Tired so often it's part of my personality

after 53,389 words, tears, early mornings, self-doubt, and all the first draft of VERTIGO PEAKS is finally complete!! 🥺

even before i started writing the first chapter, i knew the last sentence would be a direct reference to the ending of ‘paradise lost’ by john milton. paradise lost ends when adam and eve are banished from eden because they trespassed/sinned against god by listening to satan and eating from the tree. they leave eden, hand in hand, in a solitary way to live on earth. some call it the fortunate fall because adam and eve populated the earth and now we live as their children.

still, leaving eden was a punishment for their sin. i wanted to play on that, i.e., leaving Vertigo Peaks is a choice my characters make happily.

Main cast are Goncharov himself, his wife Katya (née Michailov), and Andrey 

One side character is named Mario Ambrosini. He is described as a “sad boi” and is involved in gambling. 

Set in Naples and involving a drug ring/mafia. The plot seems to involve Russian organized crime attempting to get a foothold in Italy. 

There is a Boat Scene. Katya survives via resourcefulness. 

Andrey and Goncharov have a substantial amount of homoeroticism. Andrey also has an internet in Katya. This forms a true love triangle. 

At some point, Katya threatens to shoot Goncharov. This is framed as a Girlboss Moment. 

There is also a Beer Bottle Scene. 

A supporting female character named Sofia makes an appearance, wearing a cocktail dress. Katya protects her at some point. They’re both in the Boat Scene. At one point they buy fruit together in a marketplace. This is lesbian shipping fuel. 

The villain, likely Mario, has a sidekick named Icepick Joe. Joe commits a final act of heroism before being left for dead— after being killed by an Icepick. Perhaps he turned against Mario and was killed in retaliation?

Goncharov, played by DeNiro, has a very distinctive manner of walking. 

There’s a Bridge Scene. This is the one with the clocktower chiming in the background.

There’s a scene involving a tank of anchovies. 

Icepick Joe has a traumatic backstory 

Katya betrays Goncharov AND Sofia. She’s well-intentioned, but it all comes crashing down, ending in her losing them both— losing Sofia emotionally and inadvertently causing Goncharov’s death

Hello, authors! Have you finished a novel recently? Well, congrats! Sit there a moment and just savour what you’ve accomplished.

Did you do it? — Ok I trust you.

You have now arrived in one of the authorial limbo zones that could trap you for a very long time if you’re not careful. That being…

Your Novel is not Perfect

Even if you’ve been editing as you go, I can guarantee you that your first draft is not perfect. And, while you should cherish it for what it is, before you send it off to your editor, you’re going to need to create the second and third draft.

Let’s get this out of the way now: ALWAYS work with an editor. Some authors can make a go of it unedited, such as Anne Rice, but compare her unedited works to edited ones, and it makes a world of difference. No matter how good a writer you are, an editor is only going to make you shine more.

So what is this limbo I mentioned before? Well, once you start reviewing your novel you’re always going to find something that could be better. I want to save you from creating 10 drafts that take you the next 2 years to create, putting off your actual publishing.

Steps for Revision

I am currently working on revising my own novel, and will be taking five steps to do so. If I want to take more after that, I’m simply not allowing it. These steps are as follows:

The first sweep

The dig deep

The second sweep

The dig deeper

The final read

This allows for initial general revision, a deep dive into those first notes, followed by one more round of that process, and a final read.

Your Editor will Thank You

I don’t know about you but the last thing I want when I gather my draft together to send off to my editor is for easily-noticed spelling or plot errors to be hanging around.

By taking these five steps to revise before an edit, your editor will have more time to do real work on your story, and it’ll save you running up that tab any more than is necessary.

Getting to this point will also save you the heartache of being too obsessed with your final draft. Your editor is going to request changes, and you don’t want to be crying in a heap on the floor when they dash a scene that you deem to be crucial.

(Edits closed as of 28 Nov.)

Lmaoooo

Nah I getchu. So this post has been circulating for like two years:

Link to post.

But yesterday, it had inspired someone to do this:

Link to post.

Next thing I knew there were fake Letterboxed reviews.

Goncharov moodboards. Really good ones.

Link to post.

Meta analysis. So many fake meta essays. Disturbingly good ones. And of course the memes. (Edit: HAVE I SAID THIS SHIT IS DISTURBING)

As you can see, the myth just started to grow, characters and ships and tropes being added one after the other, almost bizzarely without contradiction, until there was enough of shape to the whole thing for people to start posting fanfic about it on AO3. "No beta we die like ice-pick Joe" is already a tag.

Link to post.

It was hilarious in the beginning, but the way it's developed within less than a day, kind of like it's being willed into existence, is freaking me out a bit. We're toying with powers beyond our comprehension. 😂😂😂

Link to post.

Of course, there could be an ulterior motive as well.

Link to post (tags mine).

Edit: guys, please tag these posts "unreality" so people with disassociation issues can filter them out (not this one, this is an explainer). <3

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Edit 2: Aparently the boots in the original post are actually referring to a movie called Gomorrah that came out in 2008, directed by Mateo Garrone, based on the Scampia Feud. And other people had also been making posts about the fake movie for a while before the poster took off.

found by @thepotch

Edit 3: Explainer: why did those boots have this movie on them anyway?

Edit 4: Alt text added to all images courtesy of @valentineish ❤️

Edit 5: Turns out tumblr has done this kind of thing before. Nine years in this hell place and I had to have "Squiddles" and penis smp explained in the replies.

Edit 6: This post collects the Lore so far.

Edit 7: Lynda Carter (real one)/ earns more/ Tumblr cred.

Edit 8: Holy shit y'all we have the theme music. With sheet music. And it's on Spotify!

Edit 9: THERE IS A TRAILER WITH THE THEME MUSIC

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I made this post 18 hours after the movie poster went up. Closed edits 27 hours after first posting. So all of the above happened within 45 hours of the movie poster going up.

Edit 10: Google document live-compiling all the lore so far (Day 3)

Edit 11: Masterpost of Goncharov soundtracks (Day 3)

Edit 12: Entertainment news articles covering the Gonch-posting (real) (Contd from yday)

Edit 13: The music from the masterpost all compiled into a 31-minute original score with video edits on YouTube (edit: unfortunately taken down)

Edit 14: Staff's Goncharov art showcase for Tumblr Tuesday

As of closing on Day 3 there are 371 works in the AO3 tag.

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Updating with Day 3 shenanigans I missed yesterday:

Edit 15: Goncharov TV Tropes page

Edit 16: Ethics of Gonchposting

Important PSA 1 (how to reduce harm to Tumblr's neurodivergents)

Important PSA 2 (reality affirmation, anti-bullying)

Important PSA 3 (why you should stop trying to vandalise legit information sites)

Edit 17: Character lore from beezlebub whose poster they originated from

Edit 18: What we know about/ Director Matteo JWHJ0715 (#unreality)

Edit 19: Link to post with screenshotted and described NYT article (scroll down) and this golden exerpt from BuzzFeed: 💀

(alt text included)

End of Day 4 there are now 485 works in the Goncharov tag on AO3

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Didn't get to update this on Day 5, so these are the Day 5 doings:

More trailers!

Trailer 1 (My favourite)

Trailer 2

Trailer 3

Trailer 4

I also just found out about the Goncharov Game Jam.

It appears this opened a day after after the meme took off.

Goncharov was first entered into Wikipedia between Day 4 and 5 (attempts to vandalise it with fake info don't count, incidentally – please knock that shit off) under List of Internet Phenomena. This was then expanded into its own Wikipedia page at the end of Day 5 because, according to the talk history: "the topic now meets the notability threshold for its own artice due to significant coverage in The New York Times and other sources cited." We're on Wikipedia, people!

And then we made The Guardian half a day later. So while the meme is definitely dying down to embers by now, it still stays winning.

YouTube channels with episodes on the meme:

InformOverlord (4:30)

Lessons in Meme Culture (2:43)

End of Day of 5 there were 511 works on AO3, and End of Day 6 (today) there are 556.

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🚨BREAKING 🚨 from Martin Scorsese's daughter's TikTok (real actual)

tw: unreality:

We did it you guys!

Clarification: Francesca Scorcese asked her Dad about the meme and Martin played along. Please reblog this PSA to help Tumblr people with psychosis. Thanks.

Last weekend I was stuck on the highway for 11 hours because of the winter storms in BC. I made it home safe eventually but the bright spot in a long scary drive was the other humans. We were at a dead stop for 3.5 hours and when we finally got moving we passed a dozen or more snowmen that people had built while waiting.

Proof that even when freezing and hungry and tired, humans will make something to brighten one another's day.

But I also think we do a great disservice to the women of the ancient world by not remembering how this story, in that form, mirrored their very real pain. I’ve been thinking recently about how we can tell that women participated in the formation of their culture’s folklore because women’s trauma is embedded in it. (In Greek terms, the stories of Leto and Alcmene very clearly come out of women’s traumatic experiences with childbirth, and there are elements of women’s traumatic experiences of sexual assault embedded in, for example, the stories of Daphne or Callisto or Artemis and Actaeon) And the story of Persephone comes out of women’s experiences of being permanently separated from their mothers and daughters at marriage. (See also this post from @gardenvarietycrime.​)

For an ancient woman sending her daughter off to be married, knowing that she will see her only rarely and that the odds of death in childbirth were high, Persephone meant something. For an ancient girl leaving her mother and her entire world for a man she may never have met knowing the same, Persephone meant something. I do think a lot of the conflation of death and marriage in the ancient world comes out of this: that a girl is dead to her mother and her family whether she leaves them to go to a husband’s house or the house of Hades. Maybe it’s a consolation to know that someone else has done this before you, to know that a goddess once lost her daughter and a goddess once lost her mother the same way you are losing yours. And that they survived it.

Arranged marriage where the daughter had to go miles away from her family (and would be lucky to see them once a year!) only started to stop at our grandparents time. Many of our grandparents are in arranged mariagges.

The taking of Pershephone is a myth about the strong bond of a mother and her daughter, and how she took power in her hands. And I am thankful to my mother and grandmothers for teaching it to me.

And this myth still affects today’s women!

It’s the custom in Greece to name your children after your parents. First children take the father’s parents name, and the second son and second daughter can be named after the mother’s parents.

But when my mother gave birth to me, the first daughet, she chose to name me after her mother because, and I quote: “I re-read an old mythology book when I was pregnant with you, and I remembered the myth of Demeter and Pershephone. And I thought that I didn’t have to sit do what the men want, because you are my daughet, and I want to honor my mother first.”

So the original myth, for many, became ‘obsolete’ for lack of a better term.

Furthermore, the Abduction of Persephone is an empowering story, but while it’s not made for men, it is very much made for the mother. There’s a reason why it’s called “The Hymn to Demeter”, it’s her story. Demeter’s the one who overcomes her trauma, her actions result in her reunion with Persephone. Persephone, who is every bit as traumatized as her mother, doesn’t quite get the triumph that Demeter does, and has just as much agency at the end of her tale than she had at the beginning, which is very little.

I’d also like to point out that most modern interpretations aren’t just an attempt to make the romance between Hades and Persephone more palatable. They’re depicting a very different form of trauma than the original, which is something that I don’t see acknowledged often in surrounding commentary. The main difference being that instead of having Demeter’s plight be the driving force of the narrative, Persephone herself is the focal point.

Most of these retellings that I’ve seen haven’t solely been about actually liking the person you’re married to, though it’s certainly a bonus, it’s been about choice. Persephone’s choice. This evolution sprung from a culture that’s very tired of the insistence that young women are helpless, and claiming the only merits these retellings have is how revolutionary they get is a bit of a disservice. Several, if not most, retellings will bring up and address Persephone’s own feeling of helplessness and desire to be heard. The original myth is about the conflicting wills of the mother and father, but the wishes of the daughter in question aren’t really addressed, and retellings reflect that.

It may be controversial to some, but the modern interpretations in which there is notable friction between Demeter and Persephone tackles concerns many children have about their parents undermining their attempts to grow up, and while I don’t think one version is more valid than the other, I think there’s a bit more nuance to the myth’s evolution than simply a pursuit of a better romance.