#i didn't actually do anything other than paste together a bunch of clips

[pumpkincanoes]

I swear I'm a normal person who spends my time on normal things

[girl-in-the-mirrorbluenight]

Okay I've been thinking about this pretty much all day since I saw the hbomberguy and then todd in the shadows video i just have so many thoughts. While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Video Essayist™ (I've only made a few over the years) as a youtuber and someone who has made video essays i definitely have more experience than the average person. There are so many things that stand out to me about this whole debacle i dont even know where to start.

First I want to just give a little insight into the process for making video essays from people who've never given it a shot and just how absurd it is to do the type of plagiarizing James has done. Video essays take a fuckton of research, even for pretty simple topics, but on top that you also have to make them with the medium of video in mind. it's really not enough to just take an essay you would write for a class and read it out loud. the flow is different, you have to have accompanying visuals, often background music, etc. They're a beast to make. My Twisted video for which i used literally two sources for my research (Sondheim's books and the musical Twisted) still took days of thorough reading, note taking, watching the musical, watching the musical again, watching the musical and taking notes, cross-referencing my notes, etc. For videos that synthesize multiple sources or are covering multiple pieces of media, that time goes up exponentially. Then there's writing, recording, gathering clips (often one of the most difficult parts depending on how obscure what you're talking about is), and editing. Even for a silly video like my Glee video, I still had to do a ton of research to make sure I was getting things correct, and that was a funny tier list about freaking Glee! There is just no way you could come up with a thorough analysis by just copying and pasting. Which brings me to my next point.

I think James may have thought (or more likely rationalized) what he was doing as analysis based on like the vaguest definition. When you do any kind of analysis, what you're doing is taking research from multiple different places (news articles, primary sources, existing analysis, etc.) and coming to your own conclusions, whether that's a synthesis of those different sources, or applying it to a specific thing like a movie. Really simple example is my Twisted video where I take Sondheim's writing and apply it to a specific piece of media (in this case Twisted). I'm using existing work but coming to my own conclusion. In the Spies Are Forever video, I took existing research about the Lavender Scare and the Hays Code, including primary sources from the time period, and applied it to the musical Spies are Forever. What James seem to do is take a bunch of existing scholarship, copy and paste it all together and then come to a "conclusion" that was not actually his own original thoughts but either "facts" he completely made up or something that didn't do anything to actually link his other "sources" together. I can see why it has the veneer of analysis, but making up a random "fact" you think might be true is not the same as a drawing a conclusion based on research.

I also think Todd made a really good point in the part about England's propaganda campaign against Italy around 9:30 that it's just really bad video making to not include examples of images from this so called propaganda campaign. I have a ton of examples of news clips, government reports, etc. in my SaF video about the Lavender Scare because...it was a real historic thing that happened! If something was supposedly so widespread and not even that long ago, you can probably find evidence of it somewhere. Kaz Rowe (who is also linked in the queer creators playlist on hbomberguy's vid) talked about this a lot in their video about tiktok misinfo where people often make these outrageous claims but the thing is if something so outrageous happened (like people constantly shitting on the floors of versailles), other people at the time would probably be talking about it somewhere. It's a big red flag when someone makes such bold claims and has no evidence to back it up.

Putting this last section under the cut because I go talk about WWII, Nazis, and HIV/AIDS a bit (watch Todd's video for some more context) so if you don't want to see that post is over here.

Lastly I wanted to talk about something else Kaz brings up in a lot of their videos when talking about historical topics and that is the tendency to dehumanize people of the past, often as unwashed, unintelligent masses who would just do any ridiculous disgusting thing because they were so stupid and disgusting. There are a lot of things to criticize about the people of the past and their actions obviously, but we cannot forgot that they were in fact, people. Real individual people with their own lives and dreams and ambitions and individual opinions and they have never been and never will be a monolith. Claiming anything is broadly true of "the victorians" or "the ancient egyptians" or whatever other vague historical group you want to talk about is usually a lot more nuanced than "they all thought or acted in this one particular way". I'm certainly not a historian and i've only done one history focused video but James Somerton seemed to make a lot of broad historical claims in his videos that I think fall into this trap.

The one that stood out most to me in Todd's video was the claim about Nazi body standards which is a whole mess in general that Todd goes into for a while, but the way he talks about WWII soldiers was just like...weird. Besides the fact that a lot of his claims about Nazis seem to be bordering on glorifying them and their aesthetics (gross), I think we should remember that WWII was less than a century ago. There are still over 100,000 surviving WWII vets in the US. My grandfather who was in the Army during WWII (he didn't serve overseas but he was an enlisted soldier I can literally look up his enlistment records in the national archives online) was a real person who I obviously knew personally and who died fairly recently. To think he enlisted because he was jealous of German fitness or whatever and wanted to prove how tough Americans are is an absolutely hilarious thing to think if you knew him. I'm sure there are as many reasons for enlisting as there were enlisted soldiers. When James talks about even as relatively narrow of a group as "WWII American soldiers," he's still talking about a very large group of real and diverse people and to make such broad claims that "most" or even "a lot" of them were just so taken in by strong german physiques or whatever is frankly insulting. I haven't watched the entirety of James video so maybe he does address this at some point, but from the clips I've seen it seems very generalized and implies some level of racism when WWII soldiers in fact included a lot of racially diverse people. IDK, i think if you're a supposed historical researcher and you're making a video about WWII and you don't know about groups like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers, that's on you. I don't want to discount some of the really horrible shit that American (and obviously other countries) soldier's did in the war and how many of them held disgusting views (even my grandpa who I love dearly was not the most politically correct person to put it lightly) but Jame's claims are not criticizing any real ideology or the consequences of them, they're oversimplifying complex and harmful historical ideas and attributing them to something he pretty much made up. I'll also give you a little hint about something. When people fall into Nazi ideology, it's because they ultimately agree with the ideology, not for some surface level aesthetic reason of "fitness" or whatever. They are antisemitic, they are racist, they are eugenicists, plain and simple. They don't just think the Nazis are cool except for all their beliefs. I also think (and again I could be missing a part of the video here) the hyper focus on the Germans and the Soviets and not mentioning Italy is at the very least an oversight too. Mussolini, like Hitler and Stalin, had a pretty big campaign of promoting an ideal strong race which he tied to ancient Romans. Like this was also a country controlled by a fascist dictator that American soldiers fought in idk it just seems weird to me to leave it out. (okay edit i looked up the transcript and he does talk about Italian fascism a little bit but only about how Mussolini rose to power, nothing about his ideologies or anything really related to the main topic of body image).

And one more thing on that note that bothered me a lot. I think his claims about HIV/AIDS is probably the most well-known here on tumblr and has been pretty thoroughly destroyed by this point, but I do just want to say one more thing about it which is that AIDS isn't gone! I feel like they way he talks about it from what I've seen of this video makes HIV/AIDS sound like a problem of the past now that we have drugs for it, but that is just not the truth. There are still tens of thousands of new infections in the US each year and way more globally and yes, people do still die from it. I just don't like when people talk about AIDS as if it's this problem of the distant past, a separate era that people went through in the 80s rather than an ongoing epidemic that still does not have a cure. Safer sex, clean needle usage, and getting tested are just as important now as they were in the 80s and 90s and don't forget that.

[yuvon-writes-letters]

Hello?

I am not sure who you are or why Matt had at least 30 unopened letters from you in his mail box. I didn't read them either. I normally would, but it is not my place. The only reason I am here writing this is because I have to. Everyone should know what happened, everyone that was close enough to Matt to send him letters.

Maybe I should start with who I am? My name is Jessica, or Jessy. That's how my friends call me. Or Jess if you go Matts way. (The sentence is a bit shaky) I am was his girlfriend. I don't think you knew about me yet. No one really did, except for my close friends. And of course this stupid hacker...It's his fault that

We wanted to tell Matts friends and family in person when the danger we were in was over. It just didn't work out as planned. About a year ago the girl Hannah Donfort went missing. She was from a little town, Duskwood. Like me and all of my friends. Except for Matt. When Hannah went missing she sent a number to her boyfriend, Thomas. That was the phone number of Matt. And that is where everything started.

Matt, myself and my friends started talking. We talked much and long. About Hannah and how we could find her, he is was such an amazing detective. Always found small clues.

And after some time I started to develop feelings for Matt. And he for me. It is the story of a whole year and I still have to write some more letters, so I will keep it short.

In our journey we, mostly Matt, also met this hacker. His name is Jake and he witnessed Hannahs kidnapping. Or more, he was the one who did it. We figured out that Jake was Hannahs half-brother so for the sake of it I'll call him Jake Donfort. Even if that was not his real name.

Donfort seemed to be eager to find Hannah and helped Matt. Or at least that's what everyone thought. But I was always suspicious. He just seemed weird and always tried everything to make Matt keeping secrets from us. Wanted to make Matt stay away from Duskwood. He didn't do that though🙂Matt always talked to me. And later came to visit us.

You have to know, we tried finding Hannahs kidnapper until we got to this person. The Man without a Face. From a Duskwood legend. It had to be a man that knew everything we did and more. And somehow knew all of us.

This somebody was Donfort. Matt told me that the hacker got angry when he went to Duskwood. (Oh, did I already tell you that Donfort was searched by the government? He has always been shady)

And then the day came...Matt and I finally met and we had the greatest time in Duskwood. But Donfort didn't write anything anymore. Just that he would have to go into hiding again. (He did that before) He sent Matt some weird riddle that he even solved. This riddle gave a hint on how to find him if everything went wrong.

But that was Donforts last mistake. Again you have to know, he always wore a mask. We never got to see his real face.

And...and when the police found Matts body... (the paper is full of dried tear stains)

Not even 10 meters away, hidden in a tree was this masks. The mask Donfort always wore. Jake was responsible for multiple murders, including my boyfriend, and the kidnapping of Hannah Donfort who wasn't found to this day. But at least he had to pay...I told you about the riddle, right? My friends and myself (or most of my friends. Lilly, Hannahs sister, and surprisingly Dan left after we told them what we did. I really don't understand why thdy didn't want the murderer who was Lillys half-brother as well to be captured) sent the hints for Jakes location to police and government. It didn't take a day until he was captured and imprisoned. In some kind of maximum security prison.

But you can be sure, he will never see the light of day again. And that's not something I am saying. He will never see the sun or daylight again and sure as hell will suffer for what he did. At least that is what the guys promised me.

The Man without a Face, the murderer, Jake will suffer. Small cells, no daylight...I don't even know what they'll do or are allowed to do. But I don't care anymore.

He took my boyfriend and my friends.

Signed: Jessica Hawkins

Jessica (may I call you Jessy?),

I am very sorry for your loss. My relation with Matt is... complex. We are simultaneously strangers and rather close. I don't know how to better describe it, I'm afraid. Thank you for informing me.

Hannah Donfort went missing a year ago? That's quite a long time for your friend to be missing. That can't be easy either.

Jake... I can certainly see why you see him as suspicious. But why would he give Matt a way to contact himself if Matt got into trouble? I'm sorry if I seem a little disbelieving, but that sounded more like an act of concern than a threatening gesture.

And, if he is paranoid enough to go into hiding merely from Matt going physically to Duskwood, and clever enough to hide from the government, why would he leave a mask that could be linked back to himself at the crime scene?

This just seems rather off, I'm afraid.

I'm going to assume you're saying to yourself at the moment, "Who does she think she is? What does she know about all this? Who is she to doubt that Jake is actually the kidnapper?"

That's very, very complicated. I'll try to explain, and I'll sound completely insane. If you don't want to deal with it, if you just want to feel that you've gotten the murderer and everything is solved, close this letter now. But if you want a shot at ensuring you found the right person, keep reading.

After all, you wouldn't want to put an innocent man in prison, would you?

Alright. How to start this.

Do you know the theory of parallel universes? Every choice made, action taken, or decision made spawns a parallel universe where a different choice was made, a different action was taken, or a different decision was made.

The most prominent difference I've noticed so far between our universes is the identity of the person who had their phone number sent by Hannah's phone to Thomas, and who Thomas then contacted a day later, three days in total after the kidnapping.

Hi. Call me Yuvon. I'm the person who was contacted by Thomas and got sucked into all this mess in my world. I've got a bunch of crazy stuff going on, and I'm in contact with other people which have crazy stuff going on, but you don't really have to worry about that right now. Read the previous letters if you really want to know, but I'll warn you that it's completely insane.

It's only been... it's already been over a month for me, oh my hell. It's been only over a month since Hannah disappeared, by my timeline.

Jakes seem to be somewhat different from universe to universe, at least as far as I've seen so far, so I can't tell you with absolute certainty that your version of Jake wasn't the kidnapper. However, my version of Jake is one of the people I trust the most, right up there with my version of you. And, besides, him being the kidnapper just never made sense to me.

You pointed it out yourself, after all, I think. You might not have ever said it to Matt, but certainly you told me that you didn't think Jake was the kidnapper, because it'd be too dangerous for him to engage in the case in the first place. I completely agreed with you.

Obviously, I can't ask you to believe any of this without evidence. Ask anything you like. You and I only ever had one (virtual) date, and since I'm a woman I think you didn't see it in a romantic light (blacked out), but rather in a friendship light, so please don't ask me any questions about the romance you had with Matt. I am not Matt.

Please also do not ask questions about the time past when you and Thomas were pursued by the kidnapper after checking out Micheal Hanson's old house, and Jake then told you to stay in one house together and lock the door. That is as far as I've gotten in the investigation, and obviously I can't answer questions from the future.

(Blacked out) (Harshly blacked out) (Blacked out) I also have a question for you, if that's alright. Is Richy (Harshly blacked out)

Sorry. I spilled ink on the page.

I don't think I have much more to say. I know it sounds hollow, and I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing it, but I'm truly sorry for your loss.

—Yuvon

(The letter tucks itself in the paper clip with the others.)