Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2016 June 22

= June 22 =

I have some movie and tv questions
1. Why in Bob's Burgers are so many of the female characters voiced by males? You often hear women voice male characters, not the other way around.

2. Is there any lgbt characters in any family animated movies or tv animated series? There was a gay character in ParaNorman which Casey Affleck voices but his boyfriend never shows up. Also Shrek films had a possible LGBT character named Doris.

3. Can anyone name any movies similar to My Cousin Vinny? I would like a movie where eastern united states people meet the south or west people.

4. If actress Holly Marie Combs was born in San Diego but move to New York City at 7, is she more of San Diegan or new Yorker? Could someone name anyone else who was born in San Diego but grew up in NYC? Thanks! 2001:569:766D:AB00:C91B:6B24:4C2F:AA3B (talk) 07:15, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * 1. There's a line in (i think) M. Butterfly: "Why is it that female roles in Chinese theatre are usually played by men? Because only men know how women ought to behave." —Tamfang (talk) 07:23, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * On 3, Doc Hollywood comes to mind immediately. --69.159.9.187 (talk) 07:29, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * For #2, Gay: Smithers on The Simpsons and Bruce (the "oh, no!" guy) on Family Guy; Trans: Quagmire's dad on Family Guy.--William Thweatt TalkContribs 07:51, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Smithers is definitely the Big Gay Al of that show, but there are (and maybe are) others, from Carl Carlson to Karl. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:32, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * 3: City Slickers Clarityfiend (talk) 09:28, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * For #3: My Cousin Vinny is a classic example of the "Fish out of Water" trope, see TV Tropes entry for Fish out of Water and see where it leads you. Not every example will be specific to the locales you note, but it will start you on your research.  For questions about LGBT characters, Category:LGBT-related media may be a good place for you to start your research.  On #4, "More of a..." is entirely subjective, and would depend solely on the identity of the individual, we cannot make any pronouncements on which cultural group a person identifies with outside of their own statements on the matter.  You can use List of people from San Diego to start your research for #4.  Simply click each entry, and see who among them matches your criteria.  -- Jayron 32 12:31, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * tvtropes.org is often a useful site for this sort of query, but not this time. Before posting the suggestion of Doc Hollywood, I looked on the site for more.  Their page on My Cousin Vinny led me to the "Fish out of Water" page Jay cites, but none of the movies listed there are about "east meets south/west" as the original poster specified. (Well, unless you count Beverly Hills Cop, but "West" in this sort of context doesn't normally include urban California.) Even My Cousin Vinny isn't listed there. --69.159.9.187 (talk) 22:50, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * 1:Linda Belcher is a specific voice the voice-actor used to mimick his mother. Tina Belcher was originally supposed to be a boy, but was later switched because a girl was funnier. You can still find the original pilot with a Tina as a boy. So that sort of explains two of the male-voices-for-female-characters. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:07, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

sex-switching comic strips
There are many webcomics about boys magically becoming girls: Misfile, Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, Angels and Aliens, I Dream of a Jeanie Bottle, The Dragon Doctors. . . mostly involuntarily and permanently, though (iirc) both The Wotch and El Goonish Shive have male characters who like to switch temporarily.

But I don't think I've ever seen one in which a girl becomes a boy. Have you? —Tamfang (talk) 07:18, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Category:Transgender and transsexual-related media may be a good place for you to start your research. -- Jayron 32 12:22, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Of the titles I mentioned, only one has an article, so I'm not expecting much of Wikipedia resources. —Tamfang (talk) 08:54, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * This does get a bit confusing. Transgender comics are often about real-ish people changing gender in a real-ish world.
 * But that's very different from the magical change comics, right?. E.g. Ranma ½ isn't really about a transgender or transsexual person per se, not in the sense that you may have a trangender neighbor. Rather it's about a kid whose sex gets changed by hot/cold water, and that has little to do with real trans people. Anyway, Gender_bender has some leads. This  page does use "TG" as theme for its list. Here  is a different sort of sex change, where the sex of the super hero is changed sort of metanarratively instead of the change happening in-world. TVtropes  has a list centered around magical change, and here  are some specific recommendations for girl-to-boy comics from Yahoo answers. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:02, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * El Goonish Shive has had characters switch both ways, although male to female does seem more common. The first examples that come to mind are Grace's birthday party (where everyone switched sex), and the recent attempt to create a male V5 form (can't link, since I'm at work). MChesterMC (talk) 09:28, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll add Werewif, whose protagonist (having been bitten) becomes a woman at each full moon. —Tamfang (talk) 08:50, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Tile puzzle solving
Is there a way to solve this tile puzzle-like game? 04 16 12 03 07 01 13 06 11 08 02 09 15 10 05 14 If I move the first row the result is this: 16 12 03 04 07 01 13 06 11 08 02 09 15 10 05 14 or this: 03 04 16 12 07 01 13 06 11 08 02 09 15 10 05 14 Same for the columns: 07 16 12 03 11 01 13 06 15 08 02 09 04 10 05 14 I don't even know the name of this particular puzzle.--Carnby (talk) 14:07, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * What is the end state that you would consider as a solution? -- LarryMac | Talk  14:09, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * 01 02 03 04
 * 05 06 07 08
 * 09 10 11 12
 * 13 14 15 16


 * I found it in a casual video game.--Carnby (talk) 14:12, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * What are the rules? It looks a bit like a Sliding puzzle but that would have 15 tiles.--Shantavira|feed me 17:01, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The rows and columns 'rotate' i.e. sliding them will cause the bottom element becoming the top one or the far right one becoming the far left one when reaching the edge and vice versa.--Carnby (talk) 18:35, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Start:

04 16 12 03 07 01 13 06 11 08 02 09 15 10 05 14

Moving columns to get the right numbers in the right rows:

04 01 02 03 07 08 05 06 11 10 12 09 15 16 13 14

And then moving the rows:

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 11 10 12 13 14 15 16

So the question reduces to whether it is possible to swap two tiles without disturbing the rest of the pattern (10 and 11 are the wrong way around). Leaving that for someone more mathematically minded, as it seems like the kind of thing that would be easily proven if a suitable invariant can be found. MChesterMC (talk) 09:24, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * That was the result I was easily able to obtain; another result (with some additional manipulation) was this:
 * 01 02 03 04
 * 05 06 07 08
 * 09 10 11 12
 * 13 14 16 15
 * 13 14 16 15


 * In any case two tiles must be swapped, but I can't do it without messing up the rest of the scheme.--Carnby (talk) 13:23, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I would say the puzzle is essentially a "Rubik's torus", though differing from the usual Rubik's Cube in that all the faces are distinct rather than having one of a number (<16) of colours. Imagine joining the opposite edges together, and that by some cunning mechanism you can slide sets of four faces along the latitudes and longitudes. I found this discussion of similar puzzles. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:38, 25 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It seems it is called TwoBik or Torus puzzle. Anyway I was not able to find a way to swap two tiles (the paper is not free and I'm not sure it contains the solution).--Carnby (talk) 12:20, 26 June 2016 (UTC)