#poppitops

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A comment from the Aristasian's otherkin blog, confirming that Aristasians hatch from eggs. This idea is only slightly modified from this mid 1980's Poppitops comic that ran in their Artemis magazine.

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Poppitops comic from Artemis #6 https://archive.org/details/Artemis6/mode/2up From 1984, and possible the first in print usage of Blonde and Brunette.

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More mentions of blondes and brunettes in 1984 Artemis zines.

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A couple Poppitops comics from the old pre-Aristasia zines.

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Wallpaper from the old website! This particular joke has been in use with the Aristasians since 1984(ish). In Artemis #5, a similar joke appeared as a "caption this picture" contest.

Then in Artemis #6, it appeared again, closer to the joke in the wallpaper, as a single panel Poppitops comic.

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Ah, my “favorite” of the old Aristasian comics! This on was featured, in the modern era, on a Happy Innocent blog post they made! This one is from The Romantic #5, and in this better quality we can see some of the words that make up their world of ugliness.

Some of these words include: Jeans, washing machine, equality, alternative, classless, caring, multi-culture, rock, euro, metres, pluralism, sex, buy, obey, freedom, ecology, rebel, television, money.

It is, to say the least, an interesting hodgepodge of words. Do they hate these things? Are they annoyed that they have to hear about them? What do they have against washing machines? It’s truly a head scratcher of a comic.

Of interesting note is that it is signed by “Pippit”, who we can perhaps assume was Priscilla Langridge, since she is briefly called “Pip”. The art style is very distinctive and you see these little ladies on the iconic maps as well.

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Proto-Aristasian language and fashion dos and don’t from Artemis in 1984. With a bonus Poppitop comic! They really loved that particular joke.

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Some Poppitop comics from the Romantia zines “The Romantic”.

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The Evolution of the map of Aristasia

Thinking about the unveiling of Aristasia to Chelouranya had me thinking a bit about some of the terminology that had been used to describe their lands over the decades. While the name of the world changed, the districts have remained the same. So let us have a little peek at how their iconic map has changed over the decades.

From Imperial Angel issue 2, late around 1990 Perhaps this is the earliest published map of the lands of Romantia/Aristasia/Sai Herthe (although it's very possible an earlier concept was published in Artemis, which introduced the Poppitops and their kingdom of Poppitopia and the concept of Blonde and Brunette). In this era The Pit was called Babylon, or Carcanimæ, and this map was a "psychic territory", the issue of Imperial Angel goes at great lengths to discuss each of the districts and the symbolism of their placement on the map.

From The Children of the Void, published in 1996 The next known version of this map comes from the Children of the Void novel and cements a few of the ideas that would stick for a while. The "quarantine" is replaced with "Infra Quirinelle", an island that represented the very early 1960s. Other than that, Vintesse and Novaria have switched places, the capital city is now called "Ladyton" instead of "Romantiana", the hard lines between the Kadoria and Quirinelle and the rest of the map have been standardized, as I believe that Romantia had something to say about the 1940s and 1950s being only just barely acceptable, and the providence of Arcadia has been split in two: Arcadia and Amazonia. The little fancy lady in a long dress has been replaced with... a heiling Amazon soldieress. If you recall, in 1995 there was a bit of a kerfuffle beween Miss Martindale and some newspapers when they found an article she wrote about her distaste that a televised sporting event censored some roman salutes straight up Nazi salutes. This seems to have been a sticking point, and perhaps that's why Little Miss Amazonia is heiling her heart out.

An updated map from early elektraspace, late 1990s or early 2000s perhaps.

When the Aristasians moved to elektraspace, this version of the map was presented to signify their lands, and it seems to go from a "psychic territory" to a real alternate world with the addition of the lands and seas surrounding Aristasia, as well as the little "100 Miles (Arist.)" scale. A whole gaggle of new cities have sprouted up and the decade signifiers have vanished, perhaps cementing it more as a real place. Little Miss Amazonia is still doing her little Nazi salute from the Great Eastern Lands.

An even further updated map, posted on their blog in 2007

The final Aristasian map appears on their Aristasian Treasure Trove blog in 2007. It is almost the same as the previous elektraspace map, but there are a few notable differences: Vintesse and Novaria have once again swapped places and Novaria snakes into Amazonia, but Lempicka (perhaps named after Tamara de Lempicka, the Art Deco artist that the Aristasians had a penchant for) stays in more or less the same map location, so that it remains, rightfully so, in Vintesse. Perhaps because of the swap, all the other Vintesse cities have vanished from this map. Maybridge travels a little bit south, close to the lands of Novaria. If I recall correctly, Maybridge was the name of the districts, AKA the houses the Aristasians lived in. Perhaps the move from within Trent but nearby to Vintesse, to right the border of Trent and Novaria was a symbolic change in the aesthetics of said household. The final change, that I noticed right away, was our little heiling Amazonia has changed her arm to a much more friendly little wave. It was around this time that the Aristasians seemed to be in some sort of Wikipedia editing war to clean up their image and were absolutely appalled that people would dare dig up their past actions and bring them to light, so perhaps that's why Little Miss Amazonia has changed her pose.

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Your humble editress is usually quick to say "No, of course Aristasia wasn't a cult!", usually. But sometimes, I feel as if perhaps it was a bit too close to being a cult for comfort. It definitely varied from what you normally might think of as a cult, in that they didn't really recruit, and they usually played all their weird cards first thing, right out on the table. They didn't keep their strange secrets until after you were already invested in them, they wanted everyone to know, right up front, that they were aliens in exile. But maybe not in so many words. They were, of course, very happy to cozy up to girls who shared their interest, and see who were willing to to play their game (see Operation Roriita and their Femmekin/Otherkin blogging), but once they hooked you with their weird ideas, they didn't seem to want anything from you beyond your willingness to engage in long-term life theatre with them. Of course, it's also apparently true that certain girls, with certain positions of power, have allegedly used their spiritual and social power to act out what seems like obvious kinks (viewing it from this century, with what we understand now about kinks, even if it is just a bongo Tellurian's understanding) against seemingly unwilling members of their community who apparently were willing to subject themselves to such treatment because they apparently were lead to believe it was done for spiritual reasons. Maybe it was printed in bongo tabloids, but the events certainly seemed to transpire, one way or another.

To make a long post even longer, I would like to go through many of these and speak a little about my thoughts on them.

Chanting Chanting is used within the religious aspect of Aristasia/Chelouranya, but the religious side was never particularly pushed to any real degree. Instill guilt about not living up to potential This seems to be something that comes up a bit when ex-Aristasians (particularly of the Second Life era) tell their stories, and mostly it relates to feeling guilty that they're not really living a racinated life outside of the internet. No happiness outside of group The idea that the rest of the world was in an eclipse, and the world outside of Aristasian hearths was The Pit is a big one. Almost everything about the modern world was deemed disgusting. Forbid critical questions about leader The leaders (if that is what you could call Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge) had so many different personas it was almost impossible for them to have answered any critical questions about them. It's very possible that whole people have been invented, for the purpose of deflecting questions about who really founded Aristasia. Information deliberately withheld Now this is one that doesn't seem to actually have been a thing. Aristasians seemed to play all of their strange cards right at once. They wanted you to know they were aliens. If you didn't like that, you were free to leave. When, how, and with whom you have sex dictated While Aristasians generally didn't seem to care about your relationships outside of the group, it was indeed stated that if you were to be a full, inner circle, Aristasian, you were expected to give up relationships with em-ee-en. The old Artemis zines also have a lot to say about how intimacies between women shouldn't be regarded as "sex", and that "sex" should mean gender. So there is a lot of redefining what sex even entails in Aristasia, and more importantly, what is and isn't sexual. Which has lead to some behavior that is distinctly sexual in Tellurian life being regarded as nonsexual within Aristasia. This blurring of lines between sexual and non-sexual has lead to, to put it very lightly, misunderstandings. Encourage only good and proper thoughts This seems to be largely a Chelouranya idea, but encouraging their members to always be sweet and happy was important. Some emotions deemed evil See above, and also see this old Poppitops comics. Outsider vs insider doctrines Aristasians vs the rest of the world was a central theme to their lifestyle. There were a number of names for non-Aristasians, and even different Aristasian words for mundane objects. It was generally regarded by Aristasians that there was a war on, and they were fighting for the winning side. Instill fear of outside world See above. Control information at different levels within group This is something that they didn't really practice. While there was definitely the idea of inner and outer circle Aristasians, there seemed to be no secret information that would be revealed to the inner circle. New name/identity Creating a new identity was a central core of being Aristasian. If you decided to use your Tellurian name, you were at the very least encouraged to choose if you were a Blonde or a Brunette. Many Aristasians had many different names, identities, and even sexes. Distort information to make it acceptable There was a lot of information bending within Aristasia. Reading Aristasian musings often feels like it's very obvious that they're working backwards from whatever point they're trying to make to make it fit around their world views. This ranges greatly from science denial (for there's no belief in evolution in Aristasia) to their own history revision (They only ever got involved with all that Silly Monkey stuff to make money to fund their embassies, but also what they did wasn't Silly Monkey stuff anyways, because, remember, what they did wasn't sexual) Impose buddy system This one is a little bit vague, but pairing up blondes and brunettes or forming communal households was always a priority with Aristasians.

So, while it may seem like this Bingo card has a lot of marks, I still don't necessarily think that Aristasia or Chelouranya was a cult. I think that it was potentially a very toxic community, with some toxic views, run by some girls who maybe were not suited for running a community, members were free to leave if their faith in the game wavered, were not really expected to give up anything besides aesthetics, and were not actively recruited. However, I was never part of any Aristasian circles, so perhaps I'm very wrong about this.

I would like to make special note that I'm speaking strictly of the Aristasia that later transformed into Chelouranya, and not at all about the Filianic, Madrian, or Deanic religious community, which have made much effort over the decades to distance themselves from whatever Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge were doing after about 1982.

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A little ad for the St. Bride's Swashbuckler, which was a newsletter for their published video games. Please note the little Aristasian (although perhaps she was an Olympian at that point!) holding a flag, and how similar she looks to the Poppitops comics and the map art.