Post by So Okay Here's the Thing / Redsky

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they're always either saying stuff like "the sword in hamlet represents the alignment of stars at full moon" or saying stuff like "perhaps there are queer themes in the Little Mermaid"

aug 6, 2025, 7:47 pm • 6 0

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shoutout to this specific XKCD comic I remember whenever I think about this. last panel is a beautifully-blended hybrid of my two above-described types of analysis parody STEM people will write "literary deconstruction tends to reflect on the analyst's worldview" and think it's a revolutionary take

XKCD comic. Transcript from explainxkcd.com: [Caption above the panels:] My Hobby: Sitting down with grad students and timing how long it takes them to figure out that I'm not actually an expert in their field. [For all four panels below, there are two frames crossing the border of each panel. The ones at the top left have a caption, and the one below right has the result of the timing.] [Ponytail and Cueball are sitting across from each other in office chairs.] Engineering: Ponytail: Our big problem is heat dissipation Cueball: Have you tried logarithms? 48 seconds [Cueball is sitting in a chair at the center of a table looking left at another Cueball-like guy. To the right is a long black-haired girl.] Linguistics: Cueball: Ah, so does this Finno-Ugric family include, say, Klingon? 63 seconds [Cueball is standing with his hands up talking to another Cueball-like guy and Megan who has lifted her arm to palm her face.] Sociology: Cueball: Yeah, my latest work is on ranking people from best to worst. 4 minutes [Cueball is sitting in an armchair with another Cueball-like guy sitting attentively in front of him on the floor.] Literary Criticism: Cueball: You see, the deconstruction is inextricable from not only the text, but also the self. Eight papers and two books and they haven't caught on.

aug 6, 2025, 7:47 pm • 14 1 • view

disclaimer: I like xkcd and I like Randall Munroe

aug 6, 2025, 7:47 pm • 15 0 • view