Rosalia Rambles

Tag: holoen

  • Redundancy Review: Day 334-336, “Mission Statement”

    Redundancy Review: Day 334-336, “Mission Statement”

    (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 C-Suites and executives, welcome to Day 334-336 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Going to be another career focused ramble today, though one that hopefully ends off with a more positive message around my own work than anything else. 

    It feels easy to create career-focused articles right now because of how much is going on in my head surrounding my current career. Whilst there is a prevailing desire to leave behind startup culture with a greater motive of leaving the tech industry entirely, I cannot deny that the prospect of transitioning away from a five year career feels somewhat daunting – especially when that entire time has been spent within the corporate yoke.

    The problem in my mind is that I am far too good at existing in a system that I do not want to be a part of. This especially hits home when I reflect upon my own self and how people such as myself often struggle to meld within these spaces whilst maintaining the expectations of others.

    Or to drop the formal business speak: how the fuck has my trans and neurodivergent arse survived in this world for so long?

    In all honesty, the answer is most definitely privilege, in that my career thus far has been surrounded by people who either understood where I was coming from – my line manager’s last message to me at Codemasters was “I hope you become the person you want to be” – or had a natural curiosity about my situation and wanted to learn more from the source rather than making assumptions based on whatever the media is saying.

    Side note, if on the off chance you are somehow reading this: I am definitely the person I want to be Pete, and I hope the crazy world of EA has not swept you up too hard like it has done to so many of my other colleagues.

    People understood that my brain was likely going to cannibalise itself every so often, and when I brought up my concerns to the people responsible for managing me the response was usually:

    “Wow, that sucks. You’re still doing good work though so try not to stress too much.”

    Which does track. I will have moments where everything sucks and my mind is eating itself alive, but I still try to deliver. I guess allowing myself to have schedule slippages on the Redundancy Review now is a sign that I am being a bit kinder in terms of how I treat my work…

    …not a massive fan of the wording there, which is strange to say cause I wrote it, but I am not “allowing myself” to have breaks. The Redundancy Review is a reflection of who I am as a person, breaks in the schedule of the so-called “daily series” reflect how I am feeling in the current situation I find myself in, having lost two jobs within the span of a year.

    This leads nicely into what the title is about. One of the main things you come across when applying to corporate jobs is when you start doing your research on the company you want to join, which invariably leads you to a “mission statement” or “core values” page.

    Borrowed from my old haunt of EA

    They usually are one word titles followed by a brief summation of what it means to the company, and it is one of the easiest wins you can find in a job application or interview by being able to quote a company’s values back at them as it shows you took the time to learn about the foundation of the company.

    Considering I want to work on this site as a proper artist in the wake of this latest layoff, whilst simultaneously showing that even though I have made a public declaration to leave the industry, I still have the wherewithal to reinsert myself back into the corporate if needed: I am going to write a mission statement for Rosalia Rambles today.

    Rosalia Rambles is the personal brainchild of one Rosalia Butler, an introverted and slightly neurotic writer from the UK. Her headline series is the “Redundancy Review”, an (almost) daily series which covers her adventures navigating joblessness whilst also providing an outlet for her to gush about nerdy things. In addition to this, she is a passionate fiction writer with the ability to adapt to any genre and an underlying talent to try to make any piece of fiction trans allegory. 

    Going forward, she wishes to adopt the following values into her work:

    Humanity – The focus of the Redundancy Review is the human behind the screen. This means there will be no Generative Artificial Intelligence content hosted on this website, as to do so would be to sacrifice the integrity of the site as a whole. 

    Expression – Art is a reflection of the soul. Whilst there will be nuances in how certain topics are presented to maintain professionalism, ultimately this site is meant to be an expression of my true self. This means a decent amount of swearing, an unabashed joy in how I present myself as a trans woman, and very few filtered thoughts unless the situation calls for calm.

    Messiness – Humans are messy creatures, and any articles or stories will reflect that messiness by presenting an unfiltered view into the soul of an artist. I will make mistakes, I will not filter feelings, and I certainly will forget to correctly place images in the future. Mistakes are what remind us we are human: we make them, we fix them, we learn from them.

    Kindness – To borrow the guiding principle from my mentor: “Everyone shits. And how we deal with that is how we move forward as people.” I shit, the people behind topics I review shit, everyone shits. What matters is how we navigate the fact that everyone shits, with the overriding value of kindness above all else.

    Legacy – “Life isn’t just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies… what we’ve seen, heard, felt… anger, joy and sorrow… these are the things I will pass on. That’s what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with.” 

    …yeah that last is ripped verbatim from the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2, but considering I am a card-carrying member of the Cult of Kojima, I have no shame in applying some of his fantastic writing skills to my own work.

    In a sillier world I would add “VTubers” as a core value, but that is what we have VTuesday for.

    Raora Panthera falls into the same category as Nerissa Ravencroft to me, in that a new generation of Hololive talent debuts and there will be one or two members I am instinctively drawn to, but the remaining members end up standing out to me in their own ways.

    Specifically, what drew me in with Raora was twofold:

    • Her amazing Youtube shorts that either played around with her lore as a member of Justice, or just her explaining how to make various Italian dishes
    • Her streams of Monster Hunter World, which became frequent background noise during my work hours whenever she streamed it

    The latter in particular was very good at making me a fan, as I gelled with her personality very easily and I became familiar with her more nerdy side over time.

    Today’s review is about her second original song, “Draw.”, and I think it is a good example of being able to engage with art even if you do not fully understand it.

    Case in point, this song is in majority Japanese with no English subtitles available, and only a few English lyrics to go off to try to discern the meaning.

    Despite that, I consider this a beautiful piece of art about the nature of creation, and how art that comes from the soul is made with the purest colours.

    “All the pieces I picked up
    Unraveled within my own chest
    “It’s okay,” I whisper softly
    Saying it back to myself”

    To me, this English verse refers to the nature of an artist drawing inspiration from the world around them and using their heart and instinct to make sense of it all, reassuring yourself that art created from your own external stimuli is valid, especially if you use it to help you process the things you see.

    “All the colors I held back
    Start to gather in the hush
    “It’s all right,” the first light tells me
    Sending warmth into my heart”

    This verse refers to the artistic side struggling to express itself in the way it wants to. Colours in art can mean multiple different things, and can bring about many different interpretations, and it is good to let those colours out as an expression of yourself, letting whatever artistic muses you may have influence what you put down on your medium of choice.

    The main English verse though is what made this song speak to me:

    “Draw it slow, draw it true.”

    Art is an inherently slow process. It can take months, sometimes years, even decades for a work to reach its true completion, what matters is that the end result is true to the mind behind the work. Speed does not matter when creating works of art that reflect the nature of the soul, the key factor is that the end result rings true to the soul of the artist.

    “The effort you put forth to anything transcends yourself, for there is no futility even in death”

    Monty Oum

    Outside of the lyrics, the music video itself is gorgeous, reflecting what it means to be an artist with delightful visual references to programs, tools, and silly little doodles present throughout as well.

    I love the medium of VTubing, especially as VTubers from across the spectrum of corporate to indie all put in immense effort to their creative contributions to the world. I often use the phrase “digital puppetry” to describe VTubers to people who might not be familiar with the topic, but the medium itself goes far beyond such simplistic terms, as every VTuber is an artist in their own right, no matter what area of expertise they specialise in.

    A perfect blend of corporate speak and talking about the nature of being an artist, all the while affirming what I consider to be the “mission statement” of the Redundancy Review – this might be one of my best works yet.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition. Wherever you are, I hope the week is treating you well so far. The world continues to turn even if our bodies are catching up to that fact, and whatever we do this week, we can smash it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 322, “Comfort”

    Redundancy Review: Day 322, “Comfort”

    (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 duvets and blankets, welcome to Day 322 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Today does not feel like a good day. A mixture of the events of last week combined with period brain descending upon me has led to my emotions feeling volatile and horrible, flip-flopping from anger to regret over being angry to overwhelmed and somehow finding every emotion in between that.

    To this end, even after I dragged myself out of bed to play some Umamusume and watch the Helldivers 2 patch notes video with my partner, I find myself back in the same location sipping a delicious mocha and finding some weird inspiration to write about how I feel right now.

    Period brain can do many things to me, but one of the worst things it does is turn the various negative parts of my mind up to eleven. Catastrophising gets amped up to the point that even the most minor inconveniences somehow turn into world-ending events, depression and despair make my outlook on things I enjoy turn into doom and gloom predictions of wondering what could go wrong, and as for my aggression levels, well, I will refer to contemporary poet Fred Durst to explain how it feels:

    “It’s just one of those days where you don’t wanna wake up
    Everything is fucked, everybody sucks
    You don’t really know why
    But you wanna justify rippin’ someone’s head off”

    It is a rare occasion where I get to quote Limp Bizkit for something – I do not even consider myself a fan, but “Break Stuff” is an infinitely quotable song for moments like this.

    So, what do I do when everything is fucked and everybody sucks?

    I seek out things that comfort me.

    Quick synonym tangent, I initially used the word “insular” to describe how I prefer to interact with things that comfort me, but I did not think that really describes how I view the situation, a point that was compounded further when I looked up the synonyms of the word and I did not really agree with any of them. Thesauruses are great, I know most people would use an LLM to do the task today, but that removes the joy of discovering just how many synonyms can exist for a word as the chatbot response will only cover the most popular.

    Back on track – comforting myself is an activity I usually do in seclusion more than anything else. Whilst other people (my partner included) find comfort in getting out there and spending time with like-minded individuals, my comfort typically comes from being in a private space where I can engage in my hobbies. 

    Most of the time, this is me getting all cozy in bed with a hot mocha and an ice water, with me zoning out to streams or playing stuff on my Steam Deck. Long stretches of time where I can have no interruptions from the outside world where I can focus solely on immersing myself in another world.

    Escapism would be the most appropriate term to describe this I guess, something I have talked about before last year with a Redundancy Review. It was the reason why, up until I got canned again, that I was looking at properly investing into cosplay more this year cause I view the idea of getting all dressed up in the outfit of one of my favourite characters as one of the ultimate forms of escapism.

    Feels weird to say in a way, that one of my ideas of peak comfort is dressing up in an elaborate getup only to sit at home and do the things I would be doing anyway, but I think it serves as an important disconnection point to the harsh reality that envelops so many of us today. A persona, if you will, one you can put on or off at will to help feel like you are someone greater than you are… though I feel I lean more towards “magical girl” vibes than “superhero” vibes when the latter would be more appropriate to some.

    This is also where my love of worldbuilding and elaborate details probably comes from. The notion of having a fantasy world where even the most minute details are thought through brings joy to my soul, where systems are thought through to try to give them as much grounding within the real world whilst retaining the whimsical aspects of fantasy.

    And considering this is the first VTuesday I have been able to mark in a while, this also marks a good opportunity to talk about why VTubers appeal to me in the context of escapism.

    Despite having never grown up as your typical “theatre kid”, being more the shy and reserved type, there is a certain appeal in the notion of regular people being behind virtual avatars. Whilst kayfabe is slowly becoming less of an “essential” part of VTuber culture, for better or worse, the characters that the performers embody can still carry a lot of emotional weight in their words and actions.

    This might be why Hololive English Advent is my favourite unit of VTubers, as they blend together what I consider to be a perfect mix of the real person underneath combined with their lore and characters. Their personalities coming through on streams and them being the sweetest people ever contrasts wonderfully with how their original songs and stories go.

    An original song is the topic of today’s review, the final part of Advent’s five-part story: Unchained

    I reviewed Genesis what seems like a lifetime ago, and between then and now the remaining songs have come out of the series. Is it a little weird I am reviewing the final song without having covered the second, third, and fourth songs? Yes. Do I do anything in order on the Redundancy Review? You bet your sweet arse I do not.

    Unchained I feel is an appropriate song to review both for a day like this and considering the events I have been going through recently. It is a song about escaping from any trials you have gone through before and living a new life full of freedom, hope, and expectation for tomorrow.

    The first chorus in particular speaks to me:

    “Now I feel so free, I can be who I am,

    I know I’m not alone, I got a new life,

    In the rain, the wind, and the sunlight.

    You believed in me, and that’s where it all began

    Now hope is everlasting, I can live my life with you,

    Unchained”

    With this next stint of unemployment, outside of some emotional volatility, there is much less fear than there was before. In a way, I do feel like I have a new lease of freedom compared to what I had before, and that no matter what days ahead I face, rain, wind, or sunlight, I have a life that I can truly call mine, one fully unchained from the past.

    However… it would not be a Rosalia Rambles piece if I did not find some way to extract a trans allegory from this song, and by god the chorus definitely hits that criteria. 

    Being trans mean to live a true life unchained from the expectations of others, and in living that truth you live a happier life no matter what outside forces are coming at you – and believe me there are a lot of outside forces that want to bring you down if you are trans.

    Transition is not a solitary thing though, or at the very least, transition gets a whole lot easier when you have supportive people in your life. Having confidants that believe in you and want to encourage you to be your best self can give you some amazing amounts of motivation to live your life to the fullest.

    I also want to do a bit of analysis on the bridge, as I feel that is a wonderful sequence that speaks to the lore, and actual social dynamic, of Advent being a found family of misfits:

    “Don’t cry, you can breathe free; I’m here if you need me

    Let go of all your heartache,

    We made it through, it’s the dawning of a new day

    Feel the world’s embrace,

    Oh what a joyful place

    This is where I wanna be, so come with me;

    Keep dreaming…”

    First off, I have to gush about the first two lines sung by my absolute favourite sweetheart Shiori Novella. Her voice is so smooth and soft making these lines so comforting to listen to.

    But all of these lines combine to give the vibe of Advent regrouping after they finally made it out of The Cell together, taking a moment to breathe and take in the world around them, seeing the beauty of nature once more before carrying on in the world, being free to dream once more as the group of lovable renegades they are.

    God… for all of Hololive’s documented issues, I still find it so easy to support the girls when they put on massive projects and performances like this – especially knowing how bureaucratic it can get behind the scenes sometimes.

    Thumbnail picture, swiped from the official Hololive English Twitter account

    That covers everything for today, a somewhat rambly Redundancy Review for a very up-and-down day. Thank you for reading this edition. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and enjoy the things that bring you joy and make life worth living.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 14, “Bandaging Bruises”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: https://rosaliarambles.wordpress.com/2025/06/11/redundancy-review-day-1-a-new-beginning/)

    Good morning scrappers and brawlers, welcome to Day 14 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yesterday sucked.

    It sucked really hard.

    The Jobcentre was of minimal help to the current situation, only being able to give me the phone number for HMRC and telling me to take it up with them – which got sidetracked when I got home and found an email from the Insolvency Service saying part of my payout had been denied, a situation many of my colleagues found themselves in.

    I was in a foul mood cause of the meeting, and this discovery only exacerbated things for me, to the point I sent a very strongly worded email to the liaison officer handling the company about what I had encountered along with how furious I was at their conduct throughout this process.

    Considering we got a response, and I specifically got a letter I should hopefully be able to take to the Jobcentre, we definitely lit a big enough fire under her to get things moving… did not stop her making two fairly egregious errors in my letter initially though but that is me being a bit sour still.

    This entire process/journey I am going through right now has been extremely hard on my psyche. Part of the Redundancy Review’s origin is trying to make the best out of a bad situation by using my time to stay in the habit of writing, but that is still what it is: a bad situation.

    Having to go back to the Jobcentre is humiliating, especially as I have been in regular work for the last four years. Explaining my situation over and over again reopens any wounds I thought might finally be healing. Every time I have to deal with bureaucratic bullshit to get what I am owed I feel a reminder that the life I knew has fallen apart.

    But I can not stop. 

    I will deal with whatever necessary evils I have to in order to get what I need. I am a fighter through & through, a head-first problem solver in all scenarios, and a bloody stubborn person to the core… however difficult that last one has made things for me sometimes.

    God that felt good to get out early in the morning.

    There is a positive for myself to look forward to today – I am axolotl sitting for my parents. They are currently galavanting around Europe so I need to go back to my childhood home to not only take care of a gosh darn cutie, but also water the plants in my mother’s greenhouse, some of which are earmarked for me so there is definitely some urgency there.

    Still have not heard anything back from Poncle yet either. Starting to get a little paranoid that I might have screwed up the application somehow or my passion at the idea of working there was a little offputting. Hopefully something comes in soon, be it an interview request or a rejection.

    If anyone reading would like to help me out whilst I am waiting, I am currently always available for freelance writing work. My emotions go into everything I write and if the above proves anything, I feel extremely intensely about things. Fact or fiction, I aim to introduce passion to everything I write.

    Today’s review topic is going to be another Hololive-based one, but instead of reviewing a group’s version of a song, I am going to be looking at a talent’s original creation.

    Mori Calliope debuted in the first generation of Hololive English, “Myth”, and has been one of the most prolific members of the organisation behind the now-graduated Gawr Gura. From multiple partnerships across different organisations to performing at her own solo concerts, she has really made the most of her time in the company.

    When it comes to her music though, I am usually of a split opinion – either being incredibly impressed with how a song fits her voice or feeling that she might be trying a bit too hard.

    None of my worries come through with Lose-Lose Days though, in fact I think it might be the best song she has ever produced in her time with Hololive.

    It is her love letter to the other members of her generation, having been released around a month after Amelia Watson graduated and the meaning of the lyrics only amplifying in the wake of Gawr Gura graduating earlier this year.

    Considering in the early days Calli struggled with her role as an idol, most notably using a higher pitch in her voice to appear more “cutesy”, seeing her talk about some of her struggles through this song is rather impactful.

    “I was all bark no bite

    Fighting with God

    When it got dark at night

    The hours got long”

    To me these lyrics speak to Calli trying to find her place within Hololive, working extremely hard to make an identity for herself and possibly coming off a bit abrasive in the process. She is a notorious workaholic in the company so I can fully envision her working into the long hours of the night.

    The core message of the song though is her development of her friendship with Myth though, a fact highlighted by a gorgeously animated video by an artist known as DuDuL, someone who rose to fame via Hololive fan animations and his involvement in the community is shown through how many easter eggs are laid around for Holofans to find.

    The first two choruses end with the line:

    “If I got you, I might just stick around”

    This reflects on the song’s overall message of her friendship with the rest of Myth, and how that friendship has kept her around, but the final chorus ends off a little differently:

    “I’m gonna smile and make

    You guys

    Proud”

    A frankly beautiful change of wording that caps off a song about personal development in a very heartwarming way, only amplified by her final message written to the rest of her genmates, emphasising that no matter what happens or how things change; they always have their accomplishments together as Myth.

    I chose this to review today because of how yesterday went for me. It really did feel like a lose-lose day but I am going to try not dwell on it, I am just going to bandage my bruises and go out into today trying to make the most of it.

    Thank you for reading the next milestone edition of the Redundancy Review, we have now hit the two-week mark, and my momentum has no signs of stopping just yet. Enjoy today, and if for some reason your today is hard, you always have tomorrow. Be safe out there.