Julia, above, is correct. I've done some substantial research myself, and I think that the whole usage of pseudonyms has confused everyone. Miss Martindale is alive and well. Miss Martindale is not Cure Dolly.

Ultimately, I've done this research out of ultimate respect for Cure Dolly, and a bit of a fascination with such a brilliant mind. I've found that such brilliant people tend to create characters for themselves because they love the games of pseudonyms, and they love creating something larger than life, larger than themselves.

The clearest evidence is that Miss Martindale and Cure Dolly have distinctly different voices, pronunciations, and pacing of speech. Even reverse pitching Cure Dolly's speech, it's distinctly different.

I think that it's likely that Cure Dolly sensei was a different member of the group, Priscilla Langridge, (I think "cult" is too aggressive for historical eccentrics), and helped guide them to a more technological angle, embracing the internet.

I believe Cure Dolly was also involved in the Second Life Aristasians, documented on the Aristasian Reminiscence blog. The key indicator, for me, is the presence of a penguin in the Embassy.

A brief extract, of some articles I've read, since obscure websites and archives tend to go offline eventually.


CRASH - The Online Edition — Issue 26 Contents
GAMES LESSONS
Extract:
This world of lessons — and the ‘pupils’ do have to study the basics of maths and languages — may seem rather crazy, but some people get their jollies dressing in chain mail made from coat hangers and killing orcs with cardboard axes. Once you’ve sat in that slightly damp room, listening to scratchy records played on a wind-up gramophone under the stern gaze of Marianne Scarlett, you can understand how easy it is to get lost in the game. One who did just that is Priscilla Langridge. She committed the unthinkable sin of introducing a micro into this time warp.

Marianne was at first rather taken aback by the anachronistic intrusion. “My experience has always been looking back in time.” But it didn’t take long before she realised that unlike television, which she thinks is passive and mind rotting, computers “call for 100% concentration and commitment. They’re not just playing with a joystick.” So, about a year and a half ago part of St Brides entered the modern world, though they’ve been known to do their computing by candle light.

...

Priscilla was a writer long before fate, or more probably an advertisement, brought her to the west coast of Ireland. Hardly a computer expert at that stage, she looked upon the micro as another medium, like books or comics, to be exploited as a rich experience — rather like the school. In fact the Secret of St Brides, their first adventure, set in the corridors and dormitories of the house, then out onto the cliffs, came from a game that they would play as they took the pupils on rambles. A mystery would be created from a few bare facts found as they walked along the shore.

----


Second Life, aka Virtualia

... 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.

---
Filianism and NCUV information
From: S.A. Morrigan
December 13, 2024


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.