#i simply Do Not Care enough to spellcheck this you are getting pure stream of thought

[magpiesbones]

Oh no I have had a Thought about witch hat themes okay so. Hear me out.

the first part of Witch Hat was setting up the world and characters, and now we’re Firmly into the second part, which is showing how these systems fail, and who they fail.

and every single time a system fails someone, it is because knowledge was withheld.

coco’s mom? Coco didn’t have the knowledge of what she was doing or know to be careful. I’m not sure if this was an intentional parallel, but to apply Olruggio’s fire metaphor from ch43, Coco was touching real fire because she didn’t know it would burn. Coco is a child but she has sense and, had she known What That Spell Did I have no doubt she wouldn’t have done that or would have done that with safety measures on.

Qifrey’s Whole Deal? Caused by forbidden experimentation which it is both unknown and forbidden to heal. His lack of knowledge of both exactly what happened to him and exactly what is going to happen to him is causing him to implode.

Coco’s fever? Only helped by creating an accommodation so that Tartah could access knowledge that he could not get due to his disability. And then they were stopped from self medicating by An Actual Nurse who is presumably more knowledgeable than two teenagers, but still. Still!!

Richeh and Eunie’s Romonon arc? Saved by knowledge of the self and healing from past educational abuse. Richeh learns that she can do things her own way and therefore gains emotional knowledge, and so does Eunie even though he’s a wolf for like half of it yes I know this one’s a bit of a reach

Coco and Tartah verbally express regret that they could not give Coustas more knowledge than they did aaand this is in fact where my ability to put relevant details stops actually

What about the brimhats who possess the forbidden knowledge and are obviously Not Good?

okay but like. Do They Though? Do they actually possess a significant amount of forbidden knowledge or are they just ducking around with things they don’t understand? If the cat-headed witch knew a significant amount of forbidden magic I’m almost Certain he would have figured out a way to remove the cat head. Also hm basic osha compliance would have gained you significantly Less fuckups. Like Yes they know more than Coco, but do they know what they are fucking around with? Not really.

i got kind of distracted by my argument so this isn’t as poetic as it out to be but witch hat constantly reinforces that people benefit from knowledge, and suffer from ignorance.

#Long post #my apologies but I had this thought while writing fic and i had to write it down #witch hat atelier #tongari boushi no atelier #tbna #witch hat #i simply Do Not Care enough to spellcheck this you are getting pure stream of thought #I feel weirdly like there’s enough witch hat out now to make a decent stab at a thematic analysis and while this isnt deep by any means #this is simply A Thought and not an essay #Witch hat Atelier spoilers