#will never stop being baffled by the 'never apologize just pretend nothing happened' method

[bogunicorn]

Having any kind of disagreement with NT people is fucking exhausting and frankly I would pay a monthly subscription to never have to do it again.

[zenosungs]

laughable/lachrymose

Danganronpa V3 | Kokichi/Shuichi | Rated T

Toast is easy to make, right? Easy to make. You put the bread in the toaster and you wait and you spread honey on it when it’s done. Shuichi likes toast with honey. It’s easy. Kokichi needs easy. He can do this.

Ignoring the voices that have started screaming at him again he fumbles with the bag of bread, barely managing to fish a slice out, hands latching onto it in a seizing grasp so tight it almost crumbles in his hand. Flashes of hot and cold ravaging his body, he practically shoves it in the toaster, aching, hurting, shattering.

(OR: a fragmented road to recovery)

note:

drv3 spoilers!!

tw // suicidal thoughts tw // kokichi's death, miu's death, gonta's death (not directly stated but vague details) tw // unhealthy coping mechanisms

this entire thing is a bit heavy in general so please proceed with caution. it's not so shippy because my goal isn't to romanticize any of this, shuichi isn't a magical being who can heal kokichi with his words and touch, and he's also on the path of recovery as well

this was all written as a word vomit vent thing in one sitting so just lmk if you spot mistakes

i care about you, please reach out to someone when you need to

READ ON AO3! 

--

He should be asleep.

Kokichi should, but then again, there are a lot of things he should be doing—healing, resting, blocking all memories out—though night terrors and bubbling trepidation and the inability to close his eyes without feeling the cold metal beneath him has proved to be a hindrance. He stays awake more often than he doesn’t, which is something entirely beyond his control; no matter the soothing words Shuichi mumbles in the dead of night, or the way he always keeps Kokichi close by in a loose yet comforting hold, he can’t sleep.

He doesn’t anymore. He’s stopped trying, anyway.

(It goes deeper beyond the label he hides behind as just insomnia. If insomnia can be defined as “persistent problems falling and/or staying asleep,” can it really be just insomnia if he’s the one who’s forcing himself to stay awake? If he only faces more sickening memories when his eyes are closed, what’s the point? Or maybe, just maybe, he’s lying to himself again, something like youdon’twantanyofthoseoptionsyouwanttodisappear—but as he always does, he lets the lie bleed into him until it is him. Until there’s nothing left to call a lie.)

He could be a zombie now, he’s sure of it. With the way he’s roaming around the apartment at—a glance at the clock—4 in the morning, and the way he certainly feels undead, calling himself a zombie doesn’t seem too far off. Shuichi’s grip on him, however loose it may have been, was getting too suffocating anyway.

He sits on the couch. Stares at a TV that’s playing nothing.

Deep breath in—

(...shut up, you asshole! the whizzing of an arrow through heavy air—kaito, can you hear me, please drink this antidote sorry, but i can’t die here… since i’m the mastermind of this killing game—redwhitehotsearingmetalcold—)

He scrambles to turn the TV on.

It’s so funny. The way they never stop fucking talking like a mixtape of voices ringing in his head even though everything is over and done with, oh god, he shouldn’t be dragging this out like he is, because none of it even happened. If none of it happened, why does he always feel the phantom pain of arrows digging into his flesh, or the descension of metal onto someone so petite—it all certainly felt so real, still feels so real—

—It’s not, and he knows that. He woke up from the simulation. Fought until there was no fight in him left. Until his lungs turned to ashes and pretty amethyst hair was yanked out of his scalp (by his doing, everything bad is always by his doing, so it seems) and so many eyes came to check in on him each day he spent recovering slowly in the hospital.

Is he supposed to feel relieved?

Happy? Glad that he’s awake from all of that? It’s alarming, really, that he feels nothing of the sort. What is he supposed to feel? Even if Saihara-chan had told him that any of his feelings were valid—anger, bitterness, resentment and horror—why does he still feel like nothing? Not numbness, but akin to it, certainly, because numbness is where you feel nothing, but simultaneously he feels like nothing. Like everything. Like death. Like life he doesn’t want breathed into him.

The TV drones on, white noise in the back of his head. He could make this work. That’s right. He’s adapted before. He can make himself feel okay again, or lie himself into thinking so, because that’s how it always ends, doesn’t it?

On shaky legs, he blocks out the voices; abhorrent Maki’s, strained Kaito’s, harsh Shuichi’s, tearful Gonta’s, desperate Miu’s, all of them cherry-picked from every single corner of his mind that he can’t ever find a way to escape anymore.

He stumbles, wandering without a purpose over to the bathroom, a trembling hand pushing open the door and flicking on the light. Headache-inducing fluorescent light flickers overhead, until it floods the capacity of the room, bearing enough light for him to be able to survey himself in the mirror.

He looks dead. Or, more so, like he could die. Right now, and maybe put an end to everything. An end to nothing. How does he fucking escape? How can he live like this? Or with this, the knowledge of everything he did in the killing game, his sacrifice, the hatred in everyone’s voices that he doubtlessly deserved?

Kokichi giggles, low and empty, as he turns the faucet on with a squeak and splashes cold water on his face. He could totally die right now. The way that brings more relief to him than anything else ever since the simulation is so laughable.

I could die. Right now. It’s as simple as using the sink or smashing my head against the bathtub. How hilarious.

Giving one final splash of frigid water onto a pale face, he turns the sink off, and allows himself a small moment of breathing. He’s been so bad at that lately, both him and Saihara. Everyone, really. No one is near being the textbook definition of okay, but they all didn’t expect to be either, although the one stark difference between them and him is that they’ve accepted that they’re going to recover slowly and reach okayness once again.

So why does he feel so stuck? Whenever he runs away from the echoing whirr of the hydraulic press it clutches him in its grasp again, and whenever he embraces it it makes him relive the entire scene over and over and over again in ways so sickening he feels like he just gets worse with each damn passing night—gasping for air even when he doesn’t sleep, awakening in cold sweat if he does manage to doze—maybe there’s nothing for him left here, fuck, why didn’t they just let him stay dead—

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. He could do the anxiety coping technique, or he could listen to music as a distraction, or he could go back to bed and pretend none of this is happening, or he could do the breathing method (in for four, hold for seven, out for eight), anything.

He could eat something. He could do that.

Shuichi’s been reprimanding him for his neglect of food anyway (even though the bluenette isn’t all that better at it) so in a way, this could serve as an apology for his inability to be a good person, boyfriend, living human being, all of that. For causing him so much trouble. For interfering with Shuichi’s own recovery process, even though it’s the last thing Kokichi wants to do. Unfortunately, the universe has a lovely addiction to just screwing him over.

Swallowing past a gag, because all of this thinking is so overwhelmingly nauseating, Kokichi stumbles out of the bathroom, not bothering to turn the light off. Everything is always so loud at night, everything is doused in so much more clarity, to the point where he can see them clearly. Miu’s face, terrified and contorted, even though it was just her avatar he still recalls so clearly the look of utter anguish on her actual corpse. Gonta’s baffled and horrified look when Kokichi wouldn’t stop yelling and yelling and yelling (“I’m sick of hearing you say you don’t know! God, why are you so dumb?”). They haunt him in ways unexplainable, although both of them had already made clear they’re on the path of forgiving him, but why does he need to be given undeserved forgiveness—

He finds himself in the kitchen, hands so shaky and cold he’s barely able to even turn on the light, panic emanating for no fucking reason, because he’s all messed up and gross and mutilated in ways that can’t be seen with the naked eye. He can’t cope. Everything fails when he tries. He laughs again, choked and nervous, opening the pantry and letting his eyes mindlessly glance over the food on the shelves; he reaches with invisibly scarred arms and takes out the glass jar of honey.

Toast is easy to make, right? Easy to make. You put the bread in the toaster and you wait and you spread honey on it when it’s done. Shuichi likes toast with honey. It’s easy. Kokichi needs easy. He can do this.

Ignoring the voices that have started screaming at him again he fumbles with the bag of bread, barely managing to fish a slice out, hands latching onto it in a seizing grasp so tight it almost crumbles in his hand. Flashes of hot and cold ravaging his body, he practically shoves it in the toaster, aching, hurting, shattering.

why are you like this it’s so easy to live why are you having so much trouble with it? is it because you can’t stop hearing iruma’s pleas or maki’s harsh words or kaito’s yells or saihara-chan’s confusion whenever you hung out and played games? is it because it would’ve been easier to stay dead, easier to be crushed and leave it at that, all cracked bones under unforgiving metal? or maybe it’s because—

Stop, fuck, just—

He’s crying—why is he crying?—by the time the toast pops out, golden and hot but he picks it up anyway, he’s been burned worse before, by words and by poison, so he holds it and puts it on a plate on the counter that they must have forgotten to put away.

With a strangled sob he clumsily takes the jar of honey again, tremulous fingers barely letting him even keep his hands on it, glass smooth and cold against calloused skin, worn and too ruined and bitten to be attached to someone as youthful as he is. He can do this, he has to do this, because he doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere near better but if he sticks to routine and does everyday things he should be doing easily—he could trick his mind into thinking so. It works, it always works, please work this time…

(Why is something as simple as this so goddamn hard, why is it all so hard, why was dying easier than all of this, why is existing so easy but settling down so difficult, why is waking up so simple but finding reasons to let it stay that way so unbearable, why, why why why—)

He bites his tongue and curses brokenly when the glass jar slips from his hands, falling to the floor without an ounce of grace, fracturing into uncountable glass shards at his feet.

Immediately he steps back, before sinking to his knees with a pathetic sob, the same sinful hands reaching out, hovering and unsure of what to do. Broom—yeah, the broom, he can sweep this up, he can fix it, he can fix all of this, he can fix himself, he can live, he can make himself feel okay, he can exist, he can do this, he can breathe, he can—

In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. His lungs quiver and shrivel up and cease to work whenever he tries sucking in air, body failing him, mind overrun as his vision blurs. If he could just get up and get a broom or something, he could get this all over and done with, or he could stop thinking of the worst possible ways to end this, end him.

Arms wrap around him gently before he can even try to stand up. Kokichi trembles, clawing at the hands of the person as he blubbers and cries and bows his head, unraveling again just as he always does, sick to his stomach and wondering why he’s subjected to this form of torture that he’s incapable of enduring for any longer.

The person gently turns him around in their arms, cups his cheek. The hand is cold. Shaking, too.

He wants to laugh again, but all that leaves him is another mangled cry, idly pressing his forehead against Shuichi’s chest, ringing in his ears so loud he can’t hear whatever the other boy is trying to tell him. Kokichi’s fingers dig into his back, into his soft sleeping shirt, moments away from tearing the fabric. He could throw up. He could die.

A kiss is pressed to the top of his head, and Shuichi is too nice for someone who had found his very pathetic boyfriend sobbing on the kitchen floor with forgotten toast on the counter and a shattered glass jar with honey pooling at his feet. This time, Kokichi does laugh, the noise interrupted by hiccuping sobs but near-hysterical at the exact same time, the sound oddly resembling the way he had laughed in the killing game, though lacking the malice it had at the time. Tired this time around.

He laughs until it gives way to screaming sobs, Shuichi trying his best to stop his own disturbed trembling, merely speaking softly and low into the shell of Kokichi’s ear, no doubt trying to reassure him. Or get him to cope (and fail). Or help him breathe.

why is this happening why am i like this why are you doing this to me, shuichi, it just hurts more whenever you try and i’m trying so hard to feel okay again and make things easier but it just gets harder every single day and—

—Kokichi giggles softly.

Shuichi shushes him gently, but Kokichi basks in the ridiculousness of this all. He switches between laughing and crying, screaming and chuckling, breaking down. Perhaps he’ll never get back from this. Shuichi had told him that all his emotions are valid, but how can he describe how he’s feeling into words? Crying is supposed to help. How amusing.

(Is he supposed to feel better? Relieved? He stifles a noise halfway between a sob and a chortle. It’s uproarious, he decides, that he feels anything but.)

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

Halt and Catch Fire 4x05: We're gonna have to talk about it at some point, right?

"Nowhere Man" is a frustrating hour of tv if you, like myself, are overly emotionally invested in Halt and (some) of its characters. There's nothing wrong with it on a technical level, though it might have felt a little less cohesive than the earlier episodes, which did so much work to establish everything that was happening. After four hours of very well-plotted 'table setting,' "Nowhere Man" seems to relax a little and let things start to run their proverbial course.

But it's Halt, and a lot of characters with prestige drama/wh*te angst, so that means our beloved characters acting a fool, right? I.e., realizing things about themselves, struggling to deal, and falling back into old habits, patterns, and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I'd rate "Nowhere Man" as solid, and I definitely enjoyed watching it, but I felt really aggravated by a lot of what happened in it, tbh. (Literally nothing but spoilers for Halt and Catch Fire 4x05 below.)

Things that aggravated me:

Gordon and Katie. Like, I wanna like them, but, at the same time it's like, ah, another woman who's completely out of his league! Sure, Jan Chrises

The Heterosexual Emotional Roller Coaster known as Jameron. Seriously, that fight that they have in the beginning is like, the embodiment of straight culture, and of course it meant the return of Hoe MacVillain

How did Donna NOT RECOGNIZE CAMERON'S CODE after allegedly 'staying up half the night' looking at it?!

Related: I actually enjoyed Donna trying to squeeze Bos and Cecil, but I did not enjoy worrying about how Tanya might get punished for Bos' scheme.

TOM. Really? Ugh I did not wanna have to see this motherfvcker's face ever again

Cameron's throwaway 'oh, so you are here to kill me!' joke when Tom said 'many birds, one transcontinental stone'. Do not play like this, show!

Rover Bro saying Donna's 'lost her mind'. You're on thin ice, man. Thin. ICE.

"Whoever wrote this is on another level!" Yes, we get it, Cecil is painfully average as a coder! "Go ask HIM for the damn specs!" And Cecil also assumes a man wrote the algorithm for which he's getting so much praise, so cool

"It's an old woman tied to a bed!" Again, show, do not play like this?! Also do you have to do the whole 'Tom and Cam: Cute Couple' charade? And then hit us/Cameron with the news that Tom's whatever is pregnant before his divorce is even final? Oh and then Cameron apologizes to him?!?!?!? GODDAMNIT, SHOW

Bos' utter desperation, and his fight with Cameron, which was…not the same as but was way too close to "The Threshold", if you catch my meaning. Also Cameron really believed it would never come back to her? My precious, foolish bby. Sigh.

Followed by Bos having that horrendous argument with Donna who was in full Bitch Mode (even if rightfully, considering that Bos' lie puts her at risk)? And then Bos having a cardiac event?! WHY

Donna telling Cameron to stay out of her life. OBVI. Even though part of me was all *smashes shipper goggles onto face* 'But at least they're in the same frame and talking!'

Haley feeling left out when Katie and Joanie are listening to PJ Harvey together, even though I very much like Katie and Joanie getting along (and I'm also v into Joanie's outfit, talk about A Look)

Cameron's confession. Beautifully written, masterfully acted, but it wasn't a grown up's confession. It was the confession of a person who's partly emotionally frozen at the age of 9 or 10 by her father's death and who's blurting out something bad she did so her parent/s won't get mad at her and stop loving her. None of which is bad or wrong, I just really want her to be with someone who doesn't trigger that response in her! Or who at the very least doesn't like, repeatedly enable that response (…you know who I mean, I don't have to type out her name, do I?)

Donna and Gordon's phone call felt the same way? It was nice to see them have a good conversation (where he's finally doing some emotional labor for her…) but man, I really wish Donna had someone else to talk to. And not necessarily Cameron! Just, someone who's there for her. She also deserves better!

The final montage. I didn't dislike it though, I'm more just, baffled slightly by it? It's a typically odd/distinctive Halt directing choice, I think, to juxtapose a woman, her ex-husband and their method of tracking his illness that didn't work, and her ex gf partner's game like that.

Also wait -- are they signaling issues between him and Katie already, by subtly, sort of comparing her to Donna ("Is there a pattern?") If so *Tina Belcher groannnnn*

Some things I did like:

Joanie playing Pilgrim, even if she's frustrated with it

Again: Donna. Just, Donna. Slowly but surely applying pressure to her Rover team. And bonus: the good drama that comes with viewers figuring out who knows what -- it seems like Tanya and the couple don't know that Cecil didn't write the algorithm. There's literally an entire ep of Jane the Virgin that explains and demonstrates how this is one of Alfred Hitchcock's rules of suspense: giving the viewer and some characters information that other characters don't have. Literally classic.

I'm actually not sure how I feel about Gordon and J*e's heart to heart. I don't sympathize with him, but I empathize with J*e's inability to not worry about the future and being left behind, and his habit of obsessing over his work when he can't cope with his personal life. I definitely dig the true bromance vibes! As well as Gordon's real wisdom that none of us know how things are going to work out, even if some of us seem more fortunate/emotionally stable in the present. IDK, it's a little aggravating to focus so much on J*e's angst, though?

Donna laughing evilly while Diane makes fun of a guy who cheated at golf

This will sound like a weird thing for the like column, but Diane's reaction when she saw Bos collapse. She sounded human. Also, they let us know right away that Bos survived. Man, I don't think I've ever in my life felt so relieved to hear a tv doctor say, "He's gonna be okay"

Weirdly? Cameron and Donna meeting at the hospital. Donna being very gentle with her, but then…figuring it out. She says, "So it was you." Omg does that mean she suspected it all along? She did look very pointedly at Cameron's game on the computer screen while Joanie was playing in the very first scene! Ugh I'm still mad at you for misdirecting us show

I wonder how Cameron knew to go to the hospital -- Donna didn't call her. Did Diane?

Gordon listening to calming recordings of his own voice because it's very Leslie Knope leaving reassuring voicemails for herself

Roller derby

Donna finally finding out about Bos' debt

Haley secretly listening to PJ Harvey, because Haley is a dear and I love her and I want to see her continue to enjoy her life and flourish

The final montage. I know, it's in the dislike column, and it's in this one too for Donna figuring out Cameron's game (literally) and PJ Harvey. It almost makes up for the fake out with Donna pretending to not recognize who wrote the algorithm.

I guess, in short: if they're working toward any kind of real reconciliation between Cameron and Donna (and of course we have no idea what the showrunners are up to…), they're going for that real slow burn, which is good but also hideous for those of us on board the SS CamDonna. I’m torn between dismay over already being halfway through our final season, and some kind of relief that both the awkwardness between Cameron and Donna and the episodes in general have been so enjoyable so far *KNOCKS ON WOOD*