plagiarism in the bg3 fandom
disclaimer: this post should not be taken as a springboard to harrass anyone involved.
as i've stated previously, i didn't want to make this post because i have a lot going on in real life, but i have been watching this being done to others and myself for months now and i can't not speak about my experience anymore.
laiostoudenn (prev urls: lathanderr/spellbooking/wizardblood on tumblr / circleofspores on bsky) is a plagiarist and he has a history of stealing from other creators like @minthara, @mercymaker, @onewingedangels and others.
in this post, i, finally and after much and long deliberation, want to add my voice to theirs.
i'll try to give a chronological overview of what happened as i have come to experience it, through others and myself, and as condensed as possible and to make it easier for myself to tell:
i became aware of this new blog after he @ me and he messaged me. he's been following me. i was slow to engage because i have a lot of things going on in my real life that cost me a lot of energy during the day. i have also grown cautious of too quickly becoming close to strangers online. i became aware, however, that he had been doing this with multiple bigger creators in this space, like my friend @hawke, who is also a creator in the bg3 space, and who has experienced the same behaviour. they asked me if i knew him and i replied that i did not.
that was it for me at that point and i didn't engage much beyond that because i didn't know him and i thought nothing of it - until later.
during that time, whenever i saw his creations pop up increasingly, either in the tags or on my dash, i noticed more and more that they looked familiar to the works of others, from @minthara, to @mercymaker, to @onewingedangels and other creators, including myself.
it was then confirmed that i wasn't simply imagining things when, months ago, two creators were brave enough to speak up about the fact that he has been plagiarising gifsets and edits from them:
@minthara and @mercymaker:
@onewingedangels original set posted on 31st december 2023:
his set posted on 29th january 2024 (now deleted):
this was done without consent, and after he had already copied prior sets from @onewingedangels.
i would greatly recommend reading the posts shared above, and looking at the examples provided in it, so that you get a clear picture of what's happening here. it's not one isolated incident.
if you take a look at the notes in the post, you can also see other creators speaking about their experiences.
@minthara has recently also uploaded a google docs with the screenshots of the sets stolen from them because they either have been deleted, or lead to nothing due to now multiple url changes.
i was made aware today that he, following the first posts detailing @minthara and @mercymaker's experiences, apologised at first and admitted to what he's been doing on 31st march 2024:
but sadly, this wasn't to last, and the opportunity to learn and grow wasn't taken.
instead what happened was now painted as "bullying" from other creators, as "clique" behaviour and as "gatekeeping", despite many of us operating independently from each other. i, myself, have only started speaking to one other creator involved now that i have noticed the stealing and copying still ongoing.
i have in my time on this website never gatekept anything. i have shared metas, gifsets, creations, mods, art, tutorials, and many other things freely.
but back to the matter at hand: after he has been trying to ingratiate himself to me for some time now, following me, unfollowing me, and refollowing me again until i blocked him for my own mental health, i tried to remain civil before this point, engaging rarely if at all, hoping everything would go away on its own - which was a mistake in hindsight, i realise - i noticed that once again he's been lifting entire concepts and frame-by-frame gifs and sets from me.
things that he now claims - likely after he has been made aware of my prior personal posts and @minthara and @mercymaker's post circulating again by being reblogged by other people who have been affected) - were simply "remade" or "expanded" upon, that he may have been "subconsciously" influenced, while simultaneously claiming that he didn't know these sets existed in the first place, that he came up with the ideas independently, and that it's simply inevitable to use the same scenes because it's a limited game.
this doesn't hold up under scrutiny, however.
i want to make clear that i very much understand and that i am acutely aware that i do not own scenes and i do not own mods or outfits. however, what i do like to pride myself on is coming up with concepts and scene choices and captions accompanying these concepts that are unique, inspired by my metas, headcanons pertaining to gale and my own ocs altonaufein and karl, all of which i have seen copied by him several times now.
this is not as simple as simply gifing the same lines of dialogue from a scene as he and others supporting him are now postulating and i want to make that very, very clear.
another reason why this statement doesn't hold up under any scrutiny and, what ultimately confirmed my suspicion that he has been copying me, was when he - after the first post exposing his behaviour by @minthara and @mercymaker was made - reached out to me, asking if it it's ok to copy a gifset i made (note: again, this happened after he was called out for plagiarising the first time):
i didn't respond quickly enough, so he went ahead and posted it without waiting for my response (the response i gave him is pictured above and for transparancy, i responded about a day later bc of work and irl obligations).
below you can see the stolen post and what i managed to save from it:
the set was a 1:1 copy. he wanted a version for his oc so bad that he went ahead and stole my concept anyhow, without even waiting for the permission he asked for.
he went to take it down after my reply, made cautious most likely by his still fresh callout done in march 2024 by @minthara and @mercymaker, and i thought the issue was resolved and it wouldn't happen again, that he wouldn't take again without asking, despite having been told not only by myself, but by other creators as well, no. we are not comfortable.
but no. he "remade" the set, switching out gifs while complaining about how he "had to make it original":
my set in question was made on 1st february 2024, he reached out to me on 22nd april 2024 to "remake" the set. he is well aware of the existence of these ideas and concepts and sets he wants to copy, underlined by the need to ask for permission when it's simply too obvious to otherwise deny.
like others have had the experience, i too noticed that he often would not engage with content he planned on stealing or did go through with stealing. he would sometimes present it as his own "remake" of a set he did, of another he was "inspired" or wanted to "expand upon", sometimes crediting, sometimes crediting someone largely unrelated, sometimes and, more often, not crediting.
as i mentioned above, this was not the first and not the only set/concept, which he copied from me - whether that was before asking or after asking, or not asking at all, if it was ok to copy.
i use this example mainly to show a clear pattern of behaviour that exists across the board: he takes concepts from other creators and inserts his own oc and/or favourite character into it because he wants a version of it so very badly. it does not matter if said creator might be hurt, if they told him no, or if they exposed his behaviour before. it doesn't matter how old the set is or how recent.
it is still going on today, the only difference is that he has stopped asking at all once again.
my story completely echoes that of @minthara and @mercymaker's.
i will now go into more detail about the concept sets he's been copying, include the caption or quote attached to it. i'm sorry that these will not be in chronological fashion. i will add at a later point, just like @minthara has done, a google document to better do side by side comparisons, highlight the similarities visually even more, and preserve some of the sets, which have now been deleted by him as recently as today:
the theme of hands in gale's romance
-> mine posted on 23rd september 2023
-> his 1 posted on 24th february 2024
-> his 2 posted on 17th june 2024
i want to preface this by saying that the theme of hands was and still is incredibly important to story of my oc altonaufein and has concept of romance with gale. again, while i do not own these scenes, i wished to highlight a theme that i identified as poignant and profound within the relationship context. it's also why i added the poetry and quotes accompanying the set.
notice how even the caption format matches. the only thing lacking are my quotes / poems.
the format matches almost entirely: gifs from the same scenes (pulling gale out of the portal, the bench scene in an illusionary waterdeep, the astral sea scene, the boat scene, and more of the boat scene). the only thing that was added in this gifset are scenes that weren't available to me back then, namely the updated proposal scene, the kisses patches, and the epilogue as they came out well after i made my original gifset.
the second re-make even contains a gif that's not only the same minute detail of a larger scene - one that anyone who played gale's romance knows contains a multitude of other parts that could have been used - but also the same frames:
i suppose adding that one to the original post with the same format i had chosen for mine would have made it too obvious, but that is only speculation.
gale + missing waterdeep/home
-> mine posted on 30th september 2023
-> his (deleted on 18th july 2024) so i will have to include screenshots so you may compare:
same caption format, overlapping scenes chosen, only new additions are of content that wasn't available to me back when i first made my original set (the epilogue, kiss patches and proposal scene).
an attempt at "credit" even though he is only referencing my tags on an entirely separate set of a different creator, not the concept i came up with in my original set months prior.
and even though i have told him no before, just like others have told him no before.
i think it speaks volumes that this set is now, like some others, have been suddenly and coincidentally deleted.
gale of waterdeep vs gale dekarios
-> mine posted on 20th november 2023
-> his posted on 13th may 2024
the concept is entirely the same, the scenes are largely overlapping, again, the caption format is almost entirely identical, with the sole difference of me including the full quote and devnotes as i'm wont to do.
-> mine posted 16th september 2023
-> his 2 (a "remake" of an "older" set of "his") posted on 13th may 2024
again, the concept is entirely the same, it's same caption format, the scenes largely overlap, some of the gifs added that were not available to me when i made my set (which, again, would include the epilogue, kisses patches, and the updated proposal scene).
-> mine posted on 13th may 2024
-> his posted on 21st may 2024
it's the same concept again, the caption format is similar, it's the same setting (camp at baldur's gate), the same armour, the same armour tint, the same 3/4 pose except mirrored, and, this time, his tags were inspired too:
my tag: #i have the worst art block still and virtually no time but i still wanted to do smth for mermay so have this
his tag: #i can't do art so heres my mermay contribution i guess
-> mine posted on (likely) 30th september 2021
-> his originally posted on may 7th 2024, which has also now been deleted on 18th july 2024:
the only thing different was the font. sadly, i deleted my oc post since i have redesigned some of them and wanted to make an updated version of it in the future.
thankfully i found the link on my friends blog, @ayrennaranaaldmeri.
as you can see, all of these happened after the first cases of plagiarism and after i personally told him that i'm not comfortable with him "remaking" my concept sets as his.
there are many other sets that i suspect have been copied or plagiarised, i want to remain objective, however, and include the ones i feel are the most damning examples, supported by the fact that he has been deleting some of them today while again, trying to set up his narrative to his audience.
again, i want to highlight the pattern is here with him. my post is not the first, my suspicious are the first.
he knows what he is doing wrong, highlighted by the fact of trying to ask for permission, by deleting sets in question, by, at first, apologising, whilst now talking about "gatekeeping", "bullying", "inevitable repeats of scenes", "taking inspiration", "scrolling by", being "subconsciously" influenced, etc.
as a conclusion, i can say nothing more on this topic other than that i'm very sad. it doesn't give me joy. it stressed me immensely then and it still does now. i wish he'd have taken the already admitted wrong-doing to heart and grown from it, instead of attempting to change the narrative and doubling down on his past behaviour, not examining what he has done and is doing several times over by now.
i have blocked him now, as have done many others, and will not engage further with him. we have been through this before and at this point, i don't think he will change.
what i do very much hope, however, is that this is the last i hear of this happening.
updated the links to lead to his "archive" so you can access the stolen sets that he still hasn't deleted and seems to have no intentions of doing so.
pixelskylines
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
2087
blakekathryn
snowghoul
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
