Can you live your dreams?
A Pseudo-Pseudo Suzu Route
is a Katawa Shoujo Shipping fic featuring Suzu Suzuki, a girl from the front row of Hisao's class, who suffers from a chronic sleep disorder named narcolepsy. The fic is set from Suzu's perspective, and runs from Hisao's introduction to the class and then for the usual four arc style.
Throughout the fic, Suzu has to deal with love, her past emotional trauma, and a never-ending game of Battleship with the grim reaper himself. Despite this, the fic manages to stay with a snarky, lighthearted sense of humor, meshing well with the sleepy commentary from the Protagonist.
This fic includes examples of:
- All Just a Dream: Because the protagonist spends most of her time asleep, dream sequences come up consistently.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Suzu's narcolepsy is not presented very realistically. This is made worse by other authors, knowing that this fic is so popular, using the exact same Suzu in other stories.
- Big Sleep: In the Bad Ending, Suzu experiences this. Except she isn't dying and then closes her eyes peacefully, she closes her eyes first and then falls off the school's roof.
- Chess with Death: The very first scene opens with a game of Battleship in progress. It's actually her dead brother Seiji, and it started as a way to cope with his death, but things changed.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: This is a fic with Kenji in it.
- Death by Falling Over: Due to Suzu's condition, this is an actual possibility which she needs to be careful of all the time. In her brother's case, it's was a reality.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Death is friendly enough most of the time, and he does play a mean game of Battleship.
- Driven to Suicide: Possibly, in the bad ending. After feeling guilty for indirectly causing Hisao to have another heart attack, Suzu sits right on the edge of the school roof, fully knowing what might happen if she fell asleep. And then she does.
- Heavy Sleeper: Due to the narcolepsy, it can be hard to wake Suzu. Hisao is the same after pulling an all-nighter.
- Hollywood Board Games: The first scene opens with a Battleship game between Suzu and a face-changing individual that haunts her dreams. Her mood is sour and she loathes having to interact with him but is afraid of venturing into the dark nothingness surrounding their table. It's later revealed that this recurring dream is a coping mechanism because the individual is Suzu's late brother Seiji. This also explains her attitude: she's well aware this is unhealthy but can't bring herself to let it go.
- Metaphorgotten: Suzu tends to lose her train of thought and trail off while making comparisons.The sensation of Hisao's body next to mine is more soothing than any... any thing that is usually really soothing but not as good as this.
- Not a Morning Person: Suzu considers waking up before midday on a weekend ungodly.
- Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Suzu and Miki are ... extremely close, often sleeping together or cuddling for hours on end. Really, for an outside observer, they can look closer than Suzu and Hisao. Of course, this is in part to help each other deal with their respective issues, but still.
- Sleepy Head
- Tempting Fate: Suzu quickly realizes her mistakeWhat could go wrong? Wait wait wait, no. Can I take back a thought? Can I—no, nope, no. I'm sure something horrible will happen and everything will be ruined forever. Yeah. That was close. We should be good now.
- The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: Kenji finds a sleeping girl outside of his dormroom, assumes that she is a member of the feminist conspiracy, and kidnaps her.
- Theme Naming: The names of every member of the Suzuki family start with an S.
