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A while ago I found a webcomic about a little girl born with magic powers in a world where little girls born with magic powers are sent off to a school where they're taught to repress and hide their powers. It was a story about misogyny and patriarchal systems of power and the little acts of joy and resistance that occur in them.

Shortly after I started reading it the artist went on a short hiatus, which extended into a long hiatus, which eventually became an announcement on Twitter that she wasn't going to continue on with the comic. First off, to this day there's no indication that the comic has been discontinued on the website. I don't find this acceptable. While I don't doubt she has a lot more followers on Twitter than readers of this comic I think it's poor form to not put that kind of information on the website itself where everyone interested in reading the comic is guaranteed to see it. I didn't see the announcement for several months myself on account of how Social Media consumes and buries that sort of thing. I specifically searched her twitter account for mentions of the comic to find it.

I'm not writing about that, though. Her twitter-only announcement annoyed me, but not as much as how she justified giving up on the comic. She explained that she was no longer comfortable with the gender existentialist nature of the setting, where only little girls got magic powers and were subjected to this treatment. In her eyes, she had to either continue with a concept she was no longer comfortable with, or end the comic.

As a wise person once said, "Okay… nice dichotomy, IDIOT ‼ what lies outside it???"

The fundamental problem here is, the artist was looking at the problem from inside her story. She knew how she wanted it to go. She made a world to explore a metaphorized form of internalized misogyny, where women ran a school designed to punish girls for being themselves. Her explanation included a brief mention of a future storyline where the girls ran away and found solace with someone in the woods living outside their system of repression. Her vision for the story could not escape the fundamental nature of the world she had crafted for it. Except, that world was not on the page.

Who is it in the story who says only girls get magic powers? The girls, and the teachers they trust to tell them the truth. Teachers who, incidentally, are lying to them constantly about how dangerous their powers are. So who is it actually saying it's only women who have magic powers? The artist. That's the world she set down when she started, and when she realized how this put her on the same feminist level as Robert Jordan she didn't know how to break out of that box.

I recently finished reading Dungeon Meshi (recently, as in, two hours ago) and it was thinking about that story that reminded me of this comic. Early in the manga the mechanics of the world are presented in a pretty clear way. Dungeons are like giant magical batteries. They can form naturally or be constructed and when properly tended they build up magic that can be harnessed by the so-called Lord of the Dungeon to alter the fundamental nature of reality inside. It's such a well-understood concept that kids in magic school can make model dungeons in a beaker.

To put it mildly, this is not how it works at the end of the comic. Certain rules about dungeons are handwaved away thanks to events during the climax, but there are revelations about the nature of dungeons and the force that has driven them for all of history that are hard to square with the earlier explanation. Perhaps it does all fit together if you squint and look at it the same way, but more importantly it does not matter. Ryōko Kui did not say "Well hang on, I can't introduce this concept because it doesn't fit with the flashback I did 50 chapters ago" because honestly who cares? It's a better story because she let it be a better story. She let it grow past the boundaries she set out at the start and it became a compelling exploration of human need and desire.

The webcomic artist could have introduced the idea that actually boys get magic powers too, and this hasn't been mentioned before because the patriarchal world treats them totally differently. Maybe they're shipped off to fight far from home. Maybe they're immediately killed. Maybe they're elevated to become wizards and warriors of legend and it just never occurred to there poor little girls that there is no difference between them and these celebrated heroes. From outside, looking at just the story that had been written, I don't think it would be a jarring change. It would be a smaller than how the world changed in Dungeon Meshi.

Don't be afraid to let go of the story you set out to write if you find yourself rubbing up against the edges of it. People grow and change over time, and stories can change too, especially when they're written slowly over many years. Don't be afraid to ask for help, either. I don't know if this artist talked to anyone else about her feelings before deciding to abandon the story. If you feel trapped by the story in your head then a trusted friend can share their outside perspective. Maybe you'll find that the insurmountable problems you thought were there are surmountable after all.