My entire dash is suddenly filled with a fake Russian mafia movie from a post about a knockoff boot from like 10 years ago. We can never recreate the weirdness of this site, because shit like this is completely unpredictable
Absolutely love the part of the tumblr ecosystem where people just make up media and everyone else just goes ‘yeah, I’ll talk about this like it’s real’
"Let us say there is no sacred text here. That notion of authenticity or originality is constantly refuted. The novel doesn't allow the reader to ever say, "Oh, I see: this is the authentic, original text, exactly how it looked, what it always had to say." That's the irony of [Truant's] mother's letters [which are included as an appendix to the novel]: at first you probably just assume that, okay, this is the real thing, but then the artifice of the way they look starts to undercut everything, so you're not sure. Pretty soon you begin to notice that at every level in the novel some act of interpretation is going on. The question is, why? Well, there are many reasons, but the most important one is that everything we encounter involves an act of interpretation on our part. And this doesn't just apply to what we encounter in books, but to what we respond to in life. Oh, we live comfortably because we create these sacred domains in our head where we believe that we have a specific history, a certain set of experiences. We believe that our memories keep us in direct touch with what has happened. But memory never puts us in touch with anything directly; it's always interpretive, reductive, a complicated compression of information."
Mark B.N. Hansen, The Digital Topography of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves
I had a friend recently tell me that he never got spoiled for a show unless he actively looked for it so it's my own fault for getting spoiled and I'm like, dude... I got spoiled for the Tumblr mob movie that doesn't even exist
What I really want to come from any potential commercialization of the Gorbachev meme is a Gorbachev sequel/reboot. Nothing is going to hold up to the original movie in our heads but just *imagine* if fucking Gorbachev 2 coming soon! 2025!
My favourite scene from Goncharov is the one where he talks with the Russian twins. It's just such a poignant and underrated scene for Goncharov's characterisation (or lack of, in some ways) as a fractured man struggling with his identity. Although they're only side characters, Fyo and Misha really stood out to me because their motivations seem so transparent and emotive. Misha is fueled by such hatred over the collateral death of their sister, Irene, in an earlier instance where Goncharov's men took out her husband, and Fyo is just in a state of resigned despair, because he knows that his twin is also going to die over this vendetta and what else can he do but follow him? Misha is all he has left.
I think that conversing with people with such simple yet strong motivations without all the complexity and double meanings was something quite unique for Goncharov. You can see he looks completely intent on listening to Misha's anger (stunning monologue btw) when he has them captured in the room. But the part that really stood out to me was the end of the scene when Goncharov asks if they know what he's going to do with them and Fyo just scoffs sadly and says that no one ever really knows what men like him are going to do. No one can really understand him or his motivations for doing anything.
And the look on Goncharov's face... I don't think even he knew what he was going to do then. He's such a mess of an identity and motivations at this point in the film and you could tell that he did feel bad for the twins, but they had just tried to assassinate him so...
Anyway, we never really find out what happens to them. Since the scene cuts to Goncharov meeting Aubrey outside and though Aubrey clearly wants to ask, he doesn't. And Goncharov never tells.