Some thoughts on Kamome Shirahama’s handling of a hurt/comfort relationship in Witch Hat Atelier
>>up to and including chapter 90 spoilers under the cut<<
spoilers cover materials a couple of chapters beyond the Silver Eve arc's conclusion
Witch Hat Atelier readers are losing it right now because of the parasitic silverwood lore revelation in recent chapters.
Given that Qifrey is a host to the silverwood, he is required to be in a state of anxiety/discomfort to keep the parasite under control. The seed will only stay dormant as long as its host is in a state of unrest.
Every time Olruggio tries to help him with his most critical and consequential issues, Qifrey is in danger of his silverwood parasite overtaking him because Olruggio is his sanctuary, his safe space, his home.
The reader is shown the encroachment of the silverwood when the cat's out of the bag and Olly makes him talk. The parasite canonically takes over the body by feeding on hope, by feeding on ease and comfort.
Qifrey doesn't want to wipe Olly's memory—he does so out of necessity. He cannot have his support. He cannot have the peace of mind knowing someone is in his corner. He cannot have Olly providing the comfort that would truly put him at ease.
Qifrey visibly feels like shit immediately after wiping Olruggio's memory—so much so that Coco asks him if he's okay when the girls come out to get them for dinner.
That time when Qifrey let himself sigh and lean into Olly's embrace was the first time in his new life that he felt a level of comfort adequate to allow the silverwood tree to germinate.
hug. lean. sigh. SPROUT.
And he FELT it.
Olruggio holding him after saving his ass from drowning was the first time Qifrey was in a position to feel the silverwood doing its thing and he was just like ??? wtf was that?? nope. nope. nope.
That panel is their relationship in a nutshell. Qifrey has to push him away.
At the point in chapter 40 where Olruggio is offering support
Qifrey is self-aware enough to be able to shield himself from the thing he would love nothing more than to accept: that solace, that support, that comfort, that peace, that hope.
Olruggio even offers him the clasp of covenant. The man is committed to helping him.
At the time of writing this, we have not yet been given the particulars of what Qifrey uncovered in the Tower of Tomes. We do not yet have the details. We don't know what they're doing or how it works yet.
What we do know is that Qifrey's findings made him quit. Beldaruit is under the impression that it was the discovery of his situation's irreversibility, but we only have some puzzle pieces at the time of me writing this.
The point is that when he was a kid, Qifrey started out not knowing what was going on. He had nothing but scraps of memories. He had no awareness of the silverwood parasite or what was going on with his own body. Olruggio didn't make into the library when they attempted it together. [edit: if you've read up to chapter 93: lmao. lol even.] We know Qifrey uncovered a scrap that made him remember being a guinea pig for a new type of forbidden spell.
A new possibility overgrown with mayhem scooped forth from the seeds of sown chaos. And the great cost which hope declares is none other than despair.
Regardless of what he uncovered in the Tower, at the point in the story where Olruggio offers his undying loyalty and support (again), Qifrey is aware that this is a catalyst so he has to leave Olly hanging like
Olly is offering to help him and
Qifrey's word-for-word reaction is
as in
he LITERALLY cannot have that.
He literally cannot have Olly's forgiveness (again).
He literally cannot have Olly's support.
Experiencing the ease, the peace of mind, the hope, the comfort, that comes with Olruggio's support would be the end of him.
So. Olruggio found out Qifrey was hiding things. Again. Qifrey had to wipe his memory. Again.
"yet again."
Olruggio keeps finding out Qifrey's secrets and keeps forgiving him for keeping them to himself. It's not an isolated situation. Olly keeps offering to help. It's also worth noting that having to re-experience Olruggio realizing that Qifrey is keeping things from him must be a source of tremendous guilt and suffering in and of itself. He keeps having to deal with being a source of Olruggio's pain. Over and over.
When Olly figures out that Qifrey's eyesight is going and that he's back on his bullshit tracking the brimmed caps, he finally spills his feelings about Qifrey keeping secrets from him.
The man is burning. He is wounded.
As an aside, this completely justifies how irritable Olly was when his character was first introduced.
He gets home already in a state so exhausted from a job that he lurches forward slightly in the doorway, and then Qifrey springs it on him that he brought a whole kid home without so much as talking to him.
The man is going through it. He's probably having one of the worst damn days in recent memory. The level of absolute disregard it takes to bring a kid home without a heads up is devastating! Qifrey didn't say a thing to him! And in witch society a Master has custody over an apprentice in such a way that their apprentice is considered to be their child. Your Master is the person who raises you. You're signing up for parenthood/guardianship. Atwert uses that as a legal loophole to prevent Galga from getting sent to Adanlee, the isle of oblivion. He's like. Nah. Fuck it. I'll volunteer to be his guardian. No doomed yaoi on my watch.
A Master's apprentice is their ward. You're adopting a child. Witches are considered to be the siblings of their fellow apprentices in witch society and culture.
Witches' culture of child rearing is not the same as ours. Their politics are not the same as ours. Their laws are not the same as ours. It was particularly traumatizing for Agott to have been banished from the House of Arklaum because it's considered to be a wild exception that they raise their own biological children in the first place. Richeh's sisters didn't even know she had a biological brother.
And it's taken seriously. Olly wouldn't undertake that responsibility because he knows he has other priorities. I could go on about the implications here.
So yeah. Qifrey brought a kid home.
Witch Hat Atelier won a fucking Eisner award for the volume in which Olly spills his feelings (among other big plot and social commentary things). He has so many questions for Qifrey.
Why would you hide that shit about your vision in your remaining eye?
Why would you hide being back on your brimmed cap bullshit? Why wouldn't you talk to me?
He's furious! His response is essentially I'm mad you for not talking to me and I'm mad at myself for not being the kind of person you can confide in!
Qifrey withholding information not only upsets Olruggio because of Qifrey's behaviour but it also makes Olly question himself and what he may or may not have done to create that barrier to trust. Imagine how hard it must hit Olruggio to not feel as though he's created enough of an approachable aura given that he is the legally appointed Watchful Eye of Qifrey's atelier. Witch government mandates someone with child protection services training to be present in remote locations to rat out bad behaviour. It's his job to be someone that people can come and talk to. What a blow. That's so fucked up!
Look at Qifrey's face.
bro feels so guilty he's dissociating
Keyword: desperately.
My guy. My dude. My heart. Shattered.
So. Qifrey spills the plot when Olly prompts confidence.
Olruggio forgives him and doesn't hold a grudge. He loves and cares for Coco as much as her sisters despite the circumstances that prompted her apprenticeship.
And then Qifrey takes it all back.
Because he cannot have that.
Qifrey's whole deal is how much he guards his secrets but Olruggio knows him better than anyone. He keeps figuring out what's going on with him. And keeps forgiving him. He's a source of comfort and care. He's present for the girls when work allows it. All this makes Olruggio Qifrey's closest and most dangerous narrative op.
The first time we see him using magic, it's a goddamn drying spell
which is the same spell he frantically whips up to save Qifrey, repurposed as a contraption
That's their whole deal.
It's the essence of their relationship dynamic.
Olly keeps being a fucking threat.
Qifrey keeps being a shit over and over again both as a child and as an adult; but Olly forgives and arguably enables him since he is such a people pleaser fucked up by his own trauma following the Noz incident where they decided to send a child on a dangerous a rescue mission and unnecessarily expose him to mortality and leave him with lifelong guilt and self-blame. It rewired his brain and is largely responsible for who is is as a person. Olruggio is so desperate to be the type of witch who can still save people that he keeps sticking around, providing support. Providing care. That he truly cares for Qifrey poses a tremendous risk.
Qifrey has to push him away. He has to leave him hanging. He has to make him forget. He lives with this anguish out of necessity. He carries the agony and the guilt with him every single day. He is damned to live in a state where he cannot allow himself to be held by Olruggio ever again. The answer to the Romonon query was instant. Automatic. It's the man's whole life.
everything Olly does is a freaking danger to him; from the magic he uses to the support he gives to the contraptions he makes
Qifrey is playing with fire by having Olruggio in his life at all.
It becomes a deeply personal matter to Qifrey when he deduces what's going on with Custas, who is also a host to the silverwood.
Coco informs Qifrey about Custas falling asleep in Dagda's arms. Qifrey proceeds to have a normal time about it.
Qifrey who felt the presence of the silverwood for the first time in an embrace, in his safe haven:
It's also implied that Qifrey had his memories wiped in order revert him from a state of parasitic takeover. When the silverwood sprouts in Custas, he reverts with his hair turned silver.
Restys observes that the silverwood parasite taking over its host can be undone with Custas in hand.
It's the same storytelling device Rebecca Sugar used in Steven Universe where the audience wasn't told what happened to Lion, but was shown what happens to Lars to make him pink. By seeing what happens to Custas, we can now infer what happened to Qifrey. He got taken over by the tree, had it undone, and his hair is now silver. Like with Custas.
EDIT: vol. 15 cover reveal has clarified that Restys also has silver hair. It makes sense that she would give the seeds to Custas and Ininia. It is also explicitly confirmed that Qifrey gets his memories wiped in order revert him from a state of parasitic takeover two chapters later.
Qifrey knows how to save himself from others but he also knows how to save himself from himself.
He's telling on himself. Why would he have something like that on his person if not to be used as an absolute emergency backup plan?
If you take away the serenity of the host, depriving them of their comfort and solace, you can undo it.
Qifrey carries those obliviation seals like Aspirin for a heart attack.
That said, he's made his stance on memory erasure very clear.
It's a deeply personal subject for him given his lack of memories when first exhumed in the forest of Thristas. He had practically no memories until some of them came back in the Tower of Tomes (occasional trauma response or flashback aside). He's experienced firsthand how shitty it is to not know anything or anyone. He had no magic. He had no skills. He had to start his entire life from scratch.
When Coco becomes privy to Qifrey's situation, she asks why she isn't enough to keep him in a state of anxiety. Qifrey begins a response about how she just isn't, but doesn't finish articulating his thought. He stops himself and, instead, goes into dad mode, telling her that he can't be anxious for a witch with such a bright future. She's on the right track. She's going to become an excellent witch. She's going to be fine. This is also the reason he doesn't wipe her memory the way he wiped Olruggio's. The fact of the matter is that Coco just isn't his safe haven. She isn't what he needs. It's Olly's embrace that did it for him. It's Olly's embrace that put him in danger. It is Olruggio that he cannot have.
Kamome Shirahama examines the hurt/comfort trope by taking it and turning Witch Hat Atelier into a story of hurt/[forbidden] comfort.
Shirahama hasn't put anything in a the story for nothing. Every plot point serves as a precedent for something to come or as an illustration for something parallel. Everything in the story so far has served a purpose, foreshadowed, explained, illustrated, expanded, etc. so I've been mulling over Olruggio and Qifrey's character dynamic and what it means in the bigger picture.
Although their relationship's threat to Qifrey's life has become one of the major plot points, I'm eager to see how it's going to play out in the grand scheme of things. Coco is supposed to be the "child of hope" who stands to counterbalance despair. Shirahama's commentary on how design is the key to healing or harming draws attention to the much broader scope than the individuals' intentions. We see that in how they deal with the "failure" of the phantasmal fireball, and how Olly has to encase it in crystal so that people don't lose their healthy respect and fear for fire, as it can burn as easily as it can keep people warm and alive, for example. Magic is a double-edged sword. Actions can be double-edged swords. You can't always predict outcomes no matter how good your intentions, and the way to address that is a major point of contention in the plot. The macro ties to the micro and vice versa.
It is that which Qifrey so desperately needs to heal his soul threatens to destroy him. We're just sitting here watching a man live through torture.
Read to chapter 90, then go back to the beginning and read the whole damn thing again. You'll be clutching your face the whole time.
Commission art for the sweetest @shadowfuka with some FengQing for the soul, thank you so much again for the patience my friend <3
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