Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2012 December 1

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December 1

How does Clark Kent explain his agelessness, or is the comic Superman frozen in time like, say, the Simpsons?

That's all. 67.163.109.173 (talk) 02:01, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

There have been many different comic books, TV shows, radio programs, and movies featuring Superman. Most of those only covered a few years, so the issue didn't really come up. When a new Superman movie, set in the present, in released, there's typically no attempt to link him with the Superman in comics from the 1930's. It's sort of a multiverse in fiction, where each incarnation of Superman is unrelated to the rest. StuRat (talk) 02:13, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

The James Bond franchise does the same thing; there's no attempt to maintain temporal continuity within the universe, like Superman, the story has a set of stock characters but the stories are always set "now", for whenever "now" is. Long running animated shows and comic strips also do this a lot; there's no attempt to age the characters. Bart Simpson is still ten years old, for example, despite the fact that the show been on the air longer than the average Wikipedia editor has been alive. One notable exception was the long-running comic strip For Better or For Worse, whose characters aged in real time. However, most long-running series like this, where the actors change, or where they are drawn so it doesn't matter, don't work hard to maintain temporal continuity. --Jayron32 03:58, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but the difference, with cartoons, is there's no reason the characters should age, except for the voices in animated cartoons. That is, the artist must make an effort to draw them steadily aging. With a movie series or TV show, on the other hand, you can only disguise the aging cast for so long, then must find a new cast, if you want to keep them forever young. I also notice that some cartoons seem to partially age. Luann (comic strip) seems to have aged maybe 4 years in 27 years. Dagwood Bumstead and Blondie Bumstead had children, who grew up to be teenagers, then everyone apparently found the fountain of youth and stopped aging. StuRat (talk) 06:08, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Joanie Caucus got younger ... —Tamfang (talk) 07:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Is the average Wikipedia editor really so young?! (Get off my lawn!) —Tamfang (talk) 07:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Clark Kent doesn't need to explain his agelessness; Mr Perry and Lois and Lana and Jimmy and everyone else all suffer from the same malady. In comic books, it's rare for adult characters to age. Infant characters sometimes become children and child characters sometimes become adult (for example, if it's a female character and the artist can't fit enough boobs on the other characters), but adult characters never grow into senescence "in camera". So, you can tell a story about Batman being old or Superman being old, but they never become old within the comic continuity. In that respect, the James Bond franchise has been rather boldly different, as the age of Sir James (and M) was fairly central to Skyfall, and had certainly been brought up in previous movies. Matt Deres (talk) 18:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Gasoline Alley is another example of strips where characters age, which makes things challenging when they approach or pass the century mark. Peanuts is a different case. The characters aged a little bit over their half-century existence (or maybe you could say the cartooning matured), while often referencing then-current events. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:00, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

One oddity in the 1978 Superman film is that the scene before the credits refers to 1938 (the year of the first Superman comics), while later in the film, Lex Luthor says Krypton exploded in 1948. The former was a nod to the "true" origin of Superman, and the latter was to establish that Superman is 30, in the "prime of life", for a human anyway (Reeve himself was in his early 20s). The conflicting dates have nothing to do with each other as such. And ironically enough, to make the same film today, you'd have to say Krypton exploded in 1982, after a sequel or two had come out. One other oddity, in Superman II, is the presence of astronauts on the moon, which there hadn't been any in "real time" for several years. (Never mind the continuity problem of being able to talk and be heard in a place with no atmosphere). So, as Stu notes, these characters often exist in one or more "parallel universes" from ours. One thing about the Harry Potter series was that they had it both ways: The characters aged, but in a parallel-universe version of modern-day England. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:08, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Here's a reference: Comic Book time on TvTropes. 146.87.49.148 (talk) 12:22, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

sex position upside down blowjob

What do you call a sex position where the person does the blowjob upside down like lying on the bed where her front part is facing up and the person inserting his penis into her mouth like that?

69 (sex position)? Dismas|^(talk) 02:35, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't this question belong on the Mathematics desk? --Jayron32 03:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Technically, it would be a 68. That's like a 69, but the guys "owes her one". Matt Deres (talk) 18:55, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Technically, it was the best answer I could give with a description that I didn't fully understand. Dismas|^(talk) 02:16, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

How come the website of the actor Mark_Metcalf sells his autographs online but has no contact web address for the people running his website?

How come the website of the actor Mark_Metcalf sells his autographs online but has no contact web address for the people running his website? I bought an autograph off of his website but it didn't come in the mail. Does his website have any contact info? Thanks! Neptunekh94 (talk) 04:16, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

You will probably want to check his website, that will tell you whether it posts contact info there. μηδείς (talk) 04:44, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

There is a contact link bottom right: "Site by Jennifer Bryant". Click on the name.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 11:26, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

UFC events

Why is it that all of the UFC events are deleted? I donate to Wikipedia so that you are able to keep your information up and it really disappointments me that you seem to not care about what countless amount of fans say about these pages being deleted. Please bring them back up so that fans can look up information about these events. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.62.149.245 (talk) 22:57, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Which articles are you referring to? Also, donations do not determine content. RudolfRed (talk) 23:21, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see that any major UFC events have been deleted. There's 215 such events listed at List of UFC events and nearly all of them have articles. Our coverage of the sport seems to be quite comprehensive. If there is one which is missing, it is only 207.62.149.245's fault and no one elses that it hasn't been created yet. --Jayron32 00:02, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

UFC or less specifically MMA has been a frequent topic of discussion on ANI this year (probably longer) e.g. see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive755#MMA, part 1287 with several blocks handed out, offsite lobbying and continual problems. We seem to have fluctuated between having article for every single UFC event and having a single major article (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2012 in UFC events (3rd nomination) and all the other nominations) and only article for events seen as significant. At the current time we seem to have moved back in to having seperate articles. While sofixit may normally be good advice, I would suggest the OP take care before jumping in to this mess. Unfortunately the attempt to write a subject specific notability guideline seems to still be stuck in limbo after 2 or so years an 7 pages of archives Wikipedia:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/MMA notability, but the OP should at a minimum familiarise themselves with the general notabily guidelines. If they are going to be writing new articles with good use of reliable secondary sources covering the event, they should be fine but if they write articles without any such sources (perhaps only primary ones) they may very well find their articles deleted. Note in particular, from a quick read of the notability essay talk page and click on some of the red links, it's clear even in the case of UFC (which is a relatively significant MMA organisation I believe) there are still some events we don't have articles on and people have attempted to create them multiple times. Nil Einne (talk) 14:35, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

In fact Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Off-wiki canvassing (MMA) .... (I actually suspect the OP came here due to some lobbying attempt.) Nil Einne (talk) 15:39, 8 December 2012 (UTC)