A recent discussion about the confusing personas shared by the Aristasians brought up the fact that many people, including me, have thought that the Aristasian authoress Annalinde Matichi was Miss Mary "Martindale" herself. This is perhaps due to two things, the above picture of Goldenhead launch at the Baja Book Festival in 2011 as well as the Amazon author page being switched to the page of Miss Mary's Tellurian name in the past few years.
I believe that Miss Martindale was simply the person who managed the Amazon author page for Sushuri, and whatever Amazon bug combined their profiles together is because one account can manage several author pages, this is for people who write under pen names. It seems very reasonable that Miss Martindale would manage this for Sushuri, as she seemed to, rather famously, need other people to manage her.
The confusion with this picture of Miss Martindale selling the books stems from none of us bongos to bother actually reading the description of the picture and looking at it. At first glance, and if we were looking at just a regular Tellurian authoress, selling a regular Tellurian book, we would assume the author is the one at the table, and the silly 3D model of what looks like the girl on the cover is just a virtual cut-out of the book's main character. But that's not what the description says. Let us reread the following:
This world’s first anime-character author, Annalinde Matichei, launches her book Goldenhead at an international book fair
Now, looking at the photo, obviously Miss Martindale isn't an "anime-character", the 3D anime girl T-posing on the left is! In this photo the 3D model is Annalinde Matichei.
For your question about what people wish was different about Japanese learning materials, something that I've always disliked about most resources is how they teach 'conjugation' because it's unnecessarily complicated. It doesn't help that Japanese 'conjugation' doesn't resemble at all what you do in English, Spanish, French, German, etc. because it's not really conjugation like that. It doesn't indicate number, person, mood, or tense beyond the simple past and non-past. This video is honestly the best resource I've found for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhyrskGBKHE&list=PLg9uYxuZf8x_A-vcqqyOFZu06WlhnypWj&index=8 , and I wish verbs were taught like this in other places too.
For me, learning verbs in the ない form first really helped, but I know that other people find different ways easier. I have an explanation why I do this on my blog.
Conjugation seems to always be one of those topics where no one is satisfied and everyone wants a better way. :( Waiting for the Matrix downloading right to the brain on this one!
Thank you for the video, I actually haven't watched any of Cure Dolly's stuff, but I've heard that her videos are pretty alright, if a bit dated on a literal technical level, not subject level. I'll have to poke through some of them and see if any of the information sticks.
Again, thank you very much for answering my question!
ok so i actually like cure dolly grammar i think. (link to the verb form video: https://youtu.be/GzEVLMDC8nw)
(with some major caveats: yes it looks odd, yes skip the intro and just tune out the parts about how ‘their method’ is great and others aren’t, and play the video at 1.5 playback speed or something Faster to make it a decent pace)
i watched 5 cure dolly videos and they were worth my time. while the train metaphor feels like just another way of making sense, i liked the comparison of ga to ‘it’ and how even in english we omit ‘it’ as children or speaking fast (my dad hates the word it he wished we were More explicit in english lol). i liked seeing the explanation of the ni particle, and how the verb or ‘is’ are one half of the core sentence and the ‘it’ is the other.
also how objects of verbs aren’t the point OF a sentence (which idk maybe is confusing to me from an english perspective?). Like in: she eats fish - kanojo ga sakana o taberu. i’m used to seeing it as NEEDING she(subject)-eats(verb)-fish (object). But the point is like... the main idea expressed in the sentence was “she eats” - the ‘fish’ is just a detail DESCRIBING the specifics of eat. that helps me idk visualize how adjectives and objects in japanese work better? because i notice often these things go before verbs or subjects but i couldn’t figure out a way to reason out the position? (and in english im glad i don’t have to learn now cause i’d struggle with adjective positions in english i already did with french).
mainly though the VERB explanation. how ‘taberu’ is really the ‘not-past’ tense, often about the future, and how in english we use ‘eat’ and other non-past tense words. we say “When i go to grandma’s house, i eat cookies” and things like that all the time. And in present tense we sometimes say “i am eating cookies.” In japanese, the te form plus “iru” is like “ing” on verbs. they are “doing” activity right now. i have NEVER seen the te form explained this way (and also the first time i see a reason why existence verb iru is present in those situations). i could only ever understand te form + kudasai means “X please” (maybe like the verb ending ais in french?). So seeing this explanation on how te form can form the “am doing” of verbs really is helpful. I see it SO much in japanese and always kept reading it as “verb te form” plus “exists” and going “wait what exists is the whole thing just a big descriptor clause of something existing in a room? i dont get how it connects??? is a cat in the room idk?). Also the video covered da/ta form, as past tense, and again it helped so much to see how the forms relate. When i first ‘learned’ them we only learned some verb endings per time (so not as one full unit), and overall i was just quite confused on when it was ta/da form or actually a different conjugation thing altogether.
So like. While in a way i don’t think the explanations are very different than any other material, i do think the way its presented is easier to grasp for me than some things i’ve seen. (Japanese in 30 Hours is an oldddd book but i also like how grammar is explained in that, especially adjectives).
Dreamlock Pretty Cure with their finalized civilian and Cure forms. Read a little bit about them under the cut.
Melanie Cunningham/Cure Nightlight (Purple): The leader of Dreamlock. She’s a rather dreamy/airy girl with a love of superheroes and seemingly kind of just floats about. She loves to draw as well and often carries her sketchpad with her.
Jessica Shaw/Cure Signal (Red): The second Cure. She’s the student council president and feared by many in the school. Though, despite her uptight demeanor she does care for people deeply and is quite relaxed/lazy outside school. She also has a huge rivalry with Bonnie/Dolly.
Olivia Reed/Cure Healing (Green): The third Cure. A rather meek girl who despite being the oldest, is also the shortest. Is the designated team mom and often splits up fights between Bonnie and Jessica.
Bonnabellina Hansen/Cure Dolly (Yellow): The fourth Cure. A rich young girl who despises her rather extra name. A snobby girl with a holier than thou attitude with comebacks aplenty. Though does have a soft spot for children and is surprisingly kindhearted and passive when her brother is around.
Morpheus/Dream Drop: A court magician and sheep fairy. While currently unable to transform it is said he wields extreme amounts of power. He always tries to keep a positive outlook, though does suffer from severe trauma from the battle for Dreamland. He also is extremely curious about many things, often getting lost because he isn’t from Earth.
This interesting page is archived on a Cure Dolly diary, from the heydays of when Cure Dolly was just setting out on her Japanese learning adventure back in 2015. These are the "characters" that later would be a bit more well known by us outlanders who went to her to learn Japanese.
I don't speak Japanese, but I can struggle my way through katakana/hiragana like a very small child and Google Translate helps me with the rest. The first 2, and last 1, characters are simply her little dolls who were often in her photos and videos. But the middle 2 are of interesting note, because they're "Cure Dolly" and "Dolly's Mama".
Google Translates "キュアドリー" as "Curedree", but this is how Cure Dolly writes her name in Japanese, "Kyua Dorī". An interesting note is that there is a Precure character named キュアドリーム or Cure Dream (Kyua Dorimu), so it appears that Cure Dolly just took the character name "Dorimu" and chopped off the "mu" to make "Dori", which does indeed appear to be a proper way to spell "Dolly".
The Meiji period was 1868-1912, so she is perhaps actually referencing an actual antique doll. However the "recently came to life" and "act human" and always making mistakes is how she always seems to write about herself, as Cure Dolly. The "southern country" is most definitely because she was living in Mexico at the time.
This one is a bit of a head scratcher. I would assume this was Miss Clare Trent, most certainly another name Miss Martindale used for herself, who frequently referred to herself as Cure Dolly's mother in various persona incarnations. Miss Cure Dolly herself would certainly never refer to herself as a grown up! But what "Dolly's 3rd owner when I was a child" possibly means is anyone's guess. I believe the Japanese to English translation is a little loosey here and the final sentence should be something like "I'm helping Dolly leave, but I'm not going to Japan." Not that Dolly is leaving and also not going to Japan.
The diary mentions multiple mothers, but not "Dolly's Mama" but they are all various "host mothers", the various women who lived in whatever type of houses Cure Dolly was staying at in Japan. I do not believe they were Japanese Aristasians for one moment, I do not believe that they were aware they were being written into Cure Dolly's fantasy world.
Aristasia is sometimes very difficult to grasp, because there are many parts in motion, and it's been many different things, either at the same time or in different eras. In Aristasian lore, time and space are one. Western Aristasia butts up against our reality, and the further east you walk, the further back in time you go.
The sun rises in the East. The early-to-mid 1970s is where it began with a group of girls in their twenties who were deeply into the idea that the earth had an ancient, secret, matriarchal history and that God was a woman. Several different groups with this same belief got together to publish a magazine that explored these beliefs, writing as if they were part of an ancient and secret matriarchal society. There were scriptures, songs, holidays, and personal histories being presented in this magazine as an attempt to legitimize their belief.
By the early 80's some of these people had formed something of a hippie commune in Ireland, and attempted to live what they had preached in their magazines for the better part of a decade. These were called the Rhennish. They were a little bit like Amish hippies, rejecting modernity and living spiritually. Their spiritual beliefs were referred to as Lux Madriana.
Only a couple of years later, by the mid 1980s, the men had been kicked out of the club and the aesthetics had turned very Victorian. In this era they still claimed to exist without electricity, but they also published a number of text-based adventure games for computers. This was the St. Brides era. This was the name of their publishing company, as well the name of their "school" that ran week long events. It was a bit like a role-playing game or a LARP. Women would pay about £ 120 to spend the week reliving their school days for fun. The inhabitants of the St. Brides School called themselves the Silver Sisterhood.
The late 1980s saw an Aristasian off-shoot that included men called "Romantia". They held similar anti-modern values to the Aristasians. They produced some newsletters and zines about their world view and perhaps hosted events. Aesthetic wise, they tended to drift further into the 20th century than the Silver Sisterhood's pseudo-Victorian role-play. The groundworks for what would later become familiar in Aristasia were laid here, but they referred to themselves as "Olympians" when they didn't call themselves "Romantics". What would later be known as "The Pit" or "The Void" was known as "Babylon".
The early 1990s saw the end of the St. Brides School. They seemed to have had some disagreements with the landlords, stopped paying rent, and then left one day, leaving a lot of their stuff behind. The early 1990s also saw an assault charge against the woman who would become Miss Martindale, for some whipping her live-in-maid, who was acting as a maid in order to learn about the female-divine religion that they popularized in the mid-70s and still seemed to practice behind closed doors. Newspaper articles came out about some very problematic materials found in the house, including correspondence with National Party members and anti-semitic publications, as well as BDSM pornography, catalogs, and equipment. They largely denied this had anything to do with the Sisterhood, and insisted it was junk mail sent by perverts and things their boarders brought into the house without them knowing.
Things were quiet for about a year, until the girls came back in full force in the mid 1990s. This was Aristasia's first big day in the sun and the height of the Wildfire Club, their lesbian publishing company that leant heavily into BDSM and master and servant relationships. A large portion of their most well known books were published in this era, which were largely erotic stories interspersed with Aristasian lore. There was a lot of push and pull between releasing racy material, calling attention to it, and then insisting it has nothing to do with sex. I believe this was the first time they called what they did "Aristasia". Aesthetics in this era largely shied away from the Victorian and focused more on the glamourous 30s-50s. There was a big focus on vintage stockings. Aristasians began setting up early websites in this era. The infamous "A Weekend with Miss Martindale" was aired on late night BBC.
This era kept on rolling into the late 90s throughout the early 2000s, with Aristasian nights at local lesbian bars, as well as fetish clubs. They sold fetish supplies, vintage clothing, vintage style stockings, as well as their own books and other fetish books. This was the height of Aristasia-in-Telluria, with several households of Aristasians living together as Embassies. Girls could schedule appointments online to meet with Aristasians to see if they were a good fit for their world. The woman who was known as Miss Martindale was something of a celebrity and had gained international renown for the brief BBC documentary about her from 1996, although she had perhaps moved to America in the late 90s.
The mid-2000s put a screeching halt to Aristasia-in-Telluria and their embassy was moved almost entirely online. The girls gradually seemed to move away from real-world events, and perhaps each other, and they moved their Aristasian adventures to forums, chat rooms, and the Second Life game, where they set up their Aristasia-in-Elektraspace. Operation Bridgehead was announced in late 2005, which seemed to make a very big statement about Aristasia: It was a real place, Aristasians are aliens from that planet, and all that spanking stuff was just a big misunderstanding and not that serious at all. This is the era of Aristasia Pura. The game got very serious: the religious parts came back out in the open, the world building got elaborate, more websites popped up, and more girls started showing up to play in their sandbox. A mysterious girl known as The Mushroom Princess was the Aristasian welcome committee on Second Life and seemed to play a big part in charming new girls and directing the game. The mysterious Mushroom Princess was, in fact, one of the girls who played a major part in creating the religion that was the underlying belief that linked all of these eras together.
The mid-2000s also saw the Miss Martindale BBC documentary go online, being uploaded to early Youtube, seeming to attracting a mixed group of people to Aristasia. Some people saw it as an intense group of friends where they could create a fantasy world together online, complete with a built-in spirituality, and others were seeing the racy 1990s erotic and stylish club of ladies in vintage clothes aggressively rebelling against modernity with their femininity. Something of a fanclub for Miss Martindale popped up online, completely separate from the true Aristasians, with a big emphasis on their Romantia and Wildfire Club days. Small Romantia revival meetups pop up in the UK after people online, particularly men, discover the old Aristasia and want to experience it for themselves. The old Romantia magazines are put online. These new groups were completely unaffiliated with Aristasia.
Things chugged on, more or less the same, through the late-2000s with the Aristasians-in-Elektraspace becoming more and more interested in Anime and learning Japanese language. The fall of Second Life perhaps shrank their numbers, because in this era they seemed to put out a lot of sites attempting to entice people into their belief system, without outright calling it Aristasia. You see them making "femmekin" blogs to attract otherkins, multiple Filinist/Deanist religious blogs, several sites about Amazon warriors, and other "all girl world" websites.
Things start to get rocky in the early 2010s. The last remaining true UK Aristasians, who seemed to have receded completely into elektraspace at that point, sell their vintage school girl supplies on Ebay to fund a move to America. Anime and Japan becomes more and more important to every conversation they have. Their aesthetics change to the kawaii. Discussions in the forums often take place in Japanese. However, despite this, they start Sun Daughter Press, and publish two fiction sci-fi adventures that seem to harken back to an the early days of Aristasia Pura.
In 2013 the boat is thoroughly rocked, the seas are stormy. Old-style Aristasians, and the Miss Martindale fan club, are sick of talking about anime and kawaii things, they have noticed the gradual change and don't understand why the game has changed so drastically. They miss the old Aristasia and notice the name of their homeworld is hardly ever mentioned any more and their old ways are downplayed or utterly erased. Critical blog posts are made. "Turncoat" and "traitor" accusations are made. There's evidence an Operation Bridgehead Version 2 was in the works. The old URLs that were allowed to lapse were bought by Aristasian purists, perhaps the people that had come in from the mid-2000s, who were looking back to the 1990s. All their old archived sites were put back online to preserve the old ways. Even the near-pornographic sites that were associated with the 1990s Aristasian empire are back in the Aristaisa Preservation Project. Almost immediately after the APP goes online, Aristasia changes its name to Chelouranya. Operation Bridgehead Version 2 is, presumably, cancelled. The old Aristasia is dead, and is claimed it never really existed, Chelouranya reigns supreme. Those who have been shut out of the new Aristasia suggest starting "Nova Aristasia" to revive the old ways, but it never comes to pass.
Chelouranya is quiet throughout the mid-to-late 2010s. It's a small group of girls who are devoted to Japan. Or rather, to the Aristasian version of Japan. They learn Japanese, The Mushroom Princess visits Japan and has something of a religious awakening where she realizes that Japan is as close to their lost Motherland of Aristasia as they're ever going to get, they speak in Japanese. They start teaching Japanese to outlanders and it's surprisingly successful. The early proto-Vtuber Cure Dolly is created for this purpose and controlled by The Mushroom Princess. She has a successful patreon. If any more Aristasian world-building happens, it's done privately. The woman formerly known as Miss Martindale lives in America, her husband (for that's why she left for America) dies in the mid-2010s, she dabbles in hosting non-Aristasian spiritual retreats in California, she does some art, hosts some plays. Meanwhile the mysterious mushroom-shaped figure who brought anime into Aristasia continues teaching outlanders to speak Japanese and the former Miss Martindale helps her out, and perhaps even lends her her home.
In the late 2010s and early 2020 there is a bit of a revival of the Filianic beliefs, with several independent Filianists, some of which used to be involved in the offshoots in the 1980s. Through some intense research they make all of the old 1970s religious works available online, release their own version of the scriptures, and untangle the complicated web of the authorship of the early Filianic works.
In late 2021, the Cure Dolly Patreon made a vague announcement implying that the little Mushroom alien controlling Cure Dolly has died. There is some debate amongst her online patreons, who have probably never heard of Aristasia and couldn't tell a Blonde from a Brunette, whether or not she has really died. Shortly after this the woman who was once Miss Martindale hosts a meetup called "Wonder Woman's Island Society Recreated", with an emphasis on the ancient knowledge of the Amazons. The sun has set in the West, and is rising in the East again, but Aristasia very well may be empty of loyal subjects.
The forum rules for the Happy Innocent Musume Senshi Forums, one of Aristasia/Chelouranya's last forums, circa about 2013.
As with the Shining World forums, this was Aristasia at it's absolute most elite. Conversations were almost exclusively about anime or Japan. "Telluria" became "West-Telluria" to allow as much Japanese popular culture as needed.
It went 手-in-手 with the Happy Innocent Musume Senshi blog, which mostly was about learning Japanese, lolita fashion, and the anime Pretty Cure.
Happy Innocent Musume Senshi didn't last long, the conversation was over fairly fast, and Aristasia's leaderesses soon after found their place teaching Japanese to outlanders with the Cure Dolly persona adopted by Miss Sushur, who was, most likely, formerly Miss Priscilla Langridge.
was cure dolly/princess mushroom part of the original ireland-based group? it seems like she lived in mexico as far as her twitter posts show
Yes, she is presumed to be the same as Miss Priscilla, who was Miss Martindale’s masked right-hand mistress. Miss Priscilla was involved in St. Brides School, both the video game publisher and the pay-for-role-play school. She was most likely also involved in their early Rhennish days as well, which was hinted at in an interview given by the Mother-God website, as well as a Madrian who was known to have lived with them in Ireland, in the school, in the late 80s.
She appears to have moved to Mexico in her later life because the former Miss Martindale seemed to have access to a house there. Quite possibly it belonged to her late husband. Writing from Cure Dolly herself had said that she didn’t speak the language of the location she lived in, making it clear she wasn’t native to where she lived.
