how one chooses to live

How do you style your life...?

Aristasians, at least those living within Aristasian households, have described the movement as a lifestyle in the past. This page attempts an exploration of that, as best I can. I never met Aristasians IRL nor did I ever truly live an Aristasian life. My lifestyle, I guess you would say, has always remained primarily Tellurian (earthly).

It is possible that, because of this, my perspective on what being Aristasian truly meant is severely limited. All my interactions were online. It’s also possible that these online interactions gave the wrong impression (purposefully or otherwise) of what Aristasian life IRL was like.

Keep all that in mind going forward. I’ll share what I can of archived documents, etc. Initially, I would've vastly disagreed with their assertion that Aristasia's a lifestyle, because I was quite skeptical of their claims of all-vintage houses and wardrobes. I figured perhaps they did vintage outings occasionally, maybe.

Nowadays, I, uh, know otherwise from other people, and I'm not sure what to make of it one way or another. How the heck do you even define a lifestyle? Living like you were born half a century earlier surely counts. The core group appeared to be doing just that, though us outer-court types might not have even come close.

Recruitment: Fishing the Pit

To reiterate what I've been emphasizing throughout this site, my interactions with Aristasians were wholly online. Nevertheless, I'll try to address how this worked, both online and off, from what I was able to pick up on.

Offline Recruitment

I’m not certain how most people offline in Britain who ended up part of Aristasian communities found them. Later in this article, you’ll read about Aristasian events that took place in London around the turn of the millennium, and I suspect those helped. Many of the core group of Aristasians were transplants from earlier, ancestor groups .

The early Aristasians briefly manufactured “full-fashioned” stockings, whatever that quite meant as part of their own brand (“New Lady”). They burnt a pair of tights in Piccadilly Square as a twist on the trope of bra-burning. This no doubt attracted some folks to their sphere.

There was also, of course, the (quite awful, IMHO) Channel 4 documentary featuring Miss Martindale, and a few other (equally weird) TV appearances. Some of those you can see on the Kinema page here. Almost all of their 1990s television appearances somehow invoke the Aristasian trope of physical discipline and people spanking/caning each other.

Miss Martindale and her friends also recruited via the Wildfire Club. These endeavors, like the Channel 4 documentary, focused on physical punishment (spanking, caning, etc). The Wildfire Club sold implements for that kind of thing, in addition to publishing Aristasian books with a discipline theme.

One page from way back in March of 2000 talks about the role such commercial enterprises had in Aristasia. It wasn’t described as a recruitment thing so much as for financial reasons.

Online Recruitment

Via Miss Martindale's Wildfire Club, great pains were taken to distance the movement from sexualized sadomasochism (ie, “this is not a sex site”), but plenty probably showed up for that, at least at first. It's extremely hard to argue that none of that is sexual, isn't it? They even operated, briefly, for-pay phone numbers you could call to hear audio recordings of their spanking stories.

Later recruitment online tended to de-emphasize these parts of Aristasia’s past, focusing more on the sapphic aspect or even spiritual matters, both of which had been a draw for me initially.

Peculiarly, a lot of online Aristasians seem to have found the subculture by that point via "Weird Site Links" compendiums and other places online where people were gawking at the concept. This included me, since that was where I first saw their site, and being a somewhat queer teenager, I was prompted to click by the utter gayness of it.

Your Land of Heart's Desire?

Have you ever wanted to live in a feminine world - a world without men?

Have you ever wanted to live in a gentler, more innocent world?

Have you ever wanted to live in an elegant, beautiful, civilised world?

If you have, Aristasia may be your spiritual home.

From the (well-known) introduction to an early Aristasian website.

The majority of books published by Aristasian-associated presses over the years have focused on people hitting each other. They were also quick to recommend The Feminine Universe, which they described as the most important explication of their philosophy. I've read it, but that's a discussion for another page.

While it’s true that Aristasians didn’t use the hard sell threats and scary tactics that people in larger groups use… they did recruit online, for sure. You can’t look at something like their late-2000s interactions with the EGL or otherkin communities without seeing an element of attempted recruitment. I don’t know that many of those operations (such as posting to otherkin or EGL folks) actually worked out though; a lot didn’t go well at all.

Most online Aristasians that I knew found the community rather organically. I don’t remember quite what “weird links” site I saw them listed on, but I myself clicked on it because the site looked kinda gay.

Aristasia as a whole has been accused of cult-like aspects at times. This is difficult to deny considering its checkered past, which does include precursor groups I'd consider cults. The Aristasians I knew online in the early twenty-first century were, for the most part, caring and genuine people. That speaks to the people, of course, not their offline lives, though. One has to wonder about life amongst, say, an Aristasian household in earnest during that period of time.

Even without that possibility, lives online and off may well have differed a lot, because of something called...

Concentric Circles: The Law of Manifestation

This definitely isn’t what it sounds like. I’m guessing that, given the rest of the weirdness on this site, when you saw the word “manifestation” you were expecting some kind of TikTok thing, right? Well, this certainly had nothing to do with that. It was… actually even stranger.

The Law of Manifestation is closely related to the Telluristasian phenomenon of Personae.

Before Operation Bridgehead, Aristasia-in-Telluria was theoretically a complete world, only it was not all manifest. So, for example, an Aristasian District School might consist (in terms of vulgar mechanics) of five girls meeting in a house regularly. Now this school might in fact have a hundred pupils and ten mistresses, but most of them would not be manifest at any given time and indeed the majority might never manifest. One could liken it to a role-playing game in which most of the characters are non-player characters.

However, Aristasians regard it more seriously than that. We see it as a full world in potentia. There was, for example, a certain school in Ireland where it was well established that the full school ran beyond the boundaries of the physical house (which was already very large). Girls sometimes caught glimpses into the unmanifest corridors or passed unmanifest girls on the stairs.

In terms of law and thamë, the Law of Manifestation was very important. Each District had a District Governess who was known by name. The D.G. was rarely manifest. Often she was never manifest. But if a crisis were to arise that required her attention, she would have to be manifested by one of the available bodies.

Further to this, the term "a Law of Manifestation Aristasian" was (and is) used to mean an Aristasian on one of the outer Concentric Circles. She is not an Aristasian most of the time, but when in Aristasia she manifests an Aristasian persona. In other words she is (temporarily) an Aristasian according to the Law of Manifestation. She is (if one wishes to put it that way) stepping into the shoes of one of the non-player characters that make up the world.

How does Bridgehead affect this? Having been adopted as a protectorate of Aristasia Pura, Telluristasian lines of command are no longer so dependent on the Law of Manifestation. There are now direct superiors in Pura. Tellurian Aristasia can be accepted more on its own terms, as precisely the group of girls it is, on a schizomorph planet, but loyal to the Empire far away.

Nonetheless, the Law of Manifestation continues to be vital in many respects to the deployment of Aristasia in Telluria, while being no longer central to an autonomous thamë-structure.

From an Encyclopaedia Aristasiana article from June of 2010.

I was, during my time with the group, a Law of Manifestation Aristasian, on the outermost of the concentric circles that (apparently) formed the group. I joined them for online events. Of course, I discovered Aristasia rather early in their online career, around the turn of the millennium, so I saw this concept evolve a bit?

Early on, much as stated above, this was a notion similar to that of non-player characters in an RPG, except that these NPCs were animated (on occasion, it seems) by a player in order to "flesh out" the world. In real life, this allegedly resembled experiences shown in their book Children of the Void, online it just meant most girls had a ridiculous number of personae.

Later, following some of the posts about Aristasia Pura and whether it’s otherworldly or fictional, the Exile Aristasian concept entered the picture. This would, theoretically, I guess, be the innermost of these concentric circles of manifestation. Exile Aristasians are intermorphic souls (Aristasians, feminine) born, reincarnated in schizomorphic (human) bodies.

This drinks deeply from the existing idea of otherkin, or humans who, for whatever reason, identify as nonhuman here and now. Otherkin often describe these identities as a holdover of sorts from a past life, just like the Aristasians did. The Aristasians acknowledged this, and you can read more about how they used their commonalities with otherkin in recruitment attempts on the Realness page.

But, what's this personae thing? What, exactly, becomes manifest? Well...

Personae: Many Maidens in One

In Aristasia-in-Telluria it is common for girls to have multiple personae. Readers of Children of the Void will recall that the book had twenty-one characters but only seven physical bodies . Some girls are even "ambis", having both blonde and brunette personae (this is not the norm, but it is not rare).

For some girls personae are not important. Some have no extra personae. Some have only, perhaps, a schoolgirl or a schoolmistress necessary for her school life. At this point persona shades of into Function — an important concept that we shall discuss shortly. Other girls have two or more very distinct persona, so that no one supposes she is talking to the same person when she knows the two of them — as, indeed, she is not. Some girls find this aspect of Aristasia alone a huge liberation, and wonder how they could ever have gone through life with only one personality! It would have been as if part of them were missing.

On customs, in both Pura and Telluria, circa 2008.

My uh, personae tended to be chelana; blonde. I guess I was a plenary blonde in their terminology. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Mine varied in age. Once I was in university IRL, I was keen on my persona being a student, which was common within Aristasia.

In the earliest Aristasian communities in Telluria, schools were part of life and many Aristasians, regardless of physical age, had teenaged personae. The reasoning behind this was that in entering a new world, one needed to re-learn, if not from the beginning, then from something near the beginning.

Certain Aristasians took on teenaged personae, as described on this page.

As part of developing one’s Aristasian persona(e), of course, came at least a vague backstory, right? Some of us had that. At very least, we outer-circle Aristasians had some inkling of what part of Aristasia Pura we were from, in order to develop a general aesthetic.

You had to, after all, choose what sort of music you were going to pick up on, what kind of clothing you’d search for, what media you might consume. True, most Tellurian pop culture and fashion prior to 1964 was at least tacitly acceptable in Aristasian spaces. Still, it was important to know that you were embodying a Kadorienne persona, for example, so that you’d know to wear a gorgeous 1940s hat!

The personae concept might’ve been much more than simply filling out the world around them, though. A recent blog, by someone who seems to have become fascinated by Aristasia after its heyday, speculates in response to a question from a reader.

A Tellurian form is imperfect, full of contradictions and contrasts, whereas Aristasians are intended to be purer, more refined in their nature and purpose. Thus, a Tellurian vessel may hold several Aristasian souls of various natures. The Blue Camellia Club, Heartbook, Shining World, and other platforms were open to new participants, but they were NOT intended as simple public-facing spaces. A single vessel with multiple personae was not attempting to give outlanders any sort of impression; rather, they were allowing the many maids within them to manifest and interact freely and joyfully with other maids.

Racinated-Beauty, via her Tumblr.

Interesting idea? Creepy idea? Weird idea? It almost implies that all these personae aren’t mere characters, but something like spirits that are being channeled by the “Tellurian vessel.”

This didn’t get discussed during my time with the group, but it is quite possible it was a private teaching. It would make a lot of other things click into place about how these personae are viewed. If we take the personae as literal souls, it also relates to, and relies heavily on, the notion of a real Aristasia Pura, of course.

Pit-dwellers distrust masks as devices to hide the face of the all-important Individual (which to them is the only reality). Aristasians revere them as the means of actualising a supra-individual Reality that is in no way false, but is, in a very important sense, closer to the Solar Heart that we greet many times daily with the word "Rayati".

Aristasian Customs and Manners, “Personae and Functions”. Archived recently, but was probably written around 2005?

Things grew more complicated when you considered passages like the one above, but that's best suited for the Beliefs page rather than here, I think. Suffice to say, the Aristasian perspective on just what constitutes the "self" is quite unique and does, I think, potentially lend itself to a lot of bad situations. Personae, and play with them, can be fun and rewarding and I did enjoy it... but it ought to be within different parameters, I'm seeing now.

Racination: Thrift Store Chaos

Of course, filtering out the notion of maidens from another universe channeled into “Tellurian vessels,” the passage from the blog I quoted above has a ton of other implication. If a Tellurian form is so awful, contradictory and imperfect, how might one find harmony? How can one live as an Aristasian-in-Telluria?

This process was known as racination, at least in theory. What’s racination? It isn’t a word you’ll find in the dictionary, but rather, one of those specialized terms that the Aristasians were so fond of using. To learn what the Aristasians meant by it, you have to look for its antonym, specifically the etymology:

deracinate (n.)

1590s, "to pluck up by the roots," from French déraciner, from Old French desraciner "uproot, dig out, pull up by the roots," from des- (see dis-) + racine "root," from Late Latin radicina, diminutive of Latin radix "root" (from PIE root *wrād- "branch, root"). Related: Deracinated.

The French past participle, déraciné, literally "uprooted," was used in English from 1921 in a sense of "uprooted from one's national or social environment."

Etymonline

The Eclipse of the 1960s had, according to the Aristasians, deracinated most of the Western world.

Most pop cultural offerings to arise from “the Pit” of deracination are mutated and poisonous, thus leaving the Aristasians to seek cultural sustenance elsewhere.

The process of cutting off an individual and a society from all natural roots; of creating a rootless, atomised type of humanity which, by its divorce from, and induced forgetfulness of, all normal standards and values, lacks dignity and self-respect; though it will often tend to be more aggressive and self-assertive as a compensation. It has been said that a deracinated person has self-satisfaction without self-respect. Any person, for example, who would consent to wear clothes printed with coarse jokes or advertising commercial products is clearly deracinated. The artefacts of modern design, from cars to music, convey, with the clarity of a language, the slick impoverishment of the deracinated consciousness.

They believed we’d lost our connection to the natural center of human existence.

The process of racination, thus, meant filling in the gaps left by that (the “void” in the title of Regina Snow’s novel Children of the Void) with what sound culture could be found or made via ventures like Aristasia. This meant, in part, keeping an eye out for regular pre-1960s stuff that you might find at a thrift store or fleem (the Aristasian word for a flea market).

There were guides posted about updating your wardrobe (to look more vintage). It also extended to “racinating one’s image-sphere.” I can’t find where I originally saw that term, and if I do, I’ll be sure to link it.

This meant ditching that which you now (presumably) found tawdry, and seeking more refined entertainment. Forego that last few episodes of Breaking Bad, and watch something from the 1930s. The offerings of the first half of the twentieth century still contain that living connection, the “root” meant by racine. Thus, said culture can nourish. That’s the idea, in any case.

There was never a pressure (at least, not felt by me, during my time, in any case, interacting online) to do this, though. I actually did wear vintage fashions much more frequently than most people, though, but wasn’t swishing around in Victorian garb or anything like that. My hestia or home (at the time, a dingy apartment) featured several rather nice vintage objects of racination, but for the most part, my life was culturally modern.

Online? Sure, you were expected to have a properly Aristasian avatar and persona in such spaces. If you went to the Aristasian Embassy in Second Life (Virtualia), for example, there were certain customs in place. One sure wouldn’t show up up wearing jeans and t-shirt on one’s avvie (avatar) and definitely wouldn’t do any foul language.

There would be no mention of post-1964 media in said spaces online, either, of course. I never saw anyone ever break any rule or anything. It apparently did happen insofar as a girl who I’d spoken to a couple times at the Embassy in Second Life wrote something to that effect in a non-Aristasian magazine about her experience in Second Life.

To be quite honest, for some ladies, I’m pretty sure none of this went much further than their desktops. It was easy to outfit a full vintage wardrobe in Second Life, after all. I see nothing wrong with that, either, and the group seemed to always welcome those wanting to escape their Tellurian persona/life for a bit on the ‘net.

Nothing was required nor really asked of us offline, though suggestions (such as the aforementioned racination) were certainly offered regularly enough. I guess some girls might’ve felt a sense of pressure, but I did not. That might be a quirk of my laissez faire attitude towards life at the time, or it might be innate to the group.

There was, mind you, a pressure to appear more racinated than one was, or at least not mention so-called “deracinated” aspects of your life. This has been mentioned before. It extended to ignoring (within Aristasian spaces) the very existence of really obvious news and pop culture phenomena (again, things anyone really would know unless they had been living in a restrictive cult). This wasn’t because the people involved didn’t actually know about the things in question (Britney Spears, Super Bowl events, etc), but rather because we’d just… pretend we didn’t. There was a pressure to do that, at least publicly.

Still, there were some people within the group (and really one person in particular) that I felt I could've told anything, no matter how "deracinated." In some cases, that trust doesn't seem to have been misplaced, but who knows about others.

Life Theatre: A Game, or is it?

So, what were Aristasian events like? In practice, they tended to revolve around one specific concept. If you had no interest in “Life Theatre,” you really ought not be involved in Aristasia, it seemed like. It was that central.

Life Theatre is the key to much of what happens in Aristasia. Life Theatre, as the name implies, means acting out roles - not for the benefit of an audience but as part of our own lives. In Life Theatre we explore the different people we could be in Aristasia. The same girl may play a blonde and a brunette, a schoolmistress and a schoolgirl, an eastern noblemaid full of ancient dignity and courtesy and a Vintesse Jazz Baby or Quirinelle Jive Bunny.

Life Theatre helps us both to realise our own inner possibilities and populate Aristasia with many different characters. Personae are not merely the products of casual roleplay. Some may be adopted merely for a single appearance, but others may take on a life of their own, becoming characters in their own right.

Life Theatre: described as the “Heart of Aristasia” even in the early days…

This tied very heavily into the idea of personae, of course. If one didn't do "life theatre," how on earth would those personae ever manifest, after all? It also related to the Law of Manifestation and this need to "complete" the world of Aristasia-in-Telluria, I suppose.

While the Aristasians made “life theatre” to be a fairly new and unique concept, it’s not really all that different from some of the very casual online roleplaying done (nowadays, anyways) in the furry fandom and similar auspices. I’m not sure if it was really a unique form of LARP back in the 1990s; I do realize that back then, people were still bothered by Dungeons & Dragons, so it’s possible they were innovative in this way.

The issue in terms of Aristasia itself was the execution of this “life theatre” concept. Regardless of what was actually happening, the Aristasians on the ground did their best to give the appearance that their lifestyle really resembled that seen in Children of the Void. They willingly admitted that their daily lives (apparently) contained far less physical punishment, but did try to give this impression. Might not've been accurate, but they promoted this.

It’s one thing to (for example) take on different personae in the function of an LARP with defined limits or an online setting like a casual furry chat (some of them are casual I think?). It is, of course, quite another to be switching personae throughout your day and living your entire life like that. Can this be healthy? I can see a lot of room for exploitation, as I’ve discussed elsewhere.

Offline Events in London

The Aristasians were responsible for some casual sapphic events in London. One of these was Sweethearts, a nightclub event with a 1940s-1950s theme.

Sweethearts meets in London on the first Sunday of every month.

It is the only club in London for feminine girls who enjoy the look and sound of a more sparkling era.

Glittering period music will be provided both on record and by live performers.

Champagne and cocktails will be available and customers will be attended by a cigarette-girl in traditional short-skirted uniform selling cocktail cigarettes, chocolate and even long jewel-encrusted cigarette holders.

Girls may disport themselves on the dance floor, sit at the bar or enjoy a romantic interlude in the "cuddling corner"

Sweethearts, a nightclub event for ladies hosted by the Aristasians.

For those interested in being part of Aristasia for more than one night, though, they had regular, and much more Aristasian-coded, events.

Avenbridge School seemed, to me, from afar, like the heart of it all over there in London. It featured, teachers, lessons, uniforms, homework, and physical punishments for the (adult) students.The school’s page noted that the school wasn’t a “mere excuse for discipline,” though I don’t doubt that was a source of interest for some. This was, as you’d expect, a school roleplay or “life theatre” experience set in Aristasia.

The site about it also adds that only “genuine women” may participate Given what we know from this group’s extant earlier writings, in which they seemed trans-friendly if a little out-of-date, I’m not sure what to make of it. At the time I originally read about Avenbridge, I was too young to really parse phrases like “genuine women,” didn’t know enough about gender to know how being trans might work, nor how to listen for TERF dogwhistles.

Still, this is quite a contradiction from their manifesto - unless the implication was meant to be that they decide who counts, I really don’t know, unless one assumes multiple authors. Contact me if you’ve thoughts.

AVENBRIDGE is a traditional English-style girls' school which meets usually once a week. Girls are all over 18 — often considerably over — though they play the rôles of girls between 14 and 17. Some girls also play the rôle of a mistress

Entering Avenbridge is like entering any other girls' school. Given the initial premiss of "roleplay" everything that takes place in the School is perfectly genuine. Lessons are real, work is real. Homework is set and expected to be completed. Discipline is administered, but the School is certainly not a mere excuse for discipline. Indeed, some weeks there may be no physical punishment at all; though a girl may bring a "note from her mother" if discipline is specially required.

Concerning Avenbridge School

They were always coy in their depictions of Aristasia’s on-the-ground scale, but it seemed to exist in and around London, for the most part. Apparently, the group had been based in Oxford previously. Or, at very least, one interview (I'll hunt it up, I promise) alluded to a “large-ish colony” located there in the past. It seemed like London, being an international capital, had been the natural choice for, well, their Embassy and all that, though…

Perhaps, thus, I was wrong in saying that Avenbridge was the center of Aristasia in London. Perhaps it was the Embassy? I wasn't there. I can only show old sites. The embassy idea was extremely important and would remain so within Aristasia for quite some time, and would soon lead to a digital embassy of sorts too. More on that later.

The concept of an Aristasian Embassy began many years ago. The cardinal idea was that of a house which would (like any Embassy) be a part of another country. In the Aristasian Embassy one is no longer in England, but in Aristasia. Of course there are now other Aristasian households, and each of them is a part, not of England or France or America, or wherever they may happen to be situated physically, but of the Celestial Empire of Aristasia. The Embassy now forms a sort of bridge between Telluria (that is, the physical world in which men exist where the 1950s and 1930s are places in the past) and Aristasia, the magical world of blondes and brunettes where Quirinelle and Trent are places we can visit now.

A 2006 publication regarding on-the-ground Aristasian “households” including the Embassy in London.

So, did people do this full-time? 24-7? I’ve no idea. I certainly did not. I had high school and a million other things to worry about alongside disappearing into the internet for long hours.

Hanging out with Aristasians online, I was, indeed, left with the impression that some Aristasian colonies did exist, or had existed, as described in the publication:

Aristasia in Telluria is based on the principle of Autonomous Households. The household (or Hestia) is the fundamental unit of Aristasia. Each household has its own character. It may consist of just one or two girls, or of several. Households are bound together in Districts. Our district is called the District of Avendale. A Colony is a group of two or more Aristasian households that are near to each other. There used to be a large-ish Aristasian colony in Oxford. Your household doesn't have to be near to another one to be in the same District, but having households close together — in a colony — certainly makes things easier for cinema showings, schools, concerts, cafés and all the other activities of an Aristasian District.

The aforementioned 2006 publication, about Avendale District.

Their missive linked above includes mention of Tigrou and her own Aristasian household, separate from the Embassy. I remember coming across Tigrou’s page, from 2004. I was left with the impression of at least some on-the-ground-numbers and strict discipline. This, I later realized after talking to some people, may well have been inaccurate on both counts.

Elektraspace

What if you weren’t British, and could’t visit London? How did you participate in Aristasia, then? I was curious about this, of course, being stuck in American suburbs (and underaged, lying about it, etc…)

Aristasia had been online, it turned out, from the very beginning. The oldest archival capture of an Aristasian site is from 1998. They had put a great deal of effort into building an international community on the internet, or, as they called it, elektraspace. I rather liked that term, myself. There was also the Aphrodite Cocktail Bar, and it did feel like a window into another world. Observe.

Authoritatively Brunette!

“Ah, what lovely hats are to be found in Ladyton, and on such lovely pettes too - Miss lia Ranyarani is without doubt a Clear-Eyed Brunette To Be Reckoned With, and Miss Sarachild the verys meltingest >sigh!< of blondes: it seems rather surprising that brunette casualties were no higher than three on that opening night! I had quite forgotten about the legendary Ladyton sophisticettes! We are all indebted to Miss Alisilene for her timely reminder.

Unfortunately, I have no personal acquaintances in Ladyton, nor any Ladytonian models in my archives, but today I have two Gotham brunettes, unequivocally Kadorian, both classic studies in black. Now, a Brunette should never neglect to have at least a couple of basic black outfits in her wardrobe for those occasions when imperiousness must run at flood tide, whether she is bidding for Ming vases at an estate auction or negotiating the lease on a Park Avenue penthouse for an anonymous client...” NORMA

From the Aphrodite Cocktail Bar, archived in 2004, posting date unknown.

Elektraspace (the Aristasian internet of the time) included Belladonna, and the site of Miss Victoria Mayhew (no relation to myself) in addition to that main site. There was a sort-of forum called Girls’ Town; you couldn’t really post there, only write to an email (elektrapost) address to have your comments added.

Later Aristasian sites, such as the Blondes and Brunettes Club, would feature fully-functional forums, often self-hosted, (and even little social networks), of course. All this allowed for a geographically-distant girl to, as one website put it, get “seriously involved” if the mood struck her.

Following the move to Virtualia (Second Life - more on that later), this little tidbit got posted. It discusses some of the challenges that Aristasians faced building a community online.

The future of a Virtual Aristasia was being discussed the other day. We were speaking of the huge importance of friendship and sisterhood to Aristasians and the come-and-go nature of many of the friendships formed in Elektraspace.

In Aristasia Pura, the deepest friendships often begin in childhood and are forged through many common experiences and loyalties.

In Aristasia-in-Telluria friendships have been welded by living together and working together.

In Aristasia-in-Elektra friendship can seem a little lightweight, especially with the tendency of some new friends to be effusive one day (or month or year) and gone the next. If Elektra is going to be an important field for Aristasian life, we need to consider how to address this.

On Friendship in Elektraspace dating to May 2007.

The article, in case you’d prefer to be lazy and not click, concludes that perhaps video games ought be a focus for a bit, as a sort of communal bonding experience. It seems to be comparing these games to those played in - yes - schools, and suggesting they’d create the same esprit d’corps that, for example, rugby might.

Welp. That didn’t prove fruitless, I’d say. Ultimately video games, which were already quite a trend, became an important part of Aristasia. Once the Embassy there was established, none quite could eclipse (pun intended) a peculiarly-objectiveless game Second Life in their importance, though.

Advantages of a Virtual Aristasia — other than the fact that it helps with our geographical scatteredness — are the fact that it can be a mirror of Aristasia Pura. Blondes can really be fair-haired and brunettes really dark-haired (not that that matters a bit in real life, but it is rather cute to have it "proper" in Virtualia). We can look just as we want to look — our appearance can match our personae. It also allows all sorts of fantastical things to happen.

There have been lots of Aristasian speculations about virtual reality — 3D rooms all around us — perhaps created by a headset. Aristasian friends all about us, taking whatever shape they please — anime princesses, Trentish film stars, Quirrie teens. The days of full virtual reality are undoubtedly a way off, but the first steps are available to us now, and Aristasians are beginning to take them.

Your Aristasian Avatar will be a fully-animated 3D model like these ones, under your in-world control - fair or dark haired according to whether your personality is blonde or brunette.

Our first venture has taken place in a Virtual Universe known as Second Life. A vast world with many territories, properties, modern buildings, castles, casinos, shops — people run whole businesses within Second Life. Aristasians, of course, regard it as a territory for creating Aristasian reality. At present we have two Aristasian groups there. The first is the White Roses — a group for girls new to Aristasia, who wish to learn more or to experience Aristasian being in a virtual world. The second is the Blue Camellia Club for slightly more experienced Aristasians. Members of both groups mix freely together in Virtualia though there will be some events for Camellias only.

Website inviting Aristasian avatars to Second Life, circa 2011

If you’re not familiar with Second Life, it is/was a chat program featuring complex avatars and elaborate virtual worlds. Used for many different purposes, Second Life was, at the time, versatile and easily-learned. It gradually rotted as a platform over the years.

In Aristasian slang, we called Second Life Virtualia. Avatars there were called avvies because the actual word “avatar” had too many religious overtones. Anyways, there were immediate moves to set up some sort of permanent Aristasian presence there under the assumption that yes, this was the future of technology (“technics”, rather).

This was common around that time, when Second Life was the hot new thing. The Second Life Aristasian Embassy indeed lasted several years, albeit through a few incarnations. Even after the movement shuttered its doors, the embassy remained open in Second Life for a while longer, too. With Second Life now largely a dead mall, even that place got torn down.

I’ve much more to share about Aristasia online, and Aristasia-in-Virtualia (Second Life). That said, I'm going to be covering the vast majority of Aristasia's online endeavors on their own pag. You can visit that once it is complete and uploaded to read more about how their methods of recruitment and interaction worked in a virtual environment.