#memeology | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astraltrickster · 1 year

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What I love about the Goncharov meme is how willing most of us are to break kayfabe, because - on the surface level, it's kind, it gives people the opportunity to opt out if this just isn't good for them, and tells people - the secret is that there is no secret, that's the joke, hop right in with a "yes, and"; all are welcome. It's likely to confuse future media historians regardless.

But as someone who really enjoyed House of Leaves I also love it on a meta level because, we are essentially creating a spiritual adaptation of that book, blurring the line between meme and ARG...all based on a pair of shoes. It begs the question, then, what level of this layered narrative are we on, exactly?

I'm not the first person to compare Goncharov to The Navidson Record and I know I won't be the last. It's a very easy, obvious comparison to make - this legendary piece of lost media that everyone has an opinion on, but no one can confirm it's even real? Yeah, at this point in tumblr's collective consciousness, Goncharov is very much like that - the only difference being, we're on the same page and can agree that it's not real and never was.

Except we will place ourselves into a narrative such that it is real. It's an unspoken rule that even if you break kayfabe in other posts, even if you tag your Goncharov posts as "unreality" for accessibility (as you should, especially your original posts), you don't add to a Goncharov meta post, or fanfic, or fanart, in such a way as to even insinuate that Goncharov may not be a real movie. In this layer, that makes you the fool, the uncultured swine. Everyone's seen Goncharov! What do you mean you haven't even heard of it!? What do you mean you doubt it exists!? What rock have you been living under!? If someone earnestly asks what it is, it is to be answered elsewhere - in DMs, in an ask, over Discord, maybe in the replies, but not as an addition to the post that exists "in that reality".

There are a few things we tend to agree upon about Goncharov:

It is a work of fiction. The events of the movie did not occur in the universe - the narrative layer - where we discuss it as a real film.

As stated on the shoe label that created the meme, it is a film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by someone named Matteo JWHJ 0715 (sometimes also written as Matteo JWHJ0715 or Matteo jwhj0715), and it is a mafia movie - namely, it carries the lofty claim of being "The Greatest Mafia Movie Ever Made."

It is about the relationship between Russian and Italian mafia families, set in Naples.

This movie poster is the basis of the canon; the characters listed on it exist and are portrayed by the actors listed.

There is an additional character, Sofia, whose reasons for being omitted from the poster are unknown.

Katya and Goncharov are married; this likely at least started as merely a marriage of convenience, but the full nature of their relationship is hotly debated in a way that highlights many common views of tumblr shipping culture¹.

Katya eventually betrays Goncharov, leading to his death at the end of the film.

There is significant homoerotic subtext between Andrey/Goncharov and Katya/Sofia, much of which plays into the film's themes; however, contrary to the impressions often given by tumblr's fandom culture, it is all subtextual, and while the relationships between Andrey, Goncharov, Katya, and Sofia can be read as significant drivers of the plot, they are far from being the central focus of the story.

Clocks are a major recurring visual symbol.

There is a pivotal "boat scene".

Most other details, however, are left to whoever is currently "analyzing" it. For instance, while many on Archive Of Our Own agree that the character of "Ice Pick Joe" definitely died in the end, with "no beta we die like Ice Pick Joe" being a popular tag for Goncharov fanfiction, at least one early tumblr post implies that the character's fate is undetermined.

The Goncharov meme is simultaneously a love letter to tumblr's fan culture, and a scathing critique thereof², but one of the most underappreciated fascinating things about it is that it forms a nested narrative.

On the innermost layer, we have the unreachable - the film itself. No one has seen it. No one ever will. We're all just trying to imagine it from the shadows on the cave wall. Maybe one day we'll create it, but it will still never truly be the original 1973 film we're all writing about. Making it even harder to recreate and make "real", the mythology includes alternate cuts and regional edits to reconcile the plot points written by different users that undeniably contradict each other.

On the next layer outward, we have the posts about the film. The deep meta. The fanart. The fanfiction. The content "from another universe" where Goncharov is a real classic film that everyone has seen. The layer where we don't break kayfabe. This is a layer we can see the reality of, and contribute to, but never truly live in - it is an imaginary construct. Or is it? The film we're writing about may not exist, but the story we're weaving together from these roleplay writing exercises is somewhat coherent, and the thousands upon thousands of words of meta and fanfiction we write about it are real; one could make a compelling argument that even if Goncharov the film does not exist, the Goncharov fandom is a real fandom. This layer is one foot in the real world, and one foot in a fictional one.

On the next layer, we have the posts about the meme. This can be definitively stated to be real, with no caveats. Posts that discuss how the meme reflects on fan culture, about the self-referential nature of the meme, about the little aspects of online fandom culture it plays with. This is the first layer that can fully be said to be rooted exclusively in the real world.

But even on a layer beyond that, we have posts such as this one, discussing the discussion of the fandom for the fake film - and on yet another layer beyond that (or is it the same one?), we have the future speculation. We have guesses as to what future historians will think of this phenomenon. We have discussions of the precarious and transient nature of information online, questions about what parts of this meme will be archived and which ones will disappear. Will there be historians desperately searching for this alleged lost classic in 50 years? Will it be assumed that the shoes that started the meme were actually a piece of promotional merchandise for a real classic film?

You may notice, then, that the innermost layers are discrete, but once you get into the layers that exist in our reality, they become markedly less so.

This model gives us a structure that can be visualized somewhat like this:

[Image ID: a diagram of 5 concentric circles. The centermost circle is colored in dark red with a thick black outline and labeled "Goncharov (1973 film) - fictional, unreachable, unviewable". The next circle outward is colored in pink, with a thinner black outline, and is labeled "Goncharov fan discussion". The next circle is colored in light gold, with a black outline that blurs into the next circle, labeled "Discussion of the Goncharov fan discussion". The next layer is colored in light green, with a dark outline blurred so thoroughly that its only purpose is to provide some visual contrast for clarity of labeling, labeled "Discussion of all previous layers; note the blurring of the line between this layer and the previous". Finally, the outermost layer is colored in light blue, with a solid black outline, labeled "Speculation about the future's view of the Goncharov meme, including roleplay as lost media enthusiasts and media studies professors 50-100 years in the future". End ID.]

In fact, there are several rules the Goncharov meme has come to follow:

As stated above, any given post is constrained to its narrative layer, to the extent that those layers are discrete. Posts about Goncharov as a real film are not to have additions that break kayfabe. Similarly, posts about Goncharov as a meme are not to have anyone insist the film is real. This may be subject to change as the meme evolves, but it is the rule as of the time of this writing.

You may not add to a post to contradict a claim about the factual nature of what happened on screen, even if it directly contradicts a previous post of yours³. You are, however, encouraged to dispute its implications and get creative to try and reconcile the contradictions. The only exception is in the form of responding to a meme with another extant meme format (e.g., "I get what you're going for OP but x very much did y")

Posts about Goncharov the film are to be treated exactly the same way you would post about a real piece of media. Analysis is to be taken seriously, using real analytical frameworks and devices. Memes are to use real formats. Fanart and fanfiction are to have just as much effort put into their crafting as you would give any real piece of media.

Complaining about bad readings that do not exist, but you imagine someone might make, is encouraged.

You cannot break these rules. Not "you may not", but "you cannot". It is not possible. You can try. You will fail. Your posts breaking these rules will never gain traction, or if they do, they will do so only after being added to in order to make it fit them. The narrative is hungry. You cannot engage it without being absorbed into it. Your only escape is to walk away and not look back⁴.

In other words, the Goncharov meme is not just a meditation on fan culture, but a demonstration and discussion of the intricacy of the relationship between fiction and reality.

House of Leaves is beloved for its complex nested narrative, and again, the comparison is a common one. However, there is a subtle and potentially unsettling difference - House of Leaves did not include its author or its readers nearly as thoroughly as the Goncharov meme does. House of Leaves was written from outside the narrative; the legend of Goncharov is being written from within.

Every single person who blogs about Goncharov makes themself into a character in this story.

The narrative layers in House of Leaves bleed into each other to give a sense of mystery as to what is real and what is not in the universe(s) of the novel. The narrative layers in the Goncharov mythos bleed into each other because we traverse them freely - from the fictional reviews and retellings and analysis, to the semi-fictional drawing of comparisons to real media and the use of this nonexistent movie as a low-stakes vehicle to lightheartedly air one's real complaints with fan culture, to the fully-grounded discussion of Goncharov's impact as a meme, to the philosophical discussion of its multi-layered nature, to the once-again-fictional speculation of how it will be viewed in the future - the same person can visit any of these layers.

But their impact will always be bound by each layer's internal rules, because building a legend - a narrative - will not allow for anything else.

Goncharov does not exist. Goncharov is a narrative labyrinth that contains us all. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE ITS NARRATIVE.

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1. Tumblr shipping culture is as much of a microcosm of queer studies as it is of media analysis. It, like the Goncharov meme, operates on a minimum of two levels: the level of analyzing a story for potential queer readings, namely in the form of romantic relationships, and opportunities for transformative work; and the level of sociopolitical discussion of queer issues and stereotypes, and how they are reflected in media and the discussion thereof; the latter, particularly, in the form of intracommunity disputes and lateral aggression. For example, the dispute over the nature of Goncharov and Katya's marriage and its level of sincerity is implied in some posts to occasionally cross the line into bisexual erasure. While at the time of the Goncharov meme's emergence in 2022, the discourse within this subculture is much more civil than it once was, it is still very much an environment that stands as a constant reminder that there is no such thing as a truly apolitical space.

Of course, most everyone on this website knows that by now, right?

2. This meme comes at a time when a lot of us are terrified of going back to the way things used to be in tumblr fan discourse. We all joke about the Hamilton HIV fanfic catfish, or The JohnLock Conspiracy, or any number of other major scandals now that they're over; they are hilarious in hindsight, but it's all too easy to lose track of the fact that the human toll at the time was real. DashCon is a joke to most, but I've personally met more than one well-meaning volunteer who ended up with PTSD from dealing with attendees who thought even the volunteers were in on an intentional scam. We laugh at the absurdity of the incident known as Boneghazi, but it doesn't take away the fact that there are still people in Louisiana wondering if their relatives were the ones whose bones were stolen and offered up for sale online - though that one was only tangentially related to fandom, it's from the same broad sitewide culture. People have been stalked, harassed, doxxed, psychologically abused to the point of hospitalization and even suicide, there are even rumors of assaults over disagreements about which show is better, or which fictional characters have the best relationships. It's all petty, all funny in hindsight - but the human toll is real.

I got caught in an incident myself once*, before the porn ban. There was one guy, they and some real life friends of theirs got into my circle of friends in a roleplay community in the ■■■■■■■ fandom. They seemed nice enough. Normal enough. We had a few good chats. They played the same character I did, among a few others. Had a fun little concept we were throwing back and forth to start a thread with the doubled character. Accidental cloning due to a computer error, it was going to be.

Everything fell apart when a new ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■ dropped. It gave us a nice scene of the most popular "ship" in the fandom - one that had been teased since day 1, and of course when it got attention the company wanted to milk it for all it was worth. This guy originally seemed cool with the ship, even though they didn't like it much; they preferred to pair one of the characters off with their self-insert OC. It was all a peaceful difference of opinion for a while, but after this ■■■■■■ dropped and people were excited about the scene, they went berserk. My then-boyfriend's ex started getting anonymous messages imitating him. My inbox started filling up with threats. Some of my more casual acquaintances started confronting me over threats they thought I sent. Meanwhile, this guy was melting down on main about how everyone had "betrayed" them. I found myself blocked by our mutual friends who this guy knew in real life - it turned out, because they were telling them that I was sending them hate and threats. "Someone" tried to convince my then-boyfriend to doxx someone adjacent to the circle for "abuse". I started getting hate messages that hit some of my deepest insecurities and almost ■■■ ■■ ■■ ■■■■■■ - the only reason I ended up okay was because I figured it out, because I realized this guy was the one doing all of it, and they were mining for ammo from our mutual friends.

All of this because a bunch of people, mostly strangers, were happy about the ■■■■■■. Because of a fictional relationship. Their fixation on me was just because we played the same character but liked different ships, and I was a little more known in the fandom. This wasn't even on a website where people could see follower counts, it was right here on tumblr, so they had to be pretty obsessive to figure that out in the first place.

Eventually the friends they lied about me to caught on and left them, but not before they stole a bunch of said friends' stuff. Last I checked on them, it was 2 years since the incident, and they were still melting down on main about how anyone who liked that ship was evil. By that point they had convinced themself that the entire fandom for that ship was a campaign to harass and persecute them personally; that there was no other reason to like it.

The last thing I head about them was that they had stabbed a family member over this and some other personal drama and gotten banned from Twitter and a few conventions for making violent threats toward artists and cosplayers. I don't dare look back anymore.

*Editors' note: Some details have been altered or redacted to protect the ignorant.

3. Ironically, this is one of the few tells that Goncharov is not an extant piece of media. In fandoms for real media, it is fairly common for details to be misremembered and corrections to be made.

4. "Don't look back", of course, is easier said than done. We must recall the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus, despondent at the loss of his love, arranged to be allowed into the underworld to bring her back to life, but there was one condition; one tiny, seemingly simple condition - he must not look at her until they were both back in the light. If he did, she would be dragged back and lost forever; he would not get a second chance.

Like many myths, the details vary from telling to retelling. Some say that she was never made aware of the rule and cried out in terror as her husband refused to look at her, and almost instinctively he turned to comfort her. Some say that he fell victim to almost a form of muscle memory in mid-ascent when he turned to make sure she was okay. Some say that his desire to see her again sooner rather than later was just too strong and outweighed his resolve and common sense screaming for him to hold to the condition. Some say that he turned as soon as he was in the light, blissfully unaware until it was too late that she was still in the dark.

Whatever the reason, Orpheus looked back.

There is no version of the story where he succeeded in not looking back. The narrative will not let him not look back. The myth has no room for an Orpheus who is successful.

He cannot escape the myth.

He cannot escape the narrative.

Orpheus will always look back.

#goncharov #unreality #heavier unreality warning than your typical goncharov post #i freaked myself out with this #so if you like horror about the nature of narrative please read this and make it worth it!#house of leaves #memeology #internet culture #astral originals

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