Rosalia Rambles

Tag: hololive

  • Redundancy Review: Day 210, “Heart of an Idol”

    (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 units and detachments, welcome to Day 210 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Missed a fair few milestones due to not having the energy to write throughout the majority of December, but considering I am reasonably on schedule this time we can commemorate thirty weeks worth of the review… provided my maths is character, I think it is because a Tuesday is a multiple of seven usually and 210 is a multiple of seven, so I am pretty certain I am on track.

    Thirty weeks since possibly the most life-altering event I have encountered thus far, one that fully derailed where I was thinking I was going to go and shunted me onto the path I am currently on, a path that is currently serving me quite well even if I have my doubts about its longevity. It is weird to think that I am rapidly approaching the year anniversary of the titular event, hopefully I can stay on track to mark that as a milestone as well.

    It is VTuesday however, and the first one of those I have got to mark in a while as well, though today it is going to be more of a general discussion about an aspect of VTubing before heading into the review.

    Taking into account the origin of VTubing within Japan, it is almost impossible to talk about the majority of corpos and a significant number of independents without talking about what is often referred to as “idol culture”.

    And no, this is not going to be a screeching mess of an article about how idol culture is burning out massive amounts of VTubers , if just because I do not consider myself educated enough about the culture as a whole to articulate proper criticisms that are not just my own opinion as a relative outsider.

    This is especially apparent when you take a look at my history within idol-related media and find a fair few notable names lacking:

    • Never engaged with Love Live!, neither the game or the anime outside of Nico memes
    • Never engaged with Bandori outside of having a passive awareness of Chu2 and PAREO
    • And never engaged with Idolmaster to even know any of the characters by looks or name

    All I really took an interest in growing up was many other people’s first exposure to what an idol is: Vocaloid, and by extension… Megurine Luka.

    Yeah, no, for someone who started to interact with Vocaloid in their middle teenage years which was over a decade ago now dear god, Hatsune Miku was not actually the first Vocaloid to catch my eye, it was instead the elegant and graceful Megurine Luka I developed an attachment to first. Of course attaching to one Vocaloid almost makes it a guarantee that you will attach yourself to others which did happen to me eventually as well, it is just interesting to me I diverged from the norm from the offset.

    This fascination started with Luka Luka★Night Fever, which I cannot mention without saying rest in peace to Samfree, the producer behind this song. I hope you are resting easy knowing you left an undeniable legacy on this world with your music. From the get go the song is catchy as all hell with fun and energetic dance moves, dance moves which started to develop my interest in the idea of learning idol dances like so many young weebs aspire to do.

    In general, both back then and today, idol concerts are the driving force behind my semi-pipe dream of wanting to learn how to dance. There is something that just enraptures me about seeing the perfect blend of music, vocals, and dancing that makes me want to aspire to move like that myself… then the “pipe dream” part kicks in and outside of loading idol songs onto Beat Saber, I find it hard to find both the motivation and energy to learn, usually falling victim to my inconsistent sense of rhythm.

    I eventually branched out a bit more into Vocaloid, picking up a few other favourite producers along the way, with special mention going to Neru (the producer, not the Vocaloid Akita Neru) for some absolute bangers of songs with absolutely heart breaking lyrics – looking squarely at you Lost One’s Weeping.

    But as mentioned above, an interest in idols did not go far beyond Vocaloid as many of the other popular idol trends passed me by…

    …until Hololive showed up in my life, and everything changed.

    From that moment on, not only did I find a beautiful source of additional idol concerts to partake in, it massively expanded my world to finding other VTuber corpos and independent VTubers who provided similar sources of entertainment. This, combined with the massive boom that VTubing experienced over the early 2020s, made me fall in love with idol performances all over again.

    Although this time, as someone with both a fully developed brain and a reasonable sense of their own gender identity, it made me fixate on the general look and style of idol uniforms as a whole – primarily because I really wanted, and still do, to wear one some day with the even more massive pipe dream of attempting to perform in one.

    For now though, I am more than content to be in the crowd, waving my light sticks around, cheering “HAI! HAI! HAI!” or engaging in the ever so wonderful feeling of doing a call-and-response with whoever is on stage.

    But Hololive is now not the only source of my idol entertainment, as I now find myself fully in the grips of Umamusume: Pretty Derby, a franchise that somehow finds the perfect blend of sports anime and idol anime to make for an absolutely exhilarating and whimsical experiences delivered by your Uma clutching victory from the jaws of defeat before going up on stage to perform in the “Winning Concert”.

    Both in the anime and in the game I find myself singing along and cheering during the various performances, along with me and my partner groaning in despair when the anime decides to skip over winning concerts or dangle the hints of them in our face – special highlight here going to Next Frontier.

    True to their name, idols give me inspiration. I see how hard they work, often in the face of odds working against them, putting in all their effort to put on shows both online and in real life, and I find myself wanting to strive for the same peak in my own life and my own art. This is definitely apparent in the music of one 2.5D fairytale idol, the ever lovely Phoebe-chan and her song “Bloom Again”.

    It has only been recently that I have known who Phoebe-chan is, going back to her headline performance at the VExpo 2025 opening concert… though the funny part of that is my partner and I ran into her a short while before the concert. She was getting ready in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at, and, true to my partner’s fascination with frilly and fancy outfits, he stopped to talk to her whilst I went back to our hotel room, it was only later on that we connected the dots of what happened.

    Her performance during the concert was a mix of heartwarming moments with her original music, talking about difficulties encountered throughout the year and wanting to grow beyond what had happened in the past, followed by absolute meme territory featuring a performance of Renai Circulation with Smash Mouth and Space Jam put into the mix.

    From that moment, and compounding that with the small meet & greet she hosted the day after where we got to have a proper conversation with her and purchase some of her merch, I have found myself a quiet but dedicated fan of her work, resonating with the themes of growth, rebirth, and trying your best to go with the flow that she puts into her music.

    I actually said to her during that meet & greet that I had almost cried during her opening concert performance, as what she talked about resonated deeply with my own experience of losing my job a few months prior. I bought her album at that moment and she offered to sign it, writing a lovely message in the top-left corner.

    “Rosa, let’s meet again!! <3”

    It is a simple touch, but that small signature does help keep me going on some rough days, especially as I would love to see her again at VExpo this year.

    Plus her manager has the absolute badass name of “Steiner”, just such a powerful and cool name for someone to have.

    That… once more went way longer than I expected it to, especially for one once more so off the cuff. All the same, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to find things that inspire you in your life, be they big or small, I hope something brings you joy and helps you find the strength to keep going.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 202-204, “The Patent Pending Year End Ramble”

    (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 closers and finishers, welcome to Day 202, 203, and 204 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I’m waiting in my cold flat when the bell begins to chime
    Reflecting on this past year as it doesn’t have much time
    ‘Cause at twelve o’clock, they take me to the New Year’s Dawn
    The sands of time for me are running low…

    Bit of an Iron Maiden reference to end the year off. Was sitting here trying to think how to write an opening to the year end ramble and Hallowed Be Thy Name just got right into my head.

    2025 is almost over, and for a lot of us it has been one right stinker of a year. There have been plenty of high points throughout the year where the light of hope shined brightly to break through the darkness, but true to the sequence of days this year started with, it really was a “WThF” kind of year.

    Not sure what a “ThFS” year looks like, but I am ninety-percent convinced it cannot be worse than what this year was.

    I am going to get all the negatives out of the way first, because there is:

    1. A lot of them
    2. I do not want the positives being buried by the negatives
    3. Holy shit this year went so wrong in so many ways

    Going to start with the elephant in the room: redundancy. The whole reason I am sitting here writing a series with that word in the title. Working in the tech industry often means that you await news of your next funding round or new business arriving in with bated breath, desperately yearning for a job where you work on a ThinkPad instead, but when the reality hits that you really do not have a job anymore, it hits like a truck.

    For me, I was anticipating it, and had begun job searching anyway… though I was not anticipating it so soon in the year, I was at least expecting to see 2025 in my previous role, so getting sideswiped in May was not fun in the slightest.

    In the wake of being laid off, the lingering resentment I hold towards the UK government came right to the forefront as I navigated the Insolvency Service, Universal Credit/Jobseekers Allowance, and then setting up as a sole trader with HMRC, fighting through bureaucracy at every moment in the short month I was unemployed. 

    Which, yeah, I was only actually unemployed for a month after officially being made redundant. I cannot imagine how some of my former colleagues feel struggling to find work several months after the fact, because that month felt simultaneously long and slow to me.

    Even with the future still uncertain, I do feel I have developed a fair bit due to doing this contract role. Has it been challenging in its own way? Of course it has, I still struggle to reconcile who I want to be with who I currently am, which has been the source of several mental challenges over the course of the end of the year, not helped by seasonal depression being an absolute monster this time around due to how grey and wet the end of the year has been.

    I do feel hardened by everything I have gone through, and not necessarily in the cold & cynical way I was initially on the path of earlier in the year. I still put too much of myself into things that will likely not return the same love and care, leading to me overusing my energy during the day leaving very little in the tank for the evenings and making it so my weekends are more focused on recovery than actually enjoying myself. 

    But I feel myself slowly gaining an acceptance of the future holding whatever it has for me, as much as I feel a latent desire to be in control of my fate. There is very little I can do to change things other than stay the path I am on and wait for opportunities to arise, which this year has definitely had a lot of good ones.

    That is enough about job stuff, time to move on to some minor negative things.

    First off: a custom cosplay going awry two weeks before my big convention holiday to VExpo. That really sucked, even though the resolution to it was an overall positive due to me getting a full refund for shoddy work. It has at least taught me to be extremely anally retentive and specific when it comes time to define the specifications for a new custom cosplay in the new year, a goal I definitely want to try again with, though maybe not entirely with Hololive this time around.

    Secondly, and I mentioned this in the last Redundancy Review: having to fight an online fashion community for besmirching my partner’s honour, another event that came with a lot of negatives, but has some positive linings.

    Was it a traumatic ordeal for the both of us to navigate false and inflated accusations from a bunch of elitist randoms online? Yes

    Did it take away three precious days of our life navigating the ever changing goalposts those upjumped Discord mods enforced upon us? Yes

    Was our privacy violated by the amount of guilty until proven innocent assumptions a group of sad, lonely, and bored timewasters inflicted upon us? Yes

    Did I get a fucking thrill from taking their arguments apart piece-by-piece in an extensive Google Dockey and having a grudge to hold on to in order to live a beautiful life for both me and my partner out of sheer spite? You bet your arse I do.

    And again, if anyone from that fashion community is reading this post because you still feel the need to cyberstalk us, read my words carefully. I am more than capable of holding this grudge until the two year waiting period is up, and then holding it beyond that point to fuel the spite even further.

    God that feels good to get out of my system.

    And finally: not spending enough time with friends, something I have been working on fixing in the last months of the year and want to work on more in the early months of 2026. From pulling out of social engagements at the last minute, having clashing plans that prevent me from making the most of my time with people, or just simply having my mental demons catch up with me at the worst times, there has been less time I have spent with the people I care about most in my life.

    Think that covers every major bit of negativity this year, time to move onto the way more positive aspects of the year.

    Starting with another elephant in the room: VExpo, the absolute highlight of my year, and focus of the best & biggest piece of writing I did this year what do you mean this was almost four months ago now what the fuck it was day 90 I wrote that and we’re on day 204 now.

    VExpo gave me a taste of a life I did not actually think I would have again. One of going out to conventions, meeting like-minded individuals who enjoy the same hobbies that I do, spending time engaging in all my silly hobbies and coming back feeling both the lows of post-con depression and the absolute high of experiencing such a wonderful event with so many memories made.

    It is my goal to return for VExpo 2026, and I want to make next year’s trip even better than the one this year, with hopefully the convention itself stepping up their game to put on an even better show.

    Next up, it has actually been a great year for me in terms of gaming and pushing myself to 100% complete various games, the proudest of which I definitely think is either Monster Hunter Wilds for the surprising reward of the size grind in that game due to how investigations work and how my friends and I were able to share investigations with one another, or Death Stranding Director’s Cut, for the fairly straightforward nature of all its achievements and the fact it is a Kojima game, so I was absolutely enthralled the entire time.

    It is something I would like to bring forward into 2026, picking up previous projects to finally finish off like Mass Effect Legendary Collection and finding new ones like Space Marine 2. Achievements are always special to me, and pushing myself to 100% games is something I seriously enjoy.

    One part of this year that has ended up surprisingly well for me is actually my financial situation. Without going into too much detail and oversharing sensitive information, for someone who lost their job in the middle of the year I actually end this year off with a stronger savings position than what I started in, almost doubling what I had at the beginning. Of course I still have to worry about taxes in a couple months time which will take a decent chunk back out of that savings cushion, but the fact I can be in a position to not be overly worried about that time is incredibly reassuring.

    And finally, I want to end this post off with what I think is definitely one of the biggest positives of this year.

    This.

    The Redundancy Review.

    A series born out of an unfortunate event, turning into my biggest writing project of my life, with several ups and downs and a lot of missed days, I still end this year off with:

    • 120 posts covering 204 days
    • Approximately 120,000 words across those posts, averaging about 1000 words per post and 584 words per day
    • 54 total food and drink reviews
    • 16 posts about VTubers and VTuber related content
    • 1044 views since kicking off the Redundancy Review

    All of which are insane milestones to consider when 2024 was one of my worst years for writing, and 2025, through a shit circumstance, ended up being one of my best.

    The year ends with a certain amount of uncertainty over my future still, but even in the face of adversity, I made the most of this year with amazing goals achieved nonetheless. For the thumbnail, I am going to post the bingo card I made at the start of the year alongside a group of friends in lieu of standard “resolutions”, which turned into a much more fun way to track the year gone by.

    And that does it for the Year End Ramble, and for the year. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review, wherever you are, be it in the past or in the future, I hope you are doing well, and that life is on a steady path for you.

    2025 is ending, let us hope 2026 is a year of far simpler times.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 175, “Multiples of Seven”

    (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 squares and factorials, welcome to Day 175 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Tuesday is an important milestone day when it comes to writing these pieces, which makes it a shame that I have missed so many recently as part of my schedule slippage. We have the tradition of me making every Tuesday topic talking about something in the VTuber space, but the day also helps me keep track of how many weeks I have been doing the Redundancy Review, and by extension, making sure my day counter stays consistent.

    When it comes to writing a Tuesday piece, I will take the day and divide it by seven. Getting a whole number back means I am still consistent in my day tracking, and lets me know what week I am on.

    It is week twenty-five, if you are curious. Twenty-five weeks since I first got made redundant, with so much learnt about myself along the way, and yet… I still feel immature within the world as a whole.

    My birthday is coming up next week, and I will be twenty-eight years old, which coincidentally is also a multiple of seven, and my birthday is on Tuesday, which means it will be on a multiple of seven day for the review… okay I am getting tangential here, need to get back on track.

    Twenty-eight is a young age, all things considered, but I feel an immense amount of pressure from within my own mind to be beyond my own capabilities. For all intents and purposes, I have made an extraordinarily successful life for myself and my partner for people within our Gen Z age group, even through all the uncertainty and instability that my redundancy brought, we still had a very good lifestyle.

    I anticipate needing to do some amount of lifestyle trimming depending on the outcome of this contract and how easily I can come into new work after the contract ends. It will take a while for me to reach a point where I feel “stable” in terms of work again, and there is a real possibility that I will be in what I consider to be “unstable” work for a while yet.

    In the meantime though, I shall keep carrying on as I do, rambling about the nature of life as I see it and, when I actually make a post on a Tuesday, VTubers.

    Given the news this morning though, I feel I have to try highlight the work and career of Amane Kanata, a talent from Hololive Japan Fourth Generation who today announced they would be graduating at the end of December.

    This might be a little difficult, because I admittedly am not massively in tune to what work they have done outside of the few appearances I know off the top of my head, but I will sure try.

    First off, six years. Six years spent as a Hololive idol, working on streaming, original albums, and solo concerts. That is an impressive amount of time to spend in any career, let alone one that puts so much pressure on the talent to perform on a regular basis, so that level of dedication has to be respected.

    She listed her reasons for graduation in a document, the translated version of which I will link here (Twitter link) for full context, but it seems like she was taking on too many responsibilities above her position which led to her falling behind on her actual streamer activities, all of which took a toll on her health – all the more worrying considering she suffers from Meniere’s Disease, a very debilitating condition that causes vertigo, tinnitus, and fluctuating hearing loss.

    From the small bits I have seen of Kanata, she is an incredibly talented singer, being able to hold notes for extreme amounts of time whilst having complete control over her voice. Additionally, there was an absolutely massive outpouring of love on Twitter from other Holomems, finding out about her decision to graduate at the same time as the greater fanbase.

    People sharing good memories, saying how supportive she was of their activities, and saying that when things calm down, they should share good food together. It is the mark of a good colleague that everyone feels rough when you announce your departure.

    Though, it definitely highlights the rough nature of corporate VTubing in a way. Kanata taking on way more responsibility than her position dictated should not have happened, and suggests a lot of potential management issues behind the scenes that we as fans do not know about – something that has been speculated for a long time considering how often “disagreements with management” were cited as reasons for graduation.

    Any corporate entity is likely to have issues with management, but when the brand is built on the personas of these idols, taking time away from them which could be spent on brand building activities to instead fix problems above their station does not bode well, so hopefully after a rough year of multiple graduations for Hololive, the corporate structure going forward favours talents more and enables them to perform at their best without bureaucracy holding them back.

    For now, I wish Amane Kanata the best in whatever she does next. She explicitly stated she does not intend to reincarnate or return as a VTuber, preferring instead to be a private individual once more – which I can relate to.

    That covers everything for today, thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope your week is going well, and that you have positive things on the horizon.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 147, “Dreams”

    (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 dreamers and nappers, welcome to Day 147 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Something I miss a lot from my recent experiences with stress is that I have not been having any dreams lately, which makes me a bit sad honestly – not that I can really remember most of what happens in my dreams anyway due to not keeping a dream journal, but the ability to go inside of my mind for a sensory experience before my alarm goes off to rouse me out of sleep is something I oddly enjoy.

    Still capable of having nightmares though, though admittedly they are as infrequent as my dreams right now which is relieving. Specifically when it comes to having nightmares I can struggle to differentiate between what happened in the dream and what happened in real life, something that has actually led me to believing what happened in the nightmare before I snap myself out of it.

    My fascination with dreaming most likely comes from my love of stories, the idea that I can go to sleep with the ability to experience an almost nonsensical story produced by the random thoughts my sleeping brain comes up with has a strange appeal to it.

    But, as usual with me being a writer, the title has a double meaning, as I want to ramble about what my dreams are in an aspirational sense, and why despite the fact they feel so far away right now, I want to keep working towards them. This is partially inspired by a conversation I had with a friend over lunch about my current situation in relation to job searching, personal pursuits, and life in general.

    Let me start with the obvious one: writing. I would love to be able to make it as a writer somehow, either as a freelancer with reliably stable regular gigs with clients who love what I do or as an in-house dedicated copywriter for some kind of digital agency, though I know in this current economy that is one hell of an ask, especially given my minimal experience as a formal copywriter. Plenty of examples and instances throughout my career, just harder to sell than someone who has been doing it a lot longer than I.

    It would also be nice if I could monetise Rambles in some way, which I sort of already do with commissions (contact me for commission rates, I would be happy to work on anything you like (yes anything)), but that is also a similarly tall task to make it support all of my expenses.

    For now though, Rambles is my creative outlet, something to keep my mind active and my skills honed against the tide of AI-generated content. Hopefully when my life calms down a bit I will be able to write more fiction and get to some of the more in-depth pieces I always promised myself I would create.

    My dreams are not limited to writing though, some of them are logical, some of them are… a little more esoteric.

    I would love to make my own card game one day. I have grown up playing all sorts of tabletop games, from starting out with Warhammer 40k in my local library, to being introduced to the GOATed deckbuilder that is Star Realms, before I was finally brought down to the gutter when I got into Magic: the Gathering back in 2017. Like most people who spent their time playing those sorts of games, I have ideas and concepts I would love to bring to life one day, from translating the concept of a fighting game to cardboard to making my own deckbuilder themed around aerial combat.

    There is also the concept of “dream cosplays” I would love to do. Obviously Shiori Novella from Hololive English is still right up there, especially given the events of this year where a commissioner severely let me down, but there is also Princess Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy, the character who (sort of) gave me my name and acted as one of my first egg-cracking moments. So many amazing outfits I would love to wear and goof around in, making both my current self and my inner child extremely happy.

    And finally, the more esoteric one, well, at least it feels esoteric to me.

    I would love to learn how to dance.

    Not just any style of dance – I would love to learn how to dance like my idols in Hololive.

    Whenever a concert comes around, whenever one of the Holomems has a chance to perform live on stage, I watch their dances with fascination and glee, hoping one day I could learn to dance like that myself. Admittedly this did not start with Hololive, as this fascination dates all the way back to when I listened to Luka Luka Night Fever for the first time, but the interest in idol dances definitely ramped up with discovering Hololive.

    Which perfectly leads into what I want to discuss for today’s VTuesday, the first ever full cross-generation Hololive song: Shiny Smily Story, specifically the “call & response practice” version the main channel posted before 4th fes.

    The description does not lie. This is the idol song that represents Hololive, and even as new anthems for different fes and events come along, there will always be something incredibly special about what this song represents, either it be the highs of talents coming together to spread the joy of Hololive, or the inevitable lows that come alongside a graduation where a music box version of this song is used as backing over clips of significant moments.

    Reason I chose this version specifically as this is the most recent posting of the full version with subtitled lyrics, there is a version from when the song was first released back in 2020 but I have always felt a greater resonance with the translated lyrics in this version, so it is the interpretation I want to use for analysis.

    One of the first thing that catches me attention with these lyrics is the use of digital terminology as part of some of the verses, really playing with the fact that Hololive is an agency of virtual idols, examples including:

    “I tweaked the settings of my quivering heart

    So that I wouldn’t feel scared”

    “As I go, I’ll hit delete

    On any thoughts of giving up”

    I always love when Hololive, and hell VTubers in general, really lean into the digital space they occupy, utilising the unique nature of the medium to do interesting things, and small, cute little references to their own digital medium are very sweet.

    The next part I want to talk about is the bridge before the final chorus, and the other main inspiration behind the subject of today’s article. When I first read these lyrics all the way back in 2023, I felt myself tear up a little bit at their meaning, and honestly even two years later I still get misty eyed reading them:

    “I wanna take the stage I’ve dreamed of at last

    Shine with colors no one else has

    Cry my eyes out once in a while

    Get back up again with a smile

    Share the futures that we can see

    Make our dreams a reality

    It’s make or break

    Come on and take a leap of faith”

    There is so much meaning to me in these lyrics, both for what I see in my oshi Holomems and what I can see in myself. 

    For the former meaning, being able to perform on stage can be the realisation of a long-standing dream, with the bright & bold colours of their idol outfit on full display. It can be a long journey, one that will be marked with sadness and hardship, but should never be given up on, because there is a future where that journey pays off, and all the previous hard times show that you have made it, whatever leaps of faith taken paid off in the end.

    And as for the latter meaning?

    Well, I think I ended up summarising what it means for me when I talked about the idol journey above, with just a few context tweaks it becomes more personal to me.

    I know my long-term future is good, because I have the drive and work ethic to deliver what my future needs. There will be hurdles, roadblocks, and stumbles galore, but so long as I can roll with the punches and trust where my feet will land with each step, I am certain I will make it.

    There is not actually much else I want to say about SSS, that bridge covers practically everything else I could say about the song. Through highs, lows, positives, negatives, the dream will always be there.

    Do need a thumbnail though…

    Yeah, best fox friend will work.

    That will cover everything for today, and good timing cause it is almost 10pm here – damn work schedule. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and look forward to the rest of your week. 

  • Redundancy Review: Day 135, “Staying Sharp”

    (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 swordsmen and pikemen, welcome to Day 135 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Starting this one pretty late in the evening compared to how I normally get these done, had basically no chance to breathe during work today followed by a lunch where I was purely focused on recovery, before finishing up for the day and deciding that I wanted to focus primarily on eating for the night alongside playing some Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

    Absolutely fantastic game by the way, I am just over four hours into the game currently and I am having the time of my life. I think it might end up being too big to do a proper Redundancy Review on, but I definitely want to talk about it at some stage. The themes of the story, the writing, and especially the music are all top-notch with so much to say about all of it.

    But for now, I want to write. 

    I have talked at length over the last couple of weeks about what the “purpose” of the Redundancy Review is. Documenting change, giving myself the opportunity to look back on where I was, and to clear my head from a busy day – though there is one painfully obvious purpose I have yet to talk about.

    It keeps my brain sharp, and my writing skills in use almost every day, which I can see the results of in my everyday life… for the most part.

    When friends or my partner ask for writing assistance, it usually comes quickly to me, be it for a quick naming suggestion, help in jazzing up some paragraphs for a job application, or even for the rare commission. 

    However, the fun part comes when I am asked to write any form of professional email at work. Deep down I know what I need to write and how to handle myself in any work correspondence, having done the task for almost two years after my mentor let me get hands on with production work.

    But there is something that comes with doing that task that causes me to freeze up and overthink about what I need to write, performing several rewrites and word changes to make sure I am not coming off overly harsh, too friendly, or somehow sounding like I do not know what I am doing.

    This has reminded me of two pieces of advice that both my mentor and the producer I worked incredibly closely with have given me. The former comes in regards to me talking to her about my overthinking once:

    “Yes, I know you are an overthinker. That is why I do not give you the chance to think and give you so much to do so you focus on that instead.”

    Harsh? Yes… but she has a point. If I am given enough to work on, and the work is sufficiently stimulating to my brain, I find myself getting into a rhythm before long which seriously helps quiet my brain.

    The second piece of advice came as the producer and I talked about me going overly formal on client calls, making me wonder about the nature of professionalism:

    “Professionalism is delivering your points clearly and not saying fuck.”

    That one in particular has stuck with me, and it has actually helped inform how I handle professional interactions, letting myself sound more natural in how I explain things. I still go a little robotic from time to time, but my delivery has relaxed immensely.

    In a way it is funny, I always worried about my professionalism when it came to delivering my work output, which itself is delivered on calls where a large portion of my plushie collection is on show for my colleagues to look at.

    I do use virtual backgrounds when talking to external clients, as much as I feel like it would be a conversation starter.

    For now though, I keep myself sharp through writing these reviews… which I should probably try write a review segment for today…

    …yeah, let us have a “VThursday” as a complement to VTuesday, even though the name does not roll off the tongue the same way.

    This was something I actually ordered back right before I lost my job, a canvas panel from the “holoAnimArt” series, a collection of original art depicting Hololive members as the animals that they adopt features from for their VTuber model. Being a massive Shirakami Fubuki fan, as I have talked about before on the Redundancy Review, it was a no-brainer to pick up.

    I am surprisingly blown away by the quality of both the included print and the wooden easel it comes with for display purposes. The canvas itself has a loop in the back if I wanted to mount it on a wall instead but I really like the presentation of the easel, gives it a more rustic feeling that matches with the more realistic depiction of the Hololive member as an animal.

    The only gripe I have with it, and this is most definitely a “first world VTuber fan” problem, is that because of the size of the easel and the canvas it does not fit well onto my pre-existing, yet admittedly overflowing, Fubuki shrine, so I either have to display it on its lonesome or commit to doing a full rearrangement of my displays in order to build a better Fubuki shrine.

    You know, if that is one of the biggest problems facing me right now, then my life really is not that bad, for all the overthinking my brain likes to inflict upon me.

    But that will do it for today, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review, my every day writing practice. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax, it is Friday tomorrow, and the weekend is beckoning us ever closer.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 133, “Never Lose Your Whimsy”

    Redundancy Review: Day 133, “Never Lose Your Whimsy”

    (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 partiers and revelers, welcome to Day 133 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Trying to write personal pieces whilst in the midst of an ongoing depressive episode is, unsurprisingly, extremely difficult. Striking the delicate balance between staying optimistic in this modern age whilst also maintaining a degree of realism is a tough task – especially when your brain is against you at every turn.

    Losing salaried employment hurt, and it is hard to not view this as an event that will have a negative impact on my path going forward. On LinkedIn I have seen many former colleagues who had been made redundant starting to get back into work, some after a period of one year or more, and I have also seen incredibly talented people stay out of work for even longer than that. That disparity in opportunity pains me to see, and does not help my mental state.

    Once again, I need to keep in mind that I am lucky to be in any sort of work to begin with, and that compared to a lot of my generational peers, I am in a remarkably successful position in terms of my career progression. 

    One fear I have come across in applying to jobs across the public sector is that I am too “tech-pilled” to make a true difference outside of the private sector. My cover letters & supporting statements usually read pretty intensely, talking about my experiences working on high-stakes projects and how I have pushed beyond my limits to deliver exceptional quality work, but usually struggle to write about how this experience will enable me to help people – which is what I ultimately want to do.

    In a way, this is another one of the many reasons why I keep wanting to write the Redundancy Review. I talk a lot about how I want this to serve as a living record of my story, documenting each up and down as I navigate my path going forward.

    But maybe, I also write this as a way to affirm my humanity. To remind myself that I am more than what I can write in cover letters, or what I choose to put on my LinkedIn. I am a writer who chooses to write about the vulnerability in human life, and whilst that may be a purely personal venture for now, I definitely know I will be able to use that skill in the future, to work towards something I know makes me happy.

    For all the challenges that are thrown my way, for all the hardships I endure, I never want to become cynical or jaded. If there is one thing to take away from the Redundancy Review it is that I love games, I love toys, and I love plushies – all things that some might see as childish pursuits, but to me they are what help remind me of who I am: someone who works not for power or titles, but someone who wants to embrace their silliness in all aspects of their life.

    I never want to lose that whimsy… a statement which ties perfectly into the topic for VTuesday today.

    For those familiar with the above phrase, you already know who I am going to talk about, but for those uninformed, say hello to Gigi Murin of Hololive English Justice.

    When Justice first debuted, Gigi was… admittedly extremely low on my radar, especially when looking at the rest of the lineup in the generation. I saw clips from her debut stream and appreciated her gremlin sense of humour as someone who shares it, but compared to the other members, I did not honestly pay her much mind.

    Then came the 21st September incident of 2024, where she dedicated an eight-hour unarchived karaoke stream to singing “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire with multiple variations on the setting she was in and the processing on her audio.

    I feel a lot of people became Grems (I had to capitalise this because Google Docs kept thinking I wanted to spell “germs” no matter how many times I typed it out) after that moment, and I would like to include myself among them, even I did not fully realise it at the time.

    On the surface level, that is all Gigi seems to be: someone who is very good at generating silly bits and running with them to an over-the-top degree, but once you start digging deeper into these bits you realise how exceptional her emotional intelligence is – every bit is well-crafted and layered, bringing comedy through absurdity that someone skilled at being a “professional idiot” can do.

    But there are two moments that stick out in my mind that shows the depth of her emotional intelligence, and were the moments that cemented me as a Grem. The first of which being a short speech in the after party stream of her 3D debut, which is where this article got the title. 

    “Never lose your whimsy! Never lose it. If you lose your whimsy, you become jaded and cynical, and then you start seeing everything in a negative light.”

    Speaking as someone who has talked about becoming jaded and cynical in the wake of a life-changing event, this… definitely speaks to me on a personal level, and it is something I have struggled to keep in mind in recent weeks. Negativity has a way of worming into my mind at the worst of times, and as I continue my search for a new permanent home there have been moments where I feel myself falling into hopelessness.

    But I still choose to create, being inspired by the VTubers I look up to. Seeing the time, energy, and effort they put into projects always leaves an impact on me, leading us nicely into the actual review topic for today, Gigi Murin’s first original song: I’ll still be here

    The moment I listened to this song and I found myself bawling my eyes out over the lyrics, I knew I wanted to talk about this genuine work of art. I have always had an affinity for stories about grief, ever since I had to analyse a poem about the subject as part of my GCSE English exam. There is something hauntingly beautiful about being able to turn the raw emotion of loss into artwork that can help represent how you feel in a given medium – be it writing, illustration, or music.

    “I’ll still be here” is a song dedicated to Gigi’s father, referred to as “gigipapa” in the description, with the lyrics being a beautiful story of how grief stays with you as the years go by, while the video depicts how your living space becomes neglected in the wake of a terrible tragedy.

    It starts off incredibly bright, with the Gigi we know bouncing around her room engaging in all different activities, before a Gigi wearing funeral-appropriate attire walks into the room, looking at her past self from before the funeral with an unknown emotion.

    She still tries to do the activities she was enjoying before the funeral, but there is a distinct lack of energy to all of them, simply going through the motions as her world does not feel the same as before the funeral, the mess slowly piling up across her room as she continues to try engage with life the same way she used to until it finally all piles up with funeral Gigi standing there in the middle of it all. Throughout this sequence as well the room is slowly getting darker as well, representing how dark the world can feel when you fall into a depression-like state, somewhere that grief can definitely take someone.

    After this sequence there is a lot of imagery one could read into and extrapolate what each moment means, but I am not going to do that. Gigi took an immensely difficult decision to share this part of her heart with us as fans, and it would be rude for me to speculate on what could be representations of very intimate memories.

    I will however, talk about the lyrics of the bridge that plays over these images, as they are incredibly moving and act as a general story about how grief can make someone feel:

    “I still go through

    A thousand miles

    The ups and downs 

    I did with you

    And I write down

    A million lines

    Of things that I 

    Could say to you

    And it’s so hard sometimes

    To just come out and say the words

    But I miss you

    So please don’t miss a single thing that I do”

    Grief never truly leaves someone. Its presence will shrink over time, but the memories of what you experienced with someone, everything you wished you could have said to them before they were gone, and the fact that even after any given length of time you still want to say you miss them will stay with you forever.

    But you carry on, not just for yourself, but for their memory as well. You push yourself out of that hole you find yourself trapped in to keep going, making the most out of life to honour those who have gone.

    This gets reflected in the music video as well, as Gigi starts tidying up her room to feel a bit more organised in her life, getting out of her pajamas and into more casual clothes, clenching her fists before she decides to leave the room, going off to clear her head and make the most of a new day.

    Around a day after posting the video, Gigi made a community post on her Youtube that goes into detail around the process of creating the song and her emotions around it, but I want to highlight a few paragraphs in particular for how they resonated with me.

    This is probably going to come off as a touch parasocial, but… even if Gigi does not know me, and likely will never know me on a personal level, I feel extremely “seen” by her talking about how she sees art: as something you condense all your feelings into, throw it out in the world as a ball, and soon wonder why the hell you just created what you did.

    But there is a reason, at least for me, and it is summed up wonderfully in her short sentence: a celebration of life that just screams “I will keep going”.

    To end things off, I would like to tell my own short story about grief, though, not in the sense of losing someone. 

    Back when I first started seeing my therapist, she often emphasised to me about the importance of giving myself time to grieve after major life events, including but not limited to my gender transition, changing my job, and redefining my relationship with my parents.

    It actually took me a long while to fully understand what she meant, and I was initially rather dismissive of this viewpoint. Why would I need to grieve something that was not an explicit loss of a person?

    As time went on though, I started to understand what she meant, and in doing so I not only felt my emotions open up a bit more, I became less harsh on myself. Grief is not limited as an emotional response just to the loss of an individual, we can grieve lost opportunities, lost connections, and lost potential.

    In grieving the small things, we learn how to move forward as the people we want to be while remembering who we once were, living out the true human experience of experiencing change, making mistakes, and growing into who we want to be. 

    This has been a very odd VTuesday, talking about a surprising number of heavy topics, but one that I ultimately hope carries a positive message to whoever is reading this.

    If you have read all this way, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax. If you are carrying any amount of grief, be it from the loss of someone you loved or from any other form of loss, I hope you are able to let yourself grieve fully, and find the strength to move forward still.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 130-131, “Clarity From Separation”

    Redundancy Review: Day 130-131, “Clarity From Separation”

    (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 examiners and invigilators, welcome to Day 130 and 131 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    The moment I thought I could return to a reasonable schedule for posting, a short holiday took me out of the rhythm once more – although it was definitely a needed break.

    Specifically my partner and I took a whirlwind trip down to Swansea in South Wales, close to where he originally came to me from, with the trip itself having two main purposes:

    1. Visiting a local game shop down south to participate in an Official Hololive Card Game event
    2. Going out for a meal with my partner’s parents

    Outside of those two main objectives, having time away from my current situation in a city I have never been to before to try clear my head was my own personal objective. It was not my intention to have a career crisis before this holiday, but it oddly lined up that I needed to take some time away.

    Swansea is specifically a coastal city, and it has been an… extremely long time since I have got to see the ocean, to feel the sea breeze push against my face as my nostrils fill with the oddly satisfying scent of salt water. I did not even realise I had been missing it until it hit me once more, and it contributed massively to clearing my head.

    Over the last couple of days, I have talked with both my own parents and my partner’s parents about my career situation, explaining what I have been feeling and what I feel like my current options are. The result of these two conversations were largely the same, reminding me that I am extraordinarily lucky to have a job in today’s job market, but understanding that I might want to find more purpose within my life.

    My partner’s parents emphasised to me that I have had a lot of lived experience in regards to mental health problems and the awareness that develops from that experience, which I could use in combination with my transferable skills honed within the technology industry to advance into an administration position of sorts within either civil service or the charity sector…

    …which, yes, lines up with what I have been talking about in previous editions of the Redundancy Review, helping to cement that my feelings are valid, and that the main task I need to work on now is rounding out my skillset even further to be able to demonstrate I can enter into these roles.

    The time away also helped me define the “why” of this line of thinking, and it is a very simple reason: purpose.

    I feel I have lost my sense of purpose in life, primarily in the wake of my redundancy. The Redundancy Review has helped me keep a sense of personal purpose in mind, especially as I explore my psyche in each edition, and whilst I really enjoy getting to write these pieces, I have sort of come to accept that this website represents a living portfolio more than something that actually makes me money – which I am okay with, even though I would love to be able to support myself via writing.

    But this means I need to do a fair bit of soul-searching in order to find a new professional purpose, something that can pay my bills but also provide me with a good degree of satisfaction. Something that I leave on Friday feeling I have made a positive impact on the world by what I have been doing, and feel excited to wake up for it all again on Monday.

    It will take a while to find something like that for me, and there will be even more difficulties along the way, but I know I will make it through… I keep saying that a lot recently, possibly as an affirmation to myself to keep myself going.

    I will make it. 

    One way or another.

    Time to get to the review segment, and it is actually going to be a somewhat personal one. As part of my Swansea trip, my partner and I went exploring shortly after arriving to find a cafe or something for lunch. A fair few places my partner wanted to show me had closed down since he moved away but in our search, we came across a small Ukrainian cafe called Ruta.

    As a part of personal trivia, my grandad was Ukrainian, specifically from Lviv. He died when I was not even one year old, so I never really knew him, and growing up I never really had much exposure to Ukrainian cuisine, which drew me into wanting to try Ruta out, and specifically going for a traditional Ukrainian dish.

    The one I chose to try was called Zrazy, a potato-based dough shaped into a patty before being stuffed with minced chicken and cheese, topped with stewed mushrooms and served with sour cream.

    There is a lot I could say here.

    I could talk about how the potato dough was perfectly soft, or how the seasoning on the filling was perfect, or how the sour cream was the ideal accompaniment to this dish.

    But I want to relate this dish to what I mentioned about never knowing my grandad or having any exposure to Ukrainian cuisine.

    Despite that lack of connection, from the first bite I took… this dish tasted like home. It was wholesome, comforting, and filling. It might be a bit dramatic to say each bite healed my soul a little bit; but it genuinely did feel like that, it was a taste of a heritage I never experienced. 

    And it was extremely reasonably priced at £7.99, so like, even outside of the spiritual experience it was an economical choice for lunch as well. My partner and I intend to return to Swansea to enjoy more of the city, and I want to return to Ruta to explore even more traditional Ukrainian cuisine.

    Heck, I even want to learn how to cook Zrazy now to build that spiritual connection even more.

    That will do it for today though, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax before Monday is upon us once more, I know I am nervous to return to work after my stress leave, but I come back with a clearer head and wanting to push myself towards a better tomorrow.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 119, “First Official VTuesday”

    Redundancy Review: Day 119, “First Official VTuesday”

    (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 modellers and riggers, welcome to Day 119 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Now that I am back on a reasonable schedule, this is where I can officially announce that the Tuesday review segment where I review something in the VTuber space (primarily Hololive but I am aiming to branch out) is called…

    VTuesday.

    Which makes far too much sense in hindsight for a title because it just rolls off the tongue so well whilst being on theme.

    Regular readers will know my love of VTubers, my most popular article this year was my story of going to VeXpo, a whole convention dedicated to the topic. So, I figured I would try my best to recount the story of how I got into this whole space all the way back in 2020…

    …bastard year that it is.

    It was definitely a slow start, as it was primarily just random clips of various HoloJP members such as Suisei or Korone… and Nyanners, cannot forget about Nyanners. Though the fascination truly began with the debut of Hololive English 1st Generation “Myth”, and who else but the legendary Gawr Gura.

    Though, in hindsight, I find it very funny that Gura was my primary entry point into this whole space, because while she was my first primary exposure; I actually found myself drifting to Ninomae Ina’nis as my favourite member of Myth for her cosy vibes, gorgeous art, and delicious puns.

    And of course, being involved in the EN side meant the door to the JP and ID (Indonesia) sides was soon to burst wide open through subtitled clips and watching streams of games where it did not really matter whether or not I could understand the streamer, I had a vague idea of what was going on.

    This was especially apparent when it came to Shirakami Fubuki from HoloJP Gen 1 playing Monster Hunter World. It did not really matter what she was saying, I could understand what was going on and follow her through the tone of her voice.

    Those streams in particular actually generated a meme between myself and my partner. During the fight against a monster called Seething Bazelgeuse, once the cutscene had ended, another monster called Dodogama actually started fighting against Seething, leading to Fubuki cheering on the fight with the phrase: “DODOGAMU!”

    Mix this with the fact that Dodogama is in contention for being one of my top favourite monsters, and it stuck with me ever since.

    So… why VTubers?

    What I am about to say will probably be a little parasocial, which is definitely an issue within the VTuber space with fans overstepping their mark, but hopefully as I explain it things will make more sense.

    Every VTuber I follow regularly, from the corpos to the independents, have had their own set of challenges to overcome, moments where they could have quit to pack it all in and try their hand at something new in life.

    But so many of them have not.

    And that inspires me so much. I have no idea who these people are, and quite frankly I have no desire to know who exactly is behind that persona – all I know is that this person has had their share of challenges and feels comfortable enough to talk about it with their audience.

    My oshis have never given up, and even through my share of challenges, through my very uncertain future, I do not want to give up. They do not know me, and they likely will never know me, but they still inspire me all the same.

    One person whose compilation videos have made it into my partner and I’s evening routine is Limealicious/Laimu. At VeXpo my partner only had one meet & greet booked with Laimu and after receiving a very sweet signed photocard as part of the meet he wanted to explore more of her content.

    Her, along with Dokibird, Maid Mint, and Snuffy, recently released a cover of the iconic first level background music from Sonic Adventure 2: Escape from the City.

    This is specifically a clip taken from Doki’s birthday concert at Anime Expo this year, which as one commenter notes is the first time that Laimu has sung in a proper context due to not being the type to do karaoke streams.

    All of their voices harmonise beautifully when they all sing during the chorus, though their voices definitely provide a different vibe to a usually hype song. To me this version feels oddly relaxing to listen to, which is not a complaint or criticism, I actually really like how this sounds to listen to.

    I have to give a shoutout to Snuffy’s singing as well. Out of the four she is the one I am least familiar with, but when she sings her sections she has such a refined singing voice that sounds so smooth.

    Can you tell I am not really musically minded? I love listening to VTubers sing both covers and their original songs, but analysing music is not really something I have a massive amount of experience in.

    Now just for the thumbnail…

    …she really does have such a pretty model.

    That will cover everything today, thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. I have been off work today for stress-related reasons so it has been nice to just relax and think about VTubers for VTuesday. Wherever you are I hope you are able to take things easy and keep your effort for the week steady.

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 112-113, “Periods Suck”

    (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 lemons and bulls, welcome to Day 112-113 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yup, still suffering from period-related issues. 

    Honestly one of the worst things when it comes to this regular stretch of time for me is not the pain, or the fatigue, or the emotional instability, or loss of appetite… writing it all down like this really highlights how much my body can shut down during periods and I should really not be so harsh on myself.

    No, the worst thing about this all is the persistent brain fog I get saddled with for around a week or so – it makes everything way more difficult for me.

    Writing is the biggest one, as I will often find myself sitting in front of a document trying to formulate what I want to write and feeling my brain either shut down entirely, or have it be a dedicated effort to force my thoughts onto the right path for long enough to string coherent sentences together.

    But it definitely does not stop there, as every part of my life becomes more difficult to navigate. Even a task as simple as sleeping can be disrupted extremely easily, which leads into a long series of knock-on effects into my day, especially at work.

    I still come in, and I still try my best every day, but my current situation in being in a smaller company makes the times when my period hits hard even more nervewracking. 

    In my current role I have a decent amount of ownership over a significant part of the business pipeline. This is absolutely great for my career progression, as it advances me into new areas and learning opportunities with each day, keeping my skills honed alongside exposing me to new areas of the business.

    Tech is a rapid-moving and near-hyperproductive industry, in a way this has tempered me to a fine degree which ties into how willing I am to be flexible on a given day.

    Jump on new release testing? You got it.

    Handle some ghostwriting for a LinkedIn post? I am your girl.

    Try something entirely new that will help the company? Happy to help.

    For as much as I hold some internal resentment for myself over what kind of person this has made me, there is no denying that I am in the position I am in today for that reason… although, this senior position comes with a downside when my brain is the way it currently is: there is nowhere for me to hide.

    Before, on my bad days, I had others around me who both understood what I would be going through, offering support and making up for whatever I might have been lacking that day. Do not get me wrong, the understanding is there with my current colleagues too, but the nature of the company and my position does lead to my bad days feeling heavier now than back then.

    I always got told one specific effect of going on feminising hormone replacement therapy (HRT) by doctors in the early days of my medical transition:

    “You will find your emotional range opens up, you may also find it easier to cry.”

    There is a point I want to make here on the former, but I want to poke some fun at the latter before I do.

    Yeah.

    Yeah it really is fucking easier to cry. 

    I find myself crying over the most minor of things sometimes, and this gets exacerbated further whenever my period starts because I will find myself crying over almost anything. 

    Bunnies? Bawling. Songs? Sobbing. Critters? Crying.

    (god I love alliteration)

    Anyway, back on track.

    My emotional range has opened up ever since starting HRT, but, and this is very rare for me as I do not keep up with the MCU at all, I am thinking of a quote from Captain America: The First Avenger:

    “The serum amplifies everything that is inside. So, good becomes great. Bad becomes worse.”

    Dr Abraham Erskine

    Going on HRT was one of the best things to happen to me. For all the challenges I have faced and the problems I still navigate today, I can categorically say I am far happier than I was when I started over three years ago.

    But at the same time, I am still trying to learn how to navigate an emotional range that is comparatively new to what I had before, and one that specifically amplifies whatever I am feeling – positive or negative.

    Very on theme for the overarching narrative of this blog though, feel once my mind actually unfucks itself to a degree I should write out an updated vision for what these pieces mean to me.

    Considering the day I have had in terms of work stress whilst managing everything I have written about above, I think a proper review topic is a bit of a stretch. Still need something to get a  thumbnail though…

    …yeah, after the day I have had and the fact I missed yesterday’s post (which would have included a proper announcement that the Tuesday review segment is now called “VTuesday” because god that makes too much sense in hindsight), I think I just want to ramble about one of my silly little VTuber displays today.

    Specifically this is my (almost) complete collection of Shirakami Fubuki merch. Fubuki is one of the longest standing Hololive talents, being a part of their first generation of HoloJP talents all the way back in 2018. Initially only finding her through clips of her speaking English at different points in games, eventually she found her way into my heart through streams and songs, quickly becoming one of my favourite Japanese members.

    Plus, she is a white fox, which I have to love considering my fursona is part Arctic Fox.

    Special shoutout to the card I have in the frame as well. Not only is the promo inside worth a considerable amount of money on the secondary market (thank you to Wes from VeXpo for pointing that out to me), the frame it is in possibly one of the best card display frames I have ever seen – it even came with a perfect fit inner sleeve to protect the card further whilst it is within the frame.

    The display lives on my Playstation shelf as well because it specifically ties into when Fubuki was once having problems with getting her PS2 to work for a stream, a little meta joke that, even after just explaining it, I am probably the only person who finds it funny.

    Anyway, that should do it for today. I am proud of myself for actually getting something out in the open today, but I am also very thankful to you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to find some time to relax, we are past hump day now, and the weekend will soon be upon us.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 105, “Gaining Clarity”

    (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 soothsayers and oracles, welcome to Day 105 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Being real it feels weird to be saying “one hundred and” each time I start off a new review past day 100, I did not think I was going to be keeping up all this time. I guess it goes to show even when the schedule slips and I miss a day or two (or three), the passion & care for my craft still persists.

    That said, there is actually a job search update. You know, that thing I said I would be doing a segment on during each review before it fell to the wayside and I found myself a role so itself became a redundant segment in an article series incited by redundancy?

    There are just moments where a silly thought comes into my head, and writing it out makes it sound even sillier but I absolutely love how it came out. The above is one of them.

    Anyway, back on track. Ended up applying for a manager position at the local CeX, which for the uninformed is a UK chain of technology exchange shops and it is pronounced exactly how you want to say it. For those of you who doubt the pronunciation or want to avoid saying it, the wi-fi networks in a shop are:

    • Protected CEX
    • Unprotected CEX

    I do not think any picture could be clearer than that on how the company wants the name to be pronounced.

    It is very unlikely I will get the position, considering whilst I have a wide raft of management skills along with generally transferable soft skills, I am an outsider applying to a retail environment, something which I genuinely have no experience in.

    In a way I feel it is a rite of passage I have missed almost, in that I never did any sort of retail role before landing in my current field, and my return to the tech industry came before I would have been eligible for temporary Christmas roles around town, so, if this somehow goes somewhere it would be my first shot at retail.

    But again, there are plenty more higher qualified candidates than I, so I doubt it will go many places.

    On the plus side today, my mentor figure got back in touch with me today to both give a compliment on this blog and to reassure me we were still on good terms, hence the title of today’s edition.

    That said… I am extremely exhausted for some reason, so I will do a short review for what I will now likely be calling “VTuber Tuesdays” for the foreseeable future because even though it will be predominantly Hololive, there will be days where the topic is just something VTuber related.

    Today it is the fact I had the Vedal plushie arrive and the packaging it came in absolutely made me laugh.

    Free him. Please.

    In all honesty, this is such a high quality plushie. The shape is absolutely perfect to what I would want a Vedal plush to be, in that I can hold him like a burger and it feels right to do so.

    But not only that:

    He balances perfectly on the Neuro-sama plush I have.

    It could not be more beautiful if I tried.

    Anyway, that is me, I need to sleep. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to get some good sleep yourself, no matter the time of day.