This page is an attempt to tie up loose ends by covering (and linking to longer pages that cover) topics related to Aristasia from the broader cultural milieu, as well as some other things. So far, there isn’t terribly much here - expect more later. I’m itching to finish writing the page (yes, a whole separate page!) on Gerherd’s pseudohistory of the Great Goddess, for example, and I will most definitely talk about present day movements (and their predecessors) which seek to follow the religion of Filianism/Déanism outside of Aristasian contexts.
There's other stuff that will (ultimately) be linked here as well, including some personal thoughts on my own involvement in Aristasia, a section on the age-related "games" that went on in Aristasian "life theatre", and probably some more as well. If there's anything you, personally, think should be added, send it my way. I am open to actual contributions to this section of the site (only); as in, I'll publish your own thoughts here, given proper vetting. You can contact me here, of course.
This page, as of May 3rd, 2024, contains only two sections - on the relationship between Aristasia and the otherkin concept, and on Aristasia and plural identities. Both are based on answers I gave to questions I received about the movement over the past few months here and elsewhere, so I assume these things are of interest. I figured I'd put these on here since they were (mostly) already written, and then add more later. The next part will probably be the section on extra-Aristasian Déanism, which I might... need help writing.
Fun fact! Otherkin doesn’t have much to do with gender, and when I say here that someone “identifies as an elf” or that their “kintype is a badger” I don’t mean that they believe they’re “elf gender” or “badger gender” or that they use neopronouns based on those identities or whatever. They also don’t demand litter boxes in restrooms. Turn off Fox News and stop reading the Daily Mail, please.
Otherkin is a term dating back several decades. It initially referred to anyone who identified as a mythological creature or animal, and I believe it was coined by folks who identified as elves. The definition quickly expanded to include those who felt they were spiritually wolves animals, as well as other mythic beings (I knew a phoenix once, etc). More often than not, (early on, at least) reincarnation played a role in these beliefs. One was assumed to have had a past life as one’s kintype (a term for the sort of creature one identifies as).
Sound familiar? This site is tagged as #otherkin on neocities and in other (pun intended) directories for quite the simplest reason: Aristasians are, or rather, were, otherkin. They considered themselves otherkin. They professed to be such almost immediately upon hearing the word from people on Livejournal. If one takes the definition of otherkin as it is commonly understood online colloquially, some Aristasians have long considered themselves otherkin of a sort, too.
They just lacked that particular terminology. Words are, after all, only coined or adopted insofar as they are needed and encountered. Initially, Aristasians seem to have never encountered a word for their own feelings of otherness; they thus coined the term intermorph. They did best to explain their experiences in their own terms. There was a lot of jokes and talk about being “alien” and “foreign” in this world, way before any mention of otherkin. This led to the concept of Aristasia Pura as a real place, from which the stories and lore of this movement were channeled.
As soon as they found a word that was more succinct and (at least slightly) more widely-understood, they adopted it. This was in the mid-to-late-2000s. Earlier than that (and yes, this, too, was during my personal involvement, on and off), the two communities tended to bump into each other occasionally, but not enough to really notice each other. In otherkin parlance, there’s talk of awakening, or realizing one feels otherkin. Perhaps the collective “awakening” of the Aristasians occurred just a bit prior to their discovery of the actual term “otherkin.”
The introduction of the term to the Aristasian community was inevitable, I expect. Given both communities share similar feelings of otherness, I honestly found it rather surprising the term wasn’t discovered and used earlier. It was discovered by the Aristasians around the time when the otherkin community had entered a period of extreme skepticism, though. If you posted about your experience of otherkinity in an otherkin-specific venue online, you would be expected to rigorously defend your conclusions about yourself. This was seen as healthy, but was, in retrospect, ridiculous posturing. Still, most otherkin, happening upon Aristasian posts, met them with this same aggressive questioning that they usually provided.
Given how controversial Aristasia was from the beginning, most of those communities concluded the posts were bizarre “cult recruitment” attempts. In actuality, I believe the Aristasian interest in the otherkin concept was quite genuine. Still, otherkin were harsh with them, if I remember, and even more so than they usually were with each other at the time. This cold and unfriendly approach to newcomers in otherkin communities has since faded, thankfully.
I firmly believe that a warmer welcome from the otherkin community would’ve benefited the Aristasians in many ways. It sounds cranky given how bonkers the otherkin concept reads to most people, I realize. It’s just that I’ve noticed something. Hanging around otherkin (or furries, too, and there is an overlap, of course) tends to quickly halt any kind of right-wing radicalization going on with a person. I’m not sure if it would’ve ultimately helped strip the (by then rather vestigial) cultish aspects, too, but it might’ve, had the otherkin engaged in understanding dialogue rather than simply attacking.
Either way, Aristasians themselves at one point went as far as to suggest the (apt) title of “femmekin” for their particular kintype. They also occupied the otherkin subdomain on Wordpress.com, oddly enough. The posts are still there. Some otherkin continue to use the term, I think, on places like Tumblr. In these cases, by “femmekin” they typically don’t mean Aristasian or “intermorph” exactly these days, but something similar - I do plan to post more about this once I’ve researched a bit more. Oh, and some otherkin using the term are non-humanoid, and have furry-like kintypes - perhaps search online for “Sai Furthe” for more on this, heh.
In other areas of the internet, people have suggested that the Aristasian discovery of otherkin as a concept was a tipping point that caused massive changes in the movement. This is untrue.The earliest mentions we get of the word "otherkin" dates to the summer of 2007, if I remember right, when the matter was mentioned on an Aristasian web forum and the aforementioned blog created.
This is more than three whole years after Operation Bridgehead (the actual tipping point). True, Bridgehead was arguably the point at which the idea of Aristasia Pura as a real place really got going. I suspect, though, that the idea was older than that, and also know that the term otherkin wasn't used prior to that summer.
Regardless of my own personal views on otherkinity and alterhumanity (I’m more than sympathetic, let me be honest here), I try to adopt a neutral tone about these matters whenever possible. One of the things that drives me up walls about portrayals of alterhumanity is that often tone is used to induce assumptions when the concept gets presented to a person, either for or against the idea. I’m hoping not to do that.
I want to begin by saying that I, myself, am not multiple or plural, It isn’t my purview to really speak overmuch on such matters, especially not authoritatively. I can, however, compare my experiences in Aristasia with what I do understand of those situations, having done what research (and absorbed as much ambient knowledge) that I can.
Aristasian personae (the roles we took on during “life theatre”) had almost no similarity to “alters” or “headmates” within any sort of multiple or plural identity configuration. This comparison was made by Emily Louise’s (mostly excellent) livestream on Aristasian precursor groups a while back, just briefly, as an off-hand comment. I’d also received (even before that) several contacts about this very subject, especially asking if I “lost time” or remembered what my Aristasian personae had done during all this. Some folks on Facebook (yes, I do have a small profile on there) were directly asking if a comparison could be made with plurality. I wanted to address it here, where it seems to fit most appropriately.
As far as I know, none of us (for example) “lost time” while in persona. We also didn’t usually hold conversations with our personae as some plural folk do with other selves (I do hope my terminology isn’t a butchering). I have reason to believe that a couple maids did (for example) log onto Second Life or another program in several windows (somehow…) at once to portray multiple avatars interacting in text. I also think some might’ve written letters, notes, or comments between themselves, publicly as their Aristasian personae. Both of these were rare, though, and seemed altogether different than the communication one sees in a system.
I certainly know that I myself was fully aware after slipping out of my Aristasian personae what had transpired. This was something that other Aristasians (at least in their books, like Children of the Void implied) experienced as well, so it likely wasn’t something exclusive to me. There’s a passage in that one (for example) that references a pette whose personae include both a schoolgirl and an authority figure. It mentions that one knows what the other does. There was, from what I can tell, no “lost time” or memory oddities for any of us.
Granted, as I understand it, “lost time” (though well-known) is not an easily-understood feature of being plural or multiple (unsure of correct term). It also isn’t the only feature, nor is it always present? Again, I’m researching, but I’m not an expert, nor sure about much of this. With that in mind, there’s some more I can say, but I still believe (so far) the two are not terribly comparable.
I must say, though. The feeling of being within the personae was indeed one of radical difference from my daily self. This was on a level far, far beyond your usual roleplaying game (ie, Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder or something). It might just be because I have less frame of reference (I joined one D&D campaign for two sessions three years ago, then quit). I can’t imagine anyone (except maybe the most pretentious D&D player ever) clutching a character sheet and (for example) referring to their characters as their “manifestations” like Miss Martindale did with her persona as Miss Tyrrell back in 1993, though.
I can, myself, understand why she used the word - it did feel like my real self in medias res; my mindset would change in a remarkable way, as would my diction and even (I’ve been told) my way of carrying myself offline when interrupted mid-chat. True, this did initially begin as a sheer roleplaying exercise, but quickly (and I mean quite quickly) slipped into something much more, that persists to this day. I enjoyed it, too, beginning when I was scarcely a teenager and had first discovered the movement; it was thrilling to bring forth myself as a schoolgirl, as a pippsie (bright, young flapper-ish type), as an aging craftsmaid or other variation.
Even now it’s something I wish I could still experience. I even briefly considered splitting the work on this site into two “halves;” one was to simply be me within an Aristasian-esque persona meant to subvert things in a funny way. I decided against it because I’m questioning if this is healthy. Either way, you may (not) be surprised to know that other online venues where I write don’t really sound like this, for example - the mere auspices of Aristasia as a concept sink me into this mindset, though I’m not quite taking on a persona.
The thing is, though? This was very clearly induced as part of the experience of being within the group initially, rather than occurring within the individual themselves. It wasn’t induced through trauma, either, so I wouldn’t call it a traumagenic dissociative experience (and would hesitate to call it dissociative at all). It was simply that identity “games” and exploration were such a fixture, so expected and accepted that, assuming enough time spent with the movement, one couldn’t help but embrace them. I credit the Aristasian lack of boundaries with their “life theatre”, as well as some of their spiritual pushes, for that. I’ve often said that Aristasia is a disturbingly-liminal space insofar as it exists in the eerie twilight between spirituality and fiction; that definitely played a role (pun not intended).
The spirituality aspect made the fiction aspect more crucial, more important, more central and more serious, and easier to take within oneself. Conversely, the fiction aspect made the spiritual aspect more alluring, and provided a strong scaffolding for ideology that would’ve otherwise struggled to gain a spiritual foothold.
The idea of different “manifestations” (to use Miss Martindale’s odd terminology) within one body facilitated both. It allowed us to live (often without acknowledging it) the ideology within the scaffolding of the fictional world, and to experience it in as many ways as we wanted. Together, all these factors lent themselves to extreme exploration of the concept of unusual ways to structure the self, whether one was plural or not.
I doubt many plural folk would count this as plural, though do correct me if I’m wrong, and it is quite possible that Aristasia did include a few plural pettes in the mix at some point. The group was very active on Livejournal, which was a haven for plurality back then, and I know the two communities bounced a bit, as did several others that were desperately intriguing to a kid like me.
They fished for otherkin; that’s well-documented, and I do recall some otherkin and adjacent sorts joining (briefly); there was a lot of overlap at the time between that and the plural community, too. This wasn’t a harmonious overlap, always. I saw a lot of conflict when a few showed up; they, like me (from the very beginning) didn’t quite “fit in” with Aristasia, despite trying really hard. I remember the otherkin (and plural folk) who did develop a passing interest in Aristasia ultimately left off it because they themselves just couldn't fit into the "game" of it. They didn't seem too fond of "life theatre" or the weird balance of restraint (and lack of it) therein. I don't blame them (in some ways) in retrospect. Still, it was a thing, and I met new people and encountered new concepts from interacting.
Years and years later (seven or eight), after I'd left the group, the Aristasian personae “games” (or exploring, “life theatre,” whatever one calls it) did ultimately make me question for a while if I might be plural, though. It was simply that I could not quite shake it entirely, hard to explain. This wasn’t, in retrospect, so much Aristasia as some of the groups that, like I said, bounced around against Aristasia and some the ideas I absorbed from them after leaving Aristasia. I tried to frame my Aristasian experiences in light of those. After some self-examination, I ultimately decided I likely wasn’t plural, nor did I fully understand what that meant, and dropped the issue.
One other (important, I think) thing, though. I’m agnostic on matters like the (potential) existence of endogenous multiple systems (ie, those without trauma, existing naturally, I suppose). This is also true of many other issues, both about that, and traumagenic multiplicity.
I simply do not know enough about the subject matter to have an informed opinion. I’m, as I’ve said, not plural myself etc, either. It is best for me to abstain from commenting on any so-called “syscourse” as they’re apparently calling it, for those reasons. I can compare my own Aristasian experiences to experiences I’ve heard and read about from plural folks, but that’s all. I welcome comments, questions, and comparative replies.