Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have collaboratively explained 6 xkcd comics, and only 3255 (100%) remain. Add yours while there's a chance!
Latest comic
| Side Effect |
 Title text: Brace yourself--the chirp gets pretty weird. |
Explanation
Beret Guy tells Ponytail about the new medication he’s using, with the entirely precedented side effect of sensitivity to Sun exposure and the far less normal sensitivity to gravitational waves. At first she replies that those side effects are normal, then does a double take and is confused about the second effect. Then, when she realizes, Beret Guy starts to exhibit the stretching and squishing of a gravitational wave, but by obviously visible amounts. Beret Guy's hat also stretches and shrinks, indicating it could be a part of his body, which contradicts the idea from an earlier comic that it is stapled to his head. (Or perhaps it's part of the strange power the medicine makes him exhibit.)
This is probably the most extreme example to date of Beret Guy being peculiarly sensitive to minuscule external forces. However, rather than showing concern for his body rapidly changing shape, he instead enjoys the feeling, saying 'Whee' in the last panel.
"The chirp" refers to gravitational waves during the end-stages of black hole collision, during which expansion and contraction of the waves increase in frequency to the point where they alternate extremely rapidly (the term comes from how it sounds when the gravitational wave is represented through sound). This would cause Beret Guy's body to also change form repeatedly and rapidly.
Transcript
- [Beret Guy is standing to the right of Ponytail.]
- Beret Guy: This new topical medication makes me extra sensitive to sun exposure and gravitational waves.
- [Beret Guy's arms are out.]
- Ponytail: Oh yeah, that's a common ...wait, what was that last part?
- Beret Guy: Here comes one now!
- [Ponytail stands facing Beret Guy, who is stretched out in height.]
- [Ponytail stands facing Beret Guy, who is now shorter and wider than he was originally.]
- [Ponytail stands facing Beret Guy, who is now stretched out in height again as he was in the third panel.]
- Beret Guy: WHEEE!
Is this out of date? .
New here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes, memes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wikis like this, take a look at these help pages describing how to navigate the wiki, and how to edit pages.
- Discussion about various parts of the wiki is going on at Explain XKCD:Community portal. Share your 2¢!
- List of all comics contains a complete table of all xkcd comics so far and the corresponding explanations. The red links (like this) are missing explanations. Feel free to help out by creating them! Here's how.
Rules
Don't be a jerk. There are a lot of comics that don't have set in stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to —and helping everyone better understand— xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited.) Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
