Sources for Somerton's Plagiarism from Hbomberguy's Video (as much as I could get)
I went back through Harry's video, focused entirely on the sources James Somerton pulled from in the hopes of creating as much of a comprehensive list as I could--though my Google-Fu is not very strong. I did however find something I thought was forever lost and that made me very happy--specifically the magazine Midlands Zone containing the column by Steven Spinks that Harry poignantly used as an illustration of gay erasure... while Somerton uses it to sound like HE is waxing remorseful about the very subject.
This is not a complete list, I'm sure. For one thing, I was only able to attempt to pull sources that Harry himself mentioned in the video. Surely there's so very much more out there. I expect there to be a great deal more internet archeology to unearth just how much writing and culture Somerton has stolen like he's the British Museum of Natural History but for gay people.
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Harry's list of mentioned youtubers:
Alexander Avila - https://www.youtube.com/@alexander_avila
Matt Baume - https://www.youtube.com/@MattBaume
Khadija Mbowe - https://www.youtube.com/@KhadijaMbowe
Lady Emily - https://www.youtube.com/@LadyEmilyPresents
Shanspeare - https://www.youtube.com/@Shanspeare
RickiHirsch - https://www.youtube.com/@RickiHirsch
VerilyBitchie - https://www.youtube.com/@verilybitchie
Harry created a convenient playlist of videos by these and other people he wants to bring to everyone's attention.
Please give them your support.
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Midlands Zone Magazine - Column by Steven Spinks
After a great deal of searching, I found an archive of the "Midlands Zone" magazine, where you can read through past issues dating all the way back to February 2014. I have also found the issue from which Somerton took Spinks' poignant discussion of gay erasure:
Overall archive
Specific Issue - Pages 16-17
It will not allow you to download it, but you can read it exactly as it appeared in print form.
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My best effort to find the exact book or article Somerton lifted from to be able to get attention to the original writers
Tinker Bells and Evil Queens
By Sean Griffin
The Celluloid Closet
By Vito Russo
Wikipedia article about the book
Wikipedia article about the documentary
My weak google-fu could not find where you can access the book or documentary. Check your local municipal or university library for book or documentary, or if you know a good source for one or both, please reblog with it added
Camp and the Gay Sensibility
By Jack Babuscio
The Groundbreaking Queerness of Disney's Mulan
By Jes Tom
Personal site with links to social media accounts
Why Rebel Without a Cause was a milestone for gay rights
By Peter Howell
Why "The Craft" is still the best Halloween coming out movie
By Andrew Park
Opinion: From facehuggers to phallic tails, is 'Alien' one of the queerest films ever?
By Dani Leever
Women and Queerness in Horror: Jennifer's Body
By Zoe Fortier
[Pride 2019] We Have Such Sights to Show You: Hellraiser and the Spectrum of Queerness
By Alejandra Gonzalez
Revealing the Hellbound Heart of Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser'
By Colin Arason
Queering James Cameron's Aliens (1986)
By Bart Bishop
Demeter and Persephone in space: transformation, femininity, and myth in the 'Alien' films
By David Greven
Fears of a millennial masculinity: Scream's queer killers
By David Greven
(Scholarly site, unable to access original work, offers a way to request a full copy of the text in PDF)
Queer Subtext in Stephen King's It - Part 1: 'Reddie' Character Analysis
By Rachel Brands
Rachel is the very unfortunate lady who found out she was being stolen from because she supported Somerton through Patreon and saw one of his videos early with her writing--lacking any form of citation or credit
How 'It: Chapter Two' Leaves Richie Tozier Behind
By Joelle Monique
When Horror Becomes Strength: Queer Armor in Stephen King's 'IT'
By Alex London
Why Queer People Love Witchcraft
By Amanda Kohr
'The Favourite' Queers The Past And The Present
By Giorgi Plys-Garzotto
(Wuko) Crush (Mako x Wu)
By MoonFlower on YouTube
5 Terrible Movies With Awesome Hidden Meanings
By J.F. Sargent
The Radicalization of Sexuality: The Queer Casae of Jeffrey Dahmer
By Ian Barnard
Netflix's 'Dahmer' backlash highlights ethical issues in the platform's obsession with true crime
By Shivani Dubey
The Possible Disturbing Dissonance Between Hajime Isayama's Beliefs and Attack on Titan's Themes
Original Article by "Seldom Musings"
(Author has made all posts not related to Attack On Titan private and has retired from the blog)
Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan?
By Gita Jackson
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The following people are otherwise named in the video. There are no direct citations of articles or books by them in said video. I am unable to guarantee that I have identified the correct individual.
Darren Elliott-Smith
Michaela Barton
David Church
Claire Sisco King
Amanda Howell
Jessica Roy
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Telos announced and cancelled a film likely based on this book:
The Final Girl Support Group - By Grady Hendrix
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I refrained from including certain sources.
First off only focusing on Somerton's work.
Secondly not including anything that might be visible enough to not require amplifying their voice (I cannot speak for all of those I have found links to, but journalism is frequently a thankless job).
Thirdly any source that is of a nature that is antithetical to the very existence of the queer community, such as the right-leaning source that didn't make it into Somerton's video, but Harry was able to identify as a source he had considered using.
If you feel I have missed a mentioned source--or you know of a source from material that was not covered in Harry's video--please do not hesitate to reblog with added details.
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Please share this information far and wide, and please add to it if you find more material that can be positively identified and linked to the creator/writer.
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ok. years have passed and we've had some distance, so i'm finally gonna take the leap of faith that tma fandom is finally ready to hear me on this. let's talk about tannins.
161 was the first tma episode i heard on early release, and i felt the bit where martin declines wine and cites tannins was pretty obvious in its implications. cool, got it, say no more.
imagine my surprise when i was one of maybe three people i saw read between the lines there, in a fandom famous for red stringing--a fandom that immediately caught the much less obvious thread of ignition sources in the same episode. i'll spell it out: alcohol is an issue for martin.
maybe it just felt obvious because addiction is a pet issue for me--as it is for jonny, who has said everything he writes is filtered through a lens of addiction. i don't know if that's due to his own experience or a loved one's, and i won't speculate; i also don't know if martin personally struggled with drinking or just avoids it for fear he would, but alcohol would fit what we know of his family. his dad walking out and his mum spiralling into bitter wallowing and verbal abuse? i'd bet one or both of them drank, yeah.
on a basic level martin tries to decline alcohol, and that alone should have raised eyebrows given what we know of martin and, again, a fandom that dissects everything. we already knew martin "K" blackwood lied about his personal life and his family in particular, especially pre-canon, which is when this flashback took place. i was shocked that everyone took his flimsy excuse at face value with no further questions.
and the excuse is flimsy. martin turns down wine by--nervously--exclaiming tannins are "a proven headache trigger!" which sounds like trivia from a magazine cover and not the words of someone who actually has headaches--and it hasn't come up before or since. jon, confused, points out that tea, a drink martin consumes to a degree that is memetic both in- and out-of-universe, also contains tannins, and martin squawks a panicked, "what?!"
if tannins are enough of a concern for martin that he knew they're in wine and so avoids it, why didn't he know they're in his drink of choice? why does he still drink tea at the time of canon, and why doesn't he struggle with constant headaches from consuming 'a proven headache trigger' day in and day out? why, indeed, would someone avoid wine and not tea?
when sasha insists martin drink he caves and agrees to 'just a drop'. i imagine him pouring it in a plant, which admittedly he could have done if tannins really were the issue. i will say that i, for one, would be less likely to falsely agree to something that makes me physically ill than to a private issue that i'd rather not be pressed on any further. this scene also establishes martin's birthday was an ice cream party instead of the more traditional visit to a pub.
also, this scene was in the first episode of the final season, as one of three flashbacks that could have been to any pre-canon event in the archives. prime narrative real estate. not really time one would waste on establishing the important character context that martin has... headaches. which never comes up before or after, even regarding the week he spent in spiral town. but you know what is pretty crucial character background...?
it felt like a no-brainer, and yet all i saw was h/c fluff about jon attending to martin's headaches. and i hate feeling bitter about disability representation. i want folks with chronic headaches to feel seen and have fluffy escapist fantasies. i don't want to be mad about people portraying a character with a disability. but, guys? you got the wrong disability. jonny sent a clear message, and it went over fandom's head.
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where do you find articles or personal essays to read? and also do you have any favorite sources for news? i want to read more but i’m having a difficult time finding sources 🤍
I've answered this just recently but here's a more complete list for essays from places I visit most often (favourites are marked **)
LitHub**
Electric Literature**
Guernica Magazine**
Hazlitt**
Longreads**
Pangyrus
The Dial**
Bloodknife**
Aeon **
The Marginalian**
Asymptote Journal
N+1
Nautilus**
Quanta Magazine**
The Believer
Ordinary Plots**
The Point Magazine
The Baffler
Paris Review (Redux newsletter is good for things usu behind the paywall)
The New Yorker
The Artifice
The Collector
The Rumpus
Catapult
Tin House Archives (the online section is no longer running but past publications are still available)
Additionally, highly recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox and trying the "Pocket" feature on their homepage: it collects links to articles across the web on topics that are either trending or based on the Pocket suggestions you usually click on. I'm on private browser 99% of the time but there's still 2 or 3 articles at least that I'm always interested in and I love it!
Some other places I read things: Poets&Writers, Atlas Obscura, The Guardian, The Independent, New Scientist, Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, BBC, National Geographic, Wired, NY Times, GQ, NPR, The Irish Times / Independent, etc., I don't have favourite news sources as a rule since I usually read 2 or 3 articles on the same topic from different places depending on what it is (I don't like relying on single sources). But on the whole this covers most of what cross my orbit unless I'm looking for something specifically 💗
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feeling nuts ok so i was looking at the full page of that High School Drag interview after um going thru the 5 stages of decomposition over it and i recognized one of gerard’s other answers (about people grabbing their package) as identical to something they said in a much older interview so i was like oh are we pulling quotes from other things here? can i Search the Web and find the og source for what he said about doing drag? so i DID and i found each sentence of his answer, which i bolded, within larger quotes from completely different places, like:
“I like to think of it as a cry for help trapped in a pop song...When I was writing it, I was remembering how hard it was to be a 16-year-old in high school. I always wanted to be an artist, so I was this loner kid who just got drunk all the time. I only had one real friend. There was a girl I really liked, and she ended up taking really sleazy photographs with her boyfriend, and that really crushed me...I was just swimming in this pit of despair, jealousy and alcoholism.” (June 23, 2004 from mtv archive)
“I went to school in drag, in art school and my day was completely different because everybody thought I was a chick.” (we all know this one, earliest place i found it was here from 2003ish but i think the site’s broken now)
“You’re going to come across shitty bands and a lot of shitty people. And if any one of those people call you names because of what you look like or they don’t accept you for who you are, I want you to look right at that motherfucker, stick up your middle finger, and scream ‘Fuck you!’” (found this in a bunch of places, the earliest so far being Oct 22, 2006 on imnotokay.net where it’s listed as an “old article”)
for reference again the lad mag interview goes like:
“How did you find high school? Hard. I always wanted to be an artist, so I was this loner kid who just got drunk all the time. I only had one real friend.
In what ways were you a loner? I went to school in drag. People call you names because of what you look like, because they don't accept who you are.”
so this has me thinking that at least this portion of the interview is entirely collaged together, with the context abt high school for the second answer basically fabricated? idk how common a practice this is in like. music journalism but LAD Mag (which this is from) was a magazine that came with copies of Sugar for free, so maybe the standards were different OR SOMETHING. idk maybe gerard just happened to repeat himself here. i want to believe in high school drag. but also their history with gender is important to meeeee and i want to make sure i am not consuming Fake Info about it !!!!
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