Rosalia Rambles

Tag: justice

  • 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 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: Days 94-98, “A Long Look In The Mirror”

    (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 glassblowers and potterers, welcome to a catchup post covering days 94 to 98 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It has been a while, and, I did initially have a post ready to go for Saturday talking about something I was doing over the weekend, which was doing some tidying around my flat, all it needed was a review subject that I was struggling to find so I left it there and instead spent time with some friends catching up & chatting.

    But, partway through the conversation, the subject of how I was doing came up, and words spoken ended up hitting me right to my core triggering what I can only really describe as a mental breakdown.

    Every barrier and bits of bravado I had shattered, resulting in me crying my eyes out, apologising to my friends before just shutting down mentally, struggling to speak and needing to use Discord to say what my mind was trying to say.

    That is one of the reasons I prefer writing as a medium, because I have always found it easier to write out what is on my mind than say it out loud, in both sound & unsound states of mind. My hands can do what my mouth often cannot, which is probably why I find it easy to be somewhat emotionally honest in these pieces.

    “Somewhat” being the operative word in that sentence, as that mental breakdown did give me clarity that I had apparently been sitting on a lot more emotions than I realised, and I have honestly been taking the time since to look in the mirror to try reflect on what I am actually feeling currently.

    In short… I think it is burnout.

    Not just on work.

    Not just on hobbies.

    But on… life as a whole I guess.

    I am someone who tries to push beyond my limits in all instances, and I was suffering greatly for it. It was making my inherent paranoia worse, pushing me to the point of thinking none of my friends actually like me for me, and more like me for what I can do for them, leading me to feeling depressed when I was not able to put on a show.

    Additionally, I have not been processing my initial redundancy in a healthy way. For all intents and purposes, it was a traumatic event for me, something that is likely going to be impacting me for a good long while into the future, but at the same time, I have got to try release the hold it has on my outlook on life.

    The redundancy was not my fault, and I have come out the other side of it with a few scrapes & bruises, but ultimately alive. Whatever work I do each day to build myself up again is enough, even if it is just showing up for a placeholder post.

    It is going to be a long road to recovery from this severe of a burnout, and along the way I feel I might have to completely re-evaluate what direction I am taking to see if changing my path in a way similar to how I did in 2020 might work for me again.

    For now:

    I am enough.

    The work I am doing is enough.

    I want to make peace with my past.

    I want to build a better future for myself.

    Both things should not come at the cost of my mental health.

    I have already done so much.

    And continuing on in a healthy way will continue to do more for me too.

    For anyone reading this, thank you for being along for this journey with me. The schedule has slipped a lot in recent weeks due to conventions and depression, but I still want to be here regardless, writing my story as best I can with the dream of being able to support myself with my writing work.

    It will take a long time, but I have faith in myself.

    …so anyway, Hololive Tuesday?

    In a way it is a happy coincidence I have returned to posting on a Tuesday, especially as yesterday there was a frankly massive lore drop in regards to the two most recent HoloEN groups, Advent and Justice, with a motion comic uploaded to the main Hololive English Youtube channel.

    Advent & Justice fans are eating good right now: the amount of collabs between members (including the hilarious recent chess collab), Advent’s five song project detailing their story, and now a fully voice-acted motion comic explaining the former’s time in the cell combined with how the latter interacted with them.

    It would have been easy enough for Cover to just upload this as a manga, but the fact all the girls put the effort in to provide voice acting for this shows how dedicated to their craft they all are.

    One of the main things I love about this motion comic is that whilst it deals with lore-heavy topics, it never seems too serious, even when resident theatre kid Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame is hamming it up with bombastic speeches about the nature of justice… only to instantly flip into being a complete dork in the next scene, getting flustered by Advent’s antics.

    And speaking of Advent’s antics, god do I continue to love their chaotic found family theming. From sharing a room in The Cell to Shiori deciding to orchestrate a grand escape mainly because Bijou wanted to see the outside world, their dynamic continues to feel natural together – a bunch of misfits trying to navigate their way in the world.

    One thing I hope definitely gets expanded on in later episodes or the lore in general is getting to see Justice use their weapons and abilities a bit more – especially Raora. 

    For those unaware, my favourite member of Justice is actually Raora Panthera, the “Artist with the God Eyes”, and I feel that aspect of her is slightly underutilised in the current story context. It is such an interesting idea for an ability and Raora herself has loredumped on Twitter that she is able to open portals for teleportation which sounds like one hell of an ability, so it would be nice to see that implemented in stories.

    Of course I love that Liz is still shown using Thorn as her main weapon of choice though, there is something so badass about seeing her wield a weapon that is so clearly designed to be two-handed swung around near effortlessly with one hand, though they did actually show her doing a two-handed slash in the comic.

    Plus the end reveal of Liz being the one to be providing Advent with all the comfort and amenities of The Cell is a very cute touch. Just monitoring, innit?

    Need a thumbnail now, and well, if you have been around long enough to know what happens when I talk about Advent on Hololive Tuesday, you know who is coming up, plus…

    SHE SAID THE THING SHE SAID THE SONG NAME AND THEN IT STARTED PLAYING AAAAAAAA!

    *ahem*

    I just really love Advent.

    Deep self-reflection followed by me gushing about VTubers, even with an inconsistent schedule, the Redundancy Review follows its theme of inconsistent themes consistently… that is a very silly sentence but I love how it reads.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition though. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and take it easy. If you are struggling yourself with something, do not be like me, reach out to friends and loved ones to find support – it is often closer to home than you think.

    For more information on Advent VS Justice, surprisingly, Hololive have a dedicated webpage for it that you can view here: Advent VS Justice | hololive official website