must feel like such a betrayal to those who created a real community around him. Just like his film production company it's clear now it was another of his scams. It's infuriating how well it worked.

Somerton deleted his patreon now (along with his twitter and discord server) so there is probably no recourse for those affected. The only good thing is that someone big enough highlighted what he did (and brought receipts) so he had to stop. When smaller creators called him out it either went unnoticed or he managed to make himself a victim (and send his fans after them). He actually did what Anita Sarkeesian was accused of and gaslighted his followers about it. His misogyny just adds an extra bitter taste to this.

At the end hbomberguy talks about how if Somerton was open about what he was doing this could've been his niche. He said it just as I was thinking basically the same thing. I'm sure there is a market for field review type of videos. Not review like movie or book review but in academic sense when you take other people articles on the subject and compare to show the state of research on the subject on at the moment.

This kind of reviews doesn't need any original research. The value is in giving people overview of where the field is at and pointing them to the actual research so they can read more in depth about the results. If you already did the search for all the sources this is a perfect format to use them. Most people don't have time or resources to comb through all the resources themselves but they like to learn about it and this is why videos like that are popular. That's why iilluminaughtii, Somerton and al. were able to cash in on it.

But of course this kind of things have to properly cited. And they cannot be just all quotes. You have to make coherent points not just make stuff up for the transitions (lies that actually made Todd in the Shadows make a video not about music). I suppose that's too much work. Too much effort when you need to crank out content to satisfy all the sponsors.

I was glad to find out I already watch most of the queer creators recommended in the hbomberguy's video (and put on this watch list) as an alternative (I would add Caelan Conrad to it - funnily enough I found them through their video about antivax movement). I trained my youtube recommendations well in which way it skews but it's easier to kick out all the obviously awful when you know what talking points to avoid. It's much harder to spot grift when it pretends to care about the same things you care about. Somerton was saying all the right things. It just wasn't his words.

Did he even believe any of it? I bet he'll insist on yes but the laziness says otherwise. It seems like it was all just for the money and fans this angle gave him. That he enjoyed being cool to the audience he built and the stuff it bought him. Be gay do crime for real. Only he didn't write that one either.

[themattress]

The length had me worried, but turns out it's this person's only video and clearly a passion project so it's not a grifting "outrage merchant" type of video. And honestly, most of their points are spot on, like how Carmen's character arc was botched, how abysmal Zack and Ivy are in every way, the iffyness of Shadow-san that was never properly addressed, the waste of Player's potential by keeping him so ridiculously flat, the fact that separating Chase and Julia for so long did both characters no favor, Gray being one of the better characters despite being misused and ultimately rendered kind of pointless, and the second half of the series and its finale being a letdown that mostly failed in delivering on what the first half had set up.

Wait, it feels like I've heard this story before...

[geenawrites]

GEEENAWRITES: 2024 IN REVIEW

[bsky link] + [wordpress] - December 30th-31st marks the end of 2024. A long time ago, I would've begged for the next year to make haste and pull me from the misery of the day-to-day. But with age sometimes comes wisdom. 2024 was not a great year, but the idea of a "great year" seems wholly juvenile, if not an illusory concept. As meaningless as ranking any given moment in your life in a Top Five or Best of List. Life is not without its miseries; every year comes with creative ups and downs. This is to say that 2024 was no more a "great year" than the last. It stands to reason that until the issues that brought despair in the here and now are ended, they will continue to persist. So, the point is less about lamenting the terrors and more about figuring out what you, as an individual, can do about it within your pocket of reality. The only way out is through, so keep going. But! In the meantime, listed below are eight articles I wrote (or republished) for GeeenaWrites (dot com) and SuperJump Magazine in 2024. This is not the totality of my work, but it's just some of the work that I'm proud of.

Resident Evil at 20: Reimagining 'Ground Zero' - Published April 2024: A retrospective on the 20th Anniversary of Capcom's Resident Evil REMake for the Nintendo GameCube and Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil adaptation starring Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez.

We Gotta Talk About: Captive State (2019) - Published December 2024, written in 2019. An essay about counter-insurgency against American fascism as depicted in the political sci-fi thriller Captive State, inspired by The Battle of Algiers and Army of Shadows.

The Cat Comes Back: The Comfort of Early Edition's Supernatural Feline - Published September 2024: More review than retrospective or essay, Early Edition is a very 90s fantasy series about a dog-person who gets stuck with an immortal cat that predicts the future with a newspaper. It's corny as hell, but I love it.

I Take My Miasma Lean, My Liberals Black, and My Despair at Three - Published August 2024: This past Election period taught how quickly the working class will turn against its peers to capitulate to the interests of the elites and the political class. To see it happen in real-time is fucking demoralizing, though.

Temporarily Embarrassed by the Grift - Published July 2024: To be a socialist who pursues a future where the concept of money and capitalism is regulated to the dustbin of history is to live in a constant state of rage. Rage at the poverty we're living in and rage, watching humans beg for the right to live.

Spaces in Sharp Relief (I) - Republished Jan 2024: An autopsy of a twenty-some year experience within vitriolic fanspaces whose negatives ultimately outweigh the formative positive experiences. Because nothing has really changed.

Spaces in Sharp Relief (II) - Republished January 2024: “[…]I encourage every community to quit thinking you need to be fair to unfair voices. Get the rot out and you’ll have a healthier community.” (@AmazonChique)

To Live and Thrive in Baltimore - Republished January 2024: "At a certain age, you understand the reputation Baltimore City has as some lawless, violent city full of thugs is one by design."