explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2760: Paleontology Museum

2023-04-08T03:19:31Z

Gbredthauer: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2760
| date = April 7, 2023
| title = Paleontology Museum
| image = paleontology_museum_2x.png
| imagesize = 485x155px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Nowadays the only ones left that do anything are turtles.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a ROCK - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, Cueball and Megan went to a paleontology museum and are looking at the skeleton of a {{w|Stegosaurus}}.
Dinosaurs encompassed a wide variety of species that would be amazing to see alive today. Cueball is remarking that the fossilized specimens they're looking at (dinosaurs that are now rocks) used to be way cooler when they were alive.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball and Megan are in a Paleontology Museum. The front part of the dinosaur bones is standing before them. ]
:[Cueball: Wow. ]
:[Rocks used to be ''so cool.'' ]

:

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

2760: Paleontology Museum

2023-04-08T03:19:01Z

Gbredthauer: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2760
| date = April 7, 2023
| title = Paleontology Museum
| image = paleontology_museum_2x.png
| imagesize = 485x155px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Nowadays the only ones left that do anything are turtles.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a ROCK - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, Cueball and Megan went to a paleontology museum and are looking at the skeleton of a {{w|Stegosaurus}}.
Dinosaurs encompassed a wide variety of species that would be amazing to see alive today. Cueball is remarking that the fossilized specimens they're looking it (dinosaurs that are now rocks) used to be way cooler when they were alive.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball and Megan are in a Paleontology Museum. The front part of the dinosaur bones is standing before them. ]
:[Cueball: Wow. ]
:[Rocks used to be ''so cool.'' ]

:

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

2609: Entwives

2022-04-20T16:37:26Z

Gbredthauer: "two women" instead of "to women"

{{comic
| number = 2609
| date = April 20, 2022
| title = Entwives
| image = entwives.png
| titletext = No, we actually do have a woman who's basically part of our fellowship. She lives in Rivendell, you wouldn't know her.
}}

==Explanation==
In {{w|The Lord of the Rings}}, the {{w|Ent|Ents}} are a species of tree-like humanoids, such as the one depicted in this comic. Part of the backstory of the Ents is that all of the women of their species (the Entwives that this comic is named for) left many years ago over a dispute with the male Ents, who have since been searching for them in an attempt to make amends and preserve the future of their species. The loneliness of the Ents' all-male society is considered a great tragedy in their culture.

This comic uses that plot point to satirically comment on the extreme gender imbalance of the cast of Lord of the Rings; when presented with the all-male Fellowship of the Ring, the Ent assumes that they must come from a culture afflicted by a similar tragedy. In reality, of course, the dwarves (to an extent), elves, hobbits, and men all have a roughly even gender ratio, and the lack of women in the Fellowship is due not to cultural tragedy, but to strict gender roles excluding women from an adventuring party. Or the author simply neglected to include any female characters.

The clickable link leads to a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt2qCjL6-n4 video showing the singular scene where two women interact], which is there to emphasize how few women there are in the franchise. The inclusion of this clip may be a reference to the {{w|Bechdel test}}, a metric for judging the representation of women in a piece of media that requires two women to have a conversation about something other than a man. Whether this two-and-a-half-word exchange is sufficient to pass the test is debatable.

The title-text most likely refers to the character of Arwen; while somewhat important to the story, she is nowhere near on the level of the Fellowship, and even if she were, a single important woman wouldn't counterbalance the heavily male-centric storytelling. The way that the title text is phrased is a reference to the proverbial (and implicitly imaginary) "{{tvtropes|GirlfriendInCanada|Girlfriend in Canada}}," a trope in which a single character claims to have a girlfriend that their friends wouldn't know "because she lives in Canada" (or some other sufficient separation such as "goes to another school"), when in reality the reason that nobody else has met her is because she doesn't exist. {{w|Canada}} is one of the United States' two neighboring countries, making it a potentially plausible place for some American's long-distance girlfriend to live, and presumably the Fellowship consider the Elf kingdom to be sufficiently distant to allow the Ent to accept the plausibility of the statement without any further delving into potentially awkward details.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[Ent Man stands to the left, facing right. Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and three hobbits stand to the right of Ent Man, facing him.]

Ent Man: Alas, there are no Ent women. The Entwives all vanished in the second age, during Sauron's war.

Aragorn: I'm so sorry.

Ent Man: And what about you all? Same story, I assume?

Aragorn: Huh? No, what do you mean?

{{comic discussion}}