Most people characterise despair as a sinking feeling, but not Dirk. No--despair, when it comes to Dirk, is experienced as its own distinct sensation of clarity. It's like all the grinding, turning, pushing and pulling, splitting and rejoining of thoughts ceases, and in the space left by that internal silence, he can see all of it for what it is.

Hythlodaeus still isn't listening to him.

The platitudinous gumma of a trite and toothless one-liner tells him that much, and leaves him little room to respond. He's only just about to say something truly incendiary--perhaps even choose the nuclear option--when Hythlodaeus' Pokemon physically yank him out of the mental whirlpool he's begun. They're fast enough that his physical opposition to this is minimal, but he yanks each arm out of the Yasmsks' grasp with a lot more force than necessarily, shrugging his shoulders back to visibly reclaim his composure.

He might be able to credit that disruption of thought with the idea that occurs to him then--but if he does, it will have to be later. It's not the time, nor is it a plan he's certain of. He may recognise it later for a different kind of epiphany--the kind of temporary insanity that comes from the farther reaches of his Self, placed at the fore of his thoughts by some incidental factor or other. It happens.

So he holds tight to it in his mind, pressing his jaw against it and any number of other thoughts, promising himself to the task of remembering it later. And he digs in his heels one more time.

"You know you don't have thousands of years to fuck me into whatever shape you want, right?"