Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2024 February 23

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February 23

Mutatis mutandis

It seems to be accepted internet-knowledge that Mutatis mutandis is the motto of the X-men school (which has had many names, and probably retcons, alternate realities and what have you). My question is, when did this motto appear in comics? Or did it originally come from a film? Or did someone just slap it on some merchandise at some point, and it became "real" that way? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

First, let it be said that the phrase itself is centuries older than any X-Men stories.

This page on a fan site identifies it as appearing in an X-Men connection in a comic in 2011, but doesn't say that was the first use. --142.112.220.50 (talk) 11:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Good writers borrow, great writers steal. Your 2011 example comic seems to expect the reader to know that this is the school motto, suggesting it was well established in-universe at that point (or concievably just established earlier in the same issue). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:57, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Can't give an actual citation, but I remember it being used in the early 1990s. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

A 2006 addition to our article X-Mansion: 'The school's motto is "mutatis mutandis."' I assume that the user who added this got it from the comics. If not, perhaps the writers at Marvel Comics thought this original contribution to the Marvel Universe fanlore was worth reusing in the actual comics.  --Lambiam 14:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I would be surprised if this is a case of Pringles, but as we've seen, it can happen. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:55, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

YA fiction about a teen girl stranded on an island with birds when the boat she was on explodes

When I was in my teens I read a book about a teenage girl being stranded on an island when her parents' boat exploded. I'd love to read it again but I leant it to a friend (can't remember which one) and have been trying to find a copy for the past couple of decades. I would guess it would have been the mid-90s when I read it and I probably got it in a local bookstore (I'm in Scotland).

From memory, the cover showed a sea covered in debris, with a loan hand sticking up, but my pictorial memory isn't great so I could be making that up.

Plot elements I remember:

• The girl's parents were very well-off and appearance was very important to her mum, who was nagging her about being fat

• The girl hated her mother and they'd been arguing about what she was eating just before the boat blew up. The girl had been eating something deliberately to anger her mum

• The boat exploded due to an error in switching from one fuel tank to another (caused by language difficulties in instructions, maybe?)

• The girl ends up rescuing a couple of sailors and setting up a shelter for the three of them on an island

• The island is full of birds and she survives by eating their eggs

• There's a walrus or seal or something in a cave on the edge of the island

• There are men who come to the island to kill the birds and she doesn't trust them so she doesn't reveal herself to them. She does end up putting one of the sailors out on the beach for them to find because he's so ill she thinks he'll die without help

• She is eventually found and taken back to America

After so many previous attempts at searching, I don't hold out a great deal of hope, but a friend suggested this reference desk so it's worth a shot. Hezza1506 (talk) 15:35, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't know the answer unfortunately, but if you don't get an answer on here, I suggest you open a Reddit account (if you don't already have one) and post your query on r/whatsthatbook. You will almost certainly get an answer there. --Viennese Waltz 15:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Good suggestion but I put a post on there about it four years ago, unfortunately, and haven't had anything. I actually started to wonder if I was going nuts and had made it up in my head but I've just checked with another friend I remembered reading it (I think I loaned it to her as well), and she remembers it, so it's definitely real! Neither of us can remember the name, though. Hezza1506 (talk) 16:22, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

There's also this: https://mybookcave.com/how-to-find-a-book-when-you-dont-know-the-title-or-author/ Valereee (talk) 16:42, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Are documentaries unscripted?

In many articles on lists of programs on TV channels or streaming services (List of Amazon Freevee original programming, List of Amazon Prime Video original programming, List of Apple TV+ original programming, ...) the sections for Docuseries are subsections of sections titled Unscripted? What gives? I'm pretty sure documentaries are generally tightly scripted. (See also Script (recorded media) § Documentaries.)  --Lambiam 17:45, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Naturally it will vary from show to show, but a true documentary should at least have a script for the narrator or presenter to read. Interviews however, and statements from other people will be devise by these people, and it is possibly their decision if they want to prepare a statement in advance to say. Pablothepenguin (talk) 12:40, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Do you (or anyone else) have an explanation for why they are nevertheless so systematically placed in the Unscripted sections?  --Lambiam 18:22, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

It is true that the documentation of subjects like biographies are scripted and colored (by their writers, photographers and producers, some more than others), but unlike game shows the subjects of the documentaries are usually not scripted by the presenters. For example, An Inconvenient Truth is scripted but it documented global warming which is not. It's the latter part which places it within the genera. Modocc (talk) 14:15, 25 February 2024 (UTC)