#im just obsessed w him. every single aspect of his character is so symbolic and deep & this is why i love dosto &classics in general so muc

[karamazovanon]

Smerdyakov: 1,2,3 and 12 (for the character ask thingy)

(character ask game!)

AHHH SMERDYAKOV MY BELOVED THANK U 4 ENABLING ME TO RANT ABT HIM.

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

oh man WHERE TO FUCKING BEGIN. he!! he's such a smug little shitlord and it's one of my favorite dosto psychological archetypes, a character who feels so different from everyone else & so isolated that they end up feeling better than everyone (e.g. smarter, like smerd's bit about the creation myth) while also worse than everyone (e.g. smerd's deep insecurity about his social standing esp compared to his brothers, idolizing ivan). he's just the Are you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go ape shitt? meme a little bit. also he's just a weird little control freak. i love my lil bouillon boy.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

FAVORITE is hard omg. i really love that he plays guitar and sings in falsetto........ he's just a little guy!!! and the line. the fucking line. "I exterminate my life by my own will and inclination, in order to blame no one." what a raw fucking line. and such a concise statement of pavel as a character, who spends the entire novel fighting to exercise his free will and establish his agency as a human being in the eyes of everyone around him through any means possible, and then he only finally gets the power he wants so badly by weaponizing the societal perceptions of him he hates so much (at first fyodor pavlovich only gives half a fuck about him when he starts having fits, then later on he gets away with murder by affirming their views of him as epileptic/weak, stupid, cowardly, "just a lackey", etc etc ive ranted abt this before). smerdyakov get behind me. he did nothing wrong

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

i mean. it's gotta be the killing small animals as a child right. like we can agree on that. that's not cool baby pavel. (to be fair though. it's also interesting symbolically as a reflection of his power struggle throughout his lifetime—even as a kid he was looking for creatures with even less power than he so he could feel like he was in control of something for once, which then turned to obsession over food, arguing with his father/master, murder, etc. Wish he didn't have to kill cats about it though !)

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

oooooo hmmmmm. this probably doesn't count as a headcanon but i do want him and katya to talk shit about ivan just once. i just KNOW they'd get his ass. also not to be predictable but i absolutely hc him as gay and not even in the im just making everyone gay bc i am way, in a 100% serious this-is-a-valid-interpretation-of-the-text way. i just think his utter lack of interest in women, alienation from society, insecurity about being Born Wrong, distaste for religion (esp. how illogical it is), etc is so very gaycoded. also that line about fyodor pavlovich offering to set him up with a girl to marry: "'Perhaps you ought to marry some girl, do you want me to find you one?' But this kind of talk would only make Smerdyakov turn pale with annoyance, and he would not reply." (tr. mcduff) like that was me on thanksgiving when my aunt asked if i had a boyfriend yet im sorry!!