One of my favorite webcomics from back in the day was the webcomic Cucumber Quest. I say “back in the day” because it’s one of the first webcomics I started following, once I found out about webcomics, and I followed it right up until it stopped updating in 2019. The creator has posted some additional information about it on their patreon since then, but they’ve not worked on it in a long time (due to burnout) and I am not expecting it to ever continue. I won’t say that it will never continue or that I don’t think it ever will, only that I’m not expecting it to. Sometimes things are good and fun and you love them, but the circumstances of life prevent them from ever being brought to a satisfying conclusion. Sometimes all you get, in the end, is A conclusion. Which is kind of fitting, given the general themes of the story and all. It might seem counterintuitive to recommend a webcomic that stopped updating almost six years ago, but it is still a story near and dear to my heart and easily worth your time even if you will have to eventually cope with the lack of a “proper” resolution. I’d even go so far as to argue that maybe thinking about the story and sitting with the feelings of it ending before the story wrapped up might be the sort of thing that triggers some important introspection. Regardless, it is lovely, it is well-drawn, it is moving, and it does my favorite thing a story can do with a fantasy setting: stand it on its end and make you think about the standard heroic fable tropes you went into it expecting.

The story follows the travels of Cucumber, a young anthropomorphic rabbit boy who wants to go to magic school but is forced to go on an important quest by his mother and father because he is apparently descended from heroes of legend. He gets no say in the matter, no one anywhere seems to be able to help him, and he muddles through on his own until his sister shows up to help him. The two of them travel their world, making friends, encountering enemies, and generally learning what we’ve suspected from the very beginning (since it is heavily implied): this adventure might be dressed up as a heroic quest, but it is actually just another event in a long series that has left the world somewhat broken, the villains sad, and everyone in a position where they’re all constrained by the roles their world and its history demands they play. Heroes, villains, and even the royals we encounter are all trapped by systems not of their own choosing, constrained by what seems to be an unwillingness for the people around them to stop and consider that maybe things shouldn’t just keep going on the way they’ve been going on simply because that’s how they’ve always gone. An idea so fundamental to me that it shows up in all of my own writing in some form or another.

Despite the soft and often saccharine look to the comic (especially the early days, when they’re in the Doughnut Kingdom and everything looks like it’s literally made out of cake or sweets), it never strays into cliché or underestimates its audience. It manages to travel from levity and jokes to darkness and difficult emotions, all without ever going too far or treating its characters and events as anything but serious and worth consideration. Even the silliest moments often suggest there is something bigger on the horizon or direct your attention toward some important theme or plot point. Every character gets their due, even the comic relief characters, all while they all come to slowly realize that there’s something tragic and sad even in their moments of heroic success. There is no character, by the comic’s end, who hasn’t had to confront the reality they find themselves increasingly inhabiting instead of the heroic storybook adventure they initially signed up for. After all, what’s the point of a story about a cycle of terror without the reflection required to actually think about how to break the wheel?

I don’t want to say too much more because I started rereading it recently, after I accidentally typed in the website one day while idly browsing my daily webcomics (it has been over 6 years since I last checked it on a schedule and yet my fingers still start to automatically type in the URL), and all I want to do is gush about it and how it makes me feel now, six years later, when I’ve done the work of breaking the tragic, horrible wheels of my own life. There’s a lot there, to see yourself in, to think about, to endlessly chew on as you enter the stage of your life following reading it, but I promise you will be better off for it. After all, life is rarely satisfactory in that way. Maybe it’s okay that some good things end before you want them to when they’ve already touched your heart. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll be the first in line the instant the artist and author resumes making the series should that ever happen, but it’s okay that it’s over if it never comes back because I got more from it than I ever get from most stories I’ve ever seen or read or heard.