User talk:Sabrblade/sandbox

Oh hell no, we're not doing this. This is a massive, hand-wringing over-correction that, quite frankly, is making up stuff in the exact same way as the original Robotmasters thing. Escargon (talk) 08:52, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Agreed. Consigning *all* discussion of Sideways's dimension hopping to a dedicated Sideways (AVP) page is ridiculous obfuscation of something that, while it may have been the result of misinterpretation and miscommunication, has been part of the text for almost 10 years at this point — and has been for 12, if you count the deliberate hinting of Animated Sideways. --Riptide (talk) 13:48, 23 November 2022 (EST)

I’m in favor, having all of that info on one tidy page feels like by far most the cleanest and most reader friendly way to do it. It’s true that there’s almost 10 years of fiction with this interpretation but that fiction is largely niche and self contained in a way that really suits having its own page. It feels like less of an obfuscation than having important information on an out of place half-article on a disambiguation page and honestly seems worth it just to have that actually function as a disambiguation page. Rgby (talk) 17:41, 24 November 2022 (EST)

Gag page?

In the concept's present state I am afraid I have to agree with Escargon and Broadside. That said, this pitch did inspire me with an adjacent idea for a gimmick page leaning into Sideways's schtick that might house a couple of his more continuity-agnostic appearances more cleanly without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. See this sandbox for details. --AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 02:21, 24 November 2022 (EST)

I;m not convinced; all this stuff would already be on the Armada Sideways page but in more detail. Escargon (talk) 05:33, 24 November 2022 (EST)

We are better off with the Sideways ourobouros many years behind us. Now that Derik's falsehoods have been exposed and removed, let's just leave it be. The current article goes into impenetrably excessive detail, because the whole point of Sideways is that he never does anything important but he has these deeds described about him in a non-story retro-narrative like The Silmarillion, where attempting to accurately summarize it all in wiki format somehow winds up even longer and less engaging. I sincerely believe the only way to make a reader-friendly summary of all the layers of author-intentist retconnist handwaving would be with color-coded bulletpoints. Writing an even longer essay explanation of "X said Y but actually meant Z" is not going to make a meaningful difference, except perhaps to make it worse. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:05, 24 November 2022 (EST)

For once it seems I get to be on the side of "what? No way Jose". It may be post-facto material from another author based on a fandom misinterpretation, but it's all canon innit? The way things are is fine. That said, the idea of an "(ambiguation)" article is extremely funny to me, and does bring a different kind of utility to the table in collating most of that AVP material (which is very tied up in itself, obviously). So I could probably be swayed. —The Wadapan (talk) 11:14, 24 November 2022 (EST)

For whatever it's worth, and it's probably not much since it's only memory, but there's one bit of Robotmasters ephemera that I vaguely remember about Sideways, which was a chart that I believe held a RID link, but I've not been able to turn it up. Haven't brought it up before now since again, it's only memory, but if anyone knows what I'm talking about, by all means, please share. Escargon (talk) 09:25, 24 November 2022 (EST)

I feel like I would have seen something like that back then if it had been made known about, since I used to regularly peruse the Takara website despite not knowing any Japanese back then. But sadly I've no recollection of such a chart; just this one. Though, funnily enough, if such a chart did exist, the most it would do is kick off the original idea I had before going down this rabbit hole: To simply merge the RM Sideways page into the RID Sideways page since such a chart would have made RID Sideways a Car Robots character. But that's the most that they chart would affect since Robotmasters still didn't have any multi-universal travel, just time travel. Only seven individuals came through the Blastizone, and our double-faced biker boy wasn't one of them. --Sabrblade (talk) 12:02, 24 November 2022 (EST)

I think all of this feels like overcomplicating things for any casual user. My pitch would be that we keep the current disambig page broadly as it is, with the intro and conceptual history, and make a separate Sideways (AVP) page specifically for Jim's dimension-hopping serial liar. --Riptide (talk) 12:38, 24 November 2022 (EST)

I thought that was what this proposal was doing? Which in any case, I’m opposed to.Escargon (talk) 12:48, 24 November 2022 (EST)