Remember when we thought Years were a clear divider, a fresh start from all the bad? It’s funny to me rereading this and realizing we’ve been praying to some invisible Year God for an abundant Year for half a decade. It’s a marker of the times. The truth is nothing snaps back, especially when the Bad Events are merely symptoms of long-established conditions. I have some regret that Jane’s new position in the company wasn’t really shown. Like everything else in the series, it needed to be wrapped up neatly, but surely she’s in for more than girlbossery; the onslaught of pressure from investors, landlords, employees and suppliers was right around the corner. I’d thought about exploring the business model and the kind of role Jane would take if I ever revisited OP, but Covid kind of knocked all that for a loop. I always wrote OP in “realtime” to try and process the moment. Mike’s little coffee shop would likely die off, relocate, or still be struggling under new guidelines. It’s hard to say what a scrappy but inexperienced beneficiary would do with this reality. Life is long, and nothing stays the same. |
"Mike’s little coffee shop would likely die off, relocate, or still be struggling under new guidelines."
This honestly might be true even without COVID, given the way Brooklyn commercial rents keep pricing out everything that's not a bank or a high end chain grocery store, and pushing the mom and pop stuff further and further east. Every time I go back to the city, there's a whole new set of "we opened three months ago and haven't run out of money … yet" coffee shops I have to familiarize myself with.
Mmm. I take issue with this take, it lends itself to a certain self-justifying apathy. Nothing snaps back but things are always in flux, giving value to the arbitrary markers we set to "start over" and instigate change within and around ourselves.
I also take particular issue with the idea that "nothing snaps back, especially when the Bad Events are merely symptoms of long-established conditions." It's not so simple to say that the Bad Events were always in the making because they weren't. The cake isn't made until it's baked, regardless of whether all the ingredients are there or not, and I can say with 100% certainty that there are Bad Events now that are very much new and weren't around or possibly even conceived of when this comic was originally written.
Wait……so Covid took a possible Octopus Pie reboot from us, too??!!?? :'(