#culveria

[racinated-dreams]

A project I've been very slowly picking at, a little tiny bit at a time, is the concept of a rules-lite, aesthetics-heavy, pen & paper RPG inspired by the St. Bride's computer game and Aristasian lore.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Source The term "Culveria" seemed to pop up out of nowhere in 1997/1998 in the Cocktail Bar forums. One day they were saying America or Pit-America, the next one girl is using the term Culveria. It's interesting to note that this mod describes Culveria as "a continent of Aristasia" meaning it's a distinct place, different from the map you generally see of Aristasia! But it seems like they waffled back and forth on this topic in later times, and eventually later settled on a bit of mystic mumbo-jumbo that answers nothing when asked "What is Culveria?". However, in the 1990s, it was clear that when they said "Culveria" they meant the Aristaisan embassies and districts set up in the homes of American girls.

[racinated-dreams]

Some of the work I've done is on this Neocities webpage, which is a collaborative project about Culveria, the Aristasian world that got left behind when Operation Bridgehead was enacted. This website is a work in progress and contains a lot of placeholder text.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

The most you can find written about Culveria, before Operation Bridgehead made an official statement that basically erased Culveria from Aristasia, is in the Avendale RPG text. I believe that the Avendale RPG happened around 2001 or so, and several of the girls playing were from America, so they seemed to want to roleplay the concept of traveling from America to the UK to go to school, but in the world of Sai Herthe. There was an uncomfortable romanticization of the Confederacy in the Avendale RPG.

[racinated-dreams]

Some more slow picking away at this project! This probably needs a proof read.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

I had to download tumblr for the first time in years to ask this but I was looking through the femmeworld timeline and I just had a question about the “Mushrooms go to America” entry in Feb 2006. What was the source of that and what does it mean exactly? Thanks!!

Hello there! Sorry if the Femmeworld Timeline is a bit vague and full of mysterious words. I swear it all made sense when I was adding to it! I can see how "Mushrooms go to America" is a bit of a head scratcher, but it is a reference to this post in "The Morning Letter", titled "Mushrooms in America". It's a bit perplexing if you don't know the ins and outs of who's who of Aristasia, but "Princess Mushroom" was presumably the modern era name for Miss Priscilla Langridge, or one of the foundresses of Aristasia (who was also involved going all the way back to Lux Madriana). She lived with a handful of other Aristasian girls and their household appeared to be referred to as "The Mushroom Kingdom" and, therefore, while she was the Mushroom Princess (or often just "The Shroom"), her housepettes were also referred to collectively as mushrooms. It's not a vacation for the history books, but it's a page in the Aristasian history books that's remembered fondly, perhaps because it reminded people that Aristasia was made up of real girls, doing real things, in the real world. Or at least the Tellurian real world, it wasn't their real world. But with the "Mushrooms in America" people saw that this wasn't just an anonymous forum of people faking something, but an actual way of life for some people. When I originally added it to the Femmeworld Timeline, I estimated it happened in Feb 2006, presumably because of an archived page I saw, but the Wayback Machine actually has it archived first in June 2005.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

A post from one of the forums I saved a screen shot of, I believe this would have been about 2006ish in the Blondes & Brunettes Club. One of the major things that Operation Bridgehead lead to was nipping Culveria in the bud. You can read the linked article, or rather one quite like it, here.