Witch Hat Atelier - Vol. 8 Ch. 42

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Coustas...waiting at the very top of the stairs, in a chair that doesn't have wheels
And he falls just like that?
That was 100% intentional of him
 
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Hmm, I wonder why Coco isn't so happy as of late?

Hey Coco, I'm totally doing taboo stuff, please keep this secret please
 
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Frankly, that whole setting bit about witches being forbidden not just to cast directly on a body, but to have magic cast upon themselves, or to learn medicine, is utterly ridiculous. With all the obvious medical applications of magic, forbidding them all just because "oh no, bad people did bad experiments with that in the past" is basically the opposite of humane approach to magic the post-Conspiracy witches are supposed to be all about.
 
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*imperial march intensifies*


@danvolodar

I mean this is going to be a clear setup for the MC breaking rules and fucking up shit (also reason why her mother is now a stone statue) so maybe they might have a point...
 
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@ZanaduKhan yes, I agree it's a clear setup for Coco to break the rules, what I'm talking about is that it's ridiculous as a part of the setting. Even more so than the fact that anyone can cast magic staying a secret long-term, when laymen can buy magic trinkets with magic circles still visible upon them.

The whole idea of forbidding magical medicine because of the abuse potential it has is much like outlawing metallurgy wholesale because it can be used to make guns that kill people, potentially.

As for Coco's mother - yeah, sure, outlawing the flesh-to-stone rune, or keystone, or whatever was the defining component of that spell, is reasonable. Now, outlawing the reversing spell? Ridiculous.
 
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I'm not event paying attention to the story anymore the artwork is just really pretty.
 
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Me realising that I can't remember any of the many many many many many secrets that need to be kept all the time 🙃
 
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A new challenger appears!!! Hang in there Tartar!

Jokes aside that kinda sucks for him, he really wants to help people but that herbal medicine restriction is really weird considering he already knows so much.

Maybe I'm missing something but medicine and magic done by witches aren't the same, right? So whats the deal lmao
 
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@Snuffsaid
"My current theory is that medicinal witches are still a thing but only in secret, even from other witches."

I think this is very likely, and I think we might have already seen them in this chapter. The doctors that pulled Qifrey away, but didn't show what exactly they were going to do with him. I wouldn't be surprised if those were actually witch-doctors working in secret. Honestly I wouldn't put it past Qifrey to have actually planned to meet them in the first place, with him getting "dragged off" as a cover story to Coco and the others.
 
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@A-tan yeah I also don't agree with this rule but it probably has something to do with the conflict of interest. In the 2nd test, we do hear about how drawing on the body is forbidden (due to misuse and abuse) and that was what made the magic medics illegal. But there's only so much actual medicine can do, with magic, there's definitely more possibilities and no limitations...

and ofcause ways to reverse the damage done by magic in the first place. The problem is, if normal medics learn about magic, they'll probably be tempted to use magic in their practice and we already know how that went in the past.
 
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@Gallu Good point! I wonder If they will ever reach a point where they can mix both without freak accidents.
 
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@A-tan lol whilst that'll be great I get the sense that it might be a bit too idyllic - but seeing how new magic is in the clockwork maybe we can reach some balance in the future, who knows.
 
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Hey everyone I noticed that there weren't many WHA servers so I thought I would make one so here is the link enjoy! https://discord.gg/eEJUruhsHg
 
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@danvolodar
The kind of abuse that medical magic would be used for, will never be spoken of in this manga. Think of all the horrible things you have ever seen or heard in the news or in history, in the real world. Slavery. Execution by a thousand cuts. Organ harvesting. Execution by small animals tunneling into the body. Gene modification. People who lock their own families in the basement. Torture. Sexual abuses. And that's only considering things that have really happened - forget horrors that people have dreamed or imagined. Now add healing magic - the body can be made whole, to suffer infinitely. Or mind magic - memory can be erased, and abuses can be hidden forever.

Now add all the other magic we've seen. Magical heat - enough to melt solid metal. Immolation fire, from a bit of ink. Blood water manipulation. Crushing bone rocks into sand. Weaving flesh stone like a liquid. Animal or monster hybridization. Transport gates into or out of the body. All those things are lethal - or torturous. Healing magic allows someone to maintain their victims through almost any suffering, almost indefinitely.

Then add the fact that force is the only commodity that can't be regulated - witches who do evil can kill other witches who enforce the law, and that healing magic itself can be used to negate force - witches who do evil might find ways to use healing magic that make them indestructible. And of course, law enforcement is only a problem for evil witches if they're ever found out, in between healing magic, and memory magic, and other methods of concealing their actions.

The problem with healing magic has very little to do with healing magic. It's that once healing magic is out there in the wild, it makes all these other things uncontrollable.

Just look at Qifrey - he's not even doing anything particularly bad, but he's already abusing memory magic to hide from his own best friend.
 
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@x754 all kinds of magic can be abused for torturous or potentially lethal ends; so your argument only works against magic as a whole, not against healing magic alone. However, somehow we're not seeing the pointy hats rushing to forbid it altogether, or increasingly regulate its usage (say, through limiting access to the magical ink). Furthermore, forbidding that magic be cast on people, forbidding medical magic, and at the same time gleefully using memory manipulation (including on civilians) is the height of hypocrisy coming from the pointy hat establishment.
 
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@danvolodar
Again, not saying that the Pointed Hat faction is good, just breaking out the reason that they specifically forbid the study of healing magic, because many readers seem to have difficulty understanding why healing magic is a problem for the Pointed Hat faction. And you also failed to see my conclusion:
The problem with healing magic has very little to do with healing magic. It's that once healing magic is out there in the wild, it makes all these other things uncontrollable.

If the problem were lethality, they would only allow healing magic, and forbid everything else. So clearly the problem isn't lethality, the problem is access. Obviously, there's a reason they want to maintain access to all the lethal forms of magic: because there's way more lethal magic users than there are healing magic users! The majority of mages want to keep access to as many other disciplines as possible, so they suppress the small group whose discipline they have a problem with - healing magic.

Again, healing magic is the only discipline that specifically turns all other lethal magic into torture, and turns magical law enforcement into a magical arms/healing race.

Without healing magic, other lethal magic is just murder. And ordinary witches stop using magic on other people because murder gets them into trouble - it's much harder to cover up those disappearances, and eventually villagers will come with pitchforks, nobles will come with armies, and other moralistic witches will come to do battle. Sort of like guns - ordinary people try not to use guns because we assume that guns are lethal, and the outcome of using them is just murder, and murder gets us into trouble.

But with healing magic in the wild, all this lethal magic is "solveable". And ordinary witches can use their lethal magic on other people all they want, because healing magic can "fix" their abuses, mistakes, and tortures. There is no "anti-gun" that "solves" for the lethality of guns in the real world. But if there were items like personal kinetic shields that appear in Dune, or healing patches we could stick over a bullet hole, then ordinary people might start to use guns more freely, because those things "fix" the lethality of guns.
 

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