Talk:Quicksand

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Split Deadly quicksand but keep Moving sand 5-7-3
Deadly quicksand is a variant of quicksand that appears in both Mario Galaxy games. This quicksand variant, as its name suggests, will instantly kill the player who touches it, a behavior very different from common quicksand. It has a darker tone than conventional quicksand and is always accompanied by a death sign similar to poison from the same game. It also has its own Japanese name, which is Suna Jigoku (Sand Hell), derived from 蟻地獄 (arijigoku, "ant Hell"), referring to an antlion trap in Japanese. Additionally, this quicksand has its own name in several languages. On the other hand, moving sand is an obstacle created based on a PRIMA name, and it has the same Japanese name as normal quicksand. These are the true quicksands in the game. However, the encyclopedia listed it as quicksand, which, in turn, made the true quicksand change to the name of flowing sand. I think the ideal solution would be to give deadly quicksand its own article due to its unique behavior, which is like the desert version of poison, and it also has its own Japanese name. Meanwhile, moving sand should be merged with quicksand since the behavior of "pushing sand" is constant between normal quicksands and shares the Japanese name with common quicksand. (Also, although I didn't want to mention it, the Moving Sand article is quite poor in terms of information and, in fact, for some unknown reason, it includes the Quicksand from Mario 64, even though it was never called Moving Sand)

Finally, here I have a completed draft of the article, Deadly quicksand.

Proposer: Sorbetti (talk)
Deadline: October 1, 2025, 23:59 GMT

Split Deadly quicksand and merge Moving sand with Quicksand (Support)

1. Sorbetti (talk) Per proposal.
2. Rykitu (talk) Moving sand is quicksand, and quicksand is deadly.
3. PrincessPeachFan (talk): Per.
4. Mariuigi Khed (talk) Per.
5. Nintendo101 (talk) This is my personal preference, but the second option seems fine.

Split Deadly quicksand but keep Moving sand (Support)

1. Sorbetti (talk) Per Arend and Salmancer. I think there's some value in keeping Moving Sand on its own page, as long as its information is improved. As for Quicksand info from SMG and SMG2, a little searching revealed other sand types that behave more like Quicksand, so there's no problem with splitting Deadly quicksand and keeping Moving Sand.
2. Salmancer (talk) Who could say no to more articles? And, lets be real, "deadly quicksand" is more distinct from quicksand than Poison (obstacle) and Poison wave, and the latter has a page even though it doesn't have a name. Since making the "deadly quicksand" page no longer merges the moving sand page into quicksand, a page which does have merit to be separate from quicksand, I can now approve of the page's creation. (In defense of "moving sand", we have decided two things being distinguished in English but not in Japanese is good enough to split them sometimes, though as of yet this has only occurred when its backed up by multiple other localizations and as of right now "moving sand" has 0 non-English names on its article. And as Arend pointed out, moving sand is really different from quicksand. Again, the distinction between quicksand and moving sand is greater than that of Poison (obstacle) and Poison wave.
3. Arend (talk) Second choice, I suppose.
4. Daita (talk) What are the differences?
5. Altendo (talk) Good compromise.
6. LinkTheLefty (talk) I always thought these were separate obstacles/gimmicks.
7. Camwoodstock (talk) Makes sense to us. The one that kills you should probably be split from the one that doesn't.

Do nothing (Oppose)

1. YoYo (talk) seems extremely pedantic at best, quicksand is quicksand many elements that behave differently between titles share pages because they are still the same element, this is no exception. this would be like splitting different coloured Warp Pipes because they spit objects at different speeds in different games.
2. Arend (talk) As I said in the comments, moving sand has different traits from typical quicksand (from what I can gather, it's more like a rapid river flow that does NOT necessarily lets players sink, even though sinking is a defining quicksand trait). Deadly quicksand also doesn't seem all too different from typical quicksand aside from the fancier Japanese name (in fact, in English, the term is also interchangeable with simply "quicksand", so uh).
3. RosalinaAnimate2022 (talk) Nintendo's speculation on quicksand is not absolute in their context. It may have been mistaken in the Mario Teaches Typing series where as either Nintendo themself or Interplay may have made the sand not move (even though there was a danger sign and the word "quicksand" in the scroll in the cutscenes) in the advanced level (both of them during gameplay and cutscenes when Mario and Luigi fell after narrowly missed a Thwomp) that is when they were developing the games in that series. My speculation is that Nintendo will make the quicksand move when they are creating future sequels of the series. Therefore, I dissent from what will move forward in this proposal.

Comments

I've got bad news YoYo. May I introduce you to the "liquid movement patterns suite"?

Liquid Movement Patterns

Water	Lava	Poison (obstacle)
Water tide	Lava tide	Poison tide
Wave*	Lava swell	Poison wave

(^*) Wave currently appears to not be comparable to the other two, but its a stub and Wave's see also section seems to imply the article is also for the pattern of moving water that matches Lava swell and Poison wave

I don't really like any of these pages except Wave, and even then I only like wave because it hasn't been updated to cover hills and valleys of water to match the other two articles. I really don't like that Poison wave is conjectural; at that point it should be a paragraph of Poison (obstacle) and not a unique article. But still, it appears that "has a different movement behavior" is good enough to split liquids, name or no name. If that's true, then "has a different name and a different response on Mario" should also warrant splitting. Salmancer (talk) 07:06, September 17, 2025 (EDT)

So why did I post all of that and not vote? Well, I think "moving sand" is actually ahead of Poison tide and Poison wave in being different from the base thing, so there should be a "moving sand" page if those pages (especially the latter) exist. (I may be biased because apparently the sand that pushes the player in Mario & Luigi (series) games goes there, and the player does not sink into the sand that pushes the player in those games, so its hardly a quicksand variant.) Salmancer (talk) 07:06, September 17, 2025 (EDT)

I checked out footage of the SM64 and Galaxy (2) levels with moving sand, and I have to agree with Salmancer that moving sand is NOT the same thing as (traditional) quicksand. As with real life, a player character sinks easily into quicksand, but typically is still (if it flows, it's usually downwards). Moving sand, on the other hand, really is more like a flowing river that will take a player character into a particular direction, but doesn't necessarily lets them sink into it (hell, I don't think you CAN even sink in Galaxy (2)'s moving sand!). As for deadly quicksand, this is is closer to how quicksand works in traditional Mario titles, and since this is the only other type of quicksand in Galaxy (2), I'm not entirely sure it's worth splitting. Besides, "deadly quicksand" is only referred by the Prima guide like this like twice, whereas the same guide also calls the same stuff simply "quicksand" two other times. rend (talk) (edits) 09:07, September 17, 2025 (EDT)

@Arend The English name is kind of irrelevant. I explained above why the encyclopedia didn't even have one, and since all other languages call it Sand Hell, which in Japanese is derived from Antlions, I think that the english name is really irrelevant here, since deadly quicksand is the best English name I could find to describe Sand Hell. On the other hand, I'm not entirely against keeping Moving Sand on its own page, as long as it expands and improves its information. And for that I did some research. In both SMG1 and SMG2, there are sands that behave more similarly to Quicksand than Moving sand or deadly quicksand, so those will be the ones covered on the Quicksand page. Would you like to add a new option? What do you think? Sorbetti (talk) 13:00, September 17, 2025 (EDT)

An extra option to split deadly quicksand from the quicksand page whilst keeping the moving sand page wouldn't hurt, so sure. rend (talk) (edits) 16:02, September 17, 2025 (EDT)

For the record, the counterpart to "deadly quicksand" in SM64 is the stuff around the Tox Box path, while the counterpart to "moving quicksand" is the stuff seen in Pyramid Puzzle. Certain holes and edges are also dangerous, but not to the instantaneous amount as the Tox Box-adjacent stuff. Also in that game, Mario gradually sinks up to his waist or so even in normal sand. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 16:42, September 23, 2025 (EDT)