#pear is in a hyperfocus moment again

[groundpear]

When you're drawing and the soundtrack is Toše Proeski '^^

[blackroseraven]

So the latest game I've been vaguely obsessed with is The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia. It is a mix of typing game and bullet hell, which go together surprisingly well. You play as Ray, who is a former exorcist for the Holy Church, now doing private exorcism work. It very much follows the tried and true trope of the disillusioned former hero who is forced to reckon with his past, and the gradual rekindling of his faith. I felt it actually handled it pretty well by never taking itself too seriously and playing off a lot of said stereotypes, going so far as to make tongue-in-cheek references where possible, such as when Ray travels to Naples to reconnect with his old master, Naples is portrayed as Tokyo, complete with Mt. Vesuvius replaced by Mount Fuji.

It has a very simple but effective artstyle, using RPG-maker style pixelated sprites and simple graphics. We mainly get textboxes for dialogue, with a few instances of scrolling text for narrative purposes. The music is excellent, providing a lot of atmosphere in both the humdrum moments toodling around Ray's office, but also during combat: almost every combat event has its own theme, which helps to emphasize the importance of every exorcism you have to perform.

Difficulty ramps very smoothly by first having you deal with exorcisms in English, and then Latin. Some exorcisms additionally require you to deal with interruptions on the fly, such as randomly inserted words, or text being manipulated or blocked by the enemy. While the bullet hell aspect can feel overwhelming at times, it's important to note that Ray doesn't lose health from taking a hit: his bible must be knocked out of his hand first, and then he becomes vulnerable to losing health from the next attack. Conversely, however, you can't do anything but run around when you drop your bible, and verses need to be restarted and completed in full.

Combat is broken into multiple attack phases: for each phase you have to complete a phrase or short verse, while the enemy attempts to kill you. Completing a verse deals damage to the enemy, removing a point of health and moving them into the next phase. Later in the game, some demonic phases become 'shielded,' requiring a special action in order to destroy the enemy's barrier before you can actually continue the exorcism.

I actually thought for a little while the game was bridging into "too difficult" territory, but the best advice I found for the game was 'don't get caught up in the typing aspect.' You actually do have plenty of time to type, and getting the next letter in the sequence correct is enough to refresh the counter. Rather than getting lost in typing, it's important to focus on the bullet hell aspect and learn enemy patterns and how to dodge attacks.

I was stuck on one boss, for example, for a very long time, until I finally realized that I was making it much harder on myself than it had to be, and there was a safe zone to hide in where attacks could be easily strafed and avoided. The game takes advantage of the way your brain naturally wants to hyperfocus on completing the sentence laid out before you in order to allow the enemy to ambush you: most enemies telegraph their major attacks ahead of time, and all of their attacks are avoidable once you begin to understand their patterns.

You can also earn and equip Trinkets, which give you certain benefits - or negatives - that impact both your score and Ray's performance. Wise Pear Bookmark, for example, means that Ray doesn't instantly lose his place when he drops his bible, allowing you to pick up from where you left off as long as you can sweep the bible up fast enough, although it reduces your score by 30%. Score cannot be reduced below 0%, making it difficult to equip more than three trinkets, unless you're willing to also equip something that increases your score percentage, always at a negative effect to Ray.

So yeah, it's a game I can definitely recommend. It's clever, charming, and challenging, and in spite of how frustrated it managed to make me at points, I kept coming back to it again and again and I already want to play through the game all over again.

[iambelegodoy]

A little list of things that I hate because my boyfriend did that on Twitter and I feel like I can’t do the same thing there. It would be indelicate, right?

I hate my dysphoria

I hate how bad it feel when I take off my binder

I hate how feminine my face is

I hate how no kid ever asked me if I was a girl or a boy

I hate how confused I am about my gender

I hate feeling guilty about things that I never ever done

I hate religious trauma

I hate when my mother forces my little brother to pray making he believe that God will punish him if he don’t

I hate when people say that things that I do are annoying

And I hate the fact that, once they say that, I never do those things again

As a writer, I hate cancel culture

I hate the fact that I can’t erase the shitty things I posted on internet when I didn’t knew they were shitty

I hate how I never feel enough

I hate it when people don’t pay attention to me

I hate looking into someone’s eyes in a conversation

I hate it when people ask me to stop talking about an hyperfocus

I hate when a phase that I shared with someone ends for them and not for me

And I hate time

I hate December

I hate chronophobia

I hate growing up and noticing that none of my friends will live with me in Canada as we said when we were 10

I hate losing friends

I hate this faith I put on people

I hate how easily I believe on lies

And I hate how much I care about other people’s problems

I hate it when I feel responsible for other people’s problems

I hate it when my dad tries to touch me, but I never discovered why

I hate when my mom say that things I like in my body are ugly

I hate it when she blame me for her mistakes

I hate how she judges mothers for the same mistakes she did with me

I hate how she thinks she’s perfect and I am the one to blame for the pain I’m feeling

I hate hating her

I hate it when I don’t have the energy to give my brother attention

I hate it when I have hyperactive tics and people look me weirdly

I hate the fact that they might think I’m faking them

I hate being neurodivergent

But I hate it more when people tell me to pretend I’m not

Have I said about how much I hate time?

I hate how everything I write is trash

I hate feeling insecure

I hate how much I can’t focus on the present moment

I hate pears :)

I hate soup, never understood why

And so many types of meat, but I’m not vegetarian

I hate J.K Rowling

I hate how my gender is a political discussion

I hate how my existence is debated

I hate the fact that I always need to advocate for trans people because I’m the only outed person in my classroom

I hate when my friends look at me in the biology class when my teacher is being transphobic

I hate watching my family making jokes about my existence

I hate it when my mother talks about marriage and how I’ll find a nice man

I hate the fact that I can never ask her advice about my boyfriend

I hate it when people doubt that my boyfriend exists or when they look shocked once I tell them

I hate it when my boyfriend asks me if I’m alright and I lie because I’m so tired of annoying everybody

I hate physics

And my physics teacher

I hate how easy it is to call my best friend “dad” and how hard it is to call my real dad “dad”

I hate not being able to disagree with anyone without feeling wrong

I hate how bad my English sounds

I hate how dumb I feel playing RPG games

I hate how easily I give up on things because I feel I’m going to fail

I hate when people insist in mistaking my pronouns after I tell them that I’m trans

I hate people from south Brazil, even loving the place and culture

I hate it when my friends say some very bad shit and I can’t correct them without being annoying

I hate the fact that my grandpa would hate me if he was alive

But I hate more the fact that he died without seeing me graduate

I hate it how he promised me that he would be there

I hate cancer

I hate the word cancer

I hate how scared I am from cancer

I hate how far I am for my grandpa every year

I hate how fast the time I’m passing

I hate the fact that I consider killing myself at 18

I hate how it sounds like the only good idea because I can’t do anything write and I don’t want to give my parents more problems

I hate how much I want kids

I hate the fact that I can’t, because I am as aggressive as my mother

I hate when people scream at me

I hate loud noises

I hate the fact that my mom is proud of making me starve for a whole afternoon

I hate the fact that I can’t go back and fix my grades

I hate the fact that I am not incredible like all of those superstars

I hate it when cisgender people compliment my looks

I hate it when they call me “bonita, Linda, garotinha” and stuff

I hate when cis people call me she

I hate how gross I feel about liking women

I hate how disgusting I feel about loving my boyfriend

I hate the fact that I never kissed him

I hate how much I lied to him

I hate how much I lie for everybody

And hey, I hate when my dad think I need to love him because he bought me things I never asked for

I hate how touch is my love Language and I can’t touch my boyfriend

I hate it when I don’t understand sarcasm

I hate how easily I get sad

I hate how literal I am

I hate it how “I love you” sounds superficial

Mostly of all, I hate myself