Witch Hat Atelier - Vol. 8 Ch. 42

[danvolodar]

@x754

Again, healing magic is the only discipline that specifically turns all other lethal magic into torture

Non-magical healing still exists in the setting, so it's perfectly possible to torture with magic even without healing the victim back magically.
For what it's worth, it's perfectly possible to restrain the victim with magic and torture them through purely mundane means.

And ordinary witches stop using magic on other people because murder gets them into trouble - it's much harder to cover up those disappearances

Oh, but they have memory editing magic they aren't banning, remember? So no villagers with pitchforks and no nobles with armies. Anyone who's disappeared? Simply has never existed.

Sort of like guns - ordinary people try not to use guns because we assume that guns are lethal

Guns are a good analogy. To limit the damage people do with guns, we limit access to guns, make guns traceable, and keep advancing healing and defensive techniques, rather than making wearing armour vests illegal or banning resuscitation. The pointy hats could very well keep the availability of magic to the bare necessary minimum through controlling the ink; they could also make each spell traceable through a system of traceable chemical additives in each mage's ink; or at least keep potentially lethal magic out of the hands of preteens.
They do none of these things, they simply ban the one magic school most useful for laymen, while keeping the lucrative monopoly on all the rest.

 

[alacaelum]

@danvolodar Just to further your last point a little, it seems it IS already possible to trace magic to its origin, it was the entire plot point of Qifrey talking to mister Nornoa to analyse the ink of that brimhat, sure it seems that it is possible too to jam this capacity and stay hidden, but this clearly needs some serious skill to pull off so it isnt just anyone that can, so regulating magic could be possible in a more free level.

 

[nivinator]

@x754 The reasons they use to ban healing magic can easily be applied to any other kind of magic. Your point about healing magic being used to perpetuate evil doesn't make any sense because the kind of people you refer to--people who use healing to prolong torture or evil witches who make themselves indestructible--wouldn't care about its legality in the first place. So these people are still able to use healing for these purposes. The only people these laws are hurting are the innocents who want to use healing magic for actual healing. The ban solves absolutely NOTHING. As @danvolodar mentioned, the easier way to solve this problem would just be to limit the use of harmful magic itself.

 

[x754]

@nivinator
The ban solves nothing in the short run, that is true - nobody who wants to use healing magic for evil is going to stop because of a ban. Look at the Brimhats - clearly nothing stops them. But what happens in the long run when the Magic Security Council put effort to punishing all those who know healing magic, and destroying all their written records?
Slowly the mages who know healing magic grow fewer in number, because they aren't around to teach anyone. That's why only the small number of Brimhats know healing magic - because dead witches teach no students.

It's the same thing that happens when you ban a book or story, and destroy all the hard copies you can find. Eventually, nobody is left who remembers the banned book existed, or what its contents might have been. The Catholic church has probably erased many dozens or even hundreds of heretical books and pamphlets this way, which is why Christianity took so long to accept scientific advancements such as the heliocentric model.

 

[nivinator]

@x754 True, but this means that one of the most powerful magics will always be in the hands of evil, right? While good doesn't have healing magic and will have to suffer through injuries, the dark side will be practically invincible. And this would probably also lead to a lot of regular mages aligning with and therefore strengthening the dark side (i.e. the Brimhats) in order to learn healing magic. While they probably had good intentions while making these laws, the only people they benefit in the long run is "bad" people. I just feel like there's a better way they could have done this lol.

 

[x754]

@nivinator
"I just feel like there's a better way they could have done this lol."
Basically, the ban against healing magic is exactly like the war on drugs so far. Under the ban the only people who control healing magic are the Brimhats, just like in the drug war the only people who control drugs are criminal cartels. Anyone who has any real experience with healing or drugs realizes that legalization and regulation would be better than criminalization. And that the real problem with healing and drugs is not healing or drugs themselves, but the violent, punishing environment that make those things useful.

I don't necessarily believe that suppressing healing magic is productive. I've only been explaining why the Conehats fear it, why they ban it, and how they've been "successful" so far. - edit: "Success" is a relative measurement.

Returning to the point in my original post, I still believe that the kind of deep abuses that healing magic can achieve are not work safe, family friendly, or even socially acceptable for any commercial publication. The kind of deep abuses that healing magic can achieve would lie beyond the deepest corners of the body horror-snuff-n/c genres, and would be unmentionable even by Warhammer 40k standards. As such, we will never see any fear of healing magic justified in this manga, because we can never see real abuses drawn or discussed in this setting - it's just not the correct genre.

 

[Ezplorer]

I thought it was forbidden to do healing magic, but not to learn some things about normal medicine