A few things about qifrey's relationship with magic
Everything qifrey casts can be placed into two categories: Extremely Perfunctory Spells (stuff he uses daily to light lamps, cook or store food, wipe memories, clean, etc) or Water Sculpture. When something needs doing that he hasn't needed to do often/is specific to the situation he will always use water sculpture to get it done ("I need to get out of this stretcher and kill a guy rn but I am still injured" -> water horse. "I need to protect my students from this dragon" -> bigger water dragon.) He's really not very imaginative about it
Qifrey was taught by smoke sculptures georg
In the flashback chapters kidfrey doesn't cast anything. The closest he gets is setting up the windowway. He fully intended to go chase down brimhats without knowing any spells and it never seems to occur to him that magic is something that he has at his disposal. Olruggio thinks with magic, qifrey does not
Olruggio is the one who advised qifrey to take up water magic as a way to get familiar and comfortable with water. He is the one who told him to learn about the things that scare him so that they will be less scary
Qifrey seems to measure how much he can trust people by how aware they are of the damage magic can cause. He lets people in or keeps them out based on this. Coco's firsthand experience with forbidden magic is what convinces qifrey to tell her about silverwood. (Kidfrey also only starts to pay real attention to olruggio after olruggio points out how easy it is to die. Not magic related, but still in the same vein to me.) He is constantly reminding his students (and himself) that it is dangerous (chapters 4, 12, 20, 43, to name a few)
The first thing qifrey remembers is being tortured by a witch
initially was just going to draw arkco but before i knew it was already drawing the rest of the family, i love them all too much.
the reason i haven't made any future wha designs before is that it's so hard to predict where this story is going to go! we don't even know if magic will still be a thing by the end of it, i drew these with that in mind so that these designs would still work if they end up not being witches anymore. that being said, if coco and agott end up following qifrey and olruggio's steps i'd like to see agott as a teacher and coco as an inventor+her watchful eye. agott is smart, good with kids, likes cute spells that would make her students smile and has a tender side to her. coco wants to help people more than anything and we've seen how passionate she is about using magic for the benefit of people whose needs are often sidelined. (WHA SPOILERS in the next sentence) if qifrey ends up going blind i believe coco and olruggio will always be coming up with new inventions to make life easier for him. plus the spell that first made coco fall in love with magic was one of oru's inventions, i think she takes after him in this sense.
in this future au i like to think agott and coco build their atelier close to qifrey and olruggio's and live there with coco's mom and agott's students. the color palette for coco and agott's designs takes inspiration from orufrey's black and white/yin and yang complementary outfits, except for them the colors are green and purple! coco's outfit borrows elements from both her mom and qifrey's clothes. agott's has hints of olruggio, coco's mom (who i think she would grow close to) and her own mom (can't wait to learn more about their story). i think coco and agott will probably have a lot of different hair lengths throughout their lives but i love their bob haircuts a lot so i just kept them and updated them a little (coco's is slightly shorter and agott's slightly longer).
tetia will probably fulfill her dream of traveling the world to help people and richeh will continue creating original pieces that feature her trademark magic after her silver eve success. of course, they always come back to the naakiwan downs to visit♡
so i've noticed something about orufrey's body language
and i have been going insane about it ever since! kamome shirahama your attention to details will be the death of me /pos
hands are the most expressive non-verbal tool humans have, and since it's also quite literally the tool that gives the witches their magic, watching hands in witch hat atelier is beyond important. implied spoilers up to ch93 under cut! [don't mind the language of half the screenshots, that's beside the point]
qifrey so very often tends to clasp his hands together, rubbing them against each other or simply clinging to his long robes. a gesture so telling of just how uncomfortable due to silverwood he constantly is, always slightly nervous, always tip-toeing around the edge of a cliff.
and he's been doing so since childhood! his emotions are so closed-off when it comes to casual body language, which is both an indicator of his character and the ways in which he deals with his curse. unable to trust even his closest friend, he chooses the only vaguely soothing thing: to curl into himself, to detach, to distance.
meanwhile olruggio, despite his scruffiness, generally comes off as a more open, "simple" man, hands flying all over the place when he's agitated. he expresses his emotions freely, without restrain.
qifrey curls into a ball for comfort, meanwhile olly splays like a star, comfortable in his skin an in qifrey's presence
and what happens when they start to interact?
olly keeps reaching for qifrey, talking some sense into him with his hands, with spontaneous and emotional physical touch.
he does so even upon first meeting
he keeps and keeps reaching out to qifrey, both literally and symbolically.
no matter how hard qifrey tries to run away, to hide deeper into himself, olruggio will always be there to offer him a friendly hand or otherwise
this particular parallel is especially dear to me:
they changed so much,
but they also haven't changed at all
and the culmination of this dynamic in a single image for me is this:
qifrey, gaze averted, hands uncomfortably clasped together, fake smile on his face
and olruggio, calm and confident, leaning into qifrey's personal space with familiar ease, resting an arm on his shoulder in a friendly gesture.
everything that shirahama consistently portrays as the manga goes on and the history unravels, neatly and wordlessly shown in a single static image. the art of showing, but not telling, thus nurturing a deeper understanding of these characters. absolutely brilliant
some more qifreys bc at some point i genuinely started saving all the times i noticed him clasping his hands tightly together or around his clothes
i just feel like shirahama-sensei is so deliberate in her poses and smaller details. she always Knows what to do with the characters' hands. it's so very amazing and important to me. do you get what i mean??????
I’m coming back to this having just read chapter 96
which could straight up be titled ‘Man Viscerally Uncomfortable with Current Situation™ (unexpected social call from a near stranger)’
like my god.
clenching hand at abdomen to awkwardly massaging the bad shoulder to self-consciously rubbing at face. all in the course of a 60 second conversation.
Qifrey you could not be more anxious-looking if you tried 😬
It's so funny too because you get tricked into thinking qifrey is very suave and charming!
And he is!
…When he has a script. Or is in control of the situation. Or he’s interacting with people he's close to. He's perfectly comfortable making his request of coco's mother in their shop. he has no trouble offering assistance to the ladies of the pegasus carriage.
But he also gets steamrolled by the tavern owner during the fire. He gets bullied by medical professionals. He reverts to a preteen in the presence of his old master.
When in his element—teaching children—he is confident and engaging and elegant. But put him in front of a stranger without his family to act as a buffer? ...well
Suddenly he's back to being that little outsider boy who never fit in at the great hall
it appears that qifrey has grown into a social charmer while olruggio evolved into a grumpy shut-in BUT IT'S ALL FAKE!!! DESPITE EVERYTHING IT'S STILL THEM
even after adjusting to the sudden situation and change of plans his hands betray his nervousness i can practically feel him doing This instead of slotting his fingers together
he hides his nervousness but it doesn't go away and maybe it will never quite do so. (and good for him as long as he's a tree tbh)
and in addition to your brilliant analysis!! olruggio may hide behind his scruffiness and gruffiness hut he can't hide that warm heart of gold that he has. one example i thought of is how, despite begrudgingly accepting a random request from a greedy king, he finds his way among the people, sympathizes with the princess and openly helps her out. olruggio is the torch he is the bright guiding star!!!! he is still the same smiling stubborn kid who will do anything to help those around him
Olruggio was having a normal day three hours ago. He was coming home after a long day at work looking forward to seeing his husband best friend and eating a warm dinner. Pat the kids on the head and then go lie down. NO Qifrey says I have obtained another child she's a part of an active criminal investigation and a sign that I am dipping back into my worst destructive behaviors that you thought I'd set down years ago you have to be okay with this right now or else I'll lobotomize myself. Also there's a rat in the living room.
"average witch couple gets their memory erased 3 times" factoid actualy just a statistical error. average witch couple gets their memory erased 0 times. amnesia orufrey, who live in naakiwan downs & each had their memory erased over a 100 times, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
so i've noticed something about orufrey's body language
and i have been going insane about it ever since! kamome shirahama your attention to details will be the death of me /pos
hands are the most expressive non-verbal tool humans have, and since it's also quite literally the tool that gives the witches their magic, watching hands in witch hat atelier is beyond important. implied spoilers up to ch93 under cut! [don't mind the language of half the screenshots, that's beside the point]
qifrey so very often tends to clasp his hands together, rubbing them against each other or simply clinging to his long robes. a gesture so telling of just how uncomfortable due to silverwood he constantly is, always slightly nervous, always tip-toeing around the edge of a cliff.
and he's been doing so since childhood! his emotions are so closed-off when it comes to casual body language, which is both an indicator of his character and the ways in which he deals with his curse. unable to trust even his closest friend, he chooses the only vaguely soothing thing: to curl into himself, to detach, to distance.
meanwhile olruggio, despite his scruffiness, generally comes off as a more open, "simple" man, hands flying all over the place when he's agitated. he expresses his emotions freely, without restrain.
qifrey curls into a ball for comfort, meanwhile olly splays like a star, comfortable in his skin an in qifrey's presence
and what happens when they start to interact?
olly keeps reaching for qifrey, talking some sense into him with his hands, with spontaneous and emotional physical touch.
he does so even upon first meeting
he keeps and keeps reaching out to qifrey, both literally and symbolically.
no matter how hard qifrey tries to run away, to hide deeper into himself, olruggio will always be there to offer him a friendly hand or otherwise
this particular parallel is especially dear to me:
they changed so much,
but they also haven't changed at all
and the culmination of this dynamic in a single image for me is this:
qifrey, gaze averted, hands uncomfortably clasped together, fake smile on his face
and olruggio, calm and confident, leaning into qifrey's personal space with familiar ease, resting an arm on his shoulder in a friendly gesture.
everything that shirahama consistently portrays as the manga goes on and the history unravels, neatly and wordlessly shown in a single static image. the art of showing, but not telling, thus nurturing a deeper understanding of these characters. absolutely brilliant
some more qifreys bc at some point i genuinely started saving all the times i noticed him clasping his hands tightly together or around his clothes
i just feel like shirahama-sensei is so deliberate in her poses and smaller details. she always Knows what to do with the characters' hands. it's so very amazing and important to me. do you get what i mean??????
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