Rosalia Rambles

Tag: reviews

  • Redundancy Review: Day 338-357, “Decisions, Decisions”

    Redundancy Review: Day 338-357, “Decisions, Decisions”

    (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 pots and kettles, welcome to Day 338 to 357 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    May 29th was the last day of my contract with my previous company. I leave on good terms and whilst I do wish things could have turned out differently, the nature of layoffs is to cut costs to give the business the best chance of survival when things get hard.

    So, what comes next?

    Decisions.

    Decisions.

    Decisions.

    Some amount of waiting as well, as I currently have two open job applications that I need to wait to see if I get an interview or not, but if those do not go my way for whatever reason, a lot of personal decisions for myself.

    One of the most pressing is deciding what I want to do as a career going forward. Early on after getting told I was going to be let go, I made a decision that I wanted to move away from the tech industry as a whole. My intention is to keep the door slightly open, partially because a good majority of my connections are within this industry, and partially because I feel I could jump back in if the right opportunity came along which somehow also managed to align with the direction I want my life to go.

    But that alignment feels unlikely to happen. Even with only a short amount of time to view myself from outside the tech industry, I can see a more positive future if I slowly start to decouple myself from the professional identity I have built over the last five years.

    Admin or communications are the main things that come to mind, if I want to redirect myself into a more corporate-style focus. Working with data, organising others, or being able to use my writing skills for a positive influence in an organisation.

    There is a perspective in my mind that putting myself back into a corporate environment is “stifling” my own potential, when all of my major skill advancement and career moves have been within the same startup environment, giving me the flexibility and freedom to build myself up within the same place by adopting new roles as they appear. 

    However, and this might come off as a bit controversial, but at this stage of my life, I would happily trade freedom and flexibility for a bureaucratic structure if it gave me even a modicum of job security, especially when it would give me a launching pad for the other activities I want to do in life. 

    My goal in life is to try be evolving constantly. For the last five years, this was a career-focused goal, of pushing myself beyond my limits in work, climbing the ladder, and seeing where I could end up in that regard.

    Having the ladder shatter beneath my feet twice within the span of the years has honestly left me kind of disillusioned with that whole notion, and has made me realise little time I have taken to evolve myself over the last two years or so. I have my Rambles, but I have not really taken time to develop it in the way I want to outside of a few standout Redundancy Reviews.

    I need to work more on original fiction, which was something I did tonnes of back in 2022, and gives me the ability to be more creative with my storytelling or work on writing prompts that I find interesting, or even just scratch out a random story based on the most simple things.

    Which leads in nicely to my other main decision: when do I want to go all in on job hunting again? Well, the most forward answer is: “Right now what the fuck are you talking about do you know how fucked the market is and how long it takes to find the kind of job you are describing?!”

    But, that is exactly why I am hesitating on when I want to dedicate myself to the job hunt, which is a full-time activity in and of itself. I want to recover from the stress of my previous role, I want to work on my own projects as an artist, and I want to be in the best position possible before I throw myself into the seemingly never-ending grind that is finding a corporate position in the current market.

    The obvious worry of this approach is financials. The cost of living in the UK is high, no thanks to successive governments not doing anything to help that in the slightest, and spending any length of time unemployed is not going to help my monetary outlook, especially as my partner is not exactly rolling in cash from his part-time job – though he is also looking for full-time work himself, which has its own set of difficulties exclusive to him.

    On the flipside though, in the face of several irresponsible financial decisions I have made over the course of my life, I think I have more of a safety cushion than my contemporaries in Gen Z, which gives me a surprising amount of runway for both job hunting prospects and working on my own projects.

    And that is assuming I do nothing at all, which would include not taking commissions (which I am always open for get in touch if you are curious) or selling any of my collectable items, which I am currently working through the notion of selling a good chunk of my Magic card collection.

    Not for overt dislike of the game, but more because I am sitting on a good number of expensive cards that are gathering dust in a binder, and that I am unlikely to buy any new sealed product in future because Hasbro’s management of the game has fully put me off investing any more money into it.

    The road ahead looks rocky, but when times look hard, I keep the immortal words of Phoebe-chan in my head.

    My love of VTubers will definitely keep my spirits up as I navigate the days ahead, segueing me nicely into a VTuesday segment where I am actually going to talk about something recently released for a change rather than picking something from the backlog of awesome VTuber-related things I want to write about.

    Specifically, the second original song from Densetsu.EXE, a VTuber idol group formed of Phoebe-Chan, Mint Fantôme, and Victoria Roman: “Burn On! Hot-Blooded Heroine”

    So, I have mentioned Phoebe-chan before, my partner and I met at her Vexpo last year with her opening concert performance leaving a lasting impact on me to the point I bought her album and my partner bought a lightstick. Specifically my partner refused to accept change from her manager Steiner which left them both a little confused before they just went with it.

    However, I have not ever mentioned Mint or Victoria, which for the latter comes solely for the fact I have not interacted much with their work outside of what they do with Densetsu.EXE, only really seeing bits of her from clips when they are all streaming together. Considering how much I enjoy her personality in those moments, think it might be an idea to properly sit down and engage with her.

    As for Mint, it is now a silly goal of mine to attend a Meet & Greet with her for the sole purpose of talking to a VTuber about Ace Combat, as she has streamed Ace Combat 4 previously and someone who sounds suspiciously like her has streamed Ace Combat 7, but I am sure that is completely unrelated.

    Whilst they are all nerds in their own right, they are still idols… even if this song is particularly silly more than anything else, looking to pay tribute to old Japanese sentai style shows… which I am going to be honest, I know next to nothing about so I can not really do a deep analysis on the aesthetics of this other than it is absolutely amazing to see the idols performing as heroes in their signature outfits with PNGs of their avatars imposed onto their heads, with special mention to Mint wearing the exact off-the-hanger cosplay that so many other nerds can buy. 

    I think the MV is also a testament to how far Steiner goes for the talents under his management. Both acting as director and starring in it as the main villain “Lord Loiter”, which is a fantastically bizarre name for something in this style, it really shows the dedication he puts in to helping the enable the girls to pursue more ambitious projects, shown in the fact that the explosions in this video are real and done with gasoline.

    In general, this MV is an absolute achievement for all the hard work involved by all parties, a beautiful display of what independent groups fo VTubers can achieve with the right backing and people behind them, producing high-quality works of art that show the passion that lies behind the screens and the dedication to get it done, though I think Steiner says it best himself.

    If on the off chance you somehow see this, please forgive me for including your spelling error GIF response – it was too funny to pass up

    Also dropping the thumbnail of the video for the thumbnail of my article, courtesy of the lovely Maid Mint herself.

    Much like how this segment started with Phoebe saying “Never give up, bitch!”, I strive to never give up on myself, as my idols show what they can be capable of when you keep on keeping on.

    Well, I got no excuse now, I am officially unemployed and made a declaration I want to try keep evolving my writing work, guess I got to try keep to it now.

    As always, thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are safe and keeping well. If not, then I hope my silly words about various topics have brought you comfort, if only for a short while.

    Keep going. I will if you will.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 337, “The Day Everything Changed”

    Redundancy Review: Day 337, “The Day Everything Changed”

    (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 hermits and recluses, welcome to Day 337 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Today is 13th May 2026. One year ago, my life changed in ways I still struggle to fully comprehend.

    Whilst the one year anniversary of being made redundant is coming up in about a month’s time, this day marks when I got told that the company I was working for had entered financial distress and that falling into administration looked likely.

    The memory exists so clearly in my mind still, to the point that I can recount the entire thing when I would struggle to do so for other significant days.

    I started later than usual, around 9:30am, because of needing to do an early morning blood test. Back then I tried to start my days at 8am so I could finish earlier in the day and have more evening to evening with, and I did not particularly want to spend my lunch hour getting my blood stolen, so shifting around my day was the play.

    It flowed like any other day. We had our standup, and specifically I was invited to a meeting to start playing around with a new tool the development team had been working on for a little bit, one that was hopefully going to form part of a new proposition.

    After using it for a little bit, I had a lot of faith in the tool, and I found myself wanting to position myself as the owner/manager of this tool, wanting to take on more responsibility at the company and figuring this would be a good way to build myself up and learn more about being a producer.

    Even as some friends came down to visit me I was talking about excitement for the future with what could be coming next. Of course I still had nervous whispers in the back of my mind about what the future could hold, but I figured we would at least have till the end of the year to get things sorted.

    Then the anvil dropped.

    The CFO/HR person messaged me.

    “Hey Rosa”

    “Are you free for a quick call please”

    No preamble.

    No pleasantries.

    A message that reads as a death knell to all in the tech world, with my worst fears being realised when I got onto the call and I saw both the CFO and COO with solemn looks on their faces.

    With the gift of hindsight, the gallows humour approach would have been to say “Well I am getting fired or we all are” once I figured out what was going on.

    But I was a very different person back then, and I instantly knew what was likely going to happen. All I managed to muster was an “ah” before the news was delivered.

    I tried to keep a strong face, minimising how much I spoke both so I could understand what was being said to me and because I knew if I spoke I would start to cry my eyes out which would set the other two off.

    Not that it really mattered, but I said I would be taking the day after as an off day, before finishing the call with “I am gonna go hug Joe”, because in that moment all I wanted to do was cry my eyes out and wonder what the fuck was going to happen next.

    My running joke is that I survived layoffs so many times that it obviously would take the foundations collapsing in to finally get rid of me, but that mainly served as a deflection for survivor’s guilt – a sadly all too common phenomenon within the tech and games industry, an almost paralysing paranoia that you did not feel good enough to survive the axe when all too many talented people lost their jobs instead of you.

    The initial moments afterwards hurt. It was so bad that my anxiety response of vomiting almost triggered and I had to explain my feelings knelt in front of the toilet bowl in case it somehow got too much for me midway through.

    It was only a small consolation that I was not alone in this sensation, in that everyone in the company had received the news and had to process their next steps as well. It was a small positive that we kept daily standups going, if just to share potential job opportunities and talk about whatever we were feeling. I specifically remember rambling to a colleague of mine about Eurovision partway through the whole uncertainty process just to take our mind off things.

    Even today though, the scars remain. If anything they are more pronounced than ever because of yet another layoff hitting me just as I was starting to find my feet once more and push towards the projects I wanted to work on again this year, now instead I find myself trying to figure out what to do next whilst navigating the utter quagmire that is a mind plagued by depression and negative thoughts about how loyalty ultimately means nothing when my position on the landscape is not up to me.

    Getting dangerously close to breaking professionalism there, so I am going to move on to the review topic instead, which… admittedly is not Warhammer Wednesday because there was something that kicked off a year ago today alongside everything that happened to me on that day, which gives me a lot of mixed feelings. 

    Because yes, I did lose my job, my sense of self and purpose, and all notion of stability in my life…

    …but the Helldivers 2 ARG ended with the arrival of the Illuminate Great Host, heralding the invasion of Super Earth, which y’know, is kind of equally important as having a job.

    This ARG was extremely fun to watch across the four or five days it was live, seeing the community slowly work towards restoring the station to full functionality through minigames themed to actual terminal tasks in game – not knowing what the ultimate result was going to be

    I also have to give a shoutout to CloudPlays on Youtube for this stream title when the ARG first started. The sentiment was there my guy, but considering it took from May 9th to May 13th for things to finish, making such a content-brained declaration was certainly a choice.

    It was great to see the community come together to solve these puzzles though, even if during the pipe alignment minigame there were multiple moments where the blob kept moving a pipe out of alignment which undid a bunch of progress, especially when we had already solved the puzzle and just needed it to wait, leading to multiple messages of “HOLD” sent to the Satcom chat in the Discord, which was how players interacted with the ARG as a whole.

    This did lead to quite a few interesting moments, from the Discord API timing out because of the sheer volume of requests to the… various creative ingress bytes that the Helldivers community attempted, with the pipe shuffling incident also generating a beautiful message from one of the community managers saying “Satcom has lost all hope in the helldivers”

    Side note, no matter how hard I tried to track it down from DMs I shared with people during the ARG or things posted on Reddit, I could not for the life of me find the invalid ingress byte of “femboy feet pics”. 

    After the ARG was solved, it took a day or so for the ending to play out. This ending started around three minutes before my main meeting of that day, and I am someone who absolutely does not like being late for any meeting, so I was watching the invasion fleet arrive with absolute suspense and horror whilst also going “HURRY UP I NEED TO BE IN MY MEETING SOON!”.

    There is a certain dread that came from seeing so many Illuminate ships arrive at once, fully in the vein of the “Slipspace Rupture Detected” scene in Halo: Reach, compounded by the graphic of how it was shown in game.

    My intention is to do a couple more Helldivers 2 retrospectives around the invasion of Super Earth. I played a lot of the game around this point due to my unemployment and it forced me to evolve my strategy in game, which eventually became the foundation of how I play the game today.

    That should cover everything for today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are having a good week. The weekend is not too far away if you are having a rough one, so I hope you can relax up until that point.

  • 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 331-333, “For Those Who Come After”

    Redundancy Review: Day 331-333, “For Those Who Come After”

    (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 the ones that came before and those who come after, welcome to Day 331-333 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    First off, cause I have friends who have not got that far in Expedition 33:

    This article is going to talk about the themes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in a fair amount of detail and this is your only spoiler warning before I start as all significant details are going to be unspoilered for the purposes of discussion. If you have not yet played Clair Obscur, please do, the TL;DR of this is that it is a modern masterpiece of a video game.

    Right, now that I have probably shooed off a significant number of people – except Aaron, say hi to Aaron everyone – let us begin.

    Dim dam talé lam vacarme
    Redundancy Review begun
    And Rosa shall ramble on
    Dilim dili lili lam
    So much to say this is just a “part one”

    Dim-dim-dam-dada, dim-dim-da-dada, dim-da-lilam

    Dim-dim-dam-dada, dim-dim-da-dada, dim-da-lilam

    I love the opening of this game. The opening view of the twisted spire of Lumière with the eponymous song playing in the background helps set the tone of a dark yet optimistic story, with each individual frame of the game being as beautiful as a painting, but with credit going to the phenomenal motion capture work of Maxence Cazorla for helping to make Gustave such a relatable character from the get go.

    That said, Charlie Cox also deserves his flowers. His background in traditional acting means he delivers the majority of Gustave’s lines in a way an on-screen actor would in a natural conversational style, bringing a down–to-earth charm to the somewhat introverted inventor. He is only in a short segment of the game, but it is no surprise he was nominated alongside the monolithic talents of Ben Starr and Jennifer English for awards.

    Side tangent, as much as Jennifer English deserves the world and so much more, I really wish Andy Serkis at least got a nod for his performance as both Painted Renoir and Real Renoir, the ability to portray the same character from two drastically different perspectives has not been celebrated enough, playing two different antagonist characters would be hard work for any seasoned actor, and he made it seem effortless.

    Jen herself performs fantastically as Maelle, delivering a performance that balances the perfect mix of youth exuberance but with a weight of maturity behind it, reflecting a world in which children are forced to grow up way too fast thanks to the Gommage, Maelle carrying the weight of being orphaned multiple times before she even reached sixteen, but still wanting to join the Expedition to try save her home.

    Oh yeah, should probably explain the Gommage, which is the main inciting incident of the game.

    In the distance, visible from Lumière, there is a monolith where a lone figure sits motionless for the majority of the time. A number is painted upon it, with the number “34” being visible at the start of the game. The figure is referred to as “The Paintress”, and every year she will paint a new number onto the monolith, decreasing by one each time. When she does, everyone above that number in age will vanish into a cloud of petals, being “Gommaged”, leaving behind friends, family, and loved ones of all description.

    How the various denizens of Lumière react to the Gommage is rather realistic, with everyone taking a different approach on how to spend their final minutes. Some accept their fate with dignity and decorum, staying strong for those around them. Some choose to “enjoy life”, spending their last moments in the comforting embrace of their partners. Finally, some do not react well at all, taking to drinking and slamming the efforts of the Expeditions as pointless busywork when the Gommage keeps happening.

    This is the first main exposure to what is the main theme of the game as a whole: the cycle of grief.

    When I first started playing, my partner refused to tell me anything about the game except that it was “a game about grief”. Right from the beginning, you see how Lumière is a city that has been utterly traumatised by a regular cycle of grief – death is a constant, reoccurring factor for them, to the point that traditions around the Gommage have been established with almost everyone going to the harbour to mark their final moments.

    But there is also a beautiful moment hiding in plain sight that is beautiful foreshadowing to this overarching theme, which I wish I got a bloody screenshot of but the transcript will have to do:

    Sophie: “Sometimes I feel sorry for her.”
    Gustave: “Who, the Paintress?”
    Sophie: “Look at her. She looks sad. Maybe she’s a prisoner too. Stuck in the same cycle as us.”

    On the first playthrough, you may have no idea what Sophie is talking about. As far as the player knows, the Paintress is responsible for the Gommage, and her constant cycle of death is all that both the player and the characters know.

    But then you finish Act II, and become witness to the fantastic, if a bit divisive, twist that everything you have played through is in a painted world, with a family stuck in their own twisted cycle of grief being the main antagonist forces behind what is happening within what is now known as “The Canvas”.

    The Paintress does not want to go through with the Gommage. With each passing year, her available supply of Chroma – the source of a painter’s power, diminishes thanks to the actions of the real Renoir, who is trying to force the Paintress out of the Canvas because she is his wife, choosing to stay in a fantasy world with a painted copy of her dead son at serious detriment to her own physical health.

    Grief is ultimately what drives all characters forward in this game. Each of them have their own complex motivations as to why they move forward, but each initial Expedition member has their own flavour of grief pushing them forward:

    • Gustave lost Sophie, his lost love who he only managed to reconcile with before she died
    • Maelle lost both her original parents and her foster parents, leaving her only with Gustave as her adoptive brother
    • Lune lost her parents on a previous expedition, and hopes to find out what happened to them as part of Expedition 33
    • Sciel lost her husband Pieree, and subsequently lost her unborn child during her suicide attempt driven by the previous grief

    In spite of their grief though, they move forward, regardless of the consequences.

    I have already used one set of arc words as the title of this article, but there is another set there are equally important to the story of Clair Obscur:

    They are just “Tomorrow Comes” but I have this Sciel screenshot saved so I am going to use it because this is another instance of something becoming way more tragic on a second playthrough – specifically that Sciel tried to kill herself via drowning in the ocean, giving her a fear of water moving forward.

    Even when grief feels overwhelming, even when it feels like the world is collapsing in on yourself, even when you lose your job for the second time within a year meaning you start experiencing regular crashouts that disrupt your writing schedule and general routine: Tomorrow Comes. There will always be another dawn after the dark, and even when things feel overwhelming, there is a comfort in knowing that a tomorrow will always come. Struggles may remain for a long period of time, but it is a blessing to be guaranteed a tomorrow in the face of adversity.

    But, I made the title of this article “For Those Who Come After”, and as such, I should probably talk about what those arc words mean within the game, and what they mean to me.

    It is actually a shortened version of a longer line, which forms part of the oath Expeditioners take before embarking, something which Sandfall Interactive has not posted in full when I really wish they would. The full line is:

    “Learn from the ones who came before, and lay the trail for those who come after.”

    Within the game, this takes the form of all the expeditions that embarked before Expedition 33. You will be able to find their journals scattered around the game world which tell how they met their end whilst also informing you of how to navigate whatever danger they succumbed to… or in some cases, you find the journal after navigating the danger making you exclaim “well that would have been helpful five minutes ago”, but each Expedition before yours has laid the trail in some way, either through the grapple points or climbing handles, or dealing with an obnoxiously large threat long before you appeared.

    The Expedition is also a sign of hope for Lumiere, even as cynicism grows within the populace over the effectiveness of the effort as a whole, it shows that there are still those who are willing to navigate into a hostile world in an effort to try secure a better future for those who remain in Lumiere. Gustave specifically thinks of his apprentices, uttering these very words each time he finishes a journal entry:

    What do these words mean to me though? How do I take these arc words and apply them to my day-to-day experiences?

    Well, I have talked about it at some length in the past, but my goal as an artist is to act as inspiration for younger LGBTQ+ folk who have their own worries, concerns, or serious amounts of anxiety about living in a world that is very often hostile to them.

    I try my best to learn the history of LGBT rights as a whole, who laid the trail for people like me today and started to build a world where we can all be accepted, and I use that to inspire myself to try to do the same for others in whatever way I can.

    This is especially true for living in the UK, a country where trans rights are completely ignored by the ruling party at best, and at worst there are those who actively want to remove us from the public perception whilst simultaneously destroying our access to the life-saving healthcare we need.

    Even as economic conditions become worse and political forces start to work against me, I refuse to back down.

    I will not abandon my home.

    I will not leave behind those like me.

    I will do what I can to change things for the better for people like me, even if I do not live to see what this world will look like. 

    My art may not ever make enough money for me to live off, and it may not even reach the vast majority of people.

    But if I can inspire even one person to take the plunge and see how good their life could be when they choose to be themselves, then I can be proud that I did something good.

    For Those Who Come After.

    Plus I just had to write about Expedition 33 on Day 333 of the Redundancy Review. Even if this is not my full final write up on the game, and believe me I have a lot more to say I just do not have the screenshots or time to back it up right now, this serves as a good prologue to discussing the game at length – something that is still a goal of mine for this.

    That will cover everything for today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope the weekend will treat you well and you can take some time to relax. Partake in things that make you happy, or work to improve the space around you.

    Whatever you do, I know you will smash it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 329, “Tidying Time”

    Redundancy Review: Day 329, “Tidying Time”

    (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 caretakers and clearers (yes that is a word, I specifically looked it up), welcome to Day 329 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Spent a bit of today doing some cleaning, both of myself and of my living space, specifically starting to tackle clearing out the fridge and freezer in order to make space for various essentials I want to pick up in the coming weeks whilst I still make my current amount of money alongside tidying up the bathroom so I could stick the shower baskets back on to keep things relatively organised.

    Housework is always something I struggle to find the impetus for, possibly because of that old bastard ADHD. It never seems urgent in my mind, so it falls by the wayside in favour of other things, but simultaneously, I am a housework fiend when it comes to procrastinating something more important…

    …there is a joke in here about how my flat is going to be the cleanest it has ever been as I put off finding another job, but I do not know how confident I feel to make it.

    So instead I think I will spin it more into a general discussion topic, specifically along the lines of: What sort of timeline do I think I will find a new job on?

    The short answer is: “eeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh?”, with the explanation to that answer and the long answer being one and the same.

    As I have mentioned previously, processing where I want to go next is the first priority, and given I am extremely privileged to have a good amount of runway to support a long amount of processing time, debugging myself and recovering from burnout is the key.

    At the same time though, I know this is also partially because I reckon a three-to-six month job search is going to be the optimistic end of the timeline, with upwards of one-and-a-half years being the middle ground between pessimism and realism given how rough the market is currently for job searchers, hence my logic of wanting to throw myself into writing cause if I am going to be on the search for a while, I may as well maintain a massive personal project.

    It is the advice that is always given to all walks of life in terms of career development: maintain a personal project. Artists of all flavours, programmers, and even quality assurance professionals such as myself are expected to work on projects or ideas outside of work hours to show your dedication to your craft, and it is the theory behind this that I have a love-hate relationship with.

    I get the logic behind it, promise. Working on stuff outside of work can help show employers what you are capable of in ways that cannot be expressed properly in an interview or job application, and it can be fulfilling to see a personal project through to completion – especially if you do so with friends.

    But at the same time, and especially with modern work culture, the idea of giving up personal time to go beyond work feels extremely unfair in terms of how it makes you stand out to employers. Heck the reason there are so many gaps of multiple weeks between Redundancy Reviews before I got shitcanned was because I would finish a work day and not even want to fathom doing anything that would class as brain stimulation – and I work remotely.

    Remote work means that I do not have to consider the same factors as other people do:

    • There is no commute to worry about, freeing up on average two hours
    • I live in a very walkable town that has numerous local amenities for lunch and food shopping, meaning I can do those errands on my lunch hour
    • During my breaks from work, I can make small dents into the housework list as a way to get away from the screen and decompress my mind
    • And because I only had a few meetings a day, I could spend my focus energy on actually getting the job done rather than having my social battery drain bit-by-bit

    All of these are an extreme privilege to have against modern work culture, and asking someone who works longer hours and also has to deal with a commute to give up their paltry time in the evening or any amount of time during the two weekend days they get to work on a personal project feels, in equal measures, performative and exploitative.

    There is also a prime opportunity for me to drag AI through the mud once more off the back of that, but I think I will save that one for another day and instead talk about VTubers that I like.

    Like Nerissa Ravencroft from Hololive English Advent.

    I ramble about Shiori Novella enough, but I have only slightly alluded to what I think about Nerissa. When Advent initially debuted she was actually the design I was taken least with, but as time went on and I saw how she interacted with the community on streams, I started to fall in love with how this silly goober functions, combined with her absolutely godlike singing voice.

    Her originals are wonderfully crafted pieces that resonate with different emotions in each piece, from alluding to the playful and seductive nature of demons in “Say My Name”, to diving deep in how it feels to reflect alone on mistakes and past trauma in the hauntingly poetic “In My Feelings”… and well, I could talk about Oyome Holic here too, but let us save that for a day where I am not writing this at past ten in the evening.

    This varied vocal energy is brought out in the cover songs she creates as well, with the two I am wanting to highlight showing both ends of the Vocaloid producer spectrum with “Birdbrain” nailing the esoteric and weird side of things (alongside nailing the scream right at the end of the bridge), and with “Rabbit Hole” utilising Rachie’s English lyrics being…

    …well…

    …Rabbit Hole is a hell of a good song, and I will leave it there to save myself any embarrassment.

    Outside of this though, the thing I admire most about Nerissa is her work ethic. She does so much behind the scenes to enable music and streams for the Jailbirds, and this definitely deserves to be recognised more because the effort put in even when the odds are against her is one hell of an admirable quality.

    Plus her obsession with Culver’s acts as great advertising for the American chain, to the point that if I somehow end up in the US in the future, I would love to try it out.

    Anyway, that’s my VTuber rambling at an end for today, not so much a review, more just an unstructured gush about the talents I look up to.

    Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope this week brings you peace and comfort where possible, or if you are facing hardship, that it passes by quickly without much weight on your soul.

    Keep on keeping on.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 327-328, “Good for your soul”

    Redundancy Review: Day 327-328, “Good for your soul”

    (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 serfs and peasants, welcome to Day 327 and 328 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, I missed a day again. Yesterday ended up being a bit slow and a bit sad, partially driven by a touch of FOMO from seeing so many pictures of people attending the Hololive English All for One screening in London.

    There was a brief moment where I was considering going to that, but it ultimately ended up not being that financially viable once I considered travel, accommodation, and various miscellaneous purchases along the way – which in hindsight considering I am getting shitcanned at the end of the month, was a smart decision.

    It still stings a little though, being on the outside looking in, seeing so many groups of cool people come together for a shared event made my heart feel simultaneously full and empty at the same time. I have Vexpo this year, but considering my funds are likely to have an asterisk hanging over them for the near future, it seems like that will be my only VTuber related excursion this year.

    Which, to be blunt and selfish for a moment, really fucking sucks.

    VExpo was a damn near life-changing event for me last year, getting to meet several people with a shared interest of mine alongside having the opportunity to meet several VTubers I looked up to and meet ones that I only recently discovered. My survival comes first unfortunately, so it means a good four months or so of rooting for awesome people on the outside.

    In the meantime though, there is definitely going to be a lot I do within the comfort of my local area to help my soul to recover from the tech industry, which does include keeping up with VTuesday segments to show my love of the VTuber space in whatever way I can.

    Additionally, it means putting my energy into things that might not influence profit margins or return-on-investment numbers, but will influence the world in a positive way, whether in the wider world or within my local spaces. I should hopefully have more social energy once things fully process from my mind, which means I can work on projects with friends or just be able to host social gatherings with a bit more spring in my step – I have wanted to host a cheese-based gathering for friends, and sitting around eating cured meat and cheese to celebrate the next phase of my life sounds like one hell of a good evening.

    I guess it all boils down to processing, and everyone processes differently. In a way I have not had much processing time at all due to how hectic my life was balancing my career and keeping up with the schedule I wanted to. Thankful for being able to write the Redundancy Review as a way of debugging my mind bit by bit even when everything feels full and overwhelming.

    Not sure how today’s review topic will go, but there is a certain joy in me talking about weirdly specific topics, and despite having played-

    (it says “Install” cause I primarily play on Steam Deck, and this was taken on my laptop)

    -this much Umamusume over the last five months, I have only talked about it once on the Redundancy Review, and I do not even think I did a good job on that one knowing what I know now.

    Anyway, today’s review topic is the Pretty Derby Season 2 opening credits, set to the song “Yume wo Kakeru!”, or “Run for our Dream!” as it is labelled in the concert theatre in the game.

    Side note, the concert theatre might be one of my favourite features within the game that I cannot help but get irrationally annoyed over because of how limited the pool of vocalists for some songs are – especially in the wake of some later seasons and series of the anime having characters sing those songs whilst they do not have the same track in-game.

    I just want to have my oshi Oguri Cap sing all of the songs, is that so hard to fulfill?

    Anyway, back on track.

    Having now watched basically every single piece of Umamusume media since I first talked about the Miracle Run in Season 2, I can say that whilst it still holds an important place in my heart, I can concede that the later stories are way stronger in terms of writing and pacing.

    That said, I will not concede that Yume no Kakeru is the best opening track in the series. There is just so much joy and energy in the singing that really embodies the feeling of this being a song to sing alongside your rivalry, wanting to try your best and push yourself beyond your limits.

    In terms of visual elements… it is tough to consider. Personally, I think the Season 3 opening nails the slice-of-life aspects the best, as the daily lives of all of the students at Tracen are half the fun of the series, and the short visual gags in that opening bring a much bigger smile to my face now that I have the context of having played the game.

    There are a lot of fun visual elements to the Season 2 opening as well, a few of my favourites including:

    Mayano Top Gun in her prime position of sleeping through the entire season because the real-world horse was not active at the same time as Tokai Teio.

    Team Rigil warming up and T.M. Opera O just… doing T.M. Opera O things instead of warming up.

    And Twin Turbo proving her nature as the ultimate front runner by being so clear of the pack no one can try catch up to her. That little dot on the far right of the screen is her.

    But my absolute favourite visual element of this opening comes right at the end, where young Kitasan Black and Satono Diamond are seen cheering for Teio and McQueen, and these two were the entire reason I decided to talk about this opening because I wanted to use them as the thumbnail picture.

    These two appearing as the “Come on!” cheers play out in the song never fails to put a smile on my face from how absolutely adorable they look.

    If you are at all curious about Umamusume, I definitely recommend it. I am not someone who typically enjoys sports anime but I found myself enamoured from the beginning which only escalated into an obsession after watching Season 2, and well, after I finished Cinderella Gray I ended up going against my better instincts and getting into a fucking gacha game.

    I can definitely recommend getting into the anime over the game – I cannot in good conscience recommend people to get into the gacha game, as much as I will jokingly tease my friends to join my club.

    The anime can be found on Crunchyroll and Tubi with the Road to the Top OVA being available on Youtube. I… do not really recommend getting it through Crunchyroll as I do not agree with their business practices, so explore other options to find the platform that works best for you.

    That should cover everything for today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you have had an easy day, if you are in the UK I hope you have enjoyed the bank holiday as well.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 326, “The Severn Theatre Diaries”

    Redundancy Review: Day 326, “The Severn Theatre Diaries”

    (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 anthropologists and ornithologists, welcome to Day 326 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Upfront, I am running on god knows how little sleep right now, I was up till like gone five in the morning because of some regrettable beverage choices throughout the day, slept in until my partner returned home from his holiday, and then went out to do errands even though the correct play was to sleep some more.

    The show must go on though… well it does not have to cause I am the showrunner and I can just decide to do my own thing but I want the show to go on, especially cause there is a fair amount to cover.

    Usually when I put the word “diaries” into the title of a Redundancy Review it usually means I have gone travelling somewhere to partake in an event, like with the “Vexpo Diaries” or the “Albert Hall Diaries” from last year – side tangent, still stupid proud of of how the Vexpo piece turned out, was the longest thing I wrote last year and I still feel happy reading it back.

    It feels weird though, to be writing a “diaries” style segment on… me being in my hometown of Shrewsbury for an event. There is not really much to discuss in terms of travel or any novel aspects I encountered in a new place because I spend a good majority of my time talking about places around town anyway. The title remains though, as yesterday was a wonderful night out, even if I was all by myself.

    Context: parents had booked this show in Shrewsbury, not realising they had double booked with another show on the same date. They offered the Shrewsbury tickets to me, and I accepted, not really knowing what to expect.

    With any good excursion to the theatre, it is important to eat well before it, and given I was flying solo for the night due to my partner being away visiting his parents, I decided to go out for a meal and treat myself.

    But I had a conundrum, one that only a writer could have… in that I spent most of the day procrastinating and lazing about only to go “shit, I should write something”. This led me to seek out a place where I know I would not be judged for breaking out my laptop to have a drink and rapidly do some writing practice.

    When it comes to places like that in Shrewsbury, only one place really comes to mind: Floro Lounge. A place which acts well as a third space in that you can just keep ordering drinks and reclining into a comfy chair without needing to be moved on or rushed out cause someone else needs the table.

    And they definitely do offer a good variety of food and drink options as part of that package, with my usual drink of choice being an Elderflower Cooler that is both bright and refreshing, and my dinner that evening was a “Diablo Smash Burger”, two thin and crispy burger patties with chorizo, chilli jam, and an added fried egg for good measure.

    Fried eggs on burgers are one of my ultimate comforts, there is something so incredibly satisfying about the texture of a well-cooked egg colliding with the rich, crunchy beef of a smash burger. Add on some fries, onion rings, and mayo to bring it all together, and I had myself a worthy feast to prepare myself for the evening…

    …that said, Floro Lounge is fucking pricey sometimes, and despite how good their burgers are, they are one of the most premium items on the menu, with my Diablo Smash plus egg and onion rings running me up £21.80, alongside £4.65 for my drink bringing my total to £26.45. 

    In a word: indulgent, and something that likely will not reappear in my habits once my final pay comes from, as that is an expense I most definitely can not keep up with, even if I do love reviewing food.

    After finishing both my food and my short writing practice, I packed my gear up and took a short walk around the local park, somewhat of a mistake considering there is a music festival going on this weekend which I had somehow completely blanked on and realised a tranquil walk by the river was not in the cards, so I decided to head to the theatre instead.

    Following some issues with my tickets and two trips on the stairs, I got myself seated and took a quick cheeky picture of the stage with the cover image of the person I was going to see: Hamza Yassin

    He is a wildlife photographer, who has done work with the BBC, Channel 4, and many other smaller productions. Admittedly, I had not heard much about him before this show, and given that there was no photography or filming allowed as part of it, I was curious to see what was going to be put on show.

    What I ended up watching actually blew my mind. I was fascinated from start to finish, both how he started out in the world originally coming from Sudan, to being the black sheep of his family in that he is the only one not to pursue medicine, and all of the weird and wonderful stories he was able to tell from his tenure as a wildlife photographer, including:

    • Getting ticks the size of a grape stuck onto him from elephants in Nairobi 
    • Worrying he had habitualised an injured otter who had to stay with him for three weeks before it could go to a sanctuary
    • Being put on assignment to Antarctica last minute and having to lie about having sailed in the past
    • And many different stories about the trust that photographers put in local guides to keep them safe and inform them of opportunities

    In particular, I was impressed at how he talked about the fieldcraft and tracking elements of being a wildlife photographer. Practicing your movements and understanding how an animal behaves so that you are able to get within such a short distance that your camera is able to pick up even the smallest details of a creature up close and personal sounds incredible, with the pictures to back it up.

    I went in with no expectations, and came out having had a wonderful evening – I was even thinking to myself during the interval that my parents had missed out handing me these tickets, that this would have been an equally amazing experience for them.

    And well…

    …given that this happened to them on their night out, I think my evening was ultimately the more successful one.

    Not really a travel blog like I have done in the past, but still a wonderful time out.

    Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to take it easy and enjoy the weekend. Take in some sun, or take some time in bed – either is completely valid.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 322, “Comfort”

    Redundancy Review: Day 322, “Comfort”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I seek out things that comfort me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The first chorus in particular speaks to me:

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

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

    In the rain, the wind, and the sunlight.

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

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

    Unchained”

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Let go of all your heartache,

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

    Feel the world’s embrace,

    Oh what a joyful place

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

    Keep dreaming…”

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

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

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

    Thumbnail picture, swiped from the official Hololive English Twitter account

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

  • Redundancy Review: Day 321, “Career Uncertainty, Part 2

    (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 admirals and commodores, welcome to Day 321 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Off the back of getting rejected for a job role I was pretty excited for, I continue to persist in my goal to write a daily series. Heads up that this edition might read a bit more like a rant in some areas, as I am going to be talking about career stuff as I briefly alluded to yesterday.

    About eight years of my life has been spent either aspiring and studying to enter the tech industry, or working in the tech industry itself. As a twenty eight year old, this means approximately one quarter of my life has been spent in the tech space.

    This started with me going to university to study Computer Games Technology, with the hope of becoming a games programmer of some description, either working on my own independent projects or joining some large studio to be a cog in the machine. Admittedly it started well, with both my first and second year having good results in what I was attempting to do with my coursework.

    Not without struggle though. My second year in particular was plagued with a lot of struggle and tense moments as things heated up, particularly in the first semester more than anything else. 

    Third year… was the hardest. The first semester had me navigating a lot of personal issues that impacted my work in a negative way that whilst I was still fulfilling deadlines and getting on with things, I was not pushing myself on working on things that were not coursework, which is definitely one of the things that you need to succeed as a programmer by improving your skills.

    With the gift of hindsight, whilst I knew how to navigate programming, I am not built to be a full-time programmer. The idea of spending a full work day sitting in front of an IDE (or more realistic to the modern day, an agent prompt window) did not appeal to me in the slightest.

    This issue was compounded when my second semester was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing things online, disrupting the deadlines I had and disrupting the flow of the group I was working with at the time, causing things to fall behind.

    I still graduated, with a First class degree no less, specifically because the module I scored highest on, as part of a course dedicated to building me up as a programmer more than anything else, was Consultancy and IT Management, which was around building a case study to upgrade a company’s IT infrastructure… which I feel reflects the current me pretty nicely, but is still funny to look back on.

    As is evident from my many previous stories, I did not in-fact go into programming full time. Whilst someone in my life at the time tried to push me to work on personal projects so I could put together a more proper portfolio, the drive was not there, and I should have admitted that way sooner, both to myself and that person.

    So I spent six months unemployed, trying to work on writing when I can but mainly resolving a bunch of personal issues more than anything else. COVID jobs market sucked, and I did have some interviews, but not much success.

    That was until I interviewed for the position of QA Engineer at Codemasters, which I have talked about at length in my Day 118 Redundancy Review. This set the trajectory for where my career has taken me today, with a year spent in the games industry until I pivoted into working for an XR company that specialised in both bespoke VR content and an educational platform.

    This is where I have spent the majority of my career, building myself up as a QA initially before my mentor Gabi took me under her wing and started to build me up as a producer as well… I should reach out to her again, especially now with shit hitting the fan again. She is one of the reasons I have as much resilience as I do today, and I still try to internalise one of the last things she told me when the company went to shit:

    “You are a person worth knowing.”

    I gave a lot of myself to that XR company, pushing myself beyond my limits and learning as much as I could with each project. I definitely pushed a little too hard in some instances, as I had to have at least two periods of leave that were due to the stress catching up to me… well, the latter one was purely stress, the former was due to me catching COVID and severely underestimating how long it took to recover – I kept coming back to work only to have myself punched back down by how sluggish my body felt, something I still struggle with today as I most definitely have some variety of Long COVID after catching it twice.

    My aim was to make myself indispensable, if a little neurotic in how I approached things. Stubbornness is a genetic trait I fight against every day, and it definitely affected how I communicated with my colleagues at times, both in positive and negative ways. Regardless, I made my mark, and navigated responsibilities I would have never considered in the year prior. 

    But now we get to the hard details, and that is what it is like to work within startup/scaleup culture. I will try to frame this with the positive aspect first followed by why it can cause psychological strain in certain scenarios.

    First off, team size. After coming from Codemasters where a single platform QA team would be around fifteen to twenty people at peak times with the greater QA team easily being one-hundred people and above, going to a company which never went above fifty people at the peak was certainly a cultural difference.

    The primary perk of this was knowing who you worked with well, especially after my part of the company got reorganised into a proper studio team where we would have a general standup and retro alongside project specific meetings. This meant I got to know people on a personal level, learning about their hobbies, how they prefer to work, and who I could ask certain questions of. A lot of my old colleagues were incredibly chill people, and very supportive of me as a trans person – one distinct memory I have is absolutely bawling on the shoulder of one of them after I had to dip from a company dinner because of a murder mystery actor making a rather crass transphobic joke, which I spent a fair bit of time not wanting to ruin his very nice jacket with my snot or tears.

    The main downside of working this way is that responsibilities had to be shared almost all of the time, often leading to moments where my plate would be filled with all different tasks that needed to be balanced or differing deadlines, requiring precision prioritisation in order to get things done, which I managed to do most days, but the stress definitely felt intense on some days, especially while I was working towards being a producer, often having to balance QA responsibilities along with my production responsibilities.

    To bring things back to the positive, this does mean I can prepare, practice, and perform a presentation in a relatively short timescale, something I utilised in a recent interview to do the above in around half an hour. AI might be able to do a similar thing, but I can do it much cheaper with fewer resources, like caffeine and painkillers as opposed to context and tokens.

    Second main perk is being treated like an adult in regards to working patterns. Codemasters offered me flexitime but this was a measured arrangement, where if I signed out early on any given day, I would need to make up that time later on in the week, or vice versa where staying late one night meant I could sign out earlier. Work is hard and intense within startup culture, but so long as the work is being completed by the deadline, I was free to work however I wanted, which is an absolute relief to an ADHDer like myself, as forcing myself to work on a pattern that is not mine does my head in.

    Downside of this all? Overtime was very rarely compensated, partially due to the fact my compensation was already pretty generous, but this meant any time I needed to stay late or start early often resulted in nothing but a congratulations, which was actually less than what I got in the games industry, as I got time-and-a-half for any weekend work and double time for any bank holiday. Flexing my life for the needs of the business was also a requirement, which became particularly annoying on the day after my partner moved in with me, where I was supposed to cook our first proper meal together but ended up needing to stay multiple hours past my usual finishing time to help get something out the door, which ended with no result anyway.

    (small aside: I do not believe in the discussion of wages being taboo. Possibly a Gen Z thing, possibly a leftist thing.)

    And finally, the thing that I cannot highlight any positive for, or even try to talk about in a positive way: layoffs, and funding.

    There is no way for me to discuss this part of working in a startup or scaleup without going overly negative, because this shit absolutely destroys lives, morale, and direction of a company. In my five year career, I have survived three rounds of layoffs, and being laid off twice. Two rounds of those layoffs have been in the XR industry, where I had to watch friends and senior colleagues disappear whilst I was still around, leading to some serious survivor guilt developing which got worse during the second round.

    No one can dodge mortar shells forever, though it seems appropriate that for someone who survived layoffs three times, it would obviously take the nuke of administration/insolvency for me to finally get hit, leading to where we are today with the Redundancy Review and the “season 2” we are currently within due to the second layoff.

    So, what is the moral of me running through this all?

    Because whilst I can continue on in the tech industry, and there is definitely a real possibility I stick around if a good opportunity arises, everything I have run through has worn me down bit by fucking bit, and I am done. The games industry is undergoing constant shifts with layoffs, closures, and cancellations, the tech industry is going all in on AI which leads to fewer opportunities being created, and pretty much all of my friends have told me to move away from startup culture for the sake of my own health.

    That leaves me contemplating going down the path of the starving artist, which has its own set of pitfalls and would lead to even more career uncertainty than I am facing right now….

    …but when has that ever stopped me?

    The world needs more LGBTQ+ artists making works public, especially trans artists to try show those falling victim to culture war topics that not only are we real people, we are also nothing like what the media portrays – I literally do not like going to the toilet in public at the best of times I am certainly not going to be doing heinous shit in a women’s toilet.

    I did not intend for this to become such a long piece, but the words kept flowing as I kept typing, but now we need to do a review topic. Something shorter than usual, and I have something just for that.

    This is a can of Poppi, a brand of soda that was launched in the US in 2018 as a “gut healthy” soda with it recently launching in the UK in Pret A Manger and Tesco locations. I saw it multiple times in my local Tesco express, but considering it is £2 for an individual can or £4.50 Clubcard Price for a four-pack, I never really had the impetus to try it until today, where I went to grab a meal deal lunch for my partner and decided to include it as the drink as repayment to myself for running this errand.

    And I am very glad it came as the meal deal drink because holy shit I do not consider this worth £2 for a can and I would be at a stretch to pay £1.12~ per can in the four-pack.

    Comparing Poppi to a standard fizzy orange drink in the UK, Tango and/or Fanta, it barely has any orange flavour to it, or even much fizz to it, kind of tasting like a squash made with an extremely flat sparkling water. I am someone who does not even like Fanta, but if I had to take the pick between Fanta or Poppi I would take Fanta every time.

    But it is a healthy soda, so obviously it would not taste as good as a processed and high-sugar drink.

    I will concede that point, but counter with the comparison I made. A glass of orange squash has more orange flavour, but would also have more health benefits in term of hydration and be substantially cheaper than paying £1.12-£2 for a can of supposedly “healthy” soda.

    Note to self, Robinson’s Squash for a future Redundancy Review topic.

    Just about 2300 words for today, the longest I have written in a damn while.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax and that the Monday blues are not hitting you too hard.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 320, “Calmer than Usual”

    (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 salarymen and manufacturers, welcome to Day 320 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Sunday is usually a day I prefer to keep quiet with minimal engagements, partially out of an existential dread that comes from knowing I have to go to work the next day and wondering what the hell is going to come across my desk when I do.

    But now with the bizarre calm I find myself in from knowing my employment with my current company is coming to an end, today has been a mixture of relaxation and letting myself exist rather than worrying about what comes tomorrow.

    It has however been plagued by a pretty annoying headache, so I have not been able to push myself to do the amount of things I have wanted to today. Specifically was wanting to make a roast dinner for myself and my partner but ended up changing plans to a much simpler leftovers meal.

    Despite my pledge to wanting to keep this a daily series again, I find myself struggling to figure out what to write about for the “personal” segment of the review. Partially because whilst there is a lot I want to say about I feel in my current situation, I cannot properly express myself without getting sorely unprofessional in my conduct, and because it feels like very early days in these next steps.

    I am relaxed, which I consider the important thing. I know there is going to come a point where panic will set in once more and I very much will need a source of employment to keep the lights on, but, for now, there is a certain peace in having space to breathe again and not worry about things on Sunday.

    There is a joke to be made here about not worrying on Sunday because all I have now is time to worry about being unemployed, though I am going to remain on the optimistic side whilst focusing on writing, recovery, and slowly tuning up both the tech and the writing portfolio.

    Though if I am honest… I have doubts if I want to carry on in the tech industry after all this.

    If we include my time in university (bit of a stretch but stay with me), the year I worked in the games industry and the four years I have worked in the XR industry, I have an eight year career in tech.

    And outside of the money, which admittedly is very good, there is not much that draws me in anymore, and plenty that is pushing me out.

    I think I will talk more on that tomorrow – not exactly like I have much to do on a work day now.

    Gonna reach into the backlogs for something to review today, which came from the local market about a month back… which means, I can finally do one of these again…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    God, I missed doing that one.

    Anyway, at Shrewsbury Market there is a stall simply called “Eat In”. It offers a decent variety of Italian ingredients for making pizza, pasta, or antipasto alongside offering Roman-style sourdough pizza by the slice, topped with your choice of oil or hot honey.

    My usual order is a simple pepperoni slice, but on this day in the past, one pizza caught my eye and I could not resist trying it.

    This is an XL piece of pizza topped with Shropshire ham and mushroom, which was then topped off with Kashmiri chilli oil, also made by a local trader. This cost me £6.80, which is slightly higher than what I would usually pay for my pepperoni sliced topped in a similar way, £4.50, but is also way bigger than that slice.

    Pizza by the slice is something I wish more independent places in the UK would offer. There are not many options outside of Greggs, which is… passable but not really what I would be looking for in terms of a pizza lunch, and I do not exactly want to purchase a pizza from somewhere like Domino’s or otherwise as it is both a bit overkill and would spoil my appetite for dinner.

    Eat In serves my needs exactly, and it helps that each slice of pizza is made with absolute love, having amazingly fluffy dough, a crisp crust on the bottom, and a spicy oil on top to bring out the best of the local ingredients.

    Now I have made myself hungry damnit. 

    Ahh well, I can just go to the market on Tuesday and indulge.

    That will do it for today, I am going to spend the rest of my evening relaxing and maybe jamming some Umamusume in before bed.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to rest easy knowing what approaches tomorrow. I hope that work is easy on you and nothing massively brings you down.