Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
For one thousand years there existed a sacred order of priestesses that were spiritually fundamental to the security of Rome. As one of the highest priestly orders in the empire, they were active in most of the important rituals that composed pre-Christian Roman religion. These "Vestal Virgins" were priestesses of Hestia, the Goddess of the hearth and of homemaking. Their primary job was to keep the sacred fire alight, which claimed continuity from Prometheus and acted as the symbolic "hearth" of the Roman state.
These girls were picked through audition at a prepubescent age, chosen for their virtuosity in a ceremony known as the "capture". Once selected they were committed to a thirty year tenure, during which they had to abide by the strict rules of the order of the virgin Goddess. This naturally involved complete celibacy, but also restraint from any form of relationship with men. By becoming a Vestal they gave up their former life and became "daughters of the state": legally sisters of all Roman citizens, making love between them and any Roman man incest and punishable by death. When in public, the Vestals wore the attire of a bride, symbolising their position between girl and woman, their eternal chastity and their promise to the people of Rome to keep to the Hestian code. Those who broke the code, through either letting the sacred flame die or through relationships with men were put to death, often through immurement (being entombed alive). Such punishments were sentenced multiple times in the Roman record for transgressive priestesses.
How does this all relate to VTubers? It should be obvious what parallels I'm drawing between the purity culture of idols (and now VTube), and the sacred virginity of the Vestals; but this isn't just a coincidence, such symbolism serves a deep purpose in the psyche of man. The archetype of the holy virgin is present in every complete major cosmology (that I am aware of), and I think serves as a foundational stone of society. It symbolises a steadfast and everlasting homeliness, a connection to the innocence we all once had as children. Someone that will always be there whatever mess we get into, but at the same time being more innocent than a mother, who is by definition corrupt. This purity is a natural obsession of mankind, and to reject it outright is to reject something core to the truth of nature. Without it we loose ourselves from natural order and from the innocence we once had, and plunge into the forest without a path back.
Some people will never understand it, but many of us do, even if it is unwittingly. VTuber culture serves its purpose well as a modern replacement of the Vestal Order of Rome. Its aesthetic roots lie in Edo geisha, through to Tokyo hostess clubs and 90s pop idols. This brand of "maiden worship" is engrained well into Japanese society, while being somewhat foreign to a Western eye that has had the ideal of "purity" so firmly and consistently demonised. And while the majority culture in the West today misunderstands purity, it is those left outside of the inner social circle that are left with a natural understanding of it. Leave it to the otaku weirdos once again. But just as "waifu" culture became warped as it left its Japanese and otaku base, so did idol culture. Many western idol fans and V豚 will adamantly deny their favourite is an "idol" at all, while still participating in the aggrandisement of her maidenhood through "moe" and neotonous behaviour. And there is little more dangerous than acting on a natural instinct (in this case maiden worship) while at the same time denying you are doing so.
Most people who reject the purity side of VTubers are disingenuous, or at best confused. Purity does not come at the cost of liberty, but at the embracing of beauty. Donations serve as a method to fund the Vestal order, one which the girls are not bound to for life, but for as long as they wish to keep their job. Those who seek to undermine their performance of purity by permitting or encouraging transgressions of the law are not helping them in the slightest, but harming them directly by undermining their role and purpose; as well as, of course, hurting those who have found beauty and a connection to innocence through them.
