Redundancy Review: Day 134, “Self-Expression”

(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

Good morning impressionists and pointillists, welcome to Day 134 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

One of the first things to fall for me when I enter into a depressive spike is my outward self-expression. My appearance starts to falter as I neglect doing a proper hair wash and shave to use what little energy I have on not smelling like the dumpster I feel I am, and my choice of clothing goes from the goth-lite style I typically enjoy to simple hoodie and joggers.

It definitely helps me to cope with the depression, I do not need to put much mental effort into deciding what I want to wear and can instead direct that energy into making sure I can do what is absolutely essential for the day.

In a way though, it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. I find myself falling into a state of depression, which makes my self-expression slip, which worsens my depression because I struggle to feel like myself, which makes it harder to find the time to dress up all cute and fancy without it feeling like an obligation.

Writing definitely helps ease that feeling, or at the very least make me feel as if I am able to keep up with a form of self-expression, even if that mostly boils down to letting the words flow out of my head onto the page to make things more quiet up top – very much needed because of how noisy my brain feels right now.

On the plus side, I know my employment will at least last for the rest of the year, with some amount of uncertainty about what might come next depending on the work output of myself and the people I work with. It provides comfort and anxiety simultaneously, the former from the fact I know I can at least see out the rest of this year working towards a goal, and the latter from once more facing down the barrel of uncertainty in a highly competitive jobs market.

God this is turning into a proper ramble, I am struggling to keep my head focused on the task at hand and I keep veering off topic to talk about everything going on.

I think I am just going to do some affirmations before I head to the review segment, both for myself, and anyone reading who may need it.

It is tough to carry on right now, but I want to keep moving forward.

There is still so much room for me to grow, I can keep growing stronger.

My career has not peaked, I still have so much more to give to my field.

Everything I have been through has helped me become who I am today, I am the net result of every victory and every defeat.

Things feel overwhelming right now, but I will keep going.

There is still so much beauty in this world I am yet to bear witness to, and I want to be able to put my own stories into the world.

I teared up a little bit writing that all down if I am honest.

Anyway, time to go into the review segment for today, which… is less a review, and more just a discussion about my fursona.

Meet Rosa, the Arctic Fox & Phoenix hybrid. She is essentially my “truesona”, being a reflection of myself more than an actual character I would embody, down to her having similar proportions to what my actual body looks like IRL. This reference sheet was drawn by my friend Ely, who I think did a fantastic job with the entire thing.

So, why did I make the design choices that I did with her?

Part of it comes from my background in playing Monster Hunter. In both Rise and World I had armour & weapon setups that focused on the idea of fire (or blast, in this case) and ice, which slowly evolved into becoming my signature loadouts with me even developing lore based around the two Elder Dragons that the weapons were derived from.

This elemental aesthetic inspires not only the animal choices for the fursona itself, but for the colour detailing on her as well, with the orange & blue markings representing her two elemental affinities, the colours being matched in the eyes two.

Fun fact: I have given enough of my characters that are supposed to represent me heterochromia that I have had to write a note down that reminds me which eye is supposed be the chromatic one, as it is always a blue right eye with an unnatural colour for the right eye – orange for the fursona, and pink for any of my Monster Hunter characters.

But I want to dive deeper on why the phoenix was chosen as one half of this hybrid. The arctic fox part is easy enough to explain: it is a creature associated with cold environments and I absolutely love foxes.

The phoenix has a lot of personal connection to me though, and it started long before I became a furry.

Initially, my connection to the mythical creature came through my first D&D character, Marieya Ebontide, someone who I have written a lot of fiction about and still need to give her a proper ending. After coming up with a part of her backstory on the fly for a nothic to dig into, that small fact soon evolved into developing her as a sorcerer suppressing her powers, gifted to her by having the soul of a phoenix.

Over time, I found myself connecting with the concept of the phoenix more. I related it to my own challenges, how each time I got brought down to my lowest point I would always find a way to rekindle myself to come back stronger than I did before.

Fire dims, colour fades, and feathers shed – but nothing lasts forever, and whatever is bringing me down low fades, letting my flames reignite once more to let my true nature shine through.

I will finish up this review by going into the painful and excruciating details as to why my truesona has wings…

…wings are fucking awesome.

Simple as.

While they do a good job at helping hammer home the phoenix aspect of the character, they are mainly there for being damn awesome, even in the small amounts of lore I have written for her I specify that they are not flight-capable wings, primarily there to add lift to jumps or stabilise herself during acrobatic manoeuvres.

That pretty much covers it all for today, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you have been able to get past the hump day feelings and are able to look forward to the weekend coming soon.