721: Flatland

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Flatland
Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.
Title text: Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.

Explanation

This comic is a reference to the satirical novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which a society of flat shapes live in a 2D world. The narrator of this novel is a square that is introduced to 3D by a sphere. Cueball appears to have take the place of this sphere, and the comic takes place after the square knows the third dimension exists.

Cueball, a 3D figure, attempted a demo of the 4D game Miegakure, which confused him, even being only one dimension higher. Now he is sympathetic for the square, which he tried to introduce to 3D, which is one dimension higher for the square. The square then accepts his apology.

The joke here is that Cueball was being silly and drew lines on the square to make it look like Spongebob, which did not make the square happy. Cueball apologizes again.

The title text is a third apology for when Cueball crawled down into the second dimension. Being a stick figure, he is comprised of a circle and straight lines. In the book Flatland, a circle is the highest social level, a priest, and all women are lines; thus, to a watcher in flatland, Cueball would look very much like a priest above many connected women, which would look like an orgy between women.

Transcript

[Person encounters a square on the ground.]
Person: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland?
A. Square: Still flat. What's up?
Person: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure.
[A character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.]
Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain.
Person: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now.
A. Square: It's okay.
Person: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like Spongebob. That was out of line.
A. Square: Yes, it was.