#pashaposting

[killkaramazov]

there is just not enough posts about how Smerdyakov is Actually canonically Gay For Real in a novel from 1866. He’s like genetically engineered in a lab to be the worst “””queer representation””” ever written. He’s perfect

[emrys-rusts]

sunday warm up! trying to regain a workflow :)

[killkaramazov]

Dostoevsky kept describing Pavel as ‘emasculate’ because he understood that bashing your father’s head in with a blunt object is the most quintessentially feminine thing a girl can do

[killkaramazov]

text from The Double Vision of The Brothers Karamazov by Joyce Carol Oates and “Balaam’s Ass”: Smerdyakov as Paradoxical Redeemer in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov by Sharon Cohen

[killkaramazov]

I sort of used to think that the reason there’s no redemption for Smerdyakov’s character is, in part, due to the structural narrative of the novel and the setting— but that doesn’t entirely track on its own, given the themes presented in Crime and Punishment, considering Rodya’s crime is much worse and C&P is ALL about his redemption.

I think the real reason Smerdyakov gets no redemption is the Zhutchka thing.

It is passionately argued and established that Fyodor was no father, and so to murder him was no murder. If that applies to Mitya, then that applies to Smerdyakov even moreso, as Fyodor was, in the most literal sense, never a father to him, and failed him worse than he failed any of his children.

So that cannot be the thing that makes Smerdyakov irredeemable, or the reason he has to die.

We know about the cats, obviously. But that was only ever mentioned in passing, as something he did in childhood. I think that the fact that he has carried that pathology on into adult life is supposed to be received as a significant revelation, and it should be really shocking. It is really shocking. It’s just really fucking horrible to imagine. That whole encounter is shrouded in mystery, and we don’t really get any answers about it, like how these two met or why, or any context other than the fact that Ilusha is, now on his deathbed, completely fucking devastated.

It just sort of implies again that we’re only getting the tip of the iceberg in terms of Smerdyakov’s fucked up pathology. He has an even darker personality than we’ve previously been led to believe.

Y’all KNOW how much I love him, but I agree that if he does anything irredeemable it is that. And I agree that that is irredeemable. His childhood was not his fault, it fucked him up permanently and left him with absolutely no recourse as an adult. I still love him and I don’t even necessarily judge him, even for this, because… how can you?

It may be easy to pass judgment but the reality is that we’re talking about someone so abjectly abused and exploited that that’s not really relevant or appropriate, in my opinion.

Smerdyakov stood absolutely no chance at growing up into a normal, appropriately adjusted adult. The ONE most important thing that might help someone who comes from that kind of background break that cycle of abuse in adulthood is to be met with kindness and compassion. Smerdyakov’s childhood abuse made him weird and disgusting, and now he is shunned for being weird and disgusting.

It’s significant, that Smerdyakov’s one irredeemable act is what he does to Ilusha.

I think it’s also significant that Mitya shares this culpability in Ilusha’s suffering, (the “wisp of tow” incident), the same way he shares culpability with Smerdyakov in Fyodor’s murder, when he is tried and convicted despite his innocence.

Alyosha interferes in Ilusha’s violent outbursts while he is still a child, and meets him with love and compassion, and therefore Ilusha is saved. Not from death, but his soul is saved, in the most Christian, Dostoevskian sense.

Remember, Alyosha, disciple of Zossima, who preached about praying for the suicides, “being the servant of my servant”, and spoke of Joseph being sold into slavery by his own brothers on his deathbed.

Smerdyakov never received that kind of intervention from anyone, not in childhood, and now that he’s an adult, whatever compassion anyone might have once had for him is well past. And so it’s too late for him. But it’s not too late for Ilusha.

This is the great blind spot in Ivan’s ideology, is that he fails to see that these abused children grow up into adults, and frequently grow up into adults who often perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

The Brothers Karamazov is, fundamentally, a novel about children.

I’m reminded of Matthew 18:6: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

And, well, we all know how Smerdyakov died.

[killkaramazov]

it’s so funny that Ivan is so radicalized by child abuse and then hates Smerdyakov so goddamn much that even the sight of him makes him nauseous. Girl your values

[killkaramazov]

in my mind the most important and operative fantasy in crime and punishment is that even if you lose your mind and make the worst possible mistake there will still be someone there who loves you to hold your hand and tell you it’s okay. the most important operative fantasy of TBK is unleashing 24 years of pent up total emotional terrorism upon the people who hurt you and then killing yourself before you can face the consequences as the grand finale

[killkaramazov]

GAGGGGGGG

[killkaramazov]

This will be my worst post but fuck it. If you’re absolutely DETERMINED to take it there then Smerdy/Ivan absolutely BODIES Alyosha/Ivan in terms of narrative/characterization/dynamic/motif and theme/basically everything else that matters. But it is really not about that for the vast majority of people who are deadass about shipping yaoi from a Russian novel published in 1879. All the IvanYosha stuff seems like it’s really more about getting your rocks off on AO3 and drawing two conventionally attractive anime twinks kissing. To which I wonder why you wouldn’t pick literally any two characters from any media for that unless you’re just into incest or something. 

I really love the Grand Inquisitor kiss! And I don’t like seeing it interpreted that way! 

On the other hand something that drives me insane about my personal interpretation of the book is the juxtaposition between the Alyosha Ivan kiss vs Ivan’s general disgust for Smerdyakov. Why is Alyosha kissing Ivan a pure, innocent expression of Christian love for all humanity but Smerdyakov’s gesture of love (killing Fyodor) is something so perverse and horrifying? It shows us something about their station of life through the roles and the acts that are even allowed to them in the narrative.

As far as SmerdyIvan goes I am reminded of the JSTOR article I read (that I now cannot fucking find) where the author mentioned an idea that all of Dostoevsky’s novels center around or contain one central taboo that is so unspeakable that it is scarcely even outright mentioned, and that the central taboo in question in TBK is that Smerdyakov is the fourth brother.

Incest is already gotten into in canon and much has been written about this, especially regarding Dmitry and Fyodor’s rivalry over Grushenka, but also with Ivan falling in love with Dmitry’s ex. So even though we are going far afield from authorial intent, it is really not that much of a jump to start looking at emotional incest from other angles within the family, as we already know literally every other type of abuse was already occurring within that (entirely fractured) family unit. As far as I am concerned regarding authorial intent, any claim you want to make about a work of fiction is fair game as long as you can justify it with evidence from the text, and people have been writing academic articles and essays making wild inferences from this text for the last 150 years, so I defend my right to make this interpretation. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if Freud can diagnose Dostoevsky as bisexual we can say whatever we want about this book.

We know from the canon indisputably that Smerdyakov is unhealthily attached to Ivan, and we know that some vague thing about Smerdyakov sets Ivan’s Geiger counter for rancid horrific disgusting vibes to 10 immediately, anytime they are on the page together. So we can infer a lot from that.

Smerdyakov was literally born of sexual violence, and is a pariah in terms of his gender expression and sexuality, so him taking on the role of someone with a warped sexuality in the narrative just sort of… follows, in terms of the novels concern with the idea of inherited sin. 

There is something compelling to me about the idea that Smerdyakov would seek entrance into the Karamazov family in another, weirder way psychologically through attaching highly inappropriate feelings to Ivan. (‘If you think of me and my feelings toward you as incestuous, then that means you have acknowledged me as a family member’) 

And regardless of what I literally just said about authorial intent, Dostoevsky outright tells us how gay Smerdyakov is like every single time he’s on page. So there is also that.

Their relationship appeals to me greatly insofar as it is utterly disgusting and that’s my jam. There is lots to explore in this dynamic but one indisputable thing baked into the text between them is that it’s literally impossible to imagine any truly romantic union between them simply because of the way they both are. They repulse each other far too much for any expression of that sort. The actualization of their inappropriate relationship is not a culmination through an even vaguely romantic or sexual encounter, instead, it is the fulfilling a murder pact. 

They are like two oppositely charged magnets or something, in turns attracting and repulsing one another, pushing and pulling on each other’s gravitational pulls. Regarding the Tchermashnya-Moscow conversation, the way that their conversations are in doublespeak, with words said out loud and then literally entire other sentences written out in thought and illustrated through description of physicality, is incredibly fascinating to me. They seem to be literally communicating telepathically.  I am reminded of another JSTOR article I read that mentions the Dostoevskian doubles “exerting influence over one other that cannot be explained in any literal sense.”  The only reason they can communicate like this is because they are doubles, and this doublism is reinforced again in the narrative by their being fake twins, the same age but born to different mothers. 

They are each other’s shadows, they share a consciousness on some level, or access each other’s consciousnesses at different times through this shared plot in a way that seems incomprehensible to both of them. And Smerdyakov, in my own interpretation and opinion, as someone who is completely starved for any kind of positive regard, takes this for love. Whether that’s familial or otherwise or both. 

They engage in this mutual seduction towards an ultimate goal or realization: Ivan presents the idea, that “all is permitted” and that perhaps it would be for the better if Fyodor were dead, and Smerdyakov takes his lead from this and in turn pulls Ivan into the murder plot. Their relationship is romantic insofar as they are seducing one another in turn towards this unspeakable and forbidden act that they both desire: the murder.

They deny it right to each others faces, only Ivan’s is an earnest denial, to himself first and foremost, and to Smerdyakov it’s just sort of… foreplay. Like, “we’re just two clever people who are only saying this because we have to, and we get it, and you’re in this with me.” 

There is something really compelling too in the fact that Ivan is on board with the murder plot in one scene on a subconscious level, but later will utterly deny that any of this ever happened or that he ever felt that way. He has expressed and betrayed a desire that is so deviant, so forbidden, and so distressing to him that he has a psychological break over denying that that could have truly been something he wanted. Ivan expresses overwhelming disgust and disdain through the entire book, mostly towards Smerdyakov, but finally towards himself when he is forced to the realization of the role he has played as the idealogical murderer. Whereas Smerdyakov, the more active pursuer in their relationship, is not ashamed of his desires and is the one who ultimately has the lack of inhibition required to carry out The Forbidden Act. 

Ivan is attracted by Smerdyakov initially, despite himself, for reasons he can’t understand, like one is drawn to a cataclysmic disaster of fate in a Greek tragedy or something, and ultimately it descends into complete loathing on both sides, kills Smerdyakov, and mocks Ivan’s entire character by undermining his self concept and his entire value system and laying utterly bare his fatal flaws as a human being. Utterly doomed and hopeless relationship in every single way! 

Alas, no one wants to match my freak about this and that is definitely for the better. If I had to see ship art of them kissing anime style I would kms. Whatever the fuck they had going on is way better. 

[killkaramazov]

giving your illegitimate bastard rape baby your patronymic but not your surname, and THEN giving him a made up surname specifically chosen to be degrading and humiliating is just incomprehensibly evil to me, caving his stupid skull in was not enough

[killkaramazov]

Ivan is literally a nothing character without Smerdyakov like that relationship is what defines his entire character arc within the plot structure and I feel like I’m always seeing Ivan portrayed as some like superior god-man Logic and Reasoning sexyman with glasses type when he’s just not like that at all to me. And that characterization of him usually goes hand in hand with completely sidelining and downplaying Smerdyakov’s character like seemingly just because Ivan has sex appeal. I’m talking about sex appeal in the most classic sense here I’m not talking about him being fuckable I’m talking about him being seen as a man. He has sex appeal because he’s a legitimate child who is therefore allowed things like status and higher thought and dignity and integrity and agency. The book is not possible without Smerdyakov doing Ivan’s dirty work as a maligned person and he gets shoved aside in the readership EXACTLY the same way he does in the actual text just because he’s uncomfortable or pathetic or gross or emasculate or difficult to look at. Girl they are DOUBLES they are a split/fractured consciousness looking upon itself with hatred and terror and incomprehension. They are like spiritually divinely fatedly codependent and doomed by the crushing weight of generational inherited trauma and NOTHING is made possible for one of them without the other. BONDED PAIR DO NOT SEPARATE.

[killkaramazov]

TBK but everyone has a phone:

- Fyodor makes incomprehensible boomer voice to text posts on Facebook and sends inappropriate friend requests at odd hours when his ambien is kicking in.

- Grushenka has an Instagram with hundreds of gorgeous selfies and photos of herself that Mitya takes

- Madame K runs the local Facebook gossip group like the navy and posts shit like this on main every morning:

- Ivan lurks Reddit and watches YouTube video essays. And sometimes gets into arguments with strangers because he’s a loser.

-Mitya has an Instagram with nothing on it but yearly #nationalboyfriendday posts of Grushenka that she insists he posts and follows a bunch of gymbros and cute baby animal meme accounts so that he can send their posts to Grushenka and say “that’s so you babe”

-Lise uses her 3 hours of daily iPad time to go on r/watchpeopledie and update her secret Tumblr dark coquette emo female manipulator femcel fujo blog. She has 20,000 followers but she had more before she got deleted for posting gore and had to remake.

-Alyosha has a flip phone and does not know any social media.

-Rakitin spends 4 hours a day scrolling through Twitter and 4chan and is a contributor on wikifeet.

-Smerdyakov femcel tumblrina royalty. Has sent anon hate telling people to kill themselves before. On multiple blocklists. Incoherent back to back personal posts at 2:00 in the morning:

I fucking hate it here

*screenshot of his own fragrantica review with 10,000 notes*

*spotify link to Norman Fucking Rockwell*

*10 reblogs in a row of the Margiela F/W show*

*depop screenshot* should I buy this lol

He and Lise are mutuals. They will never know this.

[killkaramazov]

it’s Kill Fyodor Friday

[killkaramazov]

we simply must imagine that when we’re reading about Smerdyakov’s cunty little boots they had a little heel on them. I think about this all the time this is literally integral to the world building

[killkaramazov]

every time I see an adaptation where Smerdyakov is some ugly man with facial hair I mail a pipe bomb to an undisclosed location. just to encourage these people to stop and think about what they’re doing

[killkaramazov]

Good morning. What the FUCK was happening in Moscow