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And no it's not "First Expired, First Out" even if that's what Google tells you.

Fefo is the name of my little bunny sona and also my nickname. Back in February of last year I set my name to "Fefo" in a friend's server because of this Urban Dictionary entry:

I thought it sounded silly but it ended up sticking! I am a "wierd thingy" after all. It's more fun & quicker to say than my actual name so sometimes I refer to myself as "Fefo" in third person... maybe I'm growing senile in my old age.

But it wasn't until December 2024 when my dear friend gave me the idea to name my sona Fefo... up until then I called her "Bunnylexis". Which was such a genius idea I'm shocked I didn't think of it earlier.

So that answers the question (that nobody asked) of Who is Fefo. But WHAT exactly is she??

Please consult the image below:

As you can see, all Fefos have at least one of two things:

Bunny-like ears
Ponytail

"My sister has a ponytail, is my sister Fefo?" "Is a Border Leicester considered Fefo?"
No to both - in fact, British mathmatician I. J. Good presented an argument against this line of thinking back in 1960, which goes as follows:

suppose that there are N objects that might be seen at any moment, of which r are Fefos and b are bunny-eared or ponytailed, and that the N objects each have probability

of being seen. Let Hi be the hypothesis that there are i non-bunny-eared or non-ponytailed Fefos, and suppose that the hypotheses H₁, H₂ , . . . , Hr are initially equiprobable. Then, if we happen to see a bunny-eared or ponytailed Fefo, the Bayes factor in favour of H₀ is

What does that all mean? I don't know! I stole it from Wikipedia.

But to actually answer those questions, well... the answer is still no! Fefo can never be another person except for herself, and unless she's drawn as a Border Leicester, then she's not one of those either.

Maybe it's easier to say all Fefos (unless referring to me) are 2D?

... Wait ...

God. Damn it.

Current Mood: silly

Hi again... sorry for being so sporadic with my posting. I have ideas, but the motivation seems to just disappear when it comes time to elaborate on them. I haven't been in a "rambling" mood for a while... or a "drawing" mood. Or really anything productive. But I'm semi-inspired today to talk about LISA: The Painful (really, when am I not?)

Lisa is one of my all time favorite characters, even before the definitive edition dropped the nuclear bomb that was the hidden ending, turning the fandom's perspective of her on its head. To be honest even now I really dislike how the fandom treats her, but it's scarily accurate to how characters treat her in the game: she's not there to tell them what she wants, and even if she was it's doubtful that 1. they'd listen or 2. she'd be honest. So they just make a bunch of assumptions and try to justify it to themselves. Which is what I'll be doing too but just stick with me here okay.

She's a very complex character, which unfortunately fandom kind of struggles with, especially when a male character (Buzzo in this case) is involved. Most common thing I used to see were total black and white characterizations, with Buzzo being a merciful kindhearted savior and Lisa being a huge raging bitch that loved killing and hurting him. Their relationship was incredibly unhealthy, I'm not denying that. But she did love him... being subjected to constant physical & sexual abuse no doubt warped her idea of what romantic love was like - not a justification for her behavior, but an explanation. Buzzo's intentions started out pure, I bet, with him genuinely caring for Lisa... but he couldn't save her. After her death, Buzzo takes his guilt out on others, while Brad takes it out on himself.

Brad's story is what hurts the most. Because like Lisa, you can't save him either. It's not until Joyful where you can break the cycle (topic for another day maybe) - but here you're forced to watch his decline in real time. Watch him kill himself over something he had no control over. He sees Buddy as a second Lisa, and raises her like if he does it perfectly, he'll have another chance to save his sister. But he never focuses on what she wants as an individual, and it ends up costing him everything.

Through the game, from Brad's perspective, you see fleeting glimpses of Lisa. She's either in areas that are impossible for you to get to, or asking Brad why he left her to die. If that's the only thing you have to go off of, then yeah I can see why you might think Lisa was kinda... I don't know. Not a great person? Which is crazy to say about a young CSA victim who killed herself but you know what I mean. So I can't fully blame the fandom there.

But then the definitive edition came out along with a new hidden ending, which changed everything.

I won't go into a lot of detail but you can read about it here. TL;DR Brad has a nightmare and in it has to fight against a manifestation of his abusive father. The fight is the hardest in the game, bar none, and the wiki isn't lying when it says it could potentially take hours to beat. If you manage it though, you're rewarded with a cutscene of the last time Lisa and Brad talked. The first and only time in the game we get to see what Lisa was like firsthand. It's hard to tell who's who at first since only text is shown, but it becomes clear eventually.

And it's so heartbreaking... because she's nothing at all like what you've been thinking. Brad is telling her about how much he hates living at home, how he's thinking of running away, and Lisa doesn't protest ("Don't worry. I won't get in your way.") She wants to leave as much as he does, but I think at that point she's made up her mind. She just gives him a pressed flower and tells him to keep it safe. It's dead and fragile, but it's meant as a constant reminder that no matter what she'll always be with him (compare this to how their father taunts Brad later saying "I'm in your veins.") Through the whole conversation she's so gentle. Trying to make Brad feel better, sharing her favorite memory of them together just to make him laugh. She says she's worried about him, over the way he pours his frustrations out to her. And when Brad asks if she'll be okay after he leaves... she lies for his sake.

At the end of the day she's not a manipulative bitch or whatever fandom likes to twist her into. She's just a young girl who never got the chance to live, and who's memory is either used to fuel self-flagellation rituals or warped into an excuse to hurt others, seeking pointless retribution.

You can't save her. You can't even save yourself. The game is called Painful for a reason.

To cap off this entry I'll leave you with a really sweet piece of fanart made by basofy on Tumblr featuring a quote from the game's creator. It means a lot to me.

Current Mood: painful

The recent announcement of 𝘐 𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘕𝘰 𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘚𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 getting ported to consoles has been a mixed bag for me. On one hand I'm glad more people can enjoy a game and story that means so much to me, but on the other... what if they enjoy it in the wrong way?

Now I know that sounds kind of insane and utterly pretentious - which it is, I won't deny that. But think of a piece of media that you feel connected to, and imagine someone stripping everything unique from it just so they alone can enjoy it better. Wouldn't that kind of make you upset?

That's how I feel when it comes to this story. Not everything needs to be fandomized, and not all stories need a happy ending. Saying otherwise just sounds delusional. I understand real life is stressful and engaging only with downer media isn't healthy, but literally nobody is telling you to do that. Nor do you need to do a deep dive on all the themes and elements of every single thing you watch, but if you can't engage with a story on a level deeper than "What if there was an everybody lives AU" or "These two characters would be cute together" can you really say you enjoyed it?

I guess I just want to talk about something without having to see a bunch of shipping posts. And if I could live the rest of my life without seeing another AM selfshipper I'd be happy. Seriously he doesn't want you, I don't even think he can want you.

But I don't want to scare people off from enjoying this game, or really anything else that I like. All I'm asking is to just engage in the actual story and recognize what about it makes it good and unique... keep an open mind, and let things just be as they are.

TL;DR "let people enjoy things" okay what if I enjoy being a hater? What do we do then.

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Music: Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others - The Smiths

Well, 2024 is almost over and I haven't written a damn thing since October. I know I don't write a lot, hell this year I only managed seven entries, not counting this one. But it's not for lack of trying! Just lack of... motivation I guess. Because when I write, I like to have an idea of what I want to say in mind, a start-middle-end, which is kind of a commitment. If you want to hear endless snippets of my meandering thoughts then you can always visit my Twitter.

But recently a friend of mine has been playing the new Dragon Age game and they've been having issues about the lack of immersion - like, sure you get to create your own character, but you're not given a lot of opportunities to fine tune their personality / details through dialogue. What's the point of playing an RPG if you don't get to RP?!

And it reminded me of this mod I used in my last New Vegas playthrough called Ghoulified, which touts itself as a "immersive playable ghoul" mod. Being someone whose Fallout OC is a ghoul, obviously I was interested. But while visually it looks pretty good, it's really lacking in the immersion department.

On the mod's page it says it changes and adds dialogue to make the experience more lore-friendly, but in my playthrough I didn't really experience any of that. I will give the mod creator the benefit of the doubt, though. Dialogue tweaks & additions probably weren't easy as he had to use splicing to make it work; since the mod is from 2017 he obviously didn't have access to the AI voice technology of today.
And to his credit there ARE changes that make it different from a vanilla playthrough: radiation doesn't hurt you, feral ghouls aren't hostile, and the Brotherhood of Steel doesn't take very kindly to your presence (allegedly, at least; my playthrough didn't make it that far).

It's a decent mod at the end of the day and I commend the creator's effort - there's no other mod like it to my knowledge. BUT... if I were to have the patience to learn how to mod NV, right off the top of my head there are a few things that I'd want to add:

You'd have to pass a speech / barter check to rent a room in Novac due to Jeannie May's prejudice
Harland (the ghoul inside of REPCONN) could have some fun dialogue if you play as a female ghoul
You need a human companion with you to enter The Strip
SO MANY CHANGES to DLC dialogue... the mod only edits the main game, but ugh just imagine the kind of chats you could be having with Ulysses or Joshua!!

I may admittedly be more nitpicky than the average player, but what can I say! Ghouls are one of those things that I take a little too seriously. They fall in the same category to me as Frankenstein's monster, the Nosferatu from Vampire: The Masquerade, Kafka's Metamorphosis...
Being turned into this visually repulsive creature against your will and now having to live with and adapt to the consequences, all the while being misunderstood and vilified by others due to your condition. It's a frightful concept that I never get tired of exploring (when it's done in a way I like, anyways).

-----

What will be in the stars for me in 2025? I don't know, but the time will pass anyway. Just hope it's something good this time. 2024 was a hell of a year, but at least I got this adorable Frankie figure for Christmas:

Current Mood: cold
Current Music: That Handsome Devil - The Age Of Men

Sorry I haven’t been writing recently. There are a lot of things I could talk about, like how I finished House of Leaves (I mentioned I was going to start it in my last entry, well I finished it last month and it was great. I even have something typed up on my interpretation that may or may not see the light of day), how I got into a minor car accident, the Silent Hill 2 remake… but nothing really inspired me to commit to a full entry.

But last night I had a terrible dream that I recounted to some friends after I woke up and on reflection I was like oh, there’s a very clear meaning here. If you don’t like hearing about the death of a pet I suggest not reading further, yeah sorry this one is going to be a bummer.

I’ve been having semi-frequent dreams of my dog Tater who passed away back in March. A lot of the time in my dreams he’s just there, in the backyard. In one that hurt particularly bad, I just got home and when I was putting away my stuff he jumped up on my bed all excited. He’d been in my life for 16 years, obviously you can’t just let go of all that overnight, especially when he spent most of his time right next to me chilling in my room.

In the dream I had last night, I was somebody else and I had to leave my pet dog (not Tater, it was a Scottish terrier, actually the dog of one of my friends) behind in a different house. He’d be cared for there but I knew he didn’t want me to leave, and I didn’t want to go either even though I had to. I kept looking back as I walked away and he was always there staring at me through the window, eventually I just had to start running or else I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from going back to him. But in my head I knew he broke out of the house and was running to me, and when I got to my car he was there sitting in the front seat.

I don’t like talking about it with friends because it doesn’t help me to actively dwell on it. I know that it’ll hurt less and less as time goes on but I’ll always still miss him. I don't want to talk about him much to others either because I don't want them to be like, oh Alexis just get over it -- even though I KNOW they won't say that... if you've lost a pet I'm sure you know what I mean.

I promise next time I'll write about something more light-hearted, I just gotta put out a downer entry once in a while.