#goncharov meta meta

[flowersforvax]

I think the Goncharov Renaissance actually has a lot to do with the fact that every first season of any new tv show comes with the all-encompassing dread that it might not get renewed unless it's the most watched, the fastest binged, the most fan engagement, the biggest renewal campaign, the- and so on and so forth. At this point being a fan of something means you can't just fully enjoy it - you have to actively fear for it and act accordingly so that it might get to continue and that's just. Exhausting.

Any fan discussion, any art, even the shitposts, are suddenly about the engagement they generate for the big corporations. Fandom is basically doing unpaid work in advertising so we might get fucking scraps in return. It's so exhausting.

And suddenly there's Goncharov! A film from the 70s that a lot of people are very familiar with - but for a lot of us it might as well be brand new! And the hype is back but there's no endgoal. We can just enjoy the art for the art's sake. It's a breath of fresh air. Which is ironic considering how much fucking cigarette smoke floats through that film.

[mjulmjul]

Katya / Goncharov

[bismuth-209]

"Ivan Goncharov" this, "Nikolai Goncharov" that, when will you guys realize there's a reason we don't know his first name. the POINT is that we don't know. Goncharev is a family name and whoever Goncharov used to be totally went up in being the head of the Family. he doesn't HAVE a personal name to denote who he is outside of his mafia persona.

[distatefulheadcanons]

Goncharov (1973) is the most tangible proof of a hive mind on Tumblr.

Two days ago Goncharov existed in a microcosm. It was a name. Nothing else.

A little push, in the form of a movie poster, and suddenly the fabric of the universe shifted and a rich, deep body of source material was formed. There are reviews, mood boards, essays, fanfiction, character studies. You name it, it exists. And it happened in roughly a 24-hour span of time.

And the execution was FLAWLESS.

Every post that adds a bit of plot to the narrative has been shockingly cohesive. Seamless, even. We assigned ourselves a ship or two and just *went* with it. There's civilized discourse about the actual meaning behind Goncharov. I'm witnessing people engage in scholarly debates about the best mafia movie (n)ever made.

It's as if a singular being set a marble in motion on the Rube Goldberg Machine of Tumblr and by some miracle, we were all the moving pieces to make this happen.

Despite witnessing its creation, I've had to check Google multiple times to confirm this movie does not actually exist. The ruse is simply that convincing.

This might be the greatest collaborative effort ever put forth into creating a piece of media. Congrats guys.

[yardsards]

tired of everyone on here reducing icepick joe down to haha funny stabby man

like i DO like the jokes and memes, don't get me wrong, but like

there's SO MUCH to his character and he really does tie into goncharov's main themes

like. we're told early on the he was put into a mental institution as a young man due to his breakdown and inconsolable grief at losing his older brother giorno (who was his only living family and basically a father figure to him!)

wherein he was mistreated and was HEAVILY IMPLIED to be scheduled for a lobotomy before he escaped. (in fact, some interpretations say he actually received and survived the lobotomy, citing his manner of speaking and his lack of impulse control. but that's a whole separate discussion because i can honestly see both sides)

and then he turns to a life of crime because that's basically the only option he had left, after being deprived of so many opportunities in his youth (and the fear of being caught and involuntarily institutionalized again)

and him eventually leaning into the role of "violent madman" that the world thrust onto him for showing signs of mental illness in a way that was nonviolent, but was loud and inconvenient and impossible for those around him to simply push away.

and him taking his rage out at the same world that not only killed his brother but forced him to undergo years of psychiatric abuse and basically dehumanization

(like seriously, how do SO MANY people miss the connection between him using an icepick as a weapon and the concept of an ICEPICK lobotomy)

which. yknow. ties heavily into the film's theme of people being pushed to society's margins and forced into a life of crime, instead of given the help they desperately needed

and then like.

his fucking death scene. he tries to put a stop to the cycle of senseless violence, taking the fall for andrey, telling michailov that *he* was the one who killed luciana

him kneeling down and allowing michailov to bash him through the skull with his very own icepick. it's more lobotomy symbolism; dying from the very thing he spent his whole life running from. further driving home the film's themes of repeating cycles and futility

and then, to drive it all home, that sacrifice didn't even end up stopping the cycle of violence! because andrey viewed joe as basically an older brother (mirroring joe and giorno) and tried to get revenge on michailov for killing joe.

like. come on.

[teacup-gathering-itself]

Give me muggleborn students trolling eachother via howlers and voice changers but they accidentally use muggle jokes that the pureblood kids don’t understand (think Nigerian Prince scams) so it spirals out of control.

“I didn’t know your family had ties to nobility? Why didn’t you mention it?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re familiar with African nobility? Enough that they send you howlers? And you didn’t care to mention that?”

“Oh… oh yeah that’s… my bad?”

Queue every muggle raised child realizing this opportunity and making eyes that scream “do NOT fuck this up for all of us” at each other before the gossip network does its work.

Anyways I just wanna see Goncharov level of unity because they absolutely would stick to the bit if someone fell for it.

Professor Snape would die over this silently, while all the pureblood teachers are like “???? Are you well, Severus?”

[eddiezpaghetti]

Okay, so my experience with Stranger Things is a weird one.

I didn't care when it first came out, started to watch it out of "might as well" in 2020, wasn't interested in it enough to make it past S2, forgot about it outside of going "oh, hey, cool, there's a lesbian in it now, I guess," in S3, got really annoyed when "Running Up That Hill" got popular from it because it was a song I listened to on fucking loop after one of my best friends died in high school and I fully expected its appearance in the show to ignore the whole survivor's guilt theme of the song (and was very happy to learn later that it did the exact opposite of ignoring the lyrics), saw people drawing Eddie, suddenly got a lot more interested, watched just the fourth season like a fucking psychopath because I was seriously only there for Eddie, then got interested enough to start the show over properly, having mostly forgotten what I did watch of the show before.

And let me tell you something from the perspective of someone who started with the complete fourth season, who wasn't there from the start, who wasn't tainted by ship goggles or this internal battle of hope and despair, who wasn't theorizing about what the painting could be or expecting Mike and Will to kiss when Volume 2 happened or rooting for Mike and Eleven's relationship to go down in flames or whatever the fuck. Just someone who went blind into Season 4.

It's really fucking obvious that Will and Mike are gonna be endgame.

Like holy fuck. It's so fucking blatant I don't even know why people are nervous.

No sane fucking person would shoot this scene this way if they wanted the audience to care about El and Mike as a couple. Despite being all blurry in the background, Will's reaction to what's happening here is smackdab in the fucking middle, clearly showing that the important part is what's going through his head here. What he's feeling. It's like the opposite of that scene from Kingdom Hearts II where Sora and Riku reunite and Kairi just fucking vanishes into the aether while it's happening because, despite the fact that she was standing between them when the scene began, she doesn't matter to the scene, so she's just kind of gone when the camera angle changes. Will could have been behind one of their heads, or so far in the distance he blends in with the background, but he's not. He's so obvious that despite being massively blurred out, he's still the first goddamn thing you look at. What, you think that's an accident? You think he's in the middle of this dramatic fucking scene because of a mistake? He basically has a big flashing neon arrow pointing at him with "THIS IS THE POINT" being screamed through a megaphone.

And then this?

They're paired up like they're taking fucking prom pictures. Each one of these pairs is so fucking close to one another and so fucking far from everyone else. It's not, "Oh, they're standing vaguely near each other in a group shot," it's fucking Noah's Ark out here. Again, there's no way to take this as an accident. It's not just a framing issue. If they wanted to make the shot look balanced while still not hiding anyone else behind El, they would have scattered people around much more naturally. Even if they wanted to keep Nancy with Jonathan and Hopper with Joyce, there's so much room on that hill for three people to stand on El's left and three on her right. But they didn't do that. They put Mike and Will together on purpose in the most obvious way possible.

Like I get that coming up with crackpot theories is fun in and of itself and I'm not blaming anyone for having fun. I totally get the appeal of arguing a point and reaching for every stupid little thing to pull into it because it's like a game, okay? I've done that. But if you're trying to actually convince someone (whether it's someone who wants to believe or someone who's pissed at the very idea that Mike and Will could be in love), stay away from blue and yellow lights, stay away from costume design, stay away from the existence of closets in backgrounds. And don't worry about whether Mike's gay or bi when he's in love with Will either way. I'll give you a little tip about persuasion: You're only as strong as your weakest argument. Even if you've got strong stuff in there, too, the person you're trying to convince is going to dismiss anything you say as complete insanity the second you start going on an entire tangent about the shape of a character's fucking pocket.

Sometimes, clothes are just clothes. Sometimes, there's a closet in the background because it helps establish that a character is in a bedroom. Sometimes, blue and yellow are just a couple of colors that look nice together. And sure, it might be set designers and costume designers and cinematographers smirking and winking at the audience from behind the camera. But if the show was just those things, instead of those things in the context of everything else, they wouldn't be saying anything of note.

But this?

This tells a story all on its own. Someone with no context can look at this and automatically assume that each paired person is standing with someone they care about deeply, seeking comfort as they watch some sort of disaster unfold. And yeah, romantic couples usually come in twos, and we live in an amatonormative society, so that's going to be the first association anyone makes seeing a bunch of people paired off.

It's the same reason you look at this

And go, "Oh..."

"Those two are probably a couple."

And I genuinely don't understand how people could have watched S4 Vol. 2 and gotten scared. Because as someone who went in with no investment whatsoever, I just looked at these two--

--and went, "Oh, those two are a couple. Good for them." And I moved on. Shut up about the trees for five seconds and just see the forest for what it is.

Oh, and if you're still nervous? Little thing from a storyteller here: You don't leave a hanging thread like "Will confessed his romantic feelings for Mike by projecting them onto El, but Mike either didn't understand or at least didn't say he understood," without coming back to that later. That's Chekov's gun hanging on the wall, babes. It's gonna fire at some point. If Mike was going to reject Will's feelings, if they weren't relevant, they would have had that discussion in Argyle's van. There'd be no reason to leave you in suspense.

[perissologist]

ok but i cannot stop thinking about the IMPLICATIONS of the final scene with katya and sofia. katya is an immigrant. she left her homeland with goncharov when she was sixteen. she took on his name, his business, his sins for twenty years. by the end of the movie, everyone she knows and loves outside of goncharov's ring of destruction is either dead or wants nothing more to do with her.

sofia was meant to end katya: her relationship with goncharov, her place in goncharov's business, her life. goncharov let sofia into their lives to make katya jealous, to amplify katya's insecurities so that katya would stay loyal to him. and then we find out that sofia was literally sent to kill them. to end the goncharovs not only in the figurative sense but the literal one.

but she can't do it, so she leaves. now what does katya have left? who is she even anymore? she's not a goncharov; she destroyed that part of her when she betrayed him. she's not ekaterina, the name her mother gave her, the name she bore when she was a scared little girl: that person died a long time ago. this movie is so special because the female side character has her own journey that mirrors the main character's: your old self is dead. who is your new self?

so she goes to paris, to be with sofia. sofia, the woman who was meant to destroy her. and she lets it happen. she lets sofia destroy katya goncharova. her old self is dead. and she is finally free :')

[zorlok-if]

Still can't find a working link for Goncharov (1973), but...

Creating Goncharov is live on Itch.io!

Everyone knows Goncharov. Martin Scorsese's 1973 film is a cult classic, a true masterpiece of cinema. To celebrate its upcoming 50th anniversary, you, an office drone working at a major media corporation, have to create a pitch for a 2023 remake. It's an amazing opportunity that could launch your career. There's just one problem.

You haven't seen Goncharov.

Unable to turn down your corporate overlords, you and an indecisive colleague throw together a story based solely on information you can quickly find or invent.

How will you reimagine the greatest mafia movie ever made and what will you do to turn your ideas into reality?

Creating Goncharov is a surreal interactive fiction game created for Autumn Chen's Goncharov game jam. This game was written and coded by Albie. For more games by Albie, click here.

Play it here!

CW: Unreality and brief descriptions of smoking, violence, and death

Featuring the song "Main Theme from Goncharov" by @caramiaaddio. Original poster by @beelzeebub. Game screenshots below the cut.

Check out the other games made for the game jam here.

Goncharov is a fake film. Read more on it here.

[acrosc]

redraw of screencap from Goncharov (1973)

[flowersforvax]

while I was watching the news this morning I was suddenly thinking of Mario Ambrosini and him destroying that duck fresco during the Pompeii shootout and how fandom has brought the symbolism of extreme nationalism destroying its own culture to my attention and I will keep thinking about this.

I will. keep. thinking. about this Incredible Scene in this Incredible Movie that doesn't exist. What the fuck you guys

[stingrae-gayy]

I think what makes Goncharov so compelling is that it combines some of what I like to call Tumblr's Greatest Hits.

1. Fandoms overanalyzing properties in ways the creators never intended or could even comprehend. (See: miles long meta posts, Cas is Lamp, homoerotic angst read into action/comedy content like Pacific Rim or the MCU)

2. inventing something extra-canonical and acting like it is an actual part of canon. (See: Glup Shitto, TAZ Grad's Bingus debacle, BBC Sherlock's Sebastian Moran as played by Michael Fassbender)

3. the ages old tumblr experience of only learning about a property via gifsets and fandom textposts that end up on your dashboard (See: people thinking Destiel was another angel, thinking Destiel was canon ages ago, knowing inside jokes for fandoms despite never watching whatever the fandom is based around)

And lastly,

4. Making fun of non-tumblr users by way of making fun of tumblr users (See: simply saying things like Horse Plinko Eeby Deeby Blorbo lil meow meow Super Hell)

All of these have combined into a mass hallucination of a film that has not ever existed and yet has a cast, plot, director, release date, narrative themes, subtext, ships, fan theories, etc. This shit is incredible

[fremulon]

oh, sure, NOW Goncharov blows up on Tumblr. The degree to which people are ignoring the fandom that’s been here since day 1 is honestly insanely disrespectful. “oooh Katya/Sofia finally getting the respect it deserves” as though some of us haven’t been writing Katya/Sofia since the livejournal days. And it’s so frustrating because I can already see how everyone hopping on this train is going to warp the fandom into something unrecognizable. Like, ok yes, the AO3 tag was basically empty before but at least when you saw something new posted you knew it was someone writing it because they actually liked *the movie* and not someone dashing off 3k words of generic PWP just to easily rack up the kudos.

[earlgraytay]

in all seriousness though I think the thing I love most about the Goncharov meme is the way it lets Tumblr people play with both the pretentiousness/inaccessibility of film crit and the over-fandomization/misunderstandings that Tumblr likes to bring to media crit in general

affectionately mocking the tendency of Serious Film Criticism to see symbols and recognize patterns that the author may or may not have intended, as well as Serious Film Crit's tendency to mark any moments of homoeroticism as being Meant As Symbolism!!!1! even if it's, like, overtly psychosexual Hannibal nonsense

while also affectionately mocking Tumblr seizing on any film that's even the tiniest bit gay and going "these are our blorbos now", misunderstanding/eliding obvious symbolism in favour of The Gay Reading, turning any evil lesbian into a #girlboss, etc etc etc

@speculativefictions has been inventing out of whole cloth a Goncharov-themed Supernatural episode and a Goncharov-themed Riverdale episode and playing with those fandoms' patterns of analysis

(most notably a) analyzing the DeanCas subtext in Everything and b) ascribing a huge amount of intentionality to whatever the fuck is going on in Riverdale)

It's really great to see both the affectionate digs and the loving homage to two different styles of film crit that are genuinely fundamentally compatible, but that you don't normally see in the same place on Tumblr

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

It makes me so mad when people are like “oh Andrey betrayed Goncharov for money” like . . . that’s such a sad and flat way to look at the narrative . . . it’s obvious that the money is a device to make the Judas-Jesus parallel clear? Andrey, after all, makes of that money just as much as Judas does with the thirty silver coins, i.e. nothing. It’s not about the money, it’s about the misplaced resentment. The money is just a circumstancial occasion to let the frustration and disillusionment bubble to the surface and bring the character to action.

Maybe it’s my catholicism talking but it seemed quite blatant to me that Scorsese was going for the vibe of the interpretation of the Judas story as Judas being Jesus’ most fervent and dedicated follower until he realized that Jesus was not in fact going to do what Judas expected from him (actual revolution/guiding an armed insurrection?) and it was the force of his disappointment and sense of betrayal that brought him to betray Jesus in turn.

Consider that Jesus Christ Superstar premiered in Broadway in 1971?? The musical is focused on that interpretation of Judas’ role in the gospel story. I’ll eat my hat if the screenwriter and director didn’t have that in mind while making Goncharov.

The movie is hardly a story about mafia men betraying each other for mafia reasons. It’s about human beings going through a path of destruction because they’re trapped in toxic dynamics that don’t allow them to pursue healthy interpersonal relationships.

Ironically, Goncharov and Andrey’s feelings for each other by the end of the movie, in their horrifying brutality, are the most genuine and heartfelt feelings that any character shows in the movie for another. It’s like, in their world, the only way passion and devotion can exist is in blood.

Talking about a metaphor for repressed queerness . . .

[luulapants]

Goncharov (1973) is a perfect example of how fandom creates a shell around a piece of media and then slowly erodes the core it was originally built upon.

I have been in two fandoms that echo chambered their way to a theory invalidating all of canon, thereby making the source material itself irrelevant. One is the “Scott is an unreliable narrator” theory from the Teen Wolf fandom, which uses an odd POV choice from the series finale (the protagonist telling the story of their final battle to a character in a flash-forward) as evidence that the entire SHOW is actually him telling a heavily edited version of the story to make himself look like the hero. The other is the “Ghostfacers Effect” from the Supernatural fandom which also uses a weird POV episode (told through camera footage from a ghost hunting crew) to argue that, because the characters swear (bleeped out) in that episode but nowhere else in the series, this is evidence that the whole series is censored and edited by the author/God Chuck.

Both fandoms had animosity between fans and show creators, especially from queer shipping bases. Both have a huge amount of fanworks for those ships, and both experienced the “fandom echochamber” effect. Reinforced by positive responses from those seeking fluffy, kinky, self-insert, or otherwise wish-fulfilling stories, popular fanon characterizations slowly drifted until many fanworks featured characters virtually unrecognizable as their canon counterpart.

These drifts are addressed differently throughout fandom: Most people look at it and say, “No, that’s not canon, but it’s fun to read sometimes anyway,” or “This is just my headcanon.” Fanfic readers who never watched the source material are oblivious and perpetuate fanon characterizations as canon. Canon lovers decry the OOC-ness and complain that they can’t find fics about the actual characters they want to read about.

And some start arguing that fanon is actually more correct than canon.

Thus, the erosion of canon begins. “These episodes don’t count because the head writer was garbage.” “They made the character act like that to advance the plot - they wouldn’t have actually done that.” “Everything after this season is basically a different show.” “This happened off-screen but the network was too cowardly to show us.” And, finally, “Canon isn’t real.”

There is no canon. It’s a fanon shell wrapped around a desiccated center.

It’s Goncharov (1973).

Why do we need a source material? Canon isn’t real!

No shit canon isn’t real. It’s a fictional show.

You can’t argue the objective reality of a fictional story.

“But what’s the truth?”

None of it. None of it is the truth. It’s about werewolves. It’s about a gay angel. It’s not real.

You can argue objective reality in real-life historical accounts, analyzing sources and biases and excluded viewpoints. In a fictional story with an unreliable narrator, you can argue about what the text of the narration reveals about them. But there is no argument to be had about the objective reality of a fictional character. They are the text. Everything else is interpretation.

Why can’t your interpretation be what it is: an interpretation? Why can’t your headcanon be a headcanon? Why do you feel the need to saw the ladder off from underneath you? Why does fanon need to be more “true” than canon? Why would you rather have a fandom built on nothing than a fandom built on a text that disagrees with it?

Goncharov (1973) is the perfect canon because it will never disagree with fanon. It has no voice to do so. It is the perfect void that people have been trying to carve into their respective canons for years.

As Andrey said before his final betrayal, “You once told me you built your empire from nothing. You can’t get something from nothing, Goncharov. And so I fear we are nothing.”