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You, Too, Can Dress Like Taylor Swift

Free People is celebrity-approved…but is it editor-approved?

I was in middle school during Tumblr’s prime era of influence. It was a simpler time, listening to Urban Outfitters records on an Urban Outfitters turntable and aspiring to be the most aesthetically pleasing version of yourself. We lived for artsy Instagram posts wearing chevron necklaces, reblogging edits of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, and pairing hi-low skirts with Doc Martens. I still have vivid nightmares of black-and-white angsty Tumblr posts captioned with Lorde lyrics.

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CULTURE

Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes Might Be Perfect for Each Other Because They're Both Racists

Or, at the very least, they both posted some pretty racist things as teenagers.

Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello47th Annual American Music Awards, Press Room, Microsoft Theater, Los Angeles, USA - 24 Nov 2019

Photo by Matt Baron/Shutterstock

Camila Cabello has been doing damage control for a series of racist Tumblr posts that re-emerged from her teenage years.

The Havana singer came under fire yesterday for using the "n-word" and reblogging racist posts on her since-deleted Tumblr blog, "vous-etess-belles." The revelation came from an eviscerating thread posted by a Twitter user named @motivatefenty and revealed that when Cabello was around 14 and 15, she reblogged a multitude of posts that contained racist slurs as well as racist sentiments about Mexicans, Asians, and Black people, and parodied Rihanna for being a victim of domestic violence.

Cabello responded with a tearful apology. "I'm an adult and I've grown and learned and am conscious and aware of the history and the pain it carries in a way I wasn't before," the 22-year-old concluded. "Those mistakes don't represent the person I am or a person I've ever been. I only stand and have ever stood for love and inclusivity, and my heart has never, even then, had any ounce of hate or divisiveness."

While she expressed sorrow at her actions, some panned her reaction as a "non-apology." Upon a closer look, the apology technically doesn't even express regret or a concrete desire to change. Instead, it attempts to excuse what she did, wrapping it up with a typical "I'm not racist and I was never racist because I'm a good person!" response.

Cabello, as The Daily Beast writes, "is one of many of celebrities who, after being confronted with indisputable receipts, have 'apologized' for past incidents of racism without actually holding themselves accountable."


If this all sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Shawn Mendes, Cabello's current boyfriend and duet partner who—back in August—was forced to offer a similar apology to the public when racist tweets surfaced. Like Cabello's posts, the tweets were posted when he was about fourteen and contained the "n-word" as well as other disparaging comments about people of color.

Like Cabello, his apology attempted to excuse his actions rather than distance himself from them. "I apologize for everything insensitive that I said in the past. But with that being said, I think that's not my personality," he wrote at the time. His response was slammed by fans and critics, so you would think that Camila could have at least tried to learn from her boyfriend's mistakes.

For a while, many of us have thought that Cabello and Mendes' relationship was a PR stunt designed to promote their single "Señorita," which, as one Twitter user wrote, would likely play on loop in Hell. But actually, they probably have a lot more in common than most of us thought. Most likely, they make racist jokes in private while lauding each others' innocence, goodness, and sense of humor, all while expressing no desire to actually change or take ownership of their actions.

Excusing racism with humor and clinging to the idea that it doesn't exist because "you're a good person" is how racism gets perpetuated, but not in Shawn and Camila's world. For now, all we can do is pray to every God we know that we won't get a cheeky "Sorry"-type apology duet.

CULTURE

The Mystical Union of Halsey and Evan Peters: Tumblr's Greatest Crossover Couple

Turns out angsty Tumblr superstars of 2014 can find real love in 2019.

Halsey and Evan Peters

Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

"Bad at Love" singer Halsey and American Horror Story actor Evan Peters are officially dating.

They made things official this weekend, stepping out on Friday dressed as two of music's most terrifying figures. Halsey went as a red-haired Marilyn Manson, and Peters was a Juggalo, a fan of the Insane Clown Posse. Then on Saturday, they arrived at the 100th episode celebration of American Horror Story as a polka-dot-clad Sunny Bono and Cher.

The two first sparked dating rumors when they were seen on a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain. They're both coming off breakups—Peters' seven year relationship with Emma Roberts ended in March after it apparently became toxic. Though it's unclear exactly when Halsey and Yungblud broke up, they were dating at least through September.

Following Halsey and Peters' roller-coaster debut, fans quickly dug up some of Halsey's old tweets about Evan Peters. For those who didn't know, for a total of seven years, Halsey's been tweeting about her crush on the actor. Though they've all been deleted, as we know, nothing on the Internet ever goes away.


"Halsey, your powers are strong. May this be a lesson to us all!" wrote Mari Lodi in Vulture when the dating rumors began to swirl. It's true that Halsey's ability to successfully tweet her way into a relationship may indicate that she's cast some sort of occult love spell, but honestly, Halsey has always been powerful on her own. She recorded her first demo, "Is There Somewhere," on GarageBand while a homeless teen and scored a major label contract. Her first (and best) album, Badlands, went platinum, and if you listen to its lyrics, you can see that Halsey's always had some sort of divine power. Maybe it's because of her song "Hurricane," but if I had to judge her type of magic, I'd label her as a weather witch, able to conjure up storms and to change the color of the sky (possibly from red to blue to violet) at will.

Meanwhile, Evan Peters has been dabbling in occultism on his own, albeit in his role on American Horror Story. He was the iconic homicidal ghost Tate Langdon in Murder House, and in a 2012 tweet, Halsey perfectly articulated every teenage girl's feelings about his character. "Seriously Evan Peters stop making me attracted to alleged sociopaths and accused murderers…" she wrote.

Now that their union has emerged from the purely ethereal plane, becoming manifest on our physical one, we can see that it was always written in the stars. They do seem to exist in separate universes, in a way, as they come from TV and pop music respectively. On the other hand, they're both the highest possible evolution of Urban Outfitters teens, Tumblr darlings who somehow made their way into adulthood without losing their perfectly grungy, relatable-yet-alluring mystique. Of course they chose Scorpio season to make their debut as a couple; this time of transformation, rebirth, intensity, and Halloween seems designed for them to join forces. Plus, Sunday was a New Moon, the most goth of all the moons, perfect for a couple that captions their Instagram couple shots "Resident goths."

Sure, their best work may have been done years ago, but maybe this means there's more magic where their early masterpieces came from. Maybe Halsey will write a song from the perspective of Violet Langdon (she did film the music video for "Colors" in the actual Murder House from AHS Season 1). Maybe I don't know which one I'm more attracted to, but I'm not complaining. Maybe if we Tweet enough about our truest desires, they might just become incarnate—though of course, being a world-famous pop star helps.

Halsey - Colors (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com


Frank Ocean

Photo by Clint Spaulding/Shutterstock

Figuring out that your favorite artists are working on new music has become a process that involves scouring social media, interpreting vague hints, and answering a series of rhyming riddles from a bridge troll. Even when you believe you've understood the side-eye and miscellaneous sushi emoji on Beyonce's Instagram story to mean she has new music on the way, how do you know when to expect it?! How can you know what day to take off work to cry to Adele's new album in which she undoubtedly sings about the emotional journey of motherhood? We have to plan for these things!

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Gaming

VIDEO GAY-MER | Why do we love visual novels so much?

What do queer gamers/developers love the visual novel platform so much?

Coming Out on Top game trailer

Visual novels are an art form, and when done right, they are an amazing storytelling tool. We've seen a lot of good, queer visual novels in the past years - or games that are about as close to visual novels as you can get. Just last year, we had two instant classics: Butterfly Soup and Dream Daddy, take the world by storm. Not only did they showcase incredible queer stories, but they managed to do it without any ounce of mockery or depressing melodrama.

So, I got curious.

What makes these kinds of games so incredible? And why are there so many? On Queerly Represent Me - a large back log of games with some sort of queer representation within them- 215 games are listed as visual novels. That's the largest genre of games on the list, clocking in at 20%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is - and that's significant. What draws queer gamers and developers to these specific type of game? I think that visual novels not only provide a simple, fun escape from the harshness of modern queer depiction, but they are also accessible, and cheaper than most other video games on the market.

In my last article, I wrote about a game called Butterfly Soup - a beautiful visual novel that covered the lives of four queer, Asian woman going through high school during Prop 8-era California. I gushed about it, and talked about how it's unabashed happiness just made me smile. And that's not something that happens in a lot of major games or successful indie games. Even a beautiful game like Gone Home, is mired with intense drama, reminding the audience about how much it can suck to be a queer person. That doesn't exist in games like Butterfly Soup.

There's an inherent layer of sexuality that exists in a lot of these kinds of games.

A huge example is a gay dating sim, Coming Out on Top, a very NSFW visual novel about a young, freshly out, college senior who is looking for love and sex. This game has a huge selection of guys you can seduce, and even goes the extra mile to have you come out to your friends and actively maintain your friendships. All the while, you are treated to some saucy pics and scenes of your gay character actually having/enjoying sex.

It's liberating, because even when queer people are depicted having sex - it's never correct. There's always that one scene where the guy doesn't use lube - and then you cringe, cause you know they got hurt. The visual novels I've played don't have that problem - because they're made by queer developers.

I think queer visual novels exist in such volumes because they can be easier to make than other games like RPGs of even exploration sims.

I can't say I'm an expert on game development, and visual novels definitely have their own set of challenges, but they can be made easily thanks to user friendly game engines. This accessibility allows young, queer game devs the opportunity to start making their own queer stories - and in an industry where people are starving for queer characters, they're bound to find an audience!

Visual novels are also cheaper for queer gamers to buy. Even a game like Dream Daddy, produced by the incredibly popular Game Grumps, went up for only 14.99. And Butterfly Soup is still free. This is worlds cheaper than most AAA games that include very basic forms of queer representation. So, there's a level of financial accessibility available for these types of games that don't exist in other places in the market.

In the end, visual novels make queer characters more accessible to a starving audience by being cheap - and they can empower their audience by giving them an escape from the misrepresentation they receive from mainstream media. These games are about queer characters, and made for queer people - and I only hope that the rest of the industry can follow suit. Until they do though, I'm just going to go and replay Dream Daddy for millionth time and cry about how beautiful Robert is.

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