#and then all of them (~4000 people) decided to commit a mass suicide

[loo-nuh-tik]

1336, Lithuania

Duke Margiris: oh boy, is that Teutonic Order?

Duke Margiris: *kills and burns his own wife*

Margiris guards: duuude WTF was that?!

Duke Margiris: I thought they gonna fuck her or even worse... convert her to Christianity. So I panicked.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jupitermelichios]

On a more possitive note, I’ve started watching Sword Art Online. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen (and the last film I saw in cinemas was Cats to give you context for the scale i’m working on here) and I kind of adore it in much the same way I love garbage like Smallville or Twilight. It’s so stupid on so many levels. You could challenge someone to write the worst anime, and it would almost certainly be better than SAO. It’s almost hypnotic how terrible it is.

No one should watch this terrible terrible show so I therefore don’t feel at all bad that I’m about the spoil absolutely everything, but honestly if you do also hate-watch this please come talk to me about how terrible it is. I don’t know anyone else who watches it.

Highlights of Season 1 include:

everyone is trapped in an MMO, and if you die in the MMO you die IRL. but if you were a beta-tester you’re probably fine because they just let them keep all their levels and items from the testing, so they’re all massively OP and everyone just accepts this as a normal and non-game-breaking thing

it’s a fantasy MMO but there’s no races, no magic system, no weapons except swords and maces, and not even an option to dual wield - literally all you can do in this fucking game is stand in front of an enemy and mash the attack button. I’m pretty sure they’re trapped there because the devs realised no one would play this post launch-day otherwise because it’s boring as shit

when the villain traps everyone he also just changs all their avatars to look like they do IRL for absolutely no reason, like actually none, he doesn’t even say he thinks it would be funny, he just does it and no one questions it and it is literally never mentioned again because this is the worst TV show ever animated.

in the second episode the main character deliberately witholds information about how to defeat a boss, indirectly causing multiple deaths. there is absolutely no reason for him to withhold it, he was just being a jerk because he doesn’t like people

in the third episode they reset his entire personality and he’s now a selfless hero pretending to be a lower level than he really is so people will find him more relateable and be his friend because all he wants is to help people. this is not a consequence of episode 2, they just decided they didnt like the character as he’d previously been written.

he makes some new friends who are all objectively terrible people who have decided for no season that the twelve year old who doesn’t really know how to play and keeps having anxiety attacks about the very real possibility of death has to be the guild tank. the MC is high enough level to be functionally immortal in like half the levels, but doesn’t tell anyone this he just lets them go on bullying this child

none of his friends survive that episode, in the game or IRL. which is also a christmas epsiode. a child dies in battle because she’s a terrible tank and then a man commits suicide out of guilt, so then the main character murders santa to try and bring them back from the actual dead but it doesn’t work because again, this is a video game and they are dead IRL, so then he walks off into the snow alone. Christmas!

we meet the best character in the entire show in episode 4, Rosalia, who has gone evil and started just straight murdering people because she’s sick of being an attractive adult woman who can’t get a date because she’s surrounded by lolicons who are only interested in the preteen characters (not a joke, that comes up, the show is firmly on the side of the lolicons)

in the same episode we get an extended bra and panty sequence staring an actual fucking child, like canonically this character is maybe 13 at best. this is one of only 2 occaisions when they feel the need to undress a character and it’s the fucking 12 year old, it’s so gross it reads like a parody of itself

literally every single named female character aged over 8 who talks to the MC falls in love with him after like 5 minutes (and in season 2 this includes his actual sister). he shows absolutely no interest in any of them (including his sister, thank god) until...

the main character gets engaged to a girl he only knows from an MMO after a virtual single date (he doesn’t actually win her in a PVP match but only because he looses the match, he 100% canonically tries to win her in a match, which she is apparently fine with). he then doesn’t bother to ask for her real name until the final episode, he just calls her by her screen name

(that’s okay though becuase it turns out that this moron of a love interest used her real name, on a local server, in a game where your character looks like you do IRL, because apparently getting doxxed is her hobby)

they then get in-game married off screen. there’s not even like a still of a wedding photo. nothing. the main character proposes and then the show immediately jumps to the honeymoon, it’s fucking bizarre.

they find a creepy child dressed all in white with no memory alone in the woods a week into their honeymoon who starts calling them mommy and daddy literally seconds after they first meet her, and they don’t suspect anything suss is going on and adopt her

for hilarity bear in mind the main character may only be 15 at this point (he says he’s only just turned 16 in the last epsiode, but his actual birthday is never mentioned), and his virtual wifu is 16, but no one ever questions the marriage or the adoption, even though ‘hey marriage in a video game is as important and meaningful as marriage in real life’ is an actual conversation people have multiple times. also they think the child they adopt is an actual IRL 8 year old who thinks these randos she met in an MMO are her mum and dad and everyone just goes with that like it’s a totally normal thing

a character called ‘Thinker’ agrees to meet an enemy faction leader for peace talks. the “peace talks” take place in a high level dungeon and he is told to come alone with no weapons and no fast travel. he does this. no one ever comments that his name is ironic, and in fact they seem to think that being betrayed and trapped in a dungeon with a boss is a totally unexpected turn of events Thinker could never have planned for

they take their new baby into the dungeon to rescue thinker, because they went to the jean grey school of baby rearing, and she imediately reveals that she’s actually a magical maggufin with infinite power, murders the grim reaper, and then dies. In literally the second episode she’s in

after she dies the MC hacks the admin account of the game, converts her corpse into an in game item, and saves to the local storage on his console, with the intention of bringing her back to life as a robot once they’re saved from the game. I’m not joking, that’s an actual thing that happens.

the fact that the main character can just access the main admin account and make massive game-breaking changes isn’t used again in that game and he never thinks to try and use it to force log people out or give himself infinite life so he can just rush the game and free everyone. nope, convert a corpse into an item and then never think about it again.

there’s an entire episode where all they do is go fishing. its the only filler episode in the season, and it immediately follows the death of a small child. it’s the most tone-deaf beach episode in writing history

it turns out this game, this game where they didn’t bother coding in any difference races, weapons, or any kind of magic system, was intended to have fully sentient AI therapists, because why the fuck not at this point honestly

oh also the game has PVP and you can trick the game into thinking a sleeping player is in PVP with you in order to actually murder a real person without it flagging in-game as a murder making the crime impossible for the real life legal system to investigate even though you just murdered a person. and they expect us to believe this game had actual beta testers. at least cyberpunk wasn’t played on microwaves you connected straight to your brain (also not a joke, the VR consoles canonically work by sending microwave radiation into your brain, no wonder VR never caught on)

the set up for the show is that they have to reach level 100 of a dungeon in order to win. At level 75, the writers got bored and the show just ends.

it turns out the power of love allows you to just break the fucking game and the main villain literally has a line about how ‘love allows you to remove debuffs, huh, we didn’t think to plan for that’ because again, there’s no metaphors in this show, everything is 100% literal including the fact that falling in love with another player means you’re immune to the paralysis status effect

power of love also allows you to very briefly become a poltergeist after being killed, but only for like 2 seconds. again not a joke or a metaphor, main character is killed but then gets to hang around as a ghost for a little bit to enable him to defeat the boss. he also doesn’t die in real life despite that being the entire fucking premise of the show, again because power of love.

the bad guy literally has no plan, he’s just doing shit for the sake of having something to do. His actions directly cause the deaths of more than 4,000 people, and it’s not even in aid of anything. they ask him why he trapped 10,000 people in an MMO and allowed them to slowly die, and he’s just like ‘huh, i forgot i did that, random’ and then just fucking peaces out

the fact that he committed one of the largest mass killings outside of war never really comes up again, as far as we know he doesn’t even go to jail. i think the show actually kind of thinks he’s a good guy, which is a fucking WILD moral stance to take on the deaths of 4000 completely innocent people for absolutely no reason

If this sounds hilari-bad but you don’t want to invest the time to watch a show which is objectively garbage, it has an abridged series which is famously better than the show it’s parodying (i’m dead serious, people have character arcs, the getting married after one date thing is properly addressed, the mc has to deal with PTSD because of all his friends dying in epsidode 3, they don’t immediately follow the death of a child with an extended fishing montage, the villain has an actual plan). It’s mostly actually pretty good, but this is the internet and it’s an abridged series, so while there are a lot fewer yikes moments than most it still has enough that I’m not comfortable recommending it without the caveat. that said I still enjoyed it a lot, although possibly not at much as pointing and laughing at the garbage that is the actual show.

[worstloki]

I’ve never seen any of the marvel movies, but my sister really likes them and is obsessed with Loki. She asked me to follow you, so I did, because I want to be able to connect with her. I have no clue what you’re talking about most of the time, but I want to thank you for bringing me and my sister closer.

aww that's a sweet and hopefully you two will remain close. Since you’ve never seen marvel movies here’s some quick summaries on what happens around Loki:

Thor 1: Loki, who is belittled, made fun of, and ignored on a regular basis, finds out he is a frost giant, which are basically monsters that his brother has been trying to kill since he was a child. Instead of explaining anything to him his adoptive father tells him he was adopted as a political tool since he would technically be the prince of the frost giants and then promptly decides to go to sleep. His mother tells him to prove his worth as a member of the family and dumps the throne of 9 planets on him while she is on bedside duty. Loki thinks his brother is going to kill him and also there is a war against the frost giants under way so Loki sends a huge metal man to deal with some people who did treason and also keep his brother away for a bit. Loki also kills the king of the frost giants in order to prove his loyalty lies with his adoptive family. Then Thor shows up and yells at him for trying to kill all the frost giants because he’s a hypocrite and they fight. Thor then places his hammer on Loki’s chest as if it doesn't restrict breathing. Oh, and Odin shows up and denies Loki’s attempt to become worthy so Loki throws himself into space because he’d rather commit suicide than have to live with life the way it is.

Avengers 1: so you know how he threw himself into space with the hope to end his miserable worthless little life? yeah, about that, he lived and got stuck with the option of being tortured some more or attacking earth. oh no, wait, it wasn't an option because the mind stone was involved. so he was forced to attack earth and act like he was homicidal and crazy to make sure no one realised that he was still doing his best to minimise damages and ensure he could be stopped. Thor shows up at some point and grabs his neck before slamming him into a mountain onto his already injured back. Loki makes it very obvious that he doesn't want to be here and isn't actually trying to win the fight but thor, his alleged brother, misses every memo loki waves in his face. Loki gets smashed into a concrete floor by the hulk, a giant rage monster made of 8000% muscle mass, before Thor gags him and takes him to Asgard to be punished for ‘attacking thor’s planet’ and ‘targeting thor’s love interest’ and ‘being jealous’. 

Thor 2: Ha! Did you think Asgard has a decent system of justice? Jokes on you! The judge and the jury and the defendant and the prosecutor are all Odin! And you’d think ‘hey so he’s his father right so surely he loves his son a bit and would notice something is up, right?’ well, you’re wrong. Loki gets sentenced to solitary for life, which is 4000 more years by the way, and he’s told his birthright was to die and that the only reason he isn't being executed is because his mother didn't want him dead. 1 year later and its blatantly obvious that his only visitor, his mother, only wanted him alive because she wanted to manipulate him back into the loving family they’ve got going. He snaps and yells at her. The next time he hears about her its from a guard telling him she died and he wasn't invited to the funeral. Thor shows up for the first time in a year and doesn't answer Loki’s question about whether his mother suffered. Thor valiantly offers Loki the option to stay in a cell and eventually die or join him on a mission and die in the process. Loki accepts because he’s still suicidal and grieving and still cares about Thor and Asgard even if that's not reciprocated. So Loki turns up to help and Thor handcuffs him before making fun of the fact that he doesn't like falling because its an experience he could associate will falling into space and getting tortured. Loki saves Thor and his lady friend’s lives before getting impaled on a sword and dying. Thor’s last words to him were ‘i’ll tell father what you did today’ as if Loki’s character arc hasn't been about him trying to prove no one has ownership over him. Thor ditches Loki where he fell and died and since he never returns for the body he doesn't see Loki get up and go back to Asgard and take the throne from Odin. 

Thor 3: Loki got Asgard to stop totalitarian-controlling the other realms. He’s been working towards solving racism and focusing the military society on the arts instead. Thor shows up and threatens to smash his head to death. Thor then places his hammer on Loki’s chest as if it doesn't restrict breathing, and then demands to know where Odin is. Loki spends half an hour falling through a portal definitely not panicking or anything because he was falling again but anyways the good news is odin dies in front of them the bad news is thor blames loki for it. Loki spends two weeks trying to stay away from the hedonistic touchy weirdo called The Grandmaster, then Thor shows up and causes trouble and now Loki has to either find Thor or die. Loki gets to fight a legendary warrior but she slams her hand into his face and he starts losing and gets knocked out and then wakes up in her room in chains. Thor turns up and throws a cup at his head and when Loki is volunteering to help them someone smashes a glass on the wall next to him. They fight their way to their destination and Loki tries to save Thor from death and ultimately killing himself but Thor electrocutes Loki and leaves him on the ground convulsing after giving a speech about ‘being more’ than who he is and about how he can ‘do better’ and its basically the worst thought out propaganda campaign ever and no one should put Thor in charge of inspirational speeches ever. Loki turns up to save the citizens of Asgard anyways and then Thor decides Loki should take on a suicide mission. Loki saves the day again and manages to come out alive and gets rewarded by being so graciously given the honour of being allowed to stand by Thor’s side as long as he returns to the abusive family relationship they’ve got going for them. 

- Infinity War: you know how loki was tortured before avengers 1? yeah so the guy uses loki’s love for thor against him and then loki ‘sacrifices’ himself but really that was just an excuse to have the guy kill loki.

- Endgame: Time travel so we’re back to Avengers 1 after Loki was defeated. The sceptre’s influence on him is finally gone its very very visible that he has changed in the last ten minutes and Thor muzzles Loki. At least he gets away instead of getting taken to Asgard in this timeline.

[tipsycad147]

PAISLEY WITCHES

Bargarran House, home of Christian Shaw Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Paisley witches, also known as the Bargarran witches or the Renfrewshire witches, were tried in Paisley, Renfrewshire, central Scotland, in 1697. Eleven-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, complained of being tormented by some local witches; they included one of her family’s servants, Catherine Campbell, whom she had reported to her mother after witnessing her steal a drink of milk.

Seven people – Margaret Lang, John Lindsay, James Lindsay, John Reid, Catherine Campbell, Margaret Fulton, and Agnes Naismith – were found guilty of having bewitched Shaw and were condemned to death. One subsequently committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell, and it is believed that Naismith may have died while imprisoned. The other five were hanged and then burned on the Gallow Green in Paisley on 10 June 1697, the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe.

Agnes Naismith cursed everyone present at her trial, and their descendants, and for many years afterwards every tragedy in Paisley was blamed on her curse. Christian Shaw went on to become a successful businesswoman and manufacturer of thread.

Events

On 17 August 1696, 11-year-old Christian Shaw, the daughter of a local landowner, John Shaw of Bargarran, saw one of her family’s servants, Catherine Campbell, steal a drink of milk. Shaw reported the theft to her mother, whereupon Campbell cursed her, wishing that the Devil would “haul her soul through Hell”. Four days later Shaw encountered Agnes Naismith, an old woman reputed to be a witch. The following day, 22 August, Shaw became violently ill with fits, similar to the symptoms reported a few years earlier in the American Salem witch trials of 1693.[1] After eight weeks Shaw’s parents took her to see the eminent Glasgow physician Matthew Brisbane, who could find no cause for her symptoms. For eight days after her visit Shaw seemed to have recovered, but then “the fits returned with increased violence. She would become as stiff as a corpse and be senseless and motionless”.

Shaw’s parents took her back to Dr Brisbane, and by the time they arrived back in Glasgow she had begun to pull out of her mouth balls of hair she claimed had been put there by those who were afflicting her. Soon she began to pull other “trash” out of her mouth, including straw, coal, gravel, chicken feathers, and cinders. During her fits she was sometimes heard to be talking to the invisible Catherine Campbell, pleading for a return to their former friendship.

With Brisbane unable to provide any rational explanation for Shaw’s condition her family and their local parish minister concluded that she must be possessed and being tormented by witches, a common occurrence in England and Scotland and a central element in the Salem witch trials a few years earlier. The church set up a weekly fast and prayer meeting at Bargarron House, and Shaw’s father appealed to the authorities that those named by his daughter as tormenting her should be arrested. She had initially identified only Catherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith, but as time wore on she implicated others, and eventually 35 were accused. Ten were male and twenty female; the genders and identities of the remaining five are unknown

Investigation and trial

At the request of the Presbytery of Paisley the Scottish Privy Council set up a commission to investigate the case. Under the chairmanship of Lord Blantyre, the hearing opened on 5 February 1697. The commission’s task was to decide whether there was a prima facie case against those accused by Shaw before they were committed for trial.

Seven were subsequently summoned to appear before a second commission in Paisley: Margaret Lang, John Lindsay, James Lindsay, John Reid, Catherine Campbell, Margaret Fulton, and Agnes Naismith. They were charged with murder and tormenting a number of people, including Christian Shaw.[4] Their advocate, James Roberston, argued that the prosecution was obliged to rule out the possibility that the events surrounding the case could be explained by natural causes before a conviction could be safely secured. Matthew Brisbane gave evidence stating that he had been unable to find any such cause for Shaw’s condition. James Hutchison, the minister of Kilallan, about 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Paisley, delivered a sermon to the commission; it was commonplace at the time for a member of the clergy to preach to the court in Scottish witch trials, and they were not infrequently instrumental in securing convictions. Hutchison placed great store on the presence of witches’ marks on the bodies of the accused, and cast doubt on the natural explanations of those marks offered by some physicians: “And however doctors may say such and such things of it [a witches’ mark], we know not upon what ground. It may be that they have been budded and bribed to say such things”

The jury, confronted by a threat from the prosecutor that if they acquitted the defendants they would be “accessory to all the blasphemies, apostacies, murders, tortures, and seductions, etc., whereof those enemies of heaven and earth shall hereafter be guilty when they get out”, found all seven of the accused guilty

Executions

One of those convicted, James Reid committed suicide by hanging himself in his prison cell, using his handkerchief attached to a nail in the wall. The remaining six were hanged and then burned on the Gallow Green in Paisley on 10 June 1697,  the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe. John and James Lindsay, brothers from Formakin Mill, near Houston, aged 11 and 14 respectively, held each other’s hands as they were hanged together. Catherine Campbell, after having been carried struggling and screaming to the gallows, “called down the wrath of God and the Devil on her accusers”  before being despatched. Margaret Fulton appeared to have become insane, and “spoke cheerfully about visits to Elfland and the Abode of the Fairies on the backs of magical horses”.  Margaret Lang admitted to consorting with the Devil, but said that she had renounced sin and was reconciled with God. Agnes Naismith laid a “dying woman’s curse”[7] on everyone present and their descendants; for many years afterwards every tragedy in the town was blamed on “the witches’ curse”

One account of the executions states that some of the condemned were still alive when their bodies were burned, and that the executioners borrowed a walking stick from an onlooker with which to push their victims’ moving limbs back into the fire; its owner refused to take it back after it had been in contact with witches.

Modern interpretations

The anxiety induced in Christian Shaw by Catherine Campbell’s curse may have brought on a conversion disorder in the young girl, the modern name for what was once known as hysteria. The term “conversion” derives from Sigmund Freud’s idea that anxiety can be converted into physical symptoms such as the seizures displayed by Shaw.

Michael Wasser has commented that witch trials tended to occur at times of crisis such as Scotland experienced during the late 1690s. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, although it had restored the “presbyterian polity of the kirk”, nevertheless left many “disappointed at the low moral tone and lack of religious enthusiasm of their compatriots”. The Glencoe Massacre of 1692 and the subsequent inquiry had “eroded the moral legitimacy of the government”, and a series of harvest failures from 1695 onwards led to a period of famine. There was also the threat of a French invasion: “as the Bargarron witches were being tried, taxes and troops were being levied in the west to repel the expected invaders”.

In 1839 a small hole was discovered in the wall of Shaw’s bedroom at Bargarron House, which by then had become a local attraction, through which an accomplice may have passed the items she supposedly removed from her mouth.

Aftermath

Shortly after the trial in 1697 the former Scottish Secretary of State James Johnstone observed that “the parliaments of France and other judicatories who are persuaded of the being of witches never try them now because of the experience they have had that it’s impossible to distinguish possession from nature in disorder”.

Shaw married the Reverend John Millar, the parish minister of Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, in 1719.He died two years later, after which Shaw went on to become a successful businesswoman. She was involved in the manufacture of thread, at first in a small way, but as the quality of her product began to be recognised, on an increasingly large scale. Her Bargarran trademark thread became a mark of quality, and others in the area began to emulate her techniques, starting an industry in which Paisley once dominated the world, and which shaped the town’s history. The last known record of Shaw is her marriage in February 1737 to William Livingstone, a prosperous Edinburgh businessman.

In May 2008 a memorial was built at Maxwellton Cross in Paisley, the site where the witches’ charred remains were buried. It replaced the original horseshoe marking the spot, which had disappeared during the 1970s, as had its replacement later.[The bronze tondo, with a stainless steel horseshoe embedded in it, includes the inscription “Pain Inflicted, Suffering Endured, Injustice Done” A campaign was launched in 2008 petitioning the Scottish Parliament to pardon all the 4000 men, women and children prosecuted under the 16th and 17th-century witchcraft laws, but legislators argued that it was inappropriate to pardon those tried and convicted under the laws of their time

Bibliography

Adam, Isabel.

Witch Hunt: The Great Scottish Witchcraft Trials of 1697

. Macmillan, 1978.Breuer, Josef, and Sigmund Freud.

Studies on Hysteria

. The Hogarth Press, 1955.Burns, William E.

Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia

. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003.Clark, Sylvia.

Paisley: A History

. Mainstream Publishing, 1988.Guiley, Rosemary Ellen.

The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca

. 3rd ed., Facts On File, 2008.Levack, Brian P.

New Perspectives on Witchcraft

. Routledge, 2001.Levack, Brian P.

Witchcraft Sourcebook

. Routledge, 2003.McDonald, S. W., et al. “The Bargarron Witchcraft Trial – a Psychiatric Reassessment.”

Scottish Medical Journal

, vol. 41, no. 5, Oct. 1996, pp. 152–58.Newport, Andrew. “Campaign to Pardon Witches Thrown Out.”

Paisley Daily Express

, 18 Sept. 2008,

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/campaign-pardon-witches-thrown-out-2627266

.Renfrewshire Council.

Christian Shaw

.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150620190027/https://www.renfrewshire.gov.uk/webcontent/home/services/leisure+and+culture/heritage+and+local+history/els-jh-famouspeoplechristianshaw

.Staff writer. “Paisley Memorial to Ancient Witches.”

Paisley Daily Express

, 29 May 2008,

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/paisley-memorial-to-ancient-witches-2635577

.Wasser, Michael. “The Western Witch-Hunt of 1697-1700: The Last Major Witch-Hunt in Scotland.”

The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context

, Manchester University Press, 2002.

https://engole.info/paisley-witches/