logging onto Aristasia Online

logging onto to Aristasia online...?!

This part of the history section, beginning in the late 1990s, describes an era when Aristasia gradually shifted from an offline movement to one with a primarily online basis. Large portions of this page are merely skeletal, and I hope to fill them in with more information and details at a later date.

This area of the site will include material from my own time in Aristasia (online) so to speak, rather than just research I’ve done into Aristasia’s strange past.

Others have assumed (apparently, seemingly) that these interactions (Aristasia online, for example, in Second Life) took a similar tenor to prior incarnations of the movement. This really isn’t the case, though, and online Aristasia was problematic in ways that (for example) Rhennes was not, and charming in ways that older groups were certainly not.

In other words, I’d argue that while the entire movement changed rapidly during this time, it didn’t “reform” or “fix itself” - it just transformed. It became more likeable in certain ways, at least to someone like me. Though some problems did vanish or become less prominent, others took center stage. I’ve got memories of this era of Aristasia that I somewhat treasure; others that aren’t as good. I hope to explore all that, and more, on this page, ultimately.

1990s: The London Embassy

This was not (strictly) an online affair, but was advertised so heavily online that I include it here. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Aristasians maintained a household designated as an “embassy” in London (an apt location, I must say).

Throughout this period, apparently the Aristasian ambassadress to Telluria (earth, our world) was , Her Excellency lhi Conitessa lia Marenkhela. This is a blonde name, I believe, if my knowledge of Rhennish isn’t too poor. It wasn’t terribly odd that the ambassadress seemed to be a blonde with an obviously Novaryan (well, Estrenne, anyways) name. Blondes tended, I’d noticed, to outnumber brunettes. Novarya was becoming more important as high technology entered the picture, too.

She gave an interview with the “Tellurian Edition” of the Morning Letter; apparently Aristasia’s primary respectable news source. The interview discusses… the planned aesthetics of the Aristasian Embassy in London, its architecture, and the ethics of kitsch (so, yes! blonde in persona, I suppose).

The Morning Letter: The new household — codenamed Castle Mushroom — is said to be planned on an Art-Neo castle theme. Could not some people suggest that these Aristasian designs are somewhat extravagant and perhaps lack seriousness, and that this might be considered a fault especially in the case of the Embassy household?

Lady Marenkhe: Aristasians can indeed be extravagant. We believe in expressing the richness of life. We react strongly against the drabness of the Pit.

The Morning Letter: But, if we may for a moment play devil's advocate, might not some people accuse this extravagance of resembling the absurdism and pseudo-eccentricity which is also a feature of the Pit.

Lady Marenkhe: They might, but they would be wrong. Let us take the Art-Neo Castle theme. In the first place the idea of the castle comes from the structure of the house, which presents a very closed exterior to the outer world and is centred round its own inner "courtyard". We take this to be a model of the enclosed and protected Hestia — the feminine household.

The somewhat more martial (or, as Aristasians would say, Vikhelic) aspect of the castle is particularly appropriate in view of the fact that the household is surrounded by the Pit. Fortified without, homelike within: that is the essence of the castle motif — and the fact that this theme will be reiterated in the decor of the house is almost a ritual enactment of that protective essence.

Art Neo is necessary too, because our household is a modern Western one. Without going into the philosophy of Art Neo (which you will find set out in The Feminine Universe and elsewhere) it is, par excellence, the legitimate art of the machine age, lending depth and spirituality to an ethos which can otherwise be purely materialistic leading ultimately to the cultural breakdown of the Pit.

So you see, while the Art Neo Castle theme may seem purely frivolous and idiosyncratic (and I certainly expect the girls to have a lot of fun with it), it also embodies some very important Aristasian concepts.

The Aristasian Household Today, archived February of 2004.

As you can clearly see, the Conitessa’s interlocutor asks rather complicated and leading questions, a feature of almost every internal interview you’ll find on Aristasian websites, even up until the very end. Why? These are more FAQs than anything else, really, and definitely written entirely by the same person. You must admit, they get a point across, though…

This was all, apparently, in addition to the involvement of several other households, some of whom maintained websites separate from the main Aristasian site itself, including one that was, oddly, tiger-themed. The Tiger household was known for posting a lot about discipline, even more so than other Aristasians (rather iconic for it, in fact).

Almost all mentions of them included the admonition that this was not typical of Aristasia and that, while a welcome part, they were outliers. When I glanced over The Adventures of Tigrou as a teenager, I had trouble understanding exactly what was supposed to be happening to the narrator, why, and wondered (really, really wondered) how much was truth versus fiction.

Uniform, according to the Oxford dictionary, is ‘distinctive dress worn by the same body, e.g. soldiers, sailors, policemen, nurses, school children.’ These examples of human beings who wear uniform, belong to hierarchical organisations which are dependent for their efficiency and general running, on the ability of those in the various ranks carrying out their duty and following the orders of their superiors. A hierarchy cannot operate effectively unless its members are conscious of their rank and their duty to those above them.

Within the confines of our world, I am subordinate to my Mistress. She is the rock to which I cling and the foundations upon which I build my life. In return for the safety and peace which my allegiance brings, I am bound to her in terms of my Submission.

My uniform is a symbol of my pledge of obedience to my Mistress. When I dress in school uniform, I assume a lower rank. I dress as a subordinate and I place myself in the hands of my superior. In the presence of my Mistress, I relinquish all ‘rights.’ I must bend to her will in all matters.

I must wear my uniform with pride. I must be proud of my Submission. My uniform is not simply a ‘distinctive dress.’ It as a sacred vestment which I wear for my Mistress, with whom I share the magic of our world. This magic ‘transcends all earthly things’ as my Mistress wrote once. It comes from above, and together we participate in a ceremony, which is unique and special to us.

In the past, I have failed to fully grasp the importance of our ritual. I have been slovenly in the way I have presented myself to my Keeper. I am ashamed of my previous attitude. I am surprised at my own lack of understanding, my stupidity even.

Miss Wilkinson has taught me the importance of dressing with the utmost care in preparation for my Mistress. It is my duty to be as perfectly dressed as possible. When I dress, I am preparing for a sacred ritual, the importance of which is crucial in maintaining the sanctity of our marriage. To dress improperly is tantamount to sacrilegious behaviour.

I must honour my Mistress at all times. My uniform is a mark of my respect as a submissive for a superior.

The Adventures of Tigrou, Part Two: Tigrou’s Homework Assignment. Archived 2004.

On Girls’ Town, an Aristasian online hub, the embassy itself would post stories of things that had (apparently) actually happened offline in blue text (“It’s in blue because it’s true!”). The Adventures of Tigrou, which features really really extreme physical punishment (I am not kidding!) isn’t in blue text. Other posts from the same household include Tigrou talking with faeries in Nymphasia, so perhaps Tigrou was mostly fiction capturing the (more severe) ambiance of a secondary household; I’ve no idea.

The True Blue posts that I did see were mostly about small parties and events held by the group. They heavily pushed for girls to contact them online about attending such events…

These events included the weekly “life theatre” school set in Aristasia. Avenbridge School featured… you guessed it, physical discipline (as well as apparently real lessons in French, Latin, and other subjects).

Girls’ Town, the Aristasian online hub for much of the very early 2000s, often featured posts about events occurring in London at the Embassy, such as the one shown in the above screenshot. These were always posted in bright blue text, with the notice Posted in BLUE because it’s TRUE! The implication, of course, was that these were real narratives of Aristasian lives in London, or, at very least, writings about sessions spent at the Embassy for Avenbridge School. The one below is a good example.

Navy Blue

I promised to tell you what happened at my first lesson - so I shall. Mme. P is very nice, but very strict. I tried very hard, but I made the most fearful mess of my written work. I don't know if it was nervousness or not, because I did the silliest things I really do know better than. I hoped very much that she would not think I was being deliberately annoying - because I wasn't and that really isn't the sort of thing I would do. Anyway, I don't think she thought that - only that I am very sloppy, which I suppose perhaps I am, though I really didn't mean to be.

But the most awful thing was - well I have to go back a bit and tell you about my uniform. It is a navy blue gymslip with a matching belt and a red sash that goes over my shoulder. Well, Madame P has her own ideas about uniforms - different mistreses often have - and she prefers me not to wear the belt but put the sash round my waist. This of course involves having the knot in a different place, and when I tried in the hanging part of the sash looked all sort of chewed where the old knot had been - if you see what I mean. Well, I though that wouldn't look very good, so I ironed the sash.

Now you have the background. So now we are in the lesson again, and about half-way through in comes my guardian to tell Mme. P that I have left the iron on and could have burned the house down. Do you know, when I was living at the Novarian Embassy with my blonde and brunette Mummies I did that once - not burned the Embassy down, but burned a big black iron-shaped hole in the carpet.

So Mme. P said she would attend to the matter and gave me a really hard spanking with a wooden hairbrush. You know, hairbrushes really do hurt in the hands of an expert.

But do you know - that is not the worst of it. I was really sure I had turned the iron off at the switch. And later in the day the milk went off rather badly. And the next day the fridge got quite smelly. Because you see, I had turned something off - but it was the fridge, not the iron.

Mme. P says she will "discuss" this matter with me next time.

With that not-especially happy thought and with the assurance that this is all perfectly true and blue,

I am,

Annya Miralene

Posted to Girls’ Town, date unknown, but likely between 2000 and 2005.

The London Aristasian Embassy closed in the mid-2000s. Future additions to this section will include some screenshots of material produced by, and promoting events at the London Aristasian Embassy, as well as a few (figureless besides Miss M) photos of the embassy’s interior culled from news reports.

I’ll also be talking about how my impressions of what Aristasian communities in London were like might well have differed from how they really operated. Admittedly, I have no way of knowing, but this portion does raise interesting issues regarding how things are presented online versus how they might actually be occurring.

Y2K: Elektraspace

I confess that I was poking around a number of groups at that time that fell into the “alt.sex” category. One day there appeared a message on the femdom group about a Feminine Empire where only girls were allowed, and that I must jump through the “shimmering portal” quickly as it would close in short order. There was a URL, which was a thing of which I had only become aware within a year or so of that fateful afternoon.

The site was called Femmeworld, and it was an absolute delight! I won’t go into any detail here about that site, as several very intelligent and competent blogesses here on Tumblr have done that. I learned about blondes and brunettes, and I was struck with a bolt of revelation that I was a brunette, and that explained me! I made sense! Of course I understood that this was all within a fantasy world and that there was no such thing as an Aristasian brunette, but it revealed to me that other women had these feelings and experiences, and had thought about and discussed it enough to invent a fictional designation.

Former Aristasia-in-Virtualia participant, MissFenriss, on Tumblr in 2024.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Aristasians in London (and those drawn to the concept elsewhere) created websites promoting their ideas, aesthetics, and worldbuilding. They referred to these sites as “elektraspace” rather than the “internet,” and often they included small forums, chatrooms, or (very early on) simply pages where one could write an email to have it posted, a bit like a newspaper column.

Initially much of this fell into two categories: the promotion of the aforementioned offline events, or criticism of modernity (termed “Pit Crit”). As a teenager, most of the latter went over my head, though I've obvious plans to discuss it here in good time.

The offline events, despite their icky (to me) discipline focus, seemed intriguing - but were in London, and I, of course, am American. I was also awfully young at the time. I wondered, very, very deeply, what life was like as part of the (apparent) Aristasian "colony" in London, but had only their postings to go on.

Aristasia began some years before the Internet, but it came online quite early, creating its own virtual territory, known as Elektraspace. The first Aristasian presence online (unless any one knows of an earlier one) was called Femmeworld. Femmeworld was originally intended to be the Elektraspatial incarnation of Aristasia. It was pretty, pink and fluffy and carried a warning before entry that one was leaving cyberspace and entering Feminine Elektraspace.

A 2004 summary of Aristasia’s online endeavors.

Over time, as happened everywhere online, though these sites grew more and more sophisticated. The point was no longer merely the promotion of offline events, but the promotion of Aristasia on a wider scale. Aristasian elektraspace eventually would include entire small social networks. Early ones featured a great deal of “life theatre,” and later ones would retain some elements of this.

An exclusively online community formed around Aristasia, in addition to whatever might’ve been happening offline. This persisted, with many people (and personae!) coming and going in Aristasia’s elektraspace over the course of the decade.

Roleplaying and "Life Theatre" Online

While “life theatre” played a role (hehe pun) in Aristasia online from the beginning, early days saw more traditional (for the internet and IRC, forums, etc) roleplaying games as well. In particular, there was Avendale School, a roleplaying game focused on the titular school for girls located in Quirinelle, Aristasia Pura, of course.

Avendale was founded some two hundred years ago by Queen Anna Maria. It is a highly prestigious school. Probably the most prestigious school in Western Aristasia is Selastine in Trent. However Selastine is for brunettes only. Avendale is a mixed school. Daughters of royalty have attended Avendale as have the children of many of the most prominent families in Quirinelle and (to a lesser extent) other Aristasian nations.

Avendale accepts girls between the ages of 12 and 18. Most girls are proud of the school and intensely loyal to it. Pupils may be given positions of responsibility as monitors or prefects, and a proportion of the school's fundamental discipline is administered by the girls themselves.

Discipline is enforced by corporal and other forms of punishment. Though it is possible to avoid this by good behaviour. If you feel you need a lot of discipline, please say so in advance rather than trying to "court" it by excessive bad behaviour.

The Prospectus for Avendale School, posted early in the 2000s but archived in 2004.

I never joined Avendale School roleplay; at the time it was taking place, I was very much an actual student at an actual high school, and quite too busy for roleplaying in British time zones. I did read some logs of the game, which featured a great deal of physical discipline, excuses for it, and the like, so I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it much, anyways.

Someone (Sushuri-Chei, I believe) quipped that Aristasians got on better with chatting (“life theatre” one presumes) than proper roleplay, and credited that to why Avendale and similar online endeavors didn’t last very long. I still think it was merely a matter of physical discipline just not being all that interesting, but what do I know? Either way, there were other sites where you could interact, including Girls’ Town, a forum of sorts that ran from 2001-2005, and featured a lot of very interesting “life theatre…”

Often, these stories took place within Aristasia Pura, and thus were clearly fictional (or at least heavily fictionalized). Those in particular often featured either themes of discipline, spirituality, or rarely, both. it was interesting, because the parts of the “life theatre” exercises on Girls Town that occurred within the auspices of “Pura” as a setting tended to emphasize those two “differences” in perspective between this world and theirs.

Below, Miss Annalinde, a “young blonde” describes meeting a stern, but young District Governess (administer of local spanks, basically) while journeying in Pura. The post was originally accompanied by a photograph of an early 1960s woman in dark clothing, looking quite stylish and severe.

She was wearing a charming infra dress, very short with little gold chains instead of shoulder straps. Quite respectable for Infra, but not exactly - well businesslike or anything. Unless her business was picking up blondes, which, sadly, it did not seem to be. So as we were talking I told her a bit about me, and asked her about herself, and she told me she was the District Governess. I gulped a bit and asked if she had many infractions in Infra and she smiled as one smiles who has heard that sort of joke more times than she really needs to.

Well, I don't suppose she dressed that way for work - but really - she seemed so young and - jinky. So you never know about Lulu's picture. Unlikely things can happen in Infra. Or other places as well, I suppose.

I never saw her again, but the thought did cross my mind of doing something really naughty in Sandy Shore, because she was such a dreamy brunette and the thought of being reprimanded and then spanked by her just made my heart do those famous flip-flops. Have you ever felt like that?

Anyway I was much too frightened to do it really. And in any case I couldn't think of anything really naughty to do. You know how one can't. It is like looking for happiness, isn't it? When you are looking just for happiness you don't find it, but when you are doing something else it just comes sneaking up behind you. It is like that with naughtiness. When you aren't trying to be naughty it seems so easy to slip into doing a naughty thing. But when you think of doing a naughty thing just for the sake of it, nothing comes to mind.

Miss Annalinde, posting to Girls’ Town sometime in the early 2000s.

Of course, a lot of these stories (like, to a degree, the one above) end with or involve spanking in some way. Some discussed spanking customs in Pura, or were narratives of girls who had (supposedly) been naughty in their daily Aristasian lives and gotten the Chinese slipper. Others were girls joking about caning each other amid semi-revealing photos from he 1950s.

Let’s Build Lore (or… not?)

We also saw some rather elaborate attempts at character creation. While the below post wasn’t mine, I’ll admit to writing in with similar convoluted, yet largely content-free, posts. I was a teenager at the time, and jumped into it quickly, just like you’d expect a kid might jump into an elaborate roleplaying game with a complicated character…

I am, by the grace of Dea, Marie-Marguerite Celeste Emma de Saint-Vire, Marquise de Gothia. My Maman is Nathalie Ghislaine Electra de Saint-Vire, Marquise de Saint-Vire, Comtesse de Roquejardin, Comtesse de Gothia, and Generelle de Saint-Vire. Yes, 'Generelle', for in addition to the titles settled upon her, she is a great military commandress, and wears the most lovely blue and gold uniforms. She's my brunette Maman; my own darling blonde Maman passed on some years ago... she was an Englishwoman; Lady Emma Hamilton, and it is after her, in part, that I am named. Marie-Marguerite is for my grandmere, the Duchesse de Gothia, head of our family even though she has passed many of her duties and titles to my Maman. But in deference to those two ladies, I am called by the least distinguished of my names: Celeste. You may address me as Mademoiselle de Saint-Vire, or de Gothia, or Mademoiselle la Marquise, as we say. Perhaps when we know each other a little better, we may use first names.

A newcomer to Girls’ Town (perhaps…)

These little attempts at “joining the game” with an overly-elaborate backstory of some sort would continue for various people (including, once or twice, myself) well into the late 2000s. It was, however, discouraged by the core group, as was worldbuilding outside of their own auspices, for the most part.

A lot of us would question them about various aspects of Aristasia Pura, and gently “suggest” things (“am I to understand that…”). Typically, we were expected to accept answers they gave, though. It was often difficult to tell exactly who was behind which worldbuilding, too. When someone posted (for example) a narrative about life in Quirinelle, they usually signed it something like “Miss Abigail Maryhill.” We had no idea if Abby was someone like me scattered across the globe, or one of the regular (local, British) crowd simply manifesting a personae to add lore.

Headcanons still happened despite this vague discouragement. Several pettes did start little fiction writing projects and attempted to share them, but this was, again, somewhat discouraged, at least in private. Perhaps if we’d wrote about Aristasia Pura with details that didn’t match the core group, they’d have felt a loss of control. Therefore, they wanted to prevent the possibility. I still did it, though - I just didn’t share the stories with the group, nor many people in general, and some (though not all) were highly subversive of Aristasia.

The bits endorsed by the core group were clear, though, and if you squinted, even early on you could see that many implied an actual, extant Aristasia Pura. Many that seemed very close to canon were elaborate, and had a lot more substance than anything I would’ve ever posted at the time, I must be honest. The following, posted by a pette I was fairly sure to be a member at the Embassy, gives us a lot of interesting worldbuilding from a fifteen-year-old girl’s perspective.

The weird part in retrospect? Most of it isn’t about discipline, but rather about this pette’s life in Pura. This particular person (using this name and others) would share more of these stories, some featuring bits of discipline, but most wholly without, for years. She went as far as to tell us about her lessons as a schoolchild in Quirinelle back on Pura. I won’t go into too much detail because it’s a little ancillary (and many ex-Aristasians will remember it too well).

My name is Annya Miralene. I have three sisters, Wendy, Mitzi and Lindie (Annalinde). Wendy is the youngest, and I am the second eldest after Lindie. I am fifteen, like you.

I have lived in Qirinelle mostly, though I was born on Novarian soil - but not in Novaria. I was born at the Novarian Embassy in Quirinelle, so I am a vera Novaryana like my brunette mother and my sister Mitzi (who was born in Marenkhe, Novaria). Mitzi and I talk like Novaryani - that is, influenced a lot by Raihiralan speech, whereas Wendy and Lindie are very Quirrie, like blonde Mummie. Mitzi lived in Novaria for a while with her aunt and we both went to the Novarian School in Quinbury, Quirinelle, which is mostly for children of diplomats and such. The school is fairly Quirrie in style actually, but all the girls are Novaryani.

All my sisters are blonde, but Mitzi is quite boisterous and brunetty in her ways and also (sometimes) has that brunette sort of sensibleness - together with that brunette sort of dottiness. When we went on the bumper boats on holiday, Mitzi was the only girl to come out *soaked*. Well, that is how Mitzi is.

At present I am not with my blonde or brunette Mummie, but we live with our guardian, Miss Clare. I am not going to the Novarian School in Quinbury any more, but I have a governess who is teaching me French - and also there is another governess who might also be teaching me French which Mme P (my usual governess) says is splendid because you can't have enough French. Anyway the other one is Mlle. Villeneuve and I haven't met her yet.

Are you learning French? Miss Alice said you might be but she wasn't certain. Miss Alice is very clever but also too dotty for words. You can be both, you know! Anyway, if we aren't at school yet (or perhaps even if we are) Miss Clare said perhaps when she has to go somewhere Mme P could give us a lesson together in the schoolroom here. We haven't asked her yet, but she did mention she might like to teach us together.

Mme P. is a very good teacher. She is also head of Modern languages in a school. She said I did really well in my dictation last week, but this week she did it really fast with a passage I had seen but didn't know I was to prepare for dictation, so I made several mistakes and she punished me quite hard for them. I am perfectly sure she did it deliberately, but actually I like her very much and I really don't mind if she does things like that sometimes. Do you know what I mean?

Anyway, I don't think she would punish you, as you are a guest - not unless Miss Nicola said she should, anyway - or unless you throw indiarubbers about the room while she is teaching. But you don't seem like the sort of girl who would do anything like that.

I am terribly interested in romantic, beautiful things. I don't mean kissy-romantic; I mean exotic, magical, adventurous romantic. I want to write beautiful things and I want to have a Muse.

Though kissy-romantic is interesting as well. Have you ever been kissed by a brunette? No, that is an entirely improper question and I withdraw it altogether.

With lots of love,

Annya Miralene

From Girls’ Town, date unknown, but I remember reading it before 2004(?)

By 2005, or at very least 2007 at the latest, it was openly admitted that many of the longterm Aristasians believed Aristasia Pura to be a real place where they’d had past lives. By that time, this (and any of our headcanons) became a moot point, because they could easily just say “no, you’re wrong - we remember it differently.”

Miss Starry (also known as @Tellurian-in-Aristasia on Tumblr) once commented to me that she initially interpreted Aristasian lore as the group “and-thenning” a roleplaying game universe, as many other groups have online. It gradually became apparent to her, though, that this was a much more centralized endeavor. You really couldn’t have a headcanon of your own for this; the leadership remained in control regardless.

When I Showed Up

My interactions began on forums and those little columns where one might write in with questions, rather than roleplaying games. I also spoke with Aristasians in London on AOL. As I said, I lied to them about my real age; they didn’t realize I was a minor. I immediately messaged one of (who I believe to be) the core group, and they were quite keen to sign me (or perhaps anyone at that particular moment) up for Aristasia, so to speak. It is true that movements like this, when at a low ebb or just starting out, will often adopt that approach.

Either way, they were very welcoming, and very willing to discuss (their) philosophy (mostly sounding like Platonism at the time), Aristasia itself, or anything else (provided it wasn’t “The Pit”) with me. There was a moment of awkwardness when one of these ladies I’d spoken with via messenger (AOL still, I think?) suggested they would need to “call me on the phone” to assure I was feminine. Given Aristasia’s complicated relationship with gender, this was uncharacteristic in retrospect. That might be why the issue was soon, thankfully, dropped - as a teenager, I couldn’t have called London, after all. It would’ve outed my true age pretty quickly…

Just so folks are away, I don’t fault these people for not looking deeper into my identity or trying to confirm I was of age. There’s a lot of things I can fault them for, but not this. There aren’t many (safe) ways to prove your age online, after all, and most sensible people, adult or not, won’t post their identification for just anyone. It was the turn of the millennium; too, and people tended to be much more credulous about each other’s claims online.

While that wasn’t me who posted the above-quoted missive, a lot of my early posts sounded like the one by the Marquise de Gothia talking about her complicated and rich life amongst an intricate medieval-sounding family, presumably in Aristasia Pura. Later, I adopted personae less florid - schoolgirls (some younger than I was IRL, by a couple years at least), older actresses, things like that. Often, the backstories were very Mary Sue-ish, owing to my age and (lack of) writing abilities!

As Sushuri Madonna noted, Aristasians ended up gravitating towards “life theatre” more than what one might think of as traditional roleplay, though. Avendale School Roleplay didn’t last very long, after all. This left a situation where I was in persona, but not really displaying or acting on a story. Instead, I was just interacting with friends as I might normally otherwise - or as that persona would, anyways. I found this deeply enjoyable, freeing, and it helped me (in a way) to understand myself. I also found it a bit addictive over the years, to a problematic extent, almost.

This is what separated, I think, the Aristasian notion of personae as “manifestations” of the self from mere characters. I’m not saying I buy into the metaphysical ideas they floated about this. I just mean that there was something deeper at work here than simple roleplay.

Perhaps the fluidity/lack of clear boundaries within “life theatre” helped with this - I suspect it did. A lot of it also probably owed to the fact we were repeatedly bombarded with the message that this wasn’t “just a game”. While they always acknowledged the game aspect, the core group portrayed Aristasia as a moral imperative. If something is more than “just a game,” well, we, the players, must be more than characters, right? Thus, this notion of personae as something much deeper…

I will not be publicly sharing any lists of my personae, their names, or anything like that on this site. I’m certain those who were there can sort out who I was at various points in time. Probably not all my names/personae, because there were many, but still. I’ll admit it’s liked I had more personae than most pettes. The majority of them were blonde. Why? I’m unsure.

Perhaps people really do sometimes have a temperament somewhere along the spectrum between those two archetypes, and find that edifying? More likely, being young, I was just drawn to the more demure of the Aristasian genders by default (they might’ve been counting on that). I’m just not sure. I do know there was a massive proponderance of blondes compared to brunettes in Aristasian spaces (online at least) in those days, which may have played a factor.

Estrenne Novaryan Lightgames

Miss Annalinde, a common poster on Girls’ Town (and likely one of several personae of the same individual), once referred to the above gadget as sucrelescent. This isn’t a word you’ll find in the Oxford dictionary; it’s Rhennish/Raihiralain, and this was a very early use of it to mean something like “pink,” or “symbolizing Sai Sushuri (Venus).”

It makes perfect sense that the Aristasians (especially blondes) chose pink gaming systems, after all, as does our obstinate refusal to call them “Gameboys” at the time - we, taking our lead from Miss Annalinde, referred to the system as the Gamebaby. The Gamebaby would rapidly become a fixture of Aristasian online spaces, one among many peculiar fascinations grafted in. We called the “lightgames” or “Novaryan games” in Aristasian parlance. Novarya was, after all, the most technologically-advanced (and captivating) Aristasian nation...

As the Vixen says, the games we Aristasians tend to like are of the bright, sunny, colourful variety, and for those we are best served by the Eastern company of Nintendo. Here is a form of entertainment that (with the obvious use of caution) Aristasians can embrace wholeheartedly. Here is a source of innocent charming fun.

But more than that, here is a wonderful asset for a budding Aristasian world such as Aristasia Friends. Here is something we can all share. Something on which we can exchange news, anticipate coming events, tell of our adventures, experiences and achievements.

But wait! There is more! We can play together - and isn't that what friends are for? Not only can we meet together in real life to play games, just as we can meet for cinema outings and things, but very soon we shall be able to play together in Elektraspace. The new generation of games machines, which is just round the corner will include the possibility of plugging into Elektraspace and playing with each other even when we are physically miles apart. Already this is possible in Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast machine - even now one could share a world of adventure together. Within a year it should be possible on the Nintendo machines.

And even where actual playing together is not possible, we may be able to swap cutie monsters from Pokemon, for example.

The Novarian Game Friends Club site, archived in April of 2001.

The Aristasian “core group,” being the successors of St. Brides School one way or another, still had a pash for video games. Now, they were far more advanced than the text adventures of the 1980s, but still captivated those within the movement enough that it became a huge fixture quickly. A small page penned by “The Silver Vixen” had this, rather more serious comment, to give about Aristasia’s interest in video gaming and why they felt it was “sound” and “racinated” despite being modern.

I shall simply say for the however-manyth time that our opposition is to the degenerate culture of the Pit, not to its technics, which are the natural outcome of the achievements of a healthier world and would have come about whether the culture had collapsed or not. Where we reject, say, modern motor cars, that is because of their design (which is a cultural statement) not their technics. The ideal car for most secessionists would be a beautiful Art-Neo body (whether from before or after the reign of the Pit) containing the very latest technical workings in every aspect. Of course the instrumentation controlling those workings should also be of delightfully real design.

So nobody who has the smallest knowledge of the secessionist philosophy (as opposed to some crude parody of it at which the unsophisticated mind seems sadly prone to jump) could imagine that there would be any objection to the technical side of Novarian games. But what of the cultural question? Are these games not a product of Pit culture?

This is a complex question. Of course some games are based on bongo films and other cultural artefacts. These, it goes without saying, we avoid like the B.B.C. But even here, the cultural corruption is largely extraneous to the game itself; often expressed more in the packaging and advertising than in what actually takes place in the course of play. In the early days of games, this was absolutely true. The coloured dots and merry robotic bleeps bore as much relation to the cultural images displayed on the box as they did to the Works of Shakespeare. As the technics become more sophisticated it becomes concomitantly more possible to include a degree of cultural content, and more care is required. Nonetheless, secessionists who are so inclined can and do continue to enjoy a wide variety of games.

There are probably two main reasons for this. One is that in many cases the technics have not yet advanced to the point where bongo culture can be effectively expressed (this is especially true of the smaller systems such as the Gamebaby which we shall discuss later); the other is that most of the games we secessionists like best come from Japan where bongo culture is only a superficial overlay rather than a root disease and where many charming things are still done.

The Silver Vixen, writing in the early 2000s on Secession.co.uk.

Sure, right? If you enjoy older fashions and styles, there’s no reason one ought forgo the technological aspects of newer things. Why not have (for example) an art deco laptop, or an old-fashioned-looking hybrid car? The sentimental amongst us might long for such things, even, and there’s really nothing wrong with it. You have to realize, though, that this was not a matter of mere aesthetic preference, but moral imperative - the author of this piece argued that modern styles are immoral in a way because of the values they represent.

The author (again, someone using the name “Silver Vixen,” who may really have been any number of pettes) also expressed an odd interest in Japan. Was the “Japan fascination” seen in post-Bridgehead era Aristasia and (especially) Chelouranya present this early? I wouldn’t go that far. It was mostly confined to an outright obsession with Japanese video games, and long-winded justifications for that. Many of the latter touched on what I now see as deeply orientalist themes, but well, here we are…

Even this early, though, it is easy to see an idealization of the “East” and Japan in particular as less “corrupted” than the Western world in which they themselves were unlucky enough to be born. Just as older fashions allowed them to escape to an uncorrupted reality, so did these Japanese games, allegedly - because Japan itself somehow remained relatively uncorrupted. Unlike some of the other problematic aspects, his mindset was incredibly tenacious within the movement. It continued until the story’s end (and beyond).

For any sensible person, none of that would’ve been necessary. It’s quite simple enough to just say, “I enjoy Japanese video games” and be done with it, without trying to build Japan up into something it most certainly isn’t. I really, really want to write more about this, adding a section to the Storms page focused on the orientalist aspects. As someone with approximately zero background in postcolonial theory, though, let’s just say I’m struggling a bit with writing that.

Oh, and and are you wondering how the Aristasians even tolerated games with so many male characters? The page webmistress of the Aristasian Game Friends Club once addressed this directly, calling most video game characters “asexual.” This is a term here best translated into modern parlance as “agender,” I suppose. The argument was simply that it was easy to imagine these characters as ladies, so it didn’t matter what the game’s box and guide said…

Of course, as in up-to-date films there is a certain em-eh-ell-ee element in Novarian Games. This is inseparable from any use of Tellurian materials, from Shakespeare to Trentish films to Quirrie songs. On the whole this is less troublesome here than most places. In Pokemon, for example, you can give the central character any name you choose (your own if you wish), and you can easily see her as a girl - the same is true of your main rival, though you probably won't want to give her your own name, as she can be quite rude to you at times. In Pokemon Crystal you will have the option of choosing a distinctly female character as is the case in many games. In other games characters like Mario and Mickey Mouse are hardly really that-word-that-rhymes-with-ale. They exist in the asexual world of Toonery. I can't imagine them troubling the purest of Aristasians.

The Novarian Game Friends Club site, archived in April of 2001

The ideological battle at the heart of Aristasia got projected on the entire world, even video games and cartoons. History was winding down like a clock. We lived in an Age of Quarrels, the Kali Yuga, true, but we might subsist on those “final fruits” of the world-cycle mentioned in The Feminine Universe. Apparently, that included these lightgames by Nintendo (sometimes rendered as Ten Do in Aristasian, for reasons unclear to me).

They didn't limit themselves to Pokémon and the like, though. The repertoire also included some shooters and flight simulators which I, myself, have never touched. Facetiously, there were little comments about using them to “train” for Aristasian military service. This seemed cheeky and cute at the time. Later, when it became clear that many involved believed in an actual Aristasia Pura, well... these jokes get another layer, don't they?

Word from the Space Command

There has been some talk of late about Iridion 3D and its suitability for brunettes who are interested in playing at being members of the Royal Novarian Space Command. As a matter of fact, I am a member of the Royal Novarian Space Command, and I can tell you that these games are sometimes quite realistic in a gamey sort of way. Young brunettes interested in the Space Defence Forces could do worse than play the better of them as they hone the reflexes and give one some sort of a feel.

Flight Lt. Gloria Colburg

Posted to Girls’ Town, at some point in the early 2000s on the subject of a flight sim video game IRL.

Whereas most newer works of media were considered deracinated artifacts of a degenerate society, it seems the Aristasians quickly concluded that many cartoons and games - particularly those from Japan, as noted - were on the good side of this metaphysical battle. Why?

They posted rhetoric about how Japan remained a more civilized and wholesome country overall, and how the Eclipse itself was a Western phenomenon that had not necessarily seeped into the far east. The core group, as you can see in the Silver Vixen’s essay linked above, credited this so-called “traditionalism” for Japan’s prominence in technology.

Japan repeatedly, even early on, got compared to Novarya, a nation in Aristasia Pura. Lore about Novarya always featured it having flying cars and pettes living like the Jetsons, and credited their deeply “Estrenne” (the Rhennish/Raihiralan word for Eastern, of course) traditionalism for their ingenuity.

In reality, of course, Japan is a complicated place just like anywhere else, with both horrible problems and amazing parts. “Traditional” society is a nonsensical moving target in terms of definition. The Aristasian view on Japan, while charming to a younger, more naïve me, doesn’t mesh with reality very much. I plan to write more about this on the Storms page, though, so I’ll save my (mediocre, attempted) discussion of orientalism for there.

A recent and particularly thorough livestream suggested the Aristasians eventually developed an “almost religious” fascination with Nintendo as a brand. I’d disagree. This might’ve been briefly true, but the group quickly started branching into other subjects, many equally specific and peculiar (see: Operation Rorita, discussed on @Aristasian-in-Telluria’s Tumblr). This kind of thing helped them retain members and recruit.

I had (almost) zero interest in video games (outside of Second Life) throughout my entire time spent with Aristasia, actually, and the same was true for quite a few other pettes. The draw for me was always things like LGBTQ connections, worldbuilding, and spirituality, and there was plenty of that advertised, as well.

Second Life, aka Virtualia

Virtualia refers to Aristasia’s presence within the once-popular online MMO known as Second Life. I’m unsure who coined the term Virtualia as an alternative to just calling it Second Life, but we called it that - often shortened to Virchers. This rich, interactive and customizable online space rapidly became the primary venue for Aristasia online.

It is beyond the scope of this site to explain how Second Life works (or rather, how it once worked), but that information can be found elsewhere.

To give a brief overview, each user has an avatar (customizable to the extreme, really). When signing up back then, users chose their first name, as well as a last name from a list of several predetermined, unique options. For example, if you wanted your first name to be Lucy, that was all well and good, but you couldn’t have the exact same name as any other Lucy.

The game would let you then pick from a list of last names. I think you could choose from five to ten when you signed up, but there were many more rotating in circulation, all chosen by the creators of the game. Thus, Lucy might become Lucy Lefebvre if Lefebvre was the last name you chose from the list.

I’ve talked to latecomers to the Aristasia phenomenon and many seem surprised to find that those “aesthetic” names we used in Second Life were not (wholly) of our own creation, but all of the surnames used were provided by the game itself. And really, of course! Many of us would’ve likely picked the same last name for our avatars (particularly if they were our personae) if we could. Or Raihiralain ones. Some of the Second Life names persisted past that era, it is worth noting.

Once your avatar was named, I believe you chose a simple body type and clothing, and joined the game. As Aristasians, we avoided use of the term avatar if at all possible, using the shortened, slang term avvie instead. This wasn’t mere twee language. Rather, it was seen as sacreligious to call your video game character an avatar. The term, after all, did originate in spirituality. So, we called our avatars avvies.

With our avvies, we were able to visit different sims (broad locations), and, by touching things in-game (pose balls, items) participate in various activities like dancing. We could create our own items and program them, too, if we knew how to do that (Second Life had its own scripting language, I think).

I barely remember how the housing market worked in Second Life. Never bought or rented property there. I do know that the Aristasians rented space from other people on their sims. This caused friction, because early on safety protocols weren’t always in place. I’m learning now that nor were agreements in-game enforced well.

My own computer wasn’t able to access Second Life until later, but the forums always had little updates. These early versions of Embassy were destroyed several times for different reasons. In the case below, it was a matter of property dispute, and I wasn’t present in-game for it, but remember reading about it.

For a while, we had a penguin bot at the Embassy. At least, I think I remember her being at the Embassy; she might’ve been in somebody’s inventory following us around. She would help us play little rudimentary games, if I remember right, those that were possible and simple within Second Life. She also responded to things people said. There was a running gag (a meme, really) about people saying the same thing at the same time, at which point one of them would say “SNAP!” afterwards. I think the Penguin Bot counted how many times that happened and said it sometimes herself when she caught it. Naturally, this was the late-2000s and she was nothing like chatbots today, but enjoyable. I’m sure she was found at an average shop in Second Life.

Second Life, in case you didn’t know, had a thriving economy in those days. Perhaps it still does - I haven’t the wherewithal to check. Purchases were made in Linden dollars. These had the expected fluctuating exchange rate with the real dollar, if I remember right. I don’t recall how much money I ultimately put into Second Life, but I bought clothing, scripted items to toy with, clothing, furniture, pose balls, clothing, and more. Playing dress-up with your avatar in Second Life was particularly fun, and hunting for vintage, Aristasia-appropriate clothing was a lot of fun for us all.

Naturally, there were other communities within Second Life, but we rarely ran into them. When we did, it was usually in settings (like shopping) where they weren’t going to notice anything odd about us or give us any grief. We didn’t go out of our way to recruit within the game itself, if I remember correctly, though efforts continued outside of it, or seemed to. There were elaborate guides (unsure if they’re preserved!) explaining to new Aristasians how to access Second Life, too.

Men (or, as we called them, “em-ee-en”) were not allowed at the Embassy, of course, even as visitors. This applied to any male avatar within Second Life. I remember one incident rather early on in my own Second Life career where such an avvie (our slang for avatar) appeared and kept trying to interact before being banned. It was rather comical. I forget his name, but it was something pompous - he was wearing a top hat, a long coat, and looked properly Victorian, too. He told us he was a “perfect gentleman, completely harmless” or something like that. Though still banned for being a “mascūl,” there wasn’t much of a flame war with the guy.

I wasn’t able to purchase a sufficiently fast computer capable of handling Second Life until several years after Aristasia already had an Embassy there, of course. I am speaking more of the “Blumfield Era” of the Aristasian Embassy. By then, Sai Thamë Lay-College, a sort of in-game Aristasian sorority, had already been established.

Sai Thamë Lay-College

It doesn’t quite cover it when I call Sai Thamë College a “sort of sorority,” though that’s the closest term I can really think of at present. The term used, as you can see above, was lay-college. What is a lay-college? This is a wholly-Aristasian idea as I understand it, which shows up in the worldbuilding of Aristasia Pura and nowhere else.

This (archived) explanation of the concept does it justice, I guess. There is also Facts and Manners, a longer lecture given by Lhi Raya Chancandre about it and how it relates to Aristasian lore. To summarize, though? In Aristasia, ladies tend to have lots of children, and thus fewer ladies even have children to begin with (I think?). Marriage and childrearing is almost a vocation rather than a simple life expectation. As such, a lot of girls don’t marry at all.

Rather than live all by their lonesome, they, by their very nature as hypersocial intermorphs, seek community by living with others within the communal structure of “lay-college.” Unlike a regular college, a lay-college has few requirements academically, just a willingness to participate in the community. To be quite honest, in retrospect it sounds like those Gen Xers who keep talking about how they wish they owned an apartment building with a café for all their friends to share… except with Prefects and demerits and even occasional lectures…

Sai Thamë College is a Lay College established in Aristasia-in-Telluria. Its Mother-House is a beautiful building set in its own grounds in a secluded valley called Little Aristasia.

This is a "virtual building" to which access is gained by electronic means. But Sai Thamë College is not a virtual College. It is a real College where real girls live and work despite the fact that their physical locations are spread over the Tellurian globe.

Girls who, for technical or other reasons, cannot gain access to the Mother House may still join the College. Seminars and other activities in physical locations are entirely possible: perhaps even one day, one or more physical buildings.

Sai Thamë College is the point of entry most new girls will take into Aristasia. Once you have learned a little about Aristasia and talked to Aristasian girls sufficiently to feel that you wish to proceed further into the Empire, you may sign up for the Aristasia 101 course. During this course you will learn many things about Aristasia, and if at any stage you decide that it is not suitable for you, you are free to terminate your participation in the course.

Once you have completed the course you may apply to sit for the Sai Thamë College entrance examination. This is a straightforward test designed to ensure that you have learned and understood the material presented in the Aristasia 101 course and are suitable for the College. There will also be a formal interview.

A description of Sai Thamë College from the late 2000s.

Many talks given for Sai Thamë have been preserved alongside some that are older. Often they were religious in tone, because we did, in fact, have a small chapel there, too. Sunday services were held when possible, if I remember correctly. At least, I think they were held on Sunday. Friday would’ve made more sense for Filianists, but I seem to remember Sundays, sitting in my room on Second Life. Other lessons hosted in Second Life were about life in Aristasia Pura (!?) or general philosophical matters.

Sai Thamë College had a single required class - Aristasia 101.

Welcome to Aristasia 101 and congratulations upon being accepted onto the course.

By the end of this course you will have a firm grasp of Aristasian life and culture and will be in a position, if you choose and are accepted, to sit for the entrance examination for Sai thamë College.

Each course unit consists of a paper such as this one, termed a Knowledge Lecture, which will present the material of the unit together with links to a variety of resources for further study. It will also carry an assignment which must be completed before proceeding to the next unit.

Aristasian knowledge, like all traditional knowledge, is seamless and organic. Splitting it into sections or units, while necessary for the purposes of a course such as this, is decidedly artificial. As you read the lecture you will be directed to other material which in turn will link to further material. While the secondary level (that is, the material linked directly from this paper), should be largely sufficient for this unit and its assignment, you are encouraged to browse further and explore the way different aspects of Aristasian thought and culture are organically connected. This will not only give you a much firmer grasp of the subject in hand, but will make the later units considerably easier and more accessible.

In this first lecture we consider the most fundamental question: What is Aristasia?

Aristasia 101: Knowledge Lecture 1, dating to roughly 2009.

The Girl Opines?

There are stories circulating about Sai Thamë College, namely claims that we had some kind of rigorous uniform requirements within the game and schedule of punishments with detentions. These come mostly from a piece published in a Second Life-inspired magazine entitled “The Girl Opines: Episode One - in which our Heroine stumbles into the Den of Discipline.” Let’s be honest. With a title like that, one can’t help but have massive expectations for this piece. You can read screenshots of the two page article here: 1, 2.

The piece begins with the author bragging about how she hasn’t got a personality disorder. Quickly, you find that the tale isn’t quite as epic as the title implied. I will, as I have in several other places referencing this story, note that I was present for some of it. The woman in question had very valid reasons for wanting to leave Aristasia, and it was certainly her purview.

Her initial unwillingness to simply leave without elongating things (and bringing slurs into it) was rather toxic, I think. She was far from responsible for all of that, but seemed to enjoy what transpired from her dramatic break with the group.

I’ve edited the author’s (Second Life) name from the screenshots and won’t post it here. After all, she no doubt has an important reputation in Second Life to maintain as the heroine of “The Girl Opines,” and all that. I cannot seem to find any more episodes of it?

I don’t remember uniform requirements, at least not any that were taken seriously? When one touched a sign upon entering the Embassy, a believe a simple “uniform” appeared in your inventory, though. I wore that sometimes, but often just very well-programmed vintage clothing purchased elsewhere in Second Life.

I wasn’t subject to a detention despite (probably) being the most annoying person there. Looking back and remembering, I do vaguely remember people talking about them as if they happened. There was a classroom for lectures and such, and I suppose one’s avatar had to sit in it for a while. Perhaps they’d dropped the idea largely by the time my computer got fast enough to run the game?

It was at Sai Thamë College that the concept of teenies or teenaged persona first got finally wholly elucidated to me. It was part of the college’s very structure, but was an older fixture of Aristasia, as we’ve seen. While some sources have suggested teenaged personae were mandated for newcomers to Sai Thamë, this wasn’t true.

One was expected to become a teenie if one felt drawn towards it, inwardly or something, I suppose. You can read more about teenies from the archives here, and my own discussion of the concept here. Teenies (or, at least, young avatars) were not unique to Aristasia within Second Life, and it complicated things a bit.

Meet “Daphne Dormouse”

Let me turn my attention to another person I knew via Aristasia-in-Virtualia, though. Her real name was not “Daphne Dormouse.” Her real Second Life avatar name was not “Daphne Dormouse” either, as you can probably tell from the fact that “Dormouse” is not an actual Second Life last name, then or now. I’m choosing that name (“Daphne Dormouse”) to refer to her to protect her privacy in case she is still using the same Second Life account, a slim but real possibility.

I barely knew “Daphne.” We rarely spoke, but she was often present for lectures and other events where we were all paying attention rather than chatting. When we were chatting, everyone would greet her with a simple, “Rayati, Daphne!”

This was strange.

Why was this strange? Typically, in Aristasia (and in Aristasian Second Life ventures), one would indeed use the word Rayati instead of “Hello;” however, one was never supposed to use another pette’s naked given name except in settings of extreme familiarity. In other words, it was normally considered rude to call someone by their first name rather than their last.

Thus, most girls were called Miss, followed by their (usually, Second Life-assigned) surname. For example, one member, Adele Poppy, was referred to as “Miss Poppy” in almost all conversations. She was always addressed as such (she was a prefect, if I remember correctly) except in extremely intimate settings, or by girls who were new and still getting their feet.

So, why did everyone (and I mean, yes, everyone) refer to “Daphne Dormouse,” as, well… “Daphne”, rather than Miss “Dormouse”? Why was she the exception?

“Daphne Dormouse” (or, at least, her Aristasian manifestation/persona) was a bonded servant, of the paxit class, as one would say in Aristasia Pura. She was still addressed with the same courtesy and kindness, though. She often sat a few feet away from the rest of us. The latter was never enforced, talked about, or referenced - it just happened, and may have been the person’s mere preference.

So yes, a bonded servant. Reading the lore of Aristasia Pura, one learns that these individuals, born into such an “estate” typically live lives similar to indentured servants. It is assumed they’re cared for and treated well and all that, at least in the fictional context of Pura. They were, though, bound to serve their mistress. It was unclear who “Daphne’s” mistress was, and it may have been nobody particular. Either way? Bonded servant.

Given that this was all happening within a video game, that seemed to mean very little; there were no floors for her to sweep or chores for her to do. I suppose maybe behind the scenes she might’ve done some little tasks, but I was unaware if this happened. I knew, of course, that “Daphne Dormouse” was, at least in part, someone’s character in Second Life. The role of being a servant with a naked given name was something the girl behind the character had chosen.

I also, though, knew that in Aristasia Pura, the world we were supposed to be emulating, those belonging to the paxit class didn’t necessarily choose it. They were considered an invaluable part of the “Golden Chain” of society, but definitely a lower part of the hierarchy, meant to serve those above. In theory, they were cared for by them, and this didn’t resemble chattel slavery at all. In retrospect that makes it no better - wipe the glitter from your eyes and you’ll see. While Pura tended to portray these traditions as quaint, comforting, and wholesome, a chain is still a chain even if it is “golden” or invisible, and a chain is by definition a restriction.

Aristasia Pura is not our world, after all, and “bonded servitude” doesn’t exactly have the best history IRL, either way. Maybe it’s because we’re not (by nature) those peaceful intermorphs living in Pura, but that’s an immaterial point. We’ll never be such beings, and trying to emulate the concept as we were doing (by declaring this-or-that as person a paxit, a magdala, etc), we only set ourselves up for failure and creepiness.

I do not know what became of “Daphne Dormouse” when she drifted away from Aristasia, and won’t be trying to find her; it seems inappropriate. I do wonder, though, how she would feel hearing stories of the past that are only recently coming to light. Particularly, how would she (now or then) feel about the story of the “maid” at St. Bride’s School? Here was an individual, who, outside of a video game (before they really much existed) found her way to live with an Aristasian precursor group as an actual physical “bonded servant” of sorts, and I don’t doubt the term paxit was used, even back then. If you’ve read that section, and in particular, the news clippings, you know exactly what happened to her.

What happened to the “maid” at St. Bride’s could not have happened to “Daphne” of course, because “Daphne” was portraying a video game avatar, and, at that point, Aristasia primarily existed virtually. No one within the group (save, obviously, the leadership) knew the truth about St. Bride’s or Rhennes, etc. It shows you how things change and the past gets buried so quickly.

The past of Aristasia was kept extremely secret from us, and many actual lies were told about it, with, as some have noted, entire people invented (ie, Hester St. Clare) to create a convincing history (mostly) free of fascism, abuse, and (actual) slavery. Naïveté was hardly in short supply online, and I had plenty of it.

All this curated an experience where we wandered through a brightly-colored virtual wonderland, with no clue where we were actually treading at times.

I may well make some additions to this section. Also - keep in mind when reading the section on Operation Bridgehead that a lot of what is described there occurred simultaneously with these events within Second Life.

Operation Bridgehead

I’ve been asked what I can recall about Operation Bridgehead. I think it must have been 2006, and at that time there were still active text forums as well as the growing community who met in Second Life. SL was a real bandwidth hog at the time, and few girls had systems that could run it at a tolerable frame rate, so much of the conversation was still in text.

There was already an Embassy established in SL when the Operation Bridgehead announcement appeared on the forum. It may have been the Blue Camellia Club, but my memory is a sieve, and I could be wrong. I remember that the accompanying graphic was a screenshot from SL of a military brunette avatar silhouetted in front of the flag of the Empire. The gist of it was that Operation Bridgehead was a formal declaration that the community of Aristasians who existed in Elektraspace were a protectorate of the Empress.

I know I am making a hash of this. I can’t recall the language, or even how the scope of it was defined. As far as I can tell, the Embassy in SL was considered the center of operations, but all girls who identified as Aristasians-in-Telluria and had some means of connecting with us should be considered under this protection, SL account or no. I wish there were someone I could ask to correct me if I have this wrong. There seemed to always be a philosophy that what truly made an Aristasian was her sincere desire to be one, and little else mattered. That inclusivity is why I spent so much time with them. And it’s a bit ironic, now that I think of it. They always seemed to pride themselves on their elitism, but when it came to interacting with any person who identified as a girl, and wanted to visit and learn what it was all about, there could never have been warmer, more pleasant hostesses.

Former Aristasia-in-Virtualia participant, MissFenriss, on Tumblr in 2024.

Operation Bridgehead, occurring in November of 2005, marked a watershed event in Aristasia’s online (and overall) trajectory. The movement’s twilight-like mixture of fiction and spirituality became most apparent.

Core Aristasians began suggesting Aristasia Pura was a real place. The narrative shifted to something even stranger than before, with talk of Aristasia Pura existing, perhaps in another dimension, or perhaps somewhere out elsewhere in our universe. This was sometimes hinted at jokingly, but other times, especially in private, the implication was quite serious.

The story was unclear, but the message was simple: the worldbuilding is now canon IRL, so to speak. I myself would argue that this idea was actually quite older than Operation Bridgehead, but only begun to “roll out” publicly at that point. I do, as I’ve mentioned multiple times, remember a conversation about “bits of the old Aristasian language floating around!” back when I’d first joined up, after all. By the time of Operation Bridgehead, this was in full swing, and becoming quite open.

As you’ll likely guess, Operation Bridgehead caused (or allegedly caused, at least) numerous schisms and controversies within the movement, many of which I witnessed, either lurking or actually throwing my thoughts in occasionally as one persona or another. The response you see quoted below, written by a former prominent virtual Aristasian and posted directly to a now-defunct Tumblr, was perhaps the most notorious. I remember running across it, and my first thoughts were simple confusion that Aristasians were on Tumblr, of all places!

The circumstances surrounding the Operation Bridgehead is inexplicable. In particular, sudden removal of the old-timer Aristasian heavy-weights such as Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge, sudden cancellation of the old mailing address (“BM Elegance”, London WC1) at British Monomark without even providing a forwarding address (I had sent a holiday card in November 2005/3325 and was returned to me over a year later with a sticker “Addressee Unknown”, indicating the mailbox was probably suddenly abandoned), and inexplicable appearance of characters such as “Commander Thamla Caerelinde” and odd shift from the old imagery of a pre-Eclipse culture to that of a science-fiction involving extraterrestrials and space navy, all make no sense in the retrospect.

Perhaps the switch was necessary to create a new form of collective mythos when the old nostalgic fantasy of a yet-to-be-deracinated Britain no longer captivated the right audience when sensationalized publicity around spanking and discipline completely distorted the public perception of Aristasia.

Whether it is literally true or not, narratives are important and all communities, nations and individuals define themselves by their own story-telling.

Miss Iris, speaking in a blog post archived on Tumblr, which was then archived at a later date here.

This piece is called “A Mushroom Revolution, or the Hegemony of Novaria.” This argued (rather poorly, in retrospect) that the “younger” Aristasians (in terms of personae) had taken over the movement. The article called the changes made an “Aristasian Eclipse.” Other portions of it compare the changes in lore that occurred around this time to Scientology of all things. To be fair, if you were only looking at the lore, it did share certain science fiction themes.

A lot of it was rather hyperbolic. She went as far as to compare Sushuri Madonna (a well-known Aristasian figure at the time) to Kim Jong-Il for her supposed erasure of previous Aristasian history and iconography, changing the calendar, and such. This is all, in retrospect, terribly melodramatic when one is speaking of an embassy in Second Life and some flags and songs on a webpage, but the post is certainly worth reading for further context.

When I first read this article (which is no longer available, nor wholly preserved anywhere), I believed parts of it. Years later, I realized that much of what the author said about the people involved did not match with what I knew to be true about them. I mean that in terms of factual information, not just mindset or behavior. For example, with some of the folks mentioned, their nationalities do not fit with what I knew of them, nor does the rest of their supposed histories.

This, along with what I know now about some of the other people involved, led me to, eventually, conclude that she likely had little understanding of the situation overall. She might have been making things up, or working from bad sources, I readily assumed.

"Nova Aristasia” insofar as Miss Iris attempted it never happened, but it was an example of one response to Operation Bridgehead.

Context in June of 2024

In June of 2024, the same woman created a small website using Google entitled Filianism and NCUV Information.

Curiously, it seems that she joined Aristasia around the time of Bridgehead, via Second Life, not long before, which really does make her pining for the old days seem rather odd. She writes about how she showed up in the summer of 2005, a scarce few months before Bridgehead’s November declaration.

In the Second Life outpost of Aristasia (called "Virtualia" by some), avatars Sushuri Madonna (nicknamed the Mushroom, likely the same person later known as Cure Dolly) and Chancandre Aquitaine (formerly called Sushuri Novaryana before SL) functioned as the leaders. I have had some inklings that they may be the same individual representing two facets of her personality (and so was perhaps "Lady Aquila," who was never seen in SL but was very active elsewhere online). Also important to note is that around this time, Miss Martindale was abruptly silenced and made irrelevant. Shortly before the start of Operation Bridgehead, she was regularly contributing a column to The Chap magazine and even gave a live interview on a primetime television show in the United Kingdom. Likewise, some of the core members of the pre-Bridgehead online Aristasia such as Miss Isabelle Trent (aka Duchesse) and "Belladonna" disappeared during this time of transition into SL. 

Filianism and NCUV Information, S. A. Morrigan

She had found Aristasia through looking for Goddess worship sites, but became disappointed for many of the same reasons other post-Bridgehead Aristasians have described. Ultimately, she took to the faith of Filianism, but left Aristasia itself.

In 2006, I was disillusioned by two distinct but intersecting events. First, as I noted above, I was frankly disgusted with how Aristasia went from something that was highly intellectual, philosophical, and refined, to a bizarre mixture of infantized roleplay, naively romanticized Japanese pop culture, and misappropriated Hinduism.

Filianism and NCUV Information, S. A. Morrigan

Remaining a Filianist, she published a non-Aristasian version of the Clear Recital (the widely-used Aristasian scriptures) These are no longer available as I understand it. Since the Clear Recital was a religious document of claimed non-human origin, copyright didn’t apply. I’m not sure exactly how that all works, but she ultimately, as explained in the article, was instrumental in founding non-Aristasian sorts of Filianism, namely her own tradition. Still, it apparently didn’t work out…

If you’ve an interest in Operation Bridgehead and how it went down, read the site quoted above? In it, S. A. Morrigan explains that she now considers Filianism a fake religion, and, like me, finds (much of) Aristasia disturbing. She once more compares Filianism to Scientology, noting the latter is older than the former.

She asks that visitors donate to Bible study groups as a way of apologizing for her involvement in creating the non-Aristasian Filianist movement. I may not be a Christian, but I can respect wanting to do that retrospectively.

In short, I was only active in the Filianic cybersect from 2005 to 2012, and by the end of 2013, I had abandoned that fake religion entirely. I have a lot of regret, guilt, and shame over many things I have done in my life, many of which were products of my gullibility, delusional tendency, lack of self-awareness, and autistic neurotype; and this roughly decade-long chapter in my life was one of them.

Filianism and NCUV Information, S. A. Morrigan

Sun Daughter Press

Aristasia, throughout the post-Bridgehead period, revived publishing endeavors. These had stagnated since the 1990s, largely (I believe) due to the rising cost of self-publishing. When Amazon (and Kindle especially) made self-publishing far easier than ever before, it was possible for new books (and a few older volumes) to represent Aristasian culture in print once more.

These included works such as the Aristasian version of the Filianist scriptures (known colloquially as the Clear Recital), published under the title The Gospel of Our Mother God: The Scriptures of the world’s first Faith, and the “Aristasian Manifesto,” The Feminine Universe by Miss Alice Lucy Trent. Both of those works are considerably older, having originally been printed in the 1990s. They received reprints in the late 2010s. This occurred under the banner of a brand-new Aristasian publishing organ, Sun Daughter Press.

I ordered the paperback (if I remember right) copy of both quite initially after they became available.I tried my best to read and understand what was being said in those two. It’d been about a decade since my introduction to Aristasia, and I ought to have been old enough to understand (at very least) how bizarre the manifesto (The Feminine Universe, quoted throughout this page) actually was. The first part focuses on legends (pseudohistorical, but some of which were popular) about the ancient worldwide worship of God-as-Mother.

I believe it referenced Çatalhöyük, etc., much of what you’d expect. Then, it talked about more Aristasian concepts like the Eclipse, deformation, deracination, and atomisation, etc. The last bits were cold and uninteresting by comparison, starkly so, with less focus on God-as-Mother and more tedious complaints about the direction of British culture.

As an American, a lot of that was difficult to understand, or seemed merely contrary for the sake of being so. It ended with the simple idea of seceding from modernity by consuming older media, with a section about the “Aristasian experiment” to promote the group to newcomers. Having finally read the book mostly in full, it didn’t put me off Aristasia entirely. I did wonder how it all - the ancient Mother-Faith, the anime avatars in Second Life, the Filianist scriptures (mystifying, yet intriguing at the time) - connected with the complaints about Britain, etc, and the admonition that we ought to watch older films, the talk of not wearing pants, and such.

Despite claims of deep “rootedness,” in retrospect, even The Feminine Universe helps to demonstrate what a pastiche Aristasia actually was. It was probably written by multiple authors working together. I suspect one person wrote earlier portions, and another, the later bits. I can feel (through the writing) that there was a deep desire to express a coherent worldview that others might understand. That’s just not there, though. Might be why it mostly ends with “watch old movies and pretend you’re there.”

The Vixen Lands

Books about corporal punishment written in the 1990s such as Children of the Void and The Feminine Regime were untouched by the wave of print-on-demand publishing ushered in by Sun Daughter Press. These texts are now (mostly) scanned and available on the Internet Archive as “abandonware” of sorts, it seems.

It was obvious why, too. Following the deprecation of physical discipline within Aristasia as a movement, the leadership took great care not to make content about it easily-available. In fact, remembering right, I’d not read most of those (besides short excerpts posted online) prior to the 2020s when they were scanned. The first editions were expensive and hard to find.

By the time Sun Daughter Press really got going, I was a bit disappointed with the movement’s aesthetic direction already. I missed the stylish elegance that some older images projected, not realizing what a weak facade it had really been. I still, though, awaited the publication of The Flight of the Silver Vixen, a story about girls from Aristasia Pura (referred to as “the Motherland” who steal a spaceship and get lost.

The tale itself actually originated years earlier. I remembered portions of it posted, and even an audio recording of the first chapter-ish (complete with sound effects). I also remember stories of the “younger” Aristasians pestering the “older” ones for more of the story while on a trip abroad. I suspect it was the younger ones who ultimately finished it, or that it was, all around, a group effort like The Feminine Universe.

I don't remember terribly much of The Silver Vixen's exact plot. You must skip this section if you really care about spoilers in this, but it concerns some girls who steal a spacecraft and fly through a sort of wormhole. Ending up in another part of the universe, they land on another planet (also inhabited by intermorphs like themselves). They soon realize that the planet was barren and "colonized" magically by their planet long ago, though the how of it was a bizarre matter of debate. The inhabitants still remember their allegiance to the Motherland.

One of the silly teenagers who stole the spaceship is a distant relative of the actual royal family within the Motherland, though, which complicates things. Since they're far from home, she is somewhat deputized representative of the Empress, and much is made of this. Indeed, when they land on the other planet, the people there make quite a deal of it. The ending makes clear that it is, in fact, deeply significant, even on a metaphysical level.

It was originally called The Princess and the Captain. The name was changed to be more distinctive when published. It, remembering right, includes no discipline, though the vague implication of it at one point. The story hasn’t quite a definitive conclusion, and was planned to have a sequel which didn’t materialize. At one point, a girl suggested writing fanfiction to finish the tale - this was shot down almost immediately by the leadership, given that those storylines already existed, apparently, and mustn’t be overwritten.

Eagerly-Awaited Isekai

Note: Writing about Goldenhead, the novel discussed below, will be difficult for me, and this section will be subject to revision. I haven’t been able to read it in years. Certain aspects of the plot (I think) will “hurt” a great deal for me to re-read. This doesn’t relate to Aristasia - it just has to do with medical things that happened to me IRL.

A second, much more eagerly-awaited book published by Sun Daughter Press (and mostly purchased by the Aristasian core group and adjacent folks) was Goldenhead. I remember reading somewhere that this originally had the working title of Never Grow Up, Never Give In, or something similar. There were little excerpts posted prior to publication, but Goldenhead is largely not online, and only available in print or Kindle since its initial publication.

They say your imaginary friends aren’t your real friends. But who stands by you when you lose your physical body?

Tagline of Goldenhead

Goldenhead is a short isekai novel. In summary, isekai stories feature someone from our world who, upon death or impairment (such as a coma or similar incident) finds themselves in an entirely new world as a different person. There is probably more to it than that; I don’t typically read that genre. I read Goldenhead as soon as I was able, though. You can read the Sun Daughter Press’s launch material for the book itself here.

On one level a wild fantasy adventure, Goldenhead considers the subject of imaginary friends and imaginary worlds.  Are they really imaginary, or are we sometimes in contact with realities that go deeper than the “real” world in which we find ourselves?

And those of us who don’t feel we “belong” here in this mundane, patriarchal world:  could it be simply because we don’t?

Goldenhead introduces an amazing all-girl cast of characters, many of whom resemble anime characters, because anime is not just an art style but the “look” of certain alternate realities.

Sun Daughter Press’s launch page for Goldenhead.

If you visit the page in question, you can read summaries of each character, as well as their pictures, and a rough teasing description of the plot. I do think the story merits discussion here, at least the major parts the I recall. Please keep in mind that what stood out to me might not for everyone, nor may it be the most relevant aspects of this book. If you’d rather not have the plot itself “spoiled,” skip the next five-ish paragraphs, I guess?

The main character is implied to have dreamt of a spaceship in the sky her entire life, where everyone is feminine. When she falls into a coma (and thus having lost the use of her physical body), she finds herself projected to this spaceship (the Imperial Princess) as a new home. There, she meets a kind teacher, and some other friends in spirit-form, too. She also encounters strange girls who fade in and out of visibility, known as subtlies. The title, of course, comes from the character’s decision to name herself Goldenhead on arrival. Indeed with golden hair herself, she, and her compatriots, appear mostly as anime-like schoolgirls, but are shepherded by kind (if often confused) adults.

One of them becomes rather important later on in a “forest” scene (if you have read Goldenhead, you know to what I refer) and in other scenarios. I can’t quite explain what happens in that scene because it’s rather complicated. I will say that it seems to (from what I saw on the game summaries and playthroughs) slightly resemble the scene in St. Bride’s 1980s video game, Jack the Ripper. In that, the protagonist enters (essentially) a Platonic form of sorts - the femininity of a soul, and wields this as a force against the antagonists. In Goldenhead, it’s the Platonic form of the forest, which differs from a forest itself, naturally (pun intended).

Goldenhead also introduces a much stronger theme of otherkinity (and the general idea of misplaced souls) to the stories than I’d seen before. I found it rather charming at the time (and relatable). I am (yes, including now) extremely sympathetic to feelings of otherness, despite the strange milieu of Aristasia here. Much of the otherness themes revolve around a character who seems to be a faerie (here glossed into Raihiralan as “Shiani”) changeling or otherkin, but also, of course, around Goldenhead herself. Goldenhead, it seems, never felt at home on earth, even before her coma, and always had these inklings of other worlds.

At the end of the book, it is revealed that Goldenhead isn’t a schoolgirl at all, but an older woman. Throughout her adventures, her physical body is (as you’d expect) still trapped within the coma, still locked-in. A scene occurs which can only be called “magical aid in dying,” and she (who was, on earth, a woman named Susan) is free from her original, physical form. This scene initially disturbed me deeply, but that was almost fifteen years ago. Life experiences have made me more sympathetic to exploring those themes in fiction, despite it coming from a place like this movement.

Even though this ending shocked me, and left a bad taste in my mouth, much of the rest of it charmed me. I enjoyed the portions where Goldenhead roams the ship and befriends the other “Tiny Knights,” and their efforts to both understand and do right by the complex reality they’d found themselves in. Truthfully, the writing could be better, but I’m none to criticize. It mystified me how a book, with a plot so utterly different from something like The Feminine Regime could have been produced by the same movement, but it was.

I believe this was written by a specific “younger” Aristasian, with an “older” companion as editor and publisher. Artwork for the book was exclusively in an anime style. This included both pixel art of the characters (shown on the launch page above) as well as Second Life recreations of the same. It also included rather blunt marketing material. Clearly the book wasn’t meant to be your typical isekai light novel, nor is it, arguably…

Every person is a microcosmos—a little world—so the war between good and evil takes place inside each of us as well as in the greater cosmos. But I do think your current patriarchal world has more of its evil internalized. Most of the societies in these books are fundamentally good. People make mistakes; people have weaknesses; people do bad things. But fundamentally the society and most individuals are agreed on what is good and are devoted to it.

So their wars are not against each other—they are against demons: because the principle of evil is not manifested primarily through themselves. You see the difference? In your world, your wars for a very long time (not always, but for a very long time) have been against other humans. In a typical war, each side thinks it is the Side of Good and the other side is the Side of Evil. The German soldiers had “Gott mit uns” (God with Us) on their belt buckles. And that is what every side believes, whether it puts it on its buckles or not.

And in a way, they are right, they are fighting a sort of proxy war with the “devil” that is incarnated in the other side. And the other side is doing the same thing.

We don’t do that. We don’t kill our own kind. We believe fundamentally in the goodness and purity and innocence that so many humans sneer at. We do have wars, since conflict is in the nature of manifest existence, but we fight the forces of darkness directly, rather than seeing them in each other. So all our wars have been demon-wars.

Annalinde Matichei on the Sun Daughter Press Website

The author stops short of saying “yes, I do in fact believe this other world I’ve written about exists,” but it’s quite nearly there.

We also have this criticism of “humans,” implying the author herself isn’t one. Most of her arguments, though, are what you’d expect from someone critical of the human race as a whole - we have wars and even the Nazis thought they were on the side of the angels! How ridiculous, when we could just not “kill our own kind.” Admittedly, no one likes war, but it’s a bit of a child’s dream that we could just delete it. The implication? We cannot, but the intermorphs - those that are kin to the author - have no need for war.

The book contains no discipline nor references to it, but there’s a scene where a character holds out her hand as if expecting a smack, only for the situation to end more amicably. If I am able (mentally, emotionally) to re-read Goldenhead, I will certainly post more of my thoughts about it, as well as quotations and such. I apologize for being slow to do this.

I'm unsure what other updates I will make to this section. I would like to write about my own (quite thoughtless) reaction to Operation Bridgehead, changes that occurred with it, and Chelouranya ultimately. This, however, may be best featured on the Regrets and Feels page, where I hope to present a brief but more personal perspective on all this.