biting and violence and killing

Free my girl she's done nothing wrong ever in her entire life

Qifrey's manipulative behavior comes RIGHT back the second he's got another clue to the Brimmed Caps. And he knowwws Olly won't approve of this so he has to lie and turn on the charm so that Olly won't think anything of it. (Also, silvernectar? Any relation to silverwood, or is it just one more suspiciously silver thing in this world?)

Hey cool it on the criminal behavior there buddy

Another casual bit of rule-breaking here. Though since Tartah isn't considered a "real" witch/apprentice, even less so for being a stationer's apprentice, I suppose there's a bit of cultural leeway? Still, he's bending the rules even now.

Treefrey total: 2.5. I'm going to count all the instances of him being framed by the silverwood in Nolnoa's shop under one point here, for ease of categorization, but it happens several times.

Very fun that Nolnoa identifies the ink by a very faint color difference - this is why silverwash is a disability, particularly for a witch.

And Qifrey is so, so impulsive and reckless here. He knows the ink is volatile, and he's pulling this shit anyway. He loses all of that professorial, restrained calm the second his goal is in sight.

Here again is that line between craft and art - stationers are clearly not well-respected in witch society, even though their work is literally the entire reason witches can cast at all. And Coco, child of another craftsperson, is just in awe of it, while Tartah is jealous of her for having a more 'prestigious' position - and in the eyes of Great Hall witches, they'd both be borderline-outsiders. Everything's relative

The anime does a really fun thing with being able to color the jars, because many of the ones that land near each other are different colors, but they have very very similar values if you put them into greyscale.

Coco takes this as a challenge, by the way. Disabilities exist, but so do accommodations, and by god is this kid going to invent some.

Normal reactions. Olly was right to be worried about Coco reigniting his obsession. All of his morals go right out the window for this.

And ohhhh, the way his cloak looks like a brim here. He's Not Doing Well.

And then he's right back to being cheerful and whimsical and lovely, lying to Coco and buying her a nice gift so she forgets all about the ink. Hello, Beldaruit's pupil.

I love this page. It's very sweet, if you ignore the fact that Coco being protected as an individual doesn't actually fix the systemic problems that concern her, but that is kind of the way Qifrey was taught by Beldaruit - all three of them in this little lineage are disadvantaged in witch society in some way, but protected on a personal level by their masters and eventually their own status within society, so that they can be a part of it without it needing to change. But that's a future theme to deal with - here and now, it also feels a bit like Qifrey reminding himself of his priorities. We know he's hunting down the brimhats because he wants answers about the silverwood inside him, and he wants to get rid of it so he can have a life. By this point, that future life involves not just himself, not just Olly, but his students, all alive and well, and he is willing to do just as he says - everything and anything in his power - to achieve that.

Do we count this as Treefrey? I think it can be a half point. Total: 3

God she's adorable I love her. She would make a good teacher.

She's aurafarming so hard here. And naturally, as friends must, the others give her a loving hard time about it by asking her to teach them. What a sweet little moment of the four of them <3

The age-old question of how to best assess a student's understanding of the material, huh. Honestly, aside from the fact that they're all moderately life-threatening, the tests here seem like solid approaches - they're quite open in how you can solve the problems they present, and they seem reasonably well suited to testing the material they're meant to. The first test is a basic knowledge assessment, which is presumably much easier when they mountains are lower, and can be solved in a couple different ways - though not just by using contraptions. The second is a relatively low-risk and fun way to ensure students can draw without looking, and again, there are options for how you get through the tunnel. No test is perfect, and I don't think there will ever be a perfect way to assess every student for every skill, but as far as exams go... it could be a lot worse. As much as Richeh (rightly!!) complains about the by-the-book approach to testing, at least these have the wiggle room for freedom - a multiple-choice exam with poorly-worded questions would be torture for her.

And she's not wrong - the tests don't stop you from casting until you've taken them, they just restrict some of your other freedoms around casting. If she really wanted to, she could live the rest of her life having never taken the second test. But it would be a much less interesting life for her, I think, and there would be a lot of social stigma around that.

Twin-peaked cap is inspired, and Tetia is a genius. Also Qifrey you literally just copied Beldaruit's old cap design but without the little flourish at the front.

I really like how Agott and Richeh are set up as foils for this arc. Agott pushing herself to become an adult and learn as much as she can as fast as she can, so concerned about what others think of her abilities; Richeh frightened of losing herself if she branches out, but firmly confident in who Richeh is without caring about what anyone else thinks she should be. And they both grow because of each other!

And Coco doesn't even see a future for herself past saving her mother, because that one goal has eclipsed everything else for her. But that's not the only thing that's decided her fate - Iguin has a vision of what her future should be, and even Easthies can only see that same vision. It'll be an interesting contrast to how Custas eventually talks about fate, I think, though I don't remember enough of the details to say anything particularly clever about it yet. Stick a pin in this, I guess.

And her nightmare after this really highlights this feeling of being stuck - all these different pulls in different directions, all these people who have decided what a witch should and shouldn't be, what her future should and shouldn't be, and she's quite literally left drowning in it all.

It's a sleepless night for everyone, though. Qifrey very kindly nudging Agott to go to bed so that he can do his fucking around and finding out undisturbed. And he hides his supplies under his skirt when he sees her, even!

Biting him. Normally. For normal reasons. No one look at me. I've watched this scene in the anime a normal number of times and I will not be taking further questions at present, thank you and goodbye

Before we get back into my collection of Qifrey In Pain screenshots, a brief moment of appreciation for this page of the girls being eepy and adorable. The panel of the four of them passed out in the wagon together after Silver Eve is one I think about very often. They are like a litter of puppies to me.

The first time I read this, I kind of assumed this was foreshadowing a reveal that the Brimmed Caps were some continuation of the healing witches. Given their general behavior and goals (ie, unsupervised researchers with nary an ethics board in sight) I am no longer fully convinced of this theory. But still - interesting that the last unambiguously ethical holdouts against the Pointed Cap regime were healers.

He's literally monologuing to himself in a room he specifically made sure was empty and inaccessible. Fascinating behavior.

Hey maybe you could have had that level of caution before drawing a flashbang spell in front of Nolnoa. Just a thought.

I do wonder if the use of water was targeted here, or if it was just the most convenient fluid to dispense in bulk. Get swirled, idiot.

He doesn't even try to swim or anything, though I guess in this situation it wouldn't be much use. And he really, truly could have fucking died here. Just leaving the water for longer would have been enough. Iguin is being very nice.

The translation I originally read was slightly different than this - just "that eye", rather than specifically "eyeball" - but the wording is obviously meant to be ambiguous, given Iguin's mask. But while we might not get to see under those tassels, it's very possible Qifrey did. And given what he later interrogates Sasaran about, I think it's quite clear what he saw under there. (Which may undermine my 'this is a smoke projection cast through the twinned bottle spell, not the real Iguin' theory, but... most smoke projections we see do have the caster's normal face and body, so the theory still stands!)

Uhhh something something hey look they vanished into smoke isn't that neat yeah that's enough analysis to justify this. Anyway SOPPING WET AND SUFFERING YAYYYYYYYYYY YIPPEE WAHOOO

Let's be sleep deprived with papa

I think this is the first time Tetia's properly made fun of Olly. The start of a glorious, wonderful trend of him being a good example of what not to do.

We don't get a great look at how Qifrey's holding his utensils aside from this, and it might just be limp because he dozed off, but given he's having hand troubles... not a great sign.

"I hope the girls didn't notice" he says later. Meanwhile, the minute he leaves:

Aww you can see the uneven sigils. And she even tells Agott to redraw them if she wants to (Agott does not want to).

She's spent this whole time simmering in suspicion that Coco is going to want some kind of revenge, and she doesn't get it!! Agott was raised in a cut-throat, cruel environment for so long that genuine kindness - especially when it feels undeserved - just breaks her brain. There must be an ulterior motive to this, because otherwise... well, otherwise, she can't understand it. And this, I would argue, is where the crush begins, because she's forced to confront exactly how kind Coco is and how bad she feels about being mean.

And then Coco passes the fuck out. She saved up her energy to give Agott her shoes and a minor crisis, and that took everything she had. Naptime for Coco!

Which secret does he even mean here? That he's chasing the brimcaps, or why he's chasing them? I mean, the first leads to the second, but I do wonder...

AGOTT TIME

I love this little sequence, the absolute physical trust you can see Agott has that she will be caught and held safely when she crashes into Qifrey. It means a lot that this girl who is so wary she suspects Coco of an ulterior motive for returning her shoes can fling herself at 30 miles an hour into her teacher's arms and just cling without fear as he handles the aftermath. Also, very real to have her babble about the sylph shoes before focusing back in on the problem at hand.

Qifrey's little air surfboard is so nifty. Probably good for shopping trips, when it's not serving as an emergency med-evac vehicle.

Ohhh Tartah :( It seems like all the witches in Kalhn keep mostly to themselves on the island, but of course Tartah would feel better playing with children on the mainland.

And he's scared of Qifrey! Look at those faces. He's been turning over what happened ever since he realized someone tampered with Nolnoa's memory, and he's not stupid. Qifrey's the obvious suspect.

The cross-with-rounded-ends symbol is nearly the same as the one on the tabard of the healing witch shown earlier. Even if they erased all memory of healing magic, some things persist.

This whole bit is so wonderfully tense, because obviously Qifrey knows that Tartah would be suspicious, and Tartah is suspicious of him, and also that's a slightly creepy way to say that, Qifrey. But also, if you divorce the first bit from the ominous context, it could just be Qifrey trying to compliment this kid who's clearly having a rough time because of his disability. It's not that, because Qifrey is a bastard, but like. It could be!! It could be normal!!

I love this panel framing them in opposition. Very cowboy movie with the capes fluttering around them

Peak Beldaruit move here. And it's not that the whimsical, enthusiastic teacher side of Qifrey is a lie, he does this genuinely quite often (his little lecture on the history of Kalhn, his shock at the girls leaving Nolnoa's shop, his spiel about the exams). But he's very deliberately deploying that here because he knows it'll throw off Tartah's very brave, braced confrontation about something serious.

We know Coco's been sleeping poorly because she's stressed and having nightmares, and those nightmares have primarily been about all the pressure she's under. Qifrey may not be a source of that stress directly, but there are definitely some other adults in her life (IGUIN. EASTHIES.) who don't treat her like a child and are contributing to this.

We see Coco try to make a similar spell to Qifrey's little humidifier later, when he's bedbound! And oooh "our bodies (...) don't always behave the way we want them to" yeah I bet everyone in this room knows that very well. And Qifrey definitely has insight into how easy it can be for a child to hide pain behind a smile - and even without knowing more about Qifrey, this is what we see him doing just a few pages ago with Tartah, masking something messier with whimsy, so it's a really obvious parallel between these two.

Another instance of dark-side Qifrey! Feeling some particularly strong relation to Coco after realizing how badly she's pushing herself in pursuit of her goal while hiding it so well he didn't even properly clock it until she physically couldn't keep going, perhaps. But also, deflecting and avoiding Tartah's questions.

Fuck this guy. What a dick. Presumably Tartah's something of a regular, since he doesn't have sylph shoes and he seems to know those kids he was playing with reasonably well. And this is coming back to that little comment Qifrey made about how they never bothered building a bridge between mainland Kalhn and the witch's island! Of course they didn't build a bridge, because then anyone could come across and it would be much easier for people to sneak through any sort of checkpoint. By restricting the only non-magical access point to a boat (much less accessible if you're, say, in a wheelchair or something. I'm not seeing a ramp on there), they can make the process of crossing more controlled and inconvenient for anyone who doesn't count as a proper witch. The guard even says the witches take it out on them if someone "unwanted" shows up - and Tartah, even with his cap... isn't exactly wanted over there by most people.

The level of public knowledge about magic is so interestingly variable - obviously there's not going to be any sort of public education campaign about what magic can and cannot do, because any level of standardized information on magic opens the door for further questions if they ever see contradictions, so it's safer to just have it be piecemeal misunderstandings from a dozen different sources. But still. This healer obviously knows magic and medicine don't mix, because presumably that's a question that gets asked by every healer in training at some point or another. But Dagda isn't aware of this, even though he's quite well-travelled. And we see the innkeeper acting as a bit of a stand-in for the general public, too, and he just assumes witches can do anything without trying - a very useful image to project for keeping your separatist society in power, but frustrating on an individual level.

Cocoooooo you're allowed to be selfish sometimes!!! You're allowed to have wants and needs that don't get sacrificed!!!!!!!

It's a very reasonable but childish thing to assume that just because he can't see any doctors and there's a disaster happening, every single staff member in the building has clearly left entirely. Not inherently foolish, just... not really experienced enough to realize that leaving a hospital entirely unattended is not something they would do.

And then he immediately starts poking around places he probably shouldn't. With good intentions! But ooooh this little arc is a microcosm of Tartah's journey that we've seen so far - he's got his heart set on helping a friend, and he's so convinced he has to do it himself that he doesn't even think about reaching out to someone with more experience for help. And as the doctor will tell him later (it's next chapter but I'm screenshotting it now, sorry), he just doesn't know enough about the situation to make those kinds of decisions safely. It works out here, thankfully, but in the future that same impulsive, stubborn, one-track mindset won't always have luck to balance it.

This poor kid. Witch society seems to decide paths for everyone pretty young (primarily by family or teacher), and Tartah's never been given any hope in that regard. Even without silverwash, he probably would have been expected to be a stationer, which isn't a particularly respected position, but at least it would be something he could feel satisfied doing - but because he's been so thoroughly cut off from a future, he's left feeling like there's something he's owed that he doesn't have. Which isn't really his fault, but he also... doesn't handle that well in the future.

And he's so clever! He is very observant, and he has the mindset for problem-solving that a witch needs, he just doesn't have the same experience as a standard apprentice - but if he did, he wouldn't be able to help with this stuff! Truly he was meant to be a chemist.

Oh, Coco. She's pushing herself even now :( And obviously there's a bit of this that feels like setup for a young romance arc, which I wouldn't have necessarily been opposed to, but I'm glad it didn't end up going that way. People in-universe assuming that's what it is and it instead being something Much Worse is more fun anyhow. But again, Coco, PLEASE just rest. This is peak Qifrey behavior and not in any remotely good way.

We've seen bits and pieces of this get taught over the past chapters, and here she is synthesizing all of it! Like Qifrey said at the beginning, being able to explain something to someone else is the best way to know you've truly learned it. Even sick, she can give a pretty good little lesson on constructing a spell from scratch!

And this might well be the first spell Tartah's drawn (at least in a long, long time)! He's adjusting it, making it his own. Because of Coco, to help Coco, and it's fundamentally a disability aid for him! What a lovely moment.

I've already said my thoughts on the conclusion to this little adventure and how it foreshadows a lot about Tartah's character. But there's a bit more here, too. He gets praised for his interest in medicine here, asked if he's considering a future! Without his hat, he could be a healer, something he's clearly got a knack for. Without his hat, he also is not a witch in the eyes of anyone else. With his hat... he has those restrictions on his life again, and he doesn't have a future. He can't be a proper witch because of his disability, he can't be a healer because he's a witch, he can't be respected in witch society even if he tries to find something to do with himself, he can't be accepted or understood outside of it. No wonder he gets drawn into the Brimmed Caps' outlook, when that pointed cap is only ever a source of problems for him.

And again we see that there's so little public understanding of what magic entails, which is very deliberate, but it sure does come back to bite people. Plus there's a bit of a running theme of these expectations borne of misunderstanding (or overestimating) magical ability leading to burnout. Magic in this world is not a particularly subtle metaphor for art, but this is an especially obvious expression of that.

What a lovely page, but man. While Qifrey was busy, these two had a whole little adventure all to themselves. Surely this won't happen again...

She still doesn't fully consider herself a witch, huh

Lying liar who liessssss. Tartah finally manages to ask and Qifrey just goes "huh?" like he didn't fucking cast it.

They're so cute here...... And Tartah finally has a goal! An ambition! A friend!! Some hope!!

And so does Coco :]

Agott's still isolating herself though :( But she's glad Coco's okay

This line is very obviously a dig at Sasaran with full context of what his deal is. I don't even blame Iguin for not respecting this guy. He sucks!

I love the little animal loredrop at the end! Personally I am on team 'these pegasi are octopods' because wings are limbs, and even with the quadryphons, we see they're related to gryphons and the legs/wings are functionally analogous structures there. My WHAsona is, predictably, some kind of ecologist or evolutionary biologist for magical animals - especially since we learn that many of the fusion-style animals originated from magical intervention! What kind of freaky shit is going on in their genomes!!!

was going bananas watching a show set in Oregon but they didn’t edit out a constant chorus of eastern pheobes in the background, but i persevered. bc one i don’t care THAT much and 2 it’s kinda a fun part of the je ne sais quoi especially if the show sort of sucks

i am not immune to mental images of the brushbug being a cute cat bug creature

in my mind it absolutely does purr