i've read aevee bee's i love my untouchable virtual body so many times these past few days. i sought it out thinking "well she mentions invulnerability, that's kinda similar to my feelings about danmaku, right?". and well yes but it's also a piece of writing that grips me by the throat. this is the writer behind heaven will be mine after all.
i have been feeling weird, which is to say i haven't been doing well and all i can do about it is be deeply moved by art and chant posts like 'everything is a transgender allegory except being transgender which is about being alive' like mantras in my mind. i only ever say things obliquely, through someone else's mouth. sometimes i relate to alice from lake mungo more than i'd like to [1] (you really ought to watch this movie if you haven't yet).
that being said this is a text about bullet hells.
i'm a big shameless casual. i have come close but have yet to clear either of my pet touhous — perfect cherry blossom and imperishable night. my finished games are all hybrids: horde survival picayune dreams, raiding roguelike rabbit and steel and, the latest, fighting game maiden and spell [2]. i don't really feel like playing the stgs with ships and all (but i'm sure i'll try eventually). i like seeing a screen filled with the beautiful patterns of danmaku.
i truly love being amidst a barrage of bullets. how could i not be. most bullets could never hit me. they're not trying. i know exactly what part of me is vulnerable — a little dot, no more than a few pixels wide. if i'm too hasty, too desperate, i'll run my hitbox directly into a projectile. the game is as much about staying still as it is dodging.
my favorite patterns are those where as long as i stay put nothing can ever harm me. the game tells me to breathe and not panic as the bullets close in. it's unsustainable and my haven can't last but it's a comforting reminder that the game cares about me. it doesn't seriously want to kill me and we'll go out for drinks afterwards.
there's an elegance to games where the best strategy is always simply to not get hit. delay your first death as long as possible so you have lives to spare for the harder bosses. of course there's more to it than that, you need your survival strategies, you learn to stream [3] and so on but it's all secondary to this single idea: get used to the hazards and live through them.
have i made things clear yet? i'm an avoider. i don't like thinking about my problems. well no one does, and i do it anyway obviously. but i find it hard to entertain solutions. it feels as though the only real solution to anything is being somebody else. lacking that option i stick to hoping that i can react fast enough and bomb away a bullet aimed directly at me. survive through sheer violence and willpower when nimbleness couldn't cut it. i don't like having to refuse to die but it's all i have left.
i have been taking testosterone for roughly seven months now [4], unbeknownst to anyone in my family. doing hrt like this is nervewracking for the same reasons it is great. i wouldn't know in notes or frequency how much my voice has dropped but now it's been at a lower register for long enough that natural hoarseness due to this or that isn't cutting it anymore and my mom won't let me forget it and i knew damn well this would come sooner or later but can't find it in me to say a word about it. there's a thrill to grazing. see how close i can get to danger that it touches my sprite. see how i have no fear for i know precisely what my size is and precisely where i am.
amidst the downpour of bullets there's no time to think of anything else. i have to move enough to survive, and not a pixel further. another percent in my completion score is a victory. just hold on a bit further.
[1]: "i feel like something bad is going to happen to me. i feel like something bad has happened. hasn't reached me yet, but it's on its way. and it's getting closer. and i don't feel ready. i feel like i can't do anything."
[2]: i did initially mean to just write a little review / analysis of one or more of these. as you can see that'll have to wait.
[3]: streaming is when you move very slowly in a single direction so bullets aimed at you form a tidy and more easily avoidable stream. as opposed to flitting around erratically and causing the screen to fill up. see, sometimes you can even control where the bullets go.
[4]: comprar androgel sem receita é real. pelo menos pela internet e buscando na farmácia.