#we're literally the same person sometimes (more than sometimes like genuinely the biggest difference between us is religion)

[punkrockisafulltimejob]

Btw if anyone sees an "argument" between @rosen-dovecote and I, it's literally never an argument. We are really close friends who share a lot of similar view points about open and honest discussion, and if you ever see one of these "arguments" get cut off in the middle, it's because we took it to the DMs to continue our academic discussions. Debate is like, a fundamental part of both of our religions/spiritualities, learning and exchanging information is akin to picking up shiny rocks to give each other (but we can't do that cuz we live very far away so we settle for sharing gems of wisdom online). We're cool :)

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

I've just fallen down this rabbit hole and I mean this question genuinely, but in your opinion, do you think people took this seriously as a 24/7 lifestyle or more as a roleplay scenario? I'm curious because I do a lot of online RP and while I see a lot of parallels between the two, I've never considered it anything more than brief escapism. Did these participants feel the same or was it more than that?

Hello there! This is a complicated answer because a lot of people were drawn to Aristasia, and Aristasia actually had many different incarnations. So please bear with my as I type up far far more words than you were expecting me to.

I believe that in the 70s and early 80s, when it was an ancient matriarchal paganism sect known as Lux Madriana they believed in the religious aspects of it as fully as anyone does any religion. Even when they were actively inventing their own history. They attempted to live this lifestyle as closely as possible, and you can read an account of a woman who lived with them until the mid 1980s here who admits there was a fair amount of apathy among the flock, as it were. They lived "without electricity", but they published computer games during this time, so clearly they had electricity somewhere in the big house in Donegal. But, still, they dressed up every day in shawls and aprons or bonnets and crinolines and seemed to genuinely believe in the religion they were selling (literally, they sold magazine subscriptions and mail-order courses, I am not being facetious). I believe that in the late 80s and early 90s when they were involved with Romantia, and laid the groundworks for what would later become Aristasia, they fully believed in seceding from the modern life as much as possible. Although I, perhaps, believe that this was almost exclusively limited to the goings on in the house in Donegal, as it seems like some actually lived elsewhere and seemed to live mundane lives outside of the house, but there is certainly (very unfortuate) evidence that the house in Donegal was run 24/7 as a Romantia house. Now that we're getting up to the Classical Era of Aristasia in the 1990s, and they moved to the infamous house on Eagle Lane that would later appear within the pages of Children of the Void and the BBC documentary, I do believe that those who lived in that house lived the lifestyle 24/7, but perhaps by that point the only two living there were Miss Martindale and Miss Priscilla Langridge. And perhaps this is the crux of the matter. The only 2 who really, truly, believed were Miss Martindale and Miss Langridge. And it seems evident that Miss Martindale was just a persona, and the woman behind the persona eventually went on to live a (on the surface at least) mundane life.

In their later years, sometime after Operation Bridgehead, when the embassies all but closed and they moved to virtualia, I believe it became much more acceptable for it to be just a roleplay for girls who dropped in, so long as they stayed in character. After all, they never met in the flesh, just in Second Life. And the trend continued when Aristasia became Chelouranya and Second Life was replaced with web forums.

I do think that, through all those decades, the only one who was able to live the life 24/7 was the mysterious Miss Priscilla Langridge, the "most seceded Aristasian". To quote a previously linked article:

"The founder was a remarkable person but was leading a fantasy life - we were living in someone else’s fantasy"

I believe that the truth lies here, that nearly all of this was Miss Priscilla Langridge's fantasy world, and she has had Miss Martindale as her biggest supporter over the years, to help make it a reality, for her at least. I do believe that they were true believers who believed that they were (to put it fairly simply) reincarnated souls from another plane of existence. This isn't even too strange of an idea, it's something fairly wildly believed by a lot of different types of people. To add onto this, I do believe that they believed the world was in a state of moral decay that was heralded by the pronounced change in pop culture in the early 1960s, another not so uncommon belief. But I believe it was real for Miss Priscilla Langridge, and she had people who believed with her, and wanted to make it real.