True pacifist% entails digging to the end room/going back up to the altar - neither of which look too interesting as speedrunning options. This can work with the "Almost a pacifist" achievement/trophy which demands you to kill nobody but kolmi. This way it'd be more clear and straightforward but still share the spirit of a pacifist category but also be easy to validate as killing anything would not make that trophy appear in the end room - parallel to hitless with the beard statue
I mean, when it comes to true pacifist%, WR will end up with 'Ice Charge x Black Hole combination.
(Note that the pacifist achievement must requires that you reach The Work, so the sky Altar isn't valid.)
On the other hand, the 'almost a pacifist' run is not much different from the common run: "Any% - Circle of Displacement".
And I think the former is much interesting, category diversity wisely.
Going a little further, No gold run is even more interesting in terms of gameplay of speedrunning.
Unlike traditional speedruns where the shop is very important, you have to clear the game solely by finding the good teleporters and boss killers from wands in the dungeon... and ofc avoiding invisible single gold pixels!
Sure, bosskiller in the no gold category will become more difficult to find but the hard cold truth is that the meta will still be cut any% - teleportitis without exceptions as the movement option, at least for WR. Nothing even comes close to the speed of it counting in the no gold factor.
As for the Pacifist, going away from any% similarities to freeze + BH seems fairly fine, that plus some kind of angry ghost BH + freeze field looks viable... On second thought he category seems promising
