71: In the Trees

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Jump to: navigation, search
In the Trees
It was tricky.
Title text: It was tricky.

Explanation[edit]

This comic focuses on dark humor. In the first panel, the viewer is led to believe that it is a comic lamenting on the loss of love, as it states, "We made it so far together, but then I lost you in the trees." However, when we read the second panel ("Finally"), it becomes clear that the joke is that the loss of this "love" is what he had been hoping for all along. The supposed pain that came from such losing a long relationship came not from lamenting the loss of something he put so much effort into, but instead into the fact that it took so long to get there. The title text just furthers this idea.

The expression could at first be interpreted as metaphorical, but from the later panels and the background, it may be a literal loss in a forest.

There is a similar twist in comics 334: Wasteland and 1042: Never.

Transcript[edit]

[Cueball is standing in a forest.]
Cueball: We made it so far together but then I lost you in the trees.
[A closer view of Cueball.]
Cueball: Finally.


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

I also thought this comic made a vague reference to "losing the forest for the trees". losing the big picture is often criticized, but here he seems glad to stick to the details and not the big picture. ‎141.101.70.139 (talk) 11:01, 20 January 2016 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)