outlikethat - Tumblr blog

[outlikethat]

this is about when you specificially recognised yourself as being queer, not the crush you had on elizabeth swan as a kid and didn't understand. been thinking abt this a lot recently and wanted to ask tumblr. i can predict the results but i'm still interested. please tell me the specific age in tags!

[outlikethat]

The Doubling of Self: An Interview with Richard Siken by Peter Mishler

[outlikethat]

Okay, first of all: it is not at all surprising that tumblr is into this beef. at least half of being in fandom is beefing constantly, and the levels of haterdom that Kendrick Lamar has achieved are...... truly impressive and a little bit scary.

this is gonna be messy and not comprehensive but i've been thinking about this for like a week and there's just so much....... context. there's layers to this shit.

so let's start at the beginning.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

DRAKE AKA THE BOY AKA THE 6 GOD AKA THE TEFLON DON AKA CHAMPAGNE PAPI AKA WHEELCHAIR JIMMY

Aubrey Drake Graham is a rapper and actor from Toronto, Canada who I first became acquainted with from the television show Degrassi, where he played Jimmy Brooks, a hot headed jock who was later targeted in a school shooting and was paralyzed from the waist down. Everyone was skeptical when he started rapping in the 2010s, but he was a talented enough musician and business man--especially in his ability to chase and hop on trends--that he has become a very powerful figure in the music industry. One of his earliest massive hits is YOLO, a song that was inescapable when I was in college.

Drake has long had a reputation for being soft, firstly because he used to make music that women really fucked with (Hold On, We're Going Home is a great example, as is the video for Nice For What), and also because, well, he is a rapper from Canada who got his start on fucking Degrassi. This has very obviously bothered him throughout his career.

KENDRICK LAMAR DUCKWORTH AKA KENNY AKA KDOT AKA THE SECOND MOST PETTY PULITZER PRIZE WINNER

Kendrick is so different from Drake in almost every capacity. Kendrick is a rapper from Compton and from the start he was showered with critical acclaim for his technical skill but not necessarily the same kind of fame and success as Drake did. KDot has rapped a lot about his experiences as a gang member, and in many track reminds the listener that he has killed someone. His albums Good Kid M.A.A.D. City and To Pimp A Butterfly are considered modern day hip hop classics. They're really both incredible albums tbh but very very dense and emotionally effecting. Kendrick also won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for music for his album DAMN. in 2018.

On top of that, Kendrick really holds it down for the culture--his song I and Alright became spontaneous protest chants during the George Floyd protests in 2020. I actually sort of can't listen to those songs anymore because I associate them with that movement so strongly!

PROLOGUE

It wasn't always beef between Drake and Kendrick. In fact, Drake had Kendrick open for him on tour in 2012 and Drake featured on the Kendrick single Poetic Justice. The only evidence of animosity between the two occurred after Kendrick's infamous verse on Big Sean's song Control, where Kendrick essentially named a bunch of rappers and said he was coming for them to be the greatest rapper of all time. Drake was one of the people he named.

Many people interpreted this as a diss, but Kendrick didn't respond to anyone iirc. At the 2013 BET Awards, Kendrick's verse in the cypher referenced Drake's album Nothing Was The Same, and talked about tucking a "sensitive rapper" back in his pajamas. Drake insisted there was no real issue. HM!!!!!!

SIDEBAR: THE STORY OF ADIDON

Kendrick is not the only person that fucking hates Drake. In 2018, the rapper feuded with one of his idols, Pusha T. If you don't know Pusha T, actually, yes you do: he is one half of Clipse, which had the smash hit Grindin'. If you have been in a public school where kids are slamming that beat out on the lunch tables you and I come from a shared heritage.

I don't want to get into the weeds here, but Drake and Pusha went back and forth until Pusha dropped The Story of Adidon, where Pusha revealed that Drake had secretly fathered a child with an a sex worker in France. At first Drake denied it but then like a year later he claimed his son as his own. He was shamed into caring for his son through rap beef. For years, I have maintained that the hardest bar in rap music is "You are hiding a child!"

This is important to note because this is the first time beef with Drake like, stuck. He has beefed with other people before, but usually he just pumped out a pop radio hit and dominated the airwaves, basically neutralizing whatever response he was gonna get. Drake would blame Kanye for this and then start beefing with Ye but that's a whole other thing.

LIKE THAT

This is where the current beef starts. In March, rapper Future, a former Drake collaborator, released an album produced by Metro Boomin called We Don't Trust You. Kendrick has a surprise feature on Like That where he says "motherfuck the big three, nigga it's just big me." This is a reference to the J. Cole and Drake song First Person Shooter, where the two refer to themselves and Kendrick as the big three of rap. Kendrick doesn't want Drake to speak his name even as a compliment.

J Cole dropped a response and then literally three days later apologized and removed it from streaming. What Did He Know??????

DRAKE RESPONDS

On April 13th, a leak of a song goes around Twitter and people think it might be Drake's Kendrick diss. IIRC a few days later it shows up on Spotify as a song called Push-Ups. He also releases a song called Taylor Made Freestyle, where he makes fun of Kendrick by using AI voices of two iconic California rappers, Tupac and Snoop Dogg. He also mentions Taylor Swift, saying that Kendrick is a bitch for moving his release dates around not to conflict with hers, and that his feature on Bad Blood was stupid.

Tupac's estate threatened Drake with a cease and desist and Drake took down the song.

EUPHORIA, 6:16 IN LA

On April 30th, Kendrick releases Euphoria, an extremely fucking mean song. He calls out Drake for being a culture vulture for black American culture, referencing the way that Drake will identify a music trend, go to that scene, and then package it and sell it under his own name. He really does go as far as to change his accent on some of his songs, it's super weird! At the end of the track, Kendrick disses Drake using the regional accent and slang from Toronto, Drake's hometown.

Three days later, Kendrick drops 6:16 In LA, which is much shorter and rougher than Euphoria, though just as nasty. Hilariously, the beat was produced by Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift's major collaborator and main producer. The song also samples an Al Green song where Drake's uncle played guitar. Check Jack's faves on Twitter--I would love to know what Drake did to piss Taylor off!

FAMILY MATTERS AND A QUICK NOTE

On May 3rd, Drake drops Family Matter. On this track mostly he calls Kendrick short a lot. He also implies, but does not outright say, that Kendrick beats his wife Whitney, who is shown on the cover of Kendrick's album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.

Now, I want to mention this because it's a serious allegation but 1) rap beef is not journalism, sometimes these dudes just lie and 2) many of the things that Kendrick will go on to mention can be corroborated by outside sources, but this I haven't been able to. Also the way that Drake says it on the song does not really make me feel like Drake even means it, but is just searching around for something that will provoke and insult Kendrick. You may feel differently.

Not to say that Kendrick is perfect about women and abuse: Mr. Morale has some weird... stuff on it about women; Kendrick is just kind of a hotep; he threatened to take his music off Spotify if they took down R. Kelly's catalogue. No one in this conflict is perfect. I would argue Drake suffers from a much deeper level of sickness.

MEET THE GRAHAMS, NOT LIKE US

So, all this time, people had been wondering where the fuck Kendrick's response was. I thought he might not respond--it's not really his style. About an hour after Family Matters drops, Kendrick releases a song called Meet The Grahams. In previous songs, Kendrick alleged that Drake had a leak in his camp, and that the people around him dislike him so much they're feeding Kendrick dirt. Based on how quick this response came out, I would say that's probably true.

This song.... is fucking nasty. It's addressed to everyone in Drake's family, starting with his son Adonis. In the first verse, he apologizes to Adonis for having such a horrible father, and also says that he wishes Adonis's grandfather had worn a condom. By the time he's addressing Sandra, Drake's mother, he tells Sandra that he wishes men like Drake would die. He then insinuates that Drake is a pedophile.

Now, there have been many, many instances of Drake getting caught talking to underage Instagram models etc etc. The most famous example of this is when Millie Bobby Brown, then 14, said that she was friends with Drake and they text often. Drake at that time was 36. That's not fucking normal behavior.

Kendrick also says that Drake has a secret eleven year old daughter. Turns out the only bar harder than "you are hiding a child" is "you are hiding a second child."

That night--literally, I was brushing my fucking teeth and my husband was already asleep--Kendrick releases Not Like Us. On this track, he repeatedly calls Drake a pedophile over a fucking DJ Mustard beat.

It is a completely bonkers song. It made me feel like I was hallucinating. People have already started playing it in the club. Kendrick successfully used Drake's main tactic of releasing a club banger when there's beef against him. Like no shit, the Dodgers social media referenced the song in a recent tweet, this is a club banger about how Drake is a pedophile.

On this song Kendrick also has a bar that insinuates that there at least six more diss tracks in the chamber. I have no idea what's going to happen and I'm kind of fucking terrified. Anyway thanks for reading, sorry if I left anything out.

[outlikethat]

Daily drawing 1606: Taking in the warm light, surrounded by lush landscape. I'm pretty happy with how this drawing turned out! It has such a lovely feeling to it 😊

[outlikethat]

Daily drawing 1679: I use to really fear and avoid drawing water. I had no clue what I was doing and didn't know where to begin. But I've learned over time that I can break down the complexity into much simpler ideas. Art is amazing because of how you can play alongside the viewer's mind. You can represent a visually detailed thing so simply and often the eye just goes along with it without realizing how simplified it actually is. And I'm still working on finding that line for myself and how far to one side or the other I want to be. But it's helped take a lot of the hesitation from me both in art and other areas of life. Break down the problem and do what you can. It's amazing how far that can take you.

[outlikethat]

Costco has these artisanal peaches. My betrothed and I first had them while staying with some friends. They’re the platonic ideal of what an amazing peach should be. They’re peeled and preserved in juice whole, and somehow they taste slightly like vanilla.

When we got home from our visit we picked up a jar for ourselves. They lasted a good long while. We finally went to get more- and they were gone. I was devastated. That was two years ago.

Every Costco trip since then has included a hopeful look for the amazing peaches. I never stopped dreaming they’d come back.

My health has gotten better and with my improved energy I’ve finally been able to take over some of the chores. So when my betrothed lamented not having time for a Costco trip last week I volunteered to go alone.

I was meandering down the aisle and then I saw them. The peaches. The promised fruit I had been denied for two years, perfect and golden in that Costco aisle. Orchestral music swelled in my mind and everything around me faded away as I beelined toward them.

I was stricken with peach madness. I got four jars. Sitting in the car afterward I tallied the expense. The peaches were fully a quarter of the Costco bill. I texted my betrothed to apologize for absolutely losing my head. They reassured me over and over that it was a luxury I deserved to indulge and that it was okay.

Tonight while holding a dripping perfect peach in my hands, eating it while standing over the counter, each bite the exact ripeness to have a little give but not too much, and my mouth full of vanilla and peaches I contemplated going to buy more.

[outlikethat]

appreciate the crispy fluffiness of my handmade gluten free rough puff pastry 😤

[outlikethat]

concept: a worm show. worm handlers very solemnly picking up a worm from a box and showing it off like people at cat shows. or maybe just like a bunch of tables with worms in cups like a plant show. I really want to see a little worm in a cup with a huge blue ribbon next to it

[outlikethat]

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.

[outlikethat]

rb and tell me what’s your most re watched movie.. and be honest

[outlikethat]

Every time I advocate for voting people are like "no you shouldn't vote! Read this literature, it'll totally change the way you view voting!" And every single time it's the same fucking "you shouldn't vote because both parties are exactly the same so it won't make a difference who wins" bullshit wrapped up in some fancy language

[outlikethat]

big issue with linear time is that when there are a few minutes until some event and they aren't enough minutes to do anything with, you just lose those minutes. I think you should be able to save them for later and then combine them into a chunk of leftover time that you get to use at the end of the day, like bonus hours.

[outlikethat]

this is hilarious x

[outlikethat]

This is so sad!!

He was one of my favourite parts of LOTR. The way he captured the complexity and deep humanity of Theoden was so beautiful and brilliant. He will be missed 💕

[outlikethat]

AO3 IS IN TROUBLE IF CALIFORNIAN AGE VERIFICATION LAW PASSES

An upcoming Age verification bill centered in California will be voted on Monday-- And as always,instead of actually protecting kids, it will lead to more online censorship and privacy risks, as it will force websites hosting to verify their users age by sending their ID, your browser history would be linked to it. if you live California, call your reps and tell them to oppose the bill AB3080 as it highly unconstitutional.

They also deem LGBT content harmful to minors, as well as mentions of weapons and tobacco, putting them on the same level as NSFW content.

Since AO3 headquarters reside in California, much like Reddit, Twitter,Discord and Youtube (and others) who knows how bad the effects would be. Instead of just effecting Californians (even then its concerning.) the effects would be US or even worldwide. VPNs wont help.

Please take actions here (a script is included to help you) https://www.defendonlineprivacy.com/ca/action.php

Find your rep here https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/

You can also send faxes using this https://faxzero.com/

If you don't live in California, please talk about this,tag your friends and urge others to take actions, make posts and tweets using the hashtags AB3080 and NoOnAB3080

More info HERE

[outlikethat]

rap drama summation:

drake and kendrick met in 2011 after kendrick's first album release

drake became friends with kendrick bc he was like "this guy has potential" and had kendrick be one of his openers on tour

kendrick had drake on his next album that won aoty

kendrick was featured on the song "control" where he names a bunch of artists and is like "i'm coming for your job" and one of them was drake, who was also the only one pressed about it

PRESENT DAY:

j cole featured on drake's song "first person shooter" where he says that himself, drake, and kendrick are the "big 3" of rap

kendrick features on future's album on the song "like that" where he says that there is no big three and it's just him (basically that he's better than both of them)

drake drops two diss tracks ("push-ups" which is just a general diss, and "taylor made freestyle" where he disses kendrick for featuring on bad blood and delaying his response to the first diss track because of taylor's album release. while also talking about how much he loves and respects her because he's non-commital like that)

kendrick drops his response, and it's a 6-minute diss that calls drake out for EVERYTHING. like using AI to write, mistreating women, being sexist, being canadian (💀), and a bunch of other stuff like he eats him up

drake drops a response that i hadn't heard of when first making this post so it probably wasn't very good

he drops a second response yesterday, called "meet the grahams" where he addresses it to different members of drake's family (including his son) dissing him for being a bad father, bad son, and bad example (eats him up again) (this dropped an hour after drake's which means he probably had insider information and is playing 4D chess)

we now await drake's response

kendrick dropped ANOTHER diss track called "not like US"