(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 go-getters and bread-getters, welcome to Day 455 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
It finally happened.
The first consecutive post since 11th June which was almost three months ago holy shit.
A prophecy that was foretold in ancient scrolls has finally come to pass, and I write two days in a row once more… although I have no idea what to ramble about other than to simply throw out what is on my mind.
I ended up sleeping in hard this morning, waking up to the sound of my alarm before doing the one thing you should try never to do when unemployed and going back to sleep. On paper, I “lost” about an hour of time that could have been used in other ways, though I tend to view these types of calculations in a more nuanced way, if solely because I know I would not be at prime functionality waking up at that initial time anyway, spending what could be viewed as a “productive” hour shaking off grogginess and waiting for coffee to kick in anyway.
Although the above definitely reads as some amount of cope for the fact without a job, I struggle staying in a healthy routine. Staying up at late hours on weekdays doing not a whole lot of anything except zoning out to Youtube videos to numb how I am feeling which leads into sleeping in hard during the mornings to compensate for staying up that late, before dragging myself out of bed to work on whatever small bits of upkeep I can manage and perform the accursed task of job searching once more.
Even on days where I manage to get applications done or make a good amount of progress around the house, I cannot help but feel a sense of stagnation, or rather, a feeling of yearning for what my life was like with a job. Being on the hunt for a new role is repetitive as all hell with little variation in how things play out.
Fill in personal details, fill in supporting statements, fill in references. Double check everything you wrote down. Tweak it here and there to make it more suitable to the role. Have friends check it over. Tweak it further. Send it off. Get ghosted. Feel sad. Start the whole cycle again.
I am no stranger to repetitive work, my primary field of quality assurance relies on performing repetitive tasks in different permutations to see where things break. Automation can minimise a lot of these tasks, but checking other paths through an experience is often something that needs to be done by hand to find where real humans will find friction or frustration.
But there is a stark difference between the repetitive nature of job hunting versus having a repetitive job… outside of the obvious pressures that come with being unemployed.
The main thing I miss is socialising with my colleagues over morning standup. We would often get onto the tasks for the day fairly quickly but those five minutes a day where we would chat about any random shit that had come up in any of our lives is something I was not anticipating to miss, but I find myself yearning for even the smallest conversations before getting on with things for the day.
For all the talk I do about being a remote-first individual who will advocate for remote work in almost any role that can accommodate it, maybe office socialisation would not be so bad for me in the long run – especially if I am finding myself pining for the most basic and bland social interaction that comes in a professional environment.
My train of thought went off on a tangent far removed from what I was intending to talk about today, but that is the magic of the Redundancy Review. A peek inside the psyche of someone on the borderline between Gen Z and Millenial, somehow finding myself sympathising with the struggles of each generation in the problem I currently face.
What I was actually wanting to talk about today are those days where all I will really do is passively exist, where everything I need to get done in a day happens, but it feels as if nothing has ultimately happened except for the fact I have existed on that day. In some respect it could be a sign of declining mental health in the face of adversity, that days roll by into each other with no clear definition as to what happened on each day leading into existence feeling homogenised.
I like to view it with a different lens though, one specifically of finding the positive within overtly shitty situations. For a start, being able to wake up each day in a body that feels comfortable to me is an absolute blessing that I know not many others have, and is the result of years of estrogen taking its effect. Could my body be better? Absolutely, but the work continues each day.
Additionally, being able to wake up as a trans person each day and try to survive in a world that oftentimes feels insanely hostile to people like me feels like an accomplishment in and of itself. Holding on to hope that the world can become a better place than it is right now and wanting the world to be better when I eventually leave it are two similar ideals that help keep me persevering through the harder days.
Sometimes, continuing to exist is all that matters in order to see another day where you can live life to the fullest.
Outside of it being three months since my last consecutive post, it has also been just under three months since my last VTuesday and well… there is a lot I could cover. While I was gone there was a number of big releases on both my Hololive and indie fronts:
Hololive English Justice released an original group song called “SUPERNOVA SUPER GIRL”, a high energy bop which I do not listen to often but have a super soft spot for.
Hololive English Advent released another original song called “Spotlight”, an inspirational little number with the amazingly godlike lyric of “Aurafarming baddies in a getaway car” partway through.
Hololive English as a whole had their fourth concert titled “Serendipity” alongside the official MV for the title song release, which I get to see a screening of this concert in under a week’s time as part of my Vexpo trip which I definitely will talk about soon.
Shiori Novella, one of my Hololive English oshi released a four part motion comic series detailing an original story involving the Archiver herself and several other holomems in an emotional tale with some light moments that does not constitute as official canon what the hell?
And whilst this happened before my long VTuber discussion hiatus, Rin Penrose debuted a new model that is insanely more expressive than his old one and started uploading regular videos on old Flash games which has definitely become part of my regular entertainment regime.
So… there is a lot I missed, a lot I could discuss, and to be honest a lot of it I will probably stick in a backlog and work on it as time passes, but today I want to talk about something recent released in the Hololive space, specifically a cover song by Mori Calliope and Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame, of a hype anthem that has inspired anime fans to do the impossible, see the invisible, and fight the power.
Yes I am fully aware paraphrasing the song is cringe as hell, but I absolutely do not care considering Gurren Lagann holds a special place in my heart. It was the first anime series I ever watched fully as a semi-aware teenager, of course I had watched Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and individual episodes of other famous series before that point, but Gurren Lagann was my first experience of watching a story all the way through and I came out the other side a changed person.
Gurren Lagann has its weird moments, as do all anime, but I struggle to think of any definition to it other than “pure art”, a story about human perseverance in the face of impossible odds, and using those impossible odds to push your own evolution beyond its limit to overcome any obstacle in your path.
And I think a song that blends opera singing and rap music into a song that punctuates the most awesome mecha battles you have ever seen is the perfect definition of doing something impossible to come out with the best result.
The opera lyrics are in Latin, and tell the story of someone praying to a god to grant them peace, rest, and sanctuary in the fact of an oncoming apocalypse, which is perfectly contrasted with the rap lyrics being about taking what you want for yourself and not letting anything, not even a god, get in your way as the song ends with the two singers dueling to be heard until all that remains is the rap singer repeating those immortal words.
“Row! Row! Fight the power!”
That is enough about the song itself, so what do I think of Mori and Liz singing it?
Absolute.
Perfection.
There is no other way to describe this. Two singers who have diametrically opposed vocal styles, arguably two of the greatest voices in Hololive English (I love you too Nerissa) coming together to utilise their own strengths into something beautiful. I knew Liz had pipes, but I was not fully prepared for how powerful her voice was going to be in the opera parts.
As for Mori, I actually tend to flip-flop on where I think her voice shines best. There are some of her originals where I cannot help but bop along, special shoutout to Grim Reaper is a Live-Streamer for the first original of hers where I fully appreciated her talents, but at the same time there are some songs where I listen to them and I can tell she is trying her damnedest and either the lyrics do not sit right with me or I do not think her vocal style matches the song.
(disclaimer: not a professional music person, might be talking out my arse)
However, there are no such qualms with her approach to the rap on this song. In fact I think it might be some of her best vocal work yet, especially when the two of them reach the dueling segment as she starts out quiet with the opera overpowering her before she rises up in the mix to overpower any feelings of hopelessness.
Oh, and the entire thing is topped off by the key art being drawn by an artist known as Hyde/@Tabakko, an artist who I primarily follow for our shared love of a certain white fox friend, but is able to create these beautifully detailed pieces on commission for various Holomem projects, with Mori as Simon and Liz as Kamina with her fucking chest flame having little Kamina glasses on them being a small detail that elevates this from a gorgeous piece of art to a true homage to the source material.
Given the recent news of all of the Hololive branches merging into one, dropping the identifiers of “English”, “Indonesia”, and “DEV_IS” to unify everything under a single “hololive” name, and the usual anxiety that comes from any big high-level company plays like this, it reminds me of how I have always chosen to view Hololive as a company.
The main purpose of Hololive is to bring talented people together to create amazing works of art, original or interpretative. Hololive acts as a catalyst to these projects, helping talents access resources they would not be able to otherwise and provide connections to make projects like this come into reality.
But the source of all these projects are the girls behind the talents, and those are the ones who need the support in whatever they do. Whether it is whilst they are still in Hololive and working the best they can within a corporate structure, or when they graduate to go do their own thing, supporting the talents at any point in their journey is the best thing to do.
And as the somewhat Skyline Serenade concert has been able to show, you do not always need corporate backing to come together to create something magical. Sometimes all it takes is the perseverance of a few talented individuals, and those around them who can help enable amazing projects.
Not only did I write consecutively, I wrote way more than I anticipated for how I was feeling today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing good in these challenging times. We can make it through together, and I know we can see a brighter day on the horizon.
Rosalia Rambles 