Shower Of Angst / Literature

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• In Bloodsucking Fiends, newly-turned vampire Jody takes a shower and cries for her lost humanity; she also flashes back to a similar incident when she lost her virginity.
• Chrome Shelled Regios: Nina tends to do this when upstaged by Layfon, or losing a battle to another platoon.
• In Cyteen, Justin showers upon waking in Ari's apartment the morning after his rape. He washes every inch of himself down to the inside of his mouth and accomplishes nothing but making himself smell like his rapist's soap.
• The Dresden Files: After the disastrous ball at Bianca's Michael finds Harry Dresden huddled under the spray of his unheated shower suffering from angst and the early stages of hypothermia.
• Done by Asagami Fujino in The Garden of Sinners; in her case, she actually was raped. The value of this scene jumps to eleven when the film adaptation came out. Then again, she becomes a psychotic murderer who is simultaneously terrified of her powers and unconsciously leering at the horrid violence.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: When Harry asks after Quidditch team captain Wood after the Gryffindor team loses their first match, the twins admit that he is still in the showers, and joke that they think he's trying to drown himself. Add to this that they'd been playing in a thunderstorm and were all already soaked.
• In Memory, when Miles Vorkosigan begins to realize who he is as Lord Vorkosigan (he'd shunted all of his energies into Admiral Naismith for years), one of his first actions is to take a hot shower, "to scrub out the unpleasant, lingering scent of shame." He even explicitly compares it to a baptism. He then dresses, for the first time, in full Vor Lord regalia, and begins on the path that would become his future. It's practically Redemption in the Shower.
• In The Other Boleyn Girl, following her bloody and painful miscarriage of the King's son (basically the main reason she's Queen), Anne orders a bath be drawn up for herself, making the water so hot her skin flushes red. Her sister Mary (the narrator) remarks on the usual similarities to baptism. After this thorough cleaning, Anne puts on a dazzling silver and white gown to emphasize her innocence and purity.
• The Place Inside the Storm: After the protagonists arrive at Cedar Creek Commune, Tara spends some time curled up and crying in the shower.
• Taylor from Queens of Geek takes a hot shower to calm down after a meltdown.
• The Scholomance: When El spends a night in first-class accommodations after a harrowing fight with a Tortured Monster, the first thing she does is spend an hour in the shower. It doesn't help with the memories, but at least it feels more thorough than cleaning spells.
• Shaman Blues starts this way, with the hero washing off various intensely-smelling and disgusting substances he has gotten all over himself in the Cold Open, recounting the events that brought him to this point and being generally furious.
• Social Queue: After a disastrous date with Loving Bully Aiden, Zoe is so drained that it takes hours to work up the energy to get into the shower. Once she's there, she spends a lot of time sitting down, feeling like the water is washing away her shame and conflicted feelings.
• Iris of The Ultra Violets spends a traumatic couple of hours in the shower, trying to turn her now purple hair back to blonde—only to find out it's permanent. Gene modifying goop does that.
• Xandri Corelel: After surviving an assassination attempt in Failure to Communicate, Xandri spends an hour in the shower, but she still feels dirty from the assassin's blood.

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