919: Tween Bromance

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 11:55, 20 August 2013 by 157.160.45.198 (talk) (Explanation)
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Tween Bromance
Verbiage. Va-jay-jay. Irregardless.
Title text: Verbiage. Va-jay-jay. Irregardless.

Explanation

This comic is playing off the fact that people have words that drive them crazy or gross them out. Moist is a very common word that people have a strong dislike to. In this comic, Cueball seems to be dictating a "tween bromance" story or novel to Megan, who is possibly typing it up. Cueball is including all the words that get to Megan in a sequence (including the final 3 words in the title text). The 3 words in the title text are said after Megan says "STOP IT! STOP IT!"

To go into more details:

  • The first four words are portmanteaus:
    • Tween” means a pre-adolescent.
    • Bromance” means a close non-sexual friendship between two males.
    • Guesstimate” means an estimate made with very little information.
    • Frenemy” means a mixture of a friend and a rival.
  • Yiff” is a word invented by the furry community, derived from the sound a fox makes during mating.
  • Taint” is the part between the genitals and the anus in slang.
  • Preggers” a slang term for being pregnant.
  • verbiage” is a fairly new usage of an older word, meaning too many words used to explain a subject.
  • Va-jay-jay” is just a way of saying “vagina”.
  • Irregardless” is a solecism.

Transcript

[All of Cueball's lines are overlaid over the entire comic; the panels listed are merely the ones directly under each sentence fragment.]
[Cueball is standing smugly behind Megan, who is seated in front of a computer and typing.]
Cueball: By my guesstimate,
Cueball: my frenemy yiffed so hard
Cueball: her moist taint made
[Megan's eye twitches.]
Cueball: her panties preggers!
Megan: STOP IT STOP IT!

Trivia

  • Like this comic fills a sentence with (gross) neologisms, 550: Density crams a sentence with memes.


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Discussion

Language elitist. Davidy²²[talk] 09:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I think this needs an incomplete flag: the explanation needs more contextual detail, about colloquial portmanteaus like 'frenemy' and the common disapproval of 'words' like 'irregardless'. --Mynotoar (talk) 08:59, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

GAH! He's not DICTATING, the title is another joke! Tween? Bromance? Come on fellas and ladies. They are the first two portmanteaus! Cueball is essentially spitting out a sentence with an endless stream of irritating, inane, infintilisms, in an incredibly insensitive, lol, effort to drive Megan to the brink of insanity! Couldn't resist that last one. Yiffed made me giggle, the rest, connected to it, made my abs hurt from laughing, especially after Megan's reaction. He deserves a medal. Oh goodness. No profile so please don't use my IP address to violate me via the Internetz, if that is possible to do with an IP address. I would not know. Grazie. 173.245.55.84 09:32, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not anybody here, I was just passing by and enjoying the annotations on these xkcd comics, but it seems to me like no explanation of this comic would be complete without talking about word aversion, sometimes called "the moist panties phenomenon", if someone wants to be funny. Basically, he is listing words that make people (or Randall himself?) uncomfortable. This page --- http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004835.html -- talks about word aversion in relation to the more common "word rage" that some neologisms and words that began as errors provoke. 108.162.237.192 08:52, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The back of the chair is missing in the first frame. Probably just a mistake but didn't see it mentioned. 108.162.216.33 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Just a question: tween really is PRE-adolescent?? I always thought it was the equivalent of ten -> teen for twenty, so someone out of their teens, but in their (presumably early) twenties. I definitely have seen it used as such on different occasions, but it might have been by non-native speakers, as I am not living in an english-speaking country. Also, in my opinion, the rest of the comic has more of a twenty-somethings-who-never-came-out-of-puberty ring to it than a child's. 162.158.85.69 19:41, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

2 minutes ago I thought the same. I definitely saw that usage as an anglicism in German somewhere. However a quick google search proved, that the definition given here (children aged ~9-12) seems to be the actual one. --Lupo (talk) 08:56, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
I think there are two parallel usages in play. I'm not a native speaker, but "tweens" is used by Tolkien in the Lord of the rings for the twenties in hobbits, who are only considered adult in their early thirties. Any usage derived from this probably refers to the early twenties. The books (and later the films) are a staple of popular culture around the world, so that slipping into a current vocabulary would not surprise me. Wether it was redefined to mean another age group by someone not familiar with the story or reinvented via a different etymology is a mystery to me. Definitely confused me the first time I read it somewhere with the other meaning. 162.158.154.139 10:45, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

By my understanding, a "tween" is someone aged (roughly) 10-12, i.e. somewhere "between" early childhood and teenager-hood. 108.162.215.118 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Oh, so one should stop searching for "tween porn"? 198.41.242.119 13:42, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems the link to the "portmanteau" changed. Perhaps an archive copy can be found? 172.70.147.131 18:18, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Why is this in furries category!? Moderator (talk) 23:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind Moderator (talk) 23:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

updated for the new generation: "By my sigma grindset, my oomfie rizzed so hard her moist gyatt made her skibidi in Ohio!" Arthur101 (talk) 15:48, 3 March 2024 (UTC)