There was a dude. He was fucked up for some reason. He fell down all the time. One day he fell into a girl and they fell in love in several seconds. Later, she found out that Sir Falls-a-Lot had impregnated her. She found this out when her baby fell away from her, because having fucked up gravity is not only genetic, it's a dominant trait, apparently. The baby falls into the sunset, screaming, and as the end titles come on screen, we wonder - are those final screams the baby as she falls to a life of torture and pain, or from the mother, on losing her child so soon after birth?
Moral of the story: Randall Munroe thinks it only takes like 2 seconds to impregnate someone.
Update: It just occurred to me that Randall missed a great opportunity for a way better pun than "falling for him." In the 21st panel, when the girl says "He knocked me over and tumbled into the distance" what she should have said was "He knocked me over....and up." HA HA HA!
Reading this post a few months after I wrote it, I can't believe no one else commented on it. I think this is one of the best posts I've ever done.
ReplyDeletemaybe it's just late at night so I'm thinking weird.
I can't hate, I loved the colours in this one. And I have this nagging feeling that the style of his writing is a reference to something.
ReplyDeleteOK, I'll grant you that the colors in row 4 (and a bit in row 3) are nice, and the sunset in the last panel too (though of course, it's covered by screaming).
ReplyDeleteBut no one reads xkcd for nice colors, we have, I don't know, Microsoft Paint to help us with that. Or google image search.
If it is in fact a reference to something and you find out, do tell me, I may have to reevaluate it in that case. As it stands though, I still find this one of the weirdest and worst comics of the past few months. Just...such a strange and disturbing story.
This is apparently referencing "The Time Traveller's Wife," a book I've wanted to read for a long time. But it's basically the same thing, except that it's a dude plagued with random time-travelling skills. And then he has a kid, and she likes time travelling whereas he hated it (and the kid here goes "wheeeee").
ReplyDeleteAll this I got from reading the LJ feed when it came out; I've found that it's really helpful when I'm confused as hell.
Sorry for commenting on an old old post. I just thought I'd try to help out.
It's cool to comment on any post. All the comments get e-mailed to me so I can find them and go back and write responses, as I am doing now.
ReplyDeleteI guess it makes sense as a parody of that book. Now I need to find someone who read it and talk to them. From your description though it sounds like he just took the story and changed "time traveling" to "falling" but not much else...it doesn't really do anything as a parody, you know? But maybe if I'd read the book.
You say:
ReplyDelete"Moral of the story: Randall Munroe thinks it only takes like 2 seconds to impregnate someone."
That was an obvious joke. Unless you were joking, I have yet to understand how you can claim to have anything resembling a sense of humor when you take such jokes so literally.
It seems to me like you're expecting a comic about a person who for no clear reason falls sideways to make some physical sense.
I too was making a joke (perhaps not a good one). Obviously that's not the point of the story; it's just meant to be what was, for me, the lasting memory of this strip: that that girl was impregnated in two seconds from a falling guy.
ReplyDeletei used to think "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee" isn't a scream of either "torture and pain" OR losing a child, but, hey, i guess that's what happens when you don't learn a language properly...
ReplyDelete