145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics

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Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics
Guys: while I was writing this, I accidentally swallowed a table-size slab of drywall. I know! Wacky.
Title text: Guys: while I was writing this, I accidentally swallowed a table-size slab of drywall. I know! Wacky.

Explanation

This comic is a part of the Parody Week, just joking about other webcomics. This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule and is comprised of the following five parodies:

Dinosaur Comics is a webcomic by Ryan North. The artwork never changes, save a few rare exceptions, and only the dialogue is different. Randall traced the comic's usual artwork, though the drawing of the house about to be squashed in panel 3 is a more rudimentary rendition.

For those who haven't read it, this is a typical strip, and here's a strip dealing with the same subject as this comic (but posted five years after it). See also this particular example where the title text actually refer to Randall and xkcd.

Randall makes several shots at recurring themes in Dinosaur Comics. T-Rex, the green dinosaur, is bold and enthusiastic, discussing various topics, a favorite of which appears to be linguistics. This time, he is talking about they being used as a third person singular gender-free pronoun and how it should be more widely used, even though its acceptance varies. Dromiceiomimus, the white dinosaur in the third panel, usually responds calmly to T-Rex's discussions. Utahraptor, the orange dinosaur, typically contradicts T-Rex, but Randall subverts this pattern and has him agree. The comic suggests that the perpetual disagreement stems from a 'rift' in the author's mind, which would be healed if only he lived in a world where there were a land bridge between Asia and North America.

Like xkcd, Dinosaur Comics has title texts. Ryan's title texts tend to be bizarre non-sequiturs, and the title text in this parody fits this pattern.

In the last panel, the narrator starts with "In a world…", a phrase made famous by Don LaFontaine in movie trailers. It remains unclear what is meant by the reference to Dinosaur Comics being set in a world where the land bridge between Asia and North American still exists, as all the dinosaurs in this and therefore all Dinosaur Comics lived in North America in real life. [1] [2] [3] The suggestion that "everyone is bicurious" may be a reference to Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth.

Characters from Dinosaur Comics later appeared in 1350: Lorenz (see under Dinosaur) and in 1452: Jurassic World.

Transcript

T-Rex: THINGS I AM UPPITY ABOUT: "They" as a third-person singular gender-free pronoun.
T-Rex: I'm all for it!
Dromiceiomimus: But isn't that terrible grammar?
T-Rex: Only by recent convention! It's been in use that way for centuries, and its use is widely accepted! ALSO: this lets us avoid ridiculous constructs like "he/she", "s/he", "xe" or "hirs"!
Utahraptor: T-Rex, I... agree.
T-Rex: What?
Utahraptor: That sounds good to me!
Utahraptor: Normally I'd jump in with an objection, but I think your point makes sense.
T-Rex: Could it be that the rift in our author's mind has finally healed? Is he no longer locked in perpetual war with the self-doubt that lurks in his subc-
Narrator: IN A WORLD WHERE THERE IS STILL A LAND BRIDGE BETWEEN ASIA AND NORTH AMERICA FOR SOME REASON:
T-Rex: -onscious?
Narrator: ALSO HOW ABOUT IN THIS WORLD EVERYONE IS BICURIOUS


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Discussion

The word "bicurious" has also been referenced in Dinosaur Comics: [4] [5] 199.27.128.116 00:27, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Great, added for the explanation. --Kynde (talk) 20:21, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

The paragraph saying Randall is unfamiliar w/ genderqueer pronouns seems mistaken to me. He doesn't delve into a discussion of the different shades of meaning there, sure, but I think that's a stylistic choice consistent with making a readable comic --172.69.22.104 02:15, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

I think this page needs to be updated, as you don't need to be genderqueer to use neopronouns. Anyone can use whatever pronouns they want, and I don't agree that the definition of genderqueer on this page is the best one. In fact, the large majority of people who use neopronouns identify as non-binary, and this is seeming to show it's age.