bibi

Welcome back, Anon! I love getting asks about witch hat atelier, especially because none of my IRL friends have watched the show, so I just have my little Internet corner to talk about the show.

I wasn't aware that people interpreted Coco's actions as her curing both Coustas and Tartah. The narrative makes it quite clear that Coco's innovation and outside thinking allowed for Tartah to find a way to overcome his struggles with his silverwash, enabling him to become a witch. The scene between them is supposed to highlight how easy it is to accommodate people with disabilities like Tartah and Coustas but witch society and by extension the world itself doesn't due to the fact that Tartah and Coustas's disabilities aren't a crucial manner that directly affects others. This sentiment is further reinforced by how we see witches talk about Qifrey and his missing eye or in the silver eve procession where no one was interested in Coco's water purifying vase because they didn't live in the mudslums and therefore weren't affected by the pollution caused by the waste water.

What Coco introduced to Tartah and Coustas should be the bare minimum for accommodation of someone's disability. There's substantial criticism of how unaccomodating society is to those with disabilities or other needs when it really wouldn't affect them to include and accommodate individuals with a disability. The manga directly has Tartah be the one that points out how inaccessible society is to those that don't fit the norm. Tartah is also the one that directly criticises and chooses to take on a bigger outlook, believing that the world should change to accommodate people instead of people having to change to accommodate society. We can directly see this in Tartah's conversation with Coustas.

Accessibility and accommodating peoples needs has always been at the forefront of Tartah's character. His progression is quite intriguing. He develops from a character that tries to mould himself into what society needs him to be by remembering the vials on the shelf and their properties without any labels to help him to then becoming a character who tries to help society be accessible to those who need it. He tries to help Coustas by teaching him the alphabet and helping him access rudimentary education. He and Coco try to help Coustas navigate by creating the flying device. Tartah is also inspired by his interactions with Coco to create pens that are suitable for everyone. His pen designs focus on accessibility and take into consideration both the young and old, which is something that witch society neglects.

There's a consistent theme of both Coco and Tartah being characters who have accessibility at the forefront of their minds except with Coco it's not in a medical context. Coco is a seamstress; she has to make clothes that are suitable and fit the people who need them. She has worked with different materials and different items. On the other hand, Tartah is a wood carver and a toolmaker. His profession makes him knowledgeable of the differences between people and how to make products that fit the person's needs. Ironically, both Coco and Tartah's developments around the theme of accessibility are directly influenced by Coustas. Coco's innovation to produce her water purifying pot comes from her knowledge of the mudslums where Coustas used to live. Tartah's desire to help Coustas learn how to read and medicine comes from trying to help Coustas, learning about how inaccessible education can be to those in a different social class. Both Tartah and Coco's interactions influence them to make the flying device to help and accommodate Coustas. The creation of this device also directly comes from their past skills: Coco's seamstress skills and Tartah's woodcarving skills.

Interpretations such as 'Coustas brought the disability on himself' or 'Tartah is dumb' or 'Tartah was cured by Coco' are all incredibly reductive. They seem to personally dismiss the narrative context that was given to the reader beforehand. Coustas and Dagda rely on performing and music for a living. To Coustas, it was their economic livelihood that was in danger, and that's not something that a minstrel can simply recover after losing, so the most logical choice was to try and rescue the items. People dismiss just how economic constrains and lack of social mobility that Coustas and Dagda have dictates their life and life choices. On the other hand, the narrative slowly builds up and highlights over and over again the slow path that Tartah takes to lose his trust in adults. It's not a sudden, quick moment that makes him wary of Qifrey but a chain of events that the fandom dismisses at times. I understand that there's a reason as to why the fandom sometimes dismisses Qifrey's role in Tartah's loss of trust in adults since he is presented as a trustworthy adult figure to other protagonists like Coco and Richeh. Not only that, but to Tartah, it was logical to assume that every adult in witch society would act in the same manner. They are all bound by the same witches code, which directly prohibits any witch from helping Coustas in any meaningful way that doesn't consist of at least altering and wiping his memories in one way shape or form. We, the audience, are aware of Qifrey's desire to find the brimhats and that it is one of the only reasons why he kept Coco's memories intact, but Tartah isn't aware of this. Tartah only has his own knowledge and interactions with Qifrey to go off, and the same can be said for Coco. The only reason Coco trusts Qifrey compared to Tartah is because of the differing nature of their interactions.

I am gonna use your ask to comment about the Twitter take about Tartah since I find myself heavily disagreeing with OP, but I haven't been able to fully word it in a coherent manner. I have cropped OP's username and pfp because I don't want them to receive any more hate or harassment than what they already have received.

The main issue with OP's take is that it hinges on the belief that Tartah still has a crush on Coco or that his actions towards Coco in chapter 87 were a direct result of him still having a crush on her and acting as a love interest, therefore reinforcing patriarchal teachings. This one assumption is incredibly dismissive of the entire narrative shirahama built surrounding Tartah's character. There's a strong argument to be made that by the climax of the silver eve arc, neither Tartah nor Coco display particular crushes on one another with both of them heading their separate ways choosing Coustas and Agott. The scene where olruggio interprets Coco and Tartah's behaviour as them having a crush on one another and pursuing it in secret is played for laughs like OP stated but they seem to miss the point that Tartah was just as dedicated and focused on helping Coustas in anyway he can. It is that dismissal that also makes them dismiss the queercoding between Tartah and Coustas as well as the primary driving factor in that scene, which was Tartah's desire for the truth to help Coustas. By boxing Tartah's character into a love interest role, you automatically assume that his character is trying to stay in the role when that was never the case. Tartah has always been an observant and non-conforming character. It makes more narrative sense for him to not fit a perfect narrative role but to rebel against it by challenging Coco and her beliefs. What Tartah did to Coco in chapter 87 was wrong. There's no way in denying that. I generally don't agree with the take that what Tartah did is equivalent or can be read as COCSA. I understand that the take stems from the belief that forbidden magic acts can be read as SA, but I have personally never connected with the take. I find myself more aligned with the take that forbidden magic can be read as assault and even that take can be reductive at times. shirahama uses the Knight moralis's actions and Coustas's actions to point out the nuances in magic and magic use. Coustas drawing the time reversal gylph on the injured in the silver eve is forbidden magic, but it isn't SA. There is more nuance to the situation. The spell he uses can save a lot of lives: it's supposed to point out that not all forbidden magic is evil or bad but rather it depends on how someone chooses to use magic that makes it 'bad'.

On a different note, it's quite ironic to me that OP tries to use a panel of Qifrey's dialogue, which was directed to Tartah to try and drive their point forward. It almost feels dismissive of the role Qifrey played in Tartah's distrust of adults and later on paranoia, which led him to act in such an impulsive manner where he disregards Coco's autonomy. By stating that Tartah responds to Coco's secrecy like "other witch men," OP also seems to dismiss just how differently Tartah's socialisation was. While Tartah was born a witch and into a witch family, society deeming him unable to become a witch made it so that a lot of his socialisation was with outsiders and non-witches. The manga reveals to us that Tartah attends a normal school and has normal friends, frequently using the ferry to travel back and forth to where he needs to be. It's ironic that once Tartah gains friends who are witches, eg, Coco and Coustas, these two were still outsiders to witch society. OP's take almost suggest that misogyny is an inherently witch society problem and if that's the case then Tartah being a quote on quote misogynist doesn't make any sense because he never had the full witch society socialisation. It also seems simplistic to deem that Tartah's actions come primarily from a gendered perspective. I say this because the narrative makes it clear to me that Tartah's reaction would have been the same regardless of Coco's gender. To me, his argument and harmfully dismissive actions towards Coco weren't a byproduct of his own understanding of gender and gender norms but were a result of a long chain of events that led him to make impulsive decisions in hopes of learning the truth and being able to help Coustas. It is that same cycle of paranoia and impulsivity that he was caught in that made him unaware of how badly he hurt Coco. It wasn't his intention to hurt her yet that still happend and while he was satisfied by learning the truth which is why he tried to reach out to Coco he didn't seem to recognise the damage that he had caused. It seems that after the situation, once he was able to fully understand his actions and what he did, as well as seeing how hurt Coco was, he was able to recognise the damage his actions caused as we see him contemplating it while Coustas lays beside him.

She is quite literally a girl who has randomly been dumped into witch society and has to come to terms with the customs they follow and those who challenge those rules. The Alice in Wonderland comparison is really appropriate for her.

In a world where magic can theoretically achieve what a person desires, its society that limits its usage through imposing laws and advocating for the right way to do things. Coco is simply stuck in the midst of all the rules, tangled up in the dangers and the beauty that magic is. Its also interesting how Coco still utilises what many would call 'basic magic' but what really gets her through the story is how she chooses to utilise it by actively using her imagination and innovation to complete the task.

It's not an issue of people viewing Tartah and Coustas's characters through the lens of their relationship with Coco, but it's that they expect those two to be undoubtedly loyal to Coco.

Coco plays a significant role in both coustas and Tartah's character. She is our introduction to coustas and Tartah. It's reasonable that a lot of the fan perception of those two comes from Coco's own experiences with Coustas and Tartah because our first impressions of them come from Coco herself. The friendship that Coco develops with Tartah and Coustas further allows us to see those two through her perspective. It allows us to see how Coco relates to these two, how similar or different their experiences are, and the role society plays in the positions they are all in. These 3 are all outsiders in one way shape or form, and while that leads to them bonding, their reactions to the discrimination they face and how they grapple with societal oppression create fractures in their relationship.

Coco, Tartah, and Coustas have all been failed by witch society and suffered from the witches code. However, their suffering is not the same, and the manga makes sure to highlight this clearly through the tense interactions that this trio has. Being an 'outsider' (coco) , having an invisible disability (Tartah), and being both an 'outsider' and having a visible disability (Coustas) are all very different experiences.

There are layers to the systematic injustices that these characters face. As a result, they all bear widely different reactions that lead them to the places they are. All the characters share a theme of being prohibited from education, and this leads to tragedy. Magic isn't a hard tool to master if the resources are available: ink, knowledge of spells, and paper. Anyone can do magic, but the societal frameworks limit this to only a certain kind of people. This limitation results in tragedy for Coco, who loses her mother because she was unaware of the dangers of the spell she cast. While Tartah was born into witch society, he was still unable to learn magic because of how unaccomadating witch society is. In this case, abelism directly forbid Tartah from progressing as a witch even though he had the talent and desire to be one. On the other hand, Coustas's is limited from accessing both magic and rudimentary education due to classism. It's a cruel fate that coustas is aware of and expresses his anger towards in his conversation with Tartah and Coco. Without access to education, all of these characters are significantly hindered. If Coco had access to magical education, then her mother would still be here. She would be able to help her mother even more at their shop. If Tartah had access to magical education, then he could further aid Nolnoa. He could master his craft and learn so much more like the sourcing of ink and the silvertree present at the starry sword. If coustas had access to an education, then he and Dagda wouldn't be so dependent on being minstrels. If coustas had an education, then he would be able to take on less risky jobs. It's classism, which resulted in Dagda's severe injury and later on death.

Coustas's rage and anger against society and inequalities present is refreshing to see. The fact that the author doesn't dismiss his rage or try to demonise it is again very refreshing for me because I have gotten used to narratives that do. I love the consideration taken when it comes to the depictions of Coustas's perspective. While he and Coco share very obvious parallels, it's ironically what they have in life that separates them. Picking up the pen for Coustas came from a place of necessity, a desire to rid himself and Dagda of their horrible fates granted to them by an unjust system.

Coustas, Tartah, and Coco are all friends who found the joy and wonders of magic through one another, with Coco being the one to present said joys to Coustas and Tartah. It's important to note that Coustas and Tartah play active roles in Coco's journey as a witch: Tartah gives Coco her own customised pen and Coustas's branch is used by Coco to complete her spell in chapter 87. Coustas and Tartah become active ideological contrasts to Coco. Coco's trauma from being a victim to forbidden magic, as well as watching others she knows fall victim to it makes her more willing to adapt witch society's customs. Her not telling Coustas about magic or the small child about magic or her calling Tartah out for the study of medicine and magic as well as ruling out any forbidden spell as something to never be done is evidence of that. However, both Tartah and coustas bring up valid points. Magic is simply a tool to be used by the people. It isn't inherently evil, and what spell is performed can both harm or aid people. Coustas's talk with Coco highlights this quite well. Personally, I believe that Coustas and Tartah have valid points, and I am interested to see how Coco's beliefs are challenged later on.

On a different note, I love how you can see how all these three characters challenge and alter eachothers world views, specifically Coustas and Tartah. Coustas's worldview is changed by Tartah, who helped teach him letters and medicine. Tartah's worldview is altered by Coustas, who helped him see and understand just how inaccessible society is for those in need of motor aids. The knowledge about the silvertree changes how Tartah viewed the silvertree at the starry sword, and it altered Coustas's life as he became a vessel of it.

It's fine! I don't mind the Tartah glaze. It's quite nice seeing people get really excited about their favourite characters!

I haven't spent a lot of the time in the witch hat atelier fandom, specifically with the manga readers, so I don't know what the general fandom consensus is surrounding a lot of characters. With that being said, I can say that I think theres a lot of things that the fandom doesn't talk about, which I wish to explore in length.

I can see where the sentiment of Tartah being expected to be loyal to Coco comes from, especially with how he was introduced as one of her first friends alongside the girls in the atelier. On top of that, the manga went ahead with having Tartah develop a one-sided crush on Coco so the sentiment that he would be loyal to her was further solidified by that as many probably expected Tartah to adopt the classic love interest role in the narrative.

However, there's a lot more to be said about the events that transpired a few chapters ago and the queercoding/implications behind coustas x Tartah and Agott x Coco. There's plenty to discuss about what it means for Tartah to willingly join coustas, how that changes his relationship with Coco: transforming it from a one sided crush to more of a friendship as they both drift apart to find their own truths in the messy conflicts of witch society. I feel like many might not be able to come to terms with that just because of how many scenes these two have had, but I wasn't all that surprised when Tartah ended up joining the brimhats. It made sense that his arc would head in such a direction, especially since he was incredibly critical of the witches code. A conflict between him and Coco was brewing ever since chapter 42 when it came to their actions and discussions surrounding Coustas.

I do want to say that what Tartah did to Coco shouldn't be taken lightly or dismissed. That was a violation of her autonomy and agency. The manga will likely explore how this incident fractured both of their relationship as it seems that in the later chapters, Coco avoids addressing what happened with Tartah, and he is presumed missing. I am definitely excited to see their next interaction and how it will unfold after all of this.

Chapters 87 definitely played as a big turning point in their relationship. Before all of this, Tartah viewed Coco as a confidant; he viewed her as someone whom he could trust in expressing his criticisms towards witch society and the witches code. A lot of their relationship consisted of Tartah being more open with Coco telling her about his disability and his thoughts. Coco is a lot more closed off to Tartah, which creates an obvious imbalance that slowly triggers the events of chapter 87 (it's in no way her fault since her previous experiences instilled secrecy within her). I believe that Tartah might feel some jealousy towards Coco after learning that she is an outsider who still became a witches apprentice and got to learn magic. To Tartah, such a thing is unfair. It's unfair that she got to become a witch while no one took him in because of his disability. It's unfair that she got to learn magic while Coustas, who is an outsider like her didn't. Jealousy that stems from injustice of witch society seems very fitting for the development of Coco and Tartah's relationship.

On the flip side, Coco's view of Tartah vastly changes. Coco is a victim of forbidden magic. She has seen many close friends become victims of forbidden magic, so her hatred and wariness of it are understandable. So far, she has been able to overcome challenges and hurdles through innovative thinking that doesn't require her to use forbidden magic, but can that continue? While Tartah and her were united by their love for magic, a desire to help people, and a desire to change the world, they have slowly grown apart as they become increasingly aware about the fractures and corruption of witch society. What once brought them together was naivety and optimism, and what separates them is a need for insight and enlightenment. Tartah now acts as a direct ideological contrast to Coco. As Coco progresses as a character, she becomes increasingly more secretive, indirectly upholding the pointed caps beliefs. On the other hand, Tartah tries to reveal witch society's secrets and gain the truth. There's a lot to be said with how these characters have both left a long-lasting impression on the other. Coco's innovative thinking allowed for Tartah to become a witch through the understanding of herbs, helping him overcome his hurdle. Tartah teaches Coco about magical herbs and items in the beginning, as well as gifting her own customised pen suited for her use, enabling her to excel at drawing sigils. They have both played a key role in shaping the other to become the witches they are, and their ideological conflict will be intriguing to explore, especially when you add Coustas to the equation.

I love the idea that Tartah is a lot like a comet!! Also, your insight about Teita being a nurse and Tartah a possible surgeon is actually really interesting.

The Coco, olruggio, and Tartah parallels are so underrated in this fandom. I have seen a fair share of people point out the parallels between olruggio and Coco, but I have yet to see people discuss the parallels between olruggio and Tartah.

The two craftsmen who spend a lot of their time making and working with tools. They seem emotionally reserved on the outside compared to their counterparts, but it's revealed that they end up taking larger risks. They both question the witches code and are met with surprise or criticism in olruggio case. Both of them aim to help the common people and understand just how handy magic is in doing so with olruggio making items that benefit the lives of others while Tartah wants to teach Coustas magic. Both of them aim to help Qifrey and Coustas, joining the two where they go. Both of them are observant and intelligent to discover things they aren't supposed to. They also have similar reactions to Coustas and Qifreys silverwood parasite. Olruggio heads to the tower of tombs to gain the truth while Tartah fully brands himself with the truth spell, gaining the truth from Coco. Both Olruggio and Tartah's first interactions with Qifrey and Coustas are them saving them.