Several years ago I started watching “retail archeology” channels on Youtube. There’s a range of them, and one is actually called Retail Archeology, but they’re all subtly different in their subject matter and presentation. Some of them aren’t exclusive to that subject, like Brightsun Films, and some are pretty dedicated to one aspect of the genre. Today I watched a video about the liquidation of Forever 21. If you aren’t familiar with the brand it’s what’s called a “fast fashion” chain, which basically translates to cheap crap you wear. Like most physical stores the pandemic crippled them and the rise of online crap retailers, like Temu, basically put them down for good.
Forever 21 had a very particular aesthetic that was representative of the era that created it. Sort of like a reverse Hot Topic. There were other brands with a similar vibe, which have also fallen off, like Claire’s, but have survived to varying degrees of success. I was never a customer of Forever 21, but they were a mainstay of the strip mall I worked at, or around, for about a decade. The location I worked near was one of the smaller imprints they had for that style of mall, but they did brisk business for the better part of 20 years. Their management wasn’t able to navigate the changing landscape of retail and they went bankrupt last year sometime, if memory serves.
This is all germane to my story in that Megatainment would be a Barnes & Noble style location, which also underwent hard times as the rise of the internet & the pandemic took down a few similar chains. Borders might be a better parallel, although in reality my experience was with Hasting Entertainment, which was a cross between a B&N/Borders and a Blockbuster Video. I omitted the video rental aspect of my experience because even by the time I started almost 20 years ago video rental was barely hanging on. In universe Megatainment could conceivably survive the cultural shift, and continue being a location all the way to the end of the series. It doesn’t have to for the story to continue, but if I so chose it wouldn’t seem impossible.
My story is hovering around inside that era of uncertainty. Hastings Entertainment folded before the pandemic. 2016 was it’s final operational year. If it had survived pas that time the pandemic would have absolutely put it down. The leadership was barely competent enough to manage when the US was at the height of its consumerism. The pandemic would have been beyond the pale. I have to give them credit however. They outlasted a couple of competitors. I’m not 100% sure how, but they were at least wily enough to do so for a little while.
I’ve always been pretty vague about the actual years Between Failures takes place in, but the story would start somewhere around 2002 or 3. I didn’t hold to very strict rules about the timeline, but some of the earliest parts have references to things that anchor the story to a pretty specific era if not actual dates. At some point I intended to go back and make the references less specific, but on some level I can never escape the fact that Between Failures takes place in the past. A past that gets further and further away every moment.
The culture that spawned my work no longer exists. There are fewer and fewer people with living memory of it every year. On some level it’s unfortunate that I didn’t stick to a hard timeline because BF might be more valuable as a historical text if I had. I didn’t know where this was all going to go when I started. It was just a reason to keep living at a time when I very much didn’t want to anymore.
It’s also basically always been a first draft. Written in chunks, on the fly, as I outlined the overall story. Given that I feel like I’ve done pretty well stringing together pages day after day in a way that feels very natural when read all in one go. Since my sense of time doesn’t work properly I almost always feel like it’s only been a few days, and also an eternity, since I started, even though I logically know it’s really been a pretty long time in human years.
Those of you who are older than me will already know this, and those of you who are younger can’t truly understand it yet, but over time we all become relics of the times that created us. We get left behind even though we’re still here. For me I have one foot in this time period that is long gone and I have to put the other foot back there 3 times a week. So I modulate back and forth all the time, which makes me feel like I don’t really belong in either place now. I have to stay in the between times, as Jo would say. At the very least I’m glad people come to visit me here.

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I’ve said before that this is one of the last webcomics I still check in on regularly out of that glut of webcomics that started in the early 2000s. I think part of that is that you haven’t reinvented it or changed up the main cast or had the cast drastically shift personality along the way. I’m two decades older now, but Between Failures is anchored in a time 20 years ago. I think this is the only medium where that can happen. Live action actors age, animated shows will be subject to the whims of culture and even if their casts are unchanging, it will always take place in the time it is created in. Webcomics though, especially the slice of life comics from around 2003, they’re like a fly trapped in amber. Even if they don’t specify a date and allow some adjustments in tech, they’re still a connection to a time and culture that doesn’t exist anymore. I personally find it comforting to visit a time I enjoyed before friends moved away and relatives passed on, even if it’s three times a week in a long running web comic.

I remember going to Barnes and Noble as a kid. They had a little café in the bookstore…

Good times.

They still exist in a mall I rarely visit because it’s a ways from me. But they shed their self-styled cafe sometime in the last few years in favor of letting Starbucks move in and manage it.

As a former employee of Kinko’s (the glory years, pre-FedEx), I vibe with that feeling of having a chunk of my formative experience become obsolete. But then again, even while I was there, the corporation morphed from a hippie haven staffed largely by people who made zines on company time whenever they could, into a corporate chain with branding and a dress code. Every time I was pushed into getting customers to fill out feedback forms, I felt like a relic.

My google-fu is failing me, and whilst I’ve worked a lot of different jobs none of them quite like this. What is Alpha?

Alphabetization of stock.

I don’t comment often, but as a former Hastings Entertainment employee myself, yeah Alpha was the eternal backup job duty.

Admittedly also the part of the job I personally liked the most, when I could sneak away from customers to do it, despite it being considered the drudge work by most of my coworkers because of how quickly and often it got messed back up.

Your comic definitely made some of those years easier to push through though, even before Hastings imploded in upon itself, so thank you for sticking with it, Jackie.

My last wage slave job was as a mechanic for the local cab company. Blockbuster had red box/netflix cab companies had uber/lift.

We splurged on Kitchen Aid stand mixer thirty years ago. It outlived Lechmere’s, the place we bought it from.

(Then again, it will outlive me.)

There’s a freezer that my parents bought from Sears before I was born. Avocado green. Over 4 decades old and it’s still running.

That’s cool. :D
There’s a guy named Brian, who has a blog named, plaidstallions [dot] com.

He likes to talk about [1970s + 1980s], toys + pop culture, on his blog.
I think his dream is to own a: 1970s era, green fridge.
:D

The culture has long moved beyond me, too, and I am/was an electrical engineer. Designed TV cameras in the Analog standard-definition days. Thankfully I was able to retire when I saw that the only part of the next generation of cameras I could work on was the power supply, and even THAT was going digital. Now I write articles on the history of TV technology.

I’ve never done work quite like this, but ‘lets stand on silence until someone notices us and forces us to do the full boring task’ is such a mood. I used to have to trick myself into doing the dull tasks. “Oh I’ll just give this surface a quick wipe so I’m my manager comes in it looks like it has been wiped and then she won’t ask me to wipe it. Hah! I have beat the system”.
Idk,.feels like the same energy to me.

Please why are there only ever gay female characters in this web comic?

I’m a gay female, so I write what I know.

“Technically speaking, we’re all bisexuals…”
–Jess

Are you questioning why all the gay characters are female, why all the female characters are gay, why every character in the comic is a gay female, or what?

Modalities of your vaguely-worded and thus essentially valueless question:

– “Why are there only ever GAY female characters in this web comic?” – why aren’t there any straight female characters in this web comic?
– “Why are there only ever gay FEMALE characters in this web comic?” – why aren’t there any gay characters that are male/ other than female?
– “Why are there only ever gay female CHARACTERS in this web comic?” – why aren’t there gay female embodiments of concepts, e.g. ‘deus ex machina’, or items, such as toasters or bookshelves?
– “Why are there only ever GAY FEMALE CHARACTERS in this web comic?” – why is the only character type in this web comic ‘gay female characters’? Where are the straight men, etc?

I think that in actual fact what you’re going for is a petty complaint, so… whatever man :)

‘S funny, I’ve never noticed that Carol or Nina were gay…

Ha!
:D

It’s funny, because Nina was all over a certain Lincoln within the first day he arrived at the store. There was no subtlety there what she wanted.

But I guess that’s not enough heteo-normative enough for some fans. They needed it to be the sole focus of the comic or its forgotten.

I’m starting to think we all have ADHD brains.

I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one whose sense of time works like that…or maybe I’m more broken than I knew.

I miss Hastings even if it was mismanaged. Also Waldenbooks, Hooked on Books and the Cosmic Squire book store.

“Over time we all become relics of the times that created us. We get left behind even though we’re still here.” Huh. That’ll be my sobering thought of the day. Ah, the human condition…

I have been reading your webcomic for a good chunk of the last 2 decades too and, on this night, I am eager to write this. Agreeing with Boxilar, I was thinking to myself, just recently that I appreciate this being a halt in time, the same in the ever ending changling world. I am the relic, who appreciates this more so with every year passing by. Thank you.

I remember when the internet existed, but web browsers didn’t.
I remember when mobile phones existed, but cell phones didn’t.

But I sometimes struggle to remember what we did to kill time alone before cell phones. I mean, I know I read books a lot at home back then. But how did we survive being outside the house for hours without an electronic device to look at? To be fair, I wasn’t the kind of person to leave the house if I didn’t have to very often, so maybe I don’t remember it because I just never left without a reason that made it not an issue?

I don’t think it was acceptable back then to have an appointment and wait for 1-3 hours to actually see someone. Maybe we just never waited long enough to need something to occupy us?

I had Gameboys from the time I was 12 onward. Before that, and even now, I had a small sketchbook and a pen. That’s how I filled time when waiting for things.

The Texan that went up a hill and became king.

There’s a great music video similar to all the comments.

Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths.

@Jonathan B: You mean back when we actually had to talk to people and not just ask seri? Had to explain pagers and pay phones to my neice when she found my old pager. She told the that was stupid and we should have just used a cellphones.

Waiting an hour or two was always a thing, especially with doctors or government offices. It’s why traditionally waiting rooms had stacks of magazines and no clocks.

I live in this feeling constantly. I grew up in the 80s and was a teenager in the 90s. So when this comic essentially takes place, I was the same age as the characters. Most of the story feels like my time at CompUSA during college, but with actual fun hijinks instead of annoying coworkers and meetings on my days off.

I’ll keep visiting you here, Jackie. We’re of a similar ilk and need to stick together.

2807 Yep, Yep, Mhmmm, Yep.

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