I've been serving you guys as moderator from November 7th 2017, almost 5 years. While I would love to stay around and get the 5-stack, I cannot do so in good conscious. As of this post, I will be stepping down as moderator from Kid Icarus: Uprising, marking this as the last thing I'm doing with this game publicly that isn't in progress already. My reasons for leaving are a three-strike procedure, which I'll be outlining below.

When I got added on as moderator in November 2017, the boards were basically barren and the mean reason why I wanted that modship, completely and honestly, was so that I could get my run (which had been sitting there for over a month) approved and actually flesh out the board. We've gone from 2 categories a wide bevy of options, so I'd like to think I succeeded in this front. It was my first time helming a ship with speedrunning, but not my first time with any sort of leadership. When I was added on, it was as a regular mod. nes, who later got added as a Super Mod, was asking me about things to add to the board, a lot of which I did not agree with and explained my reasoning one at a time. One of those things was a Discord, something I still do not believe I should've been in charge of making (and wasn't which had later ramifications) as it would've just become a byproduct of my own stuff, instead of actually being focused on the game. Some time after those conversations started, nes was set as a Super Moderator for Kid Icarus Uprising and made a bunch of changes immediately. It took a LOT of begging on my end to get things back to the way they were and to get a parlay of trust set up. I later asked why I couldn't be a Super Mod given I'd set up pretty much the whole board from barebones, and was told I didn't have enough experience. This created a pretty tense atmosphere between the two of us because I knew I had earned that spot but wasn't allocated it. Later on, a couple more mods were brought on board and my thoughts on the matter kept getting more and more ignored. All of this while I was giving my time in the way of being available for people and setting up (admittedly outdated) guide videos on YouTube to get people started. This dismissiveness, I'd call strike 1.

Strike 2 really just comes down to me. There's only so much time you can put in a game, you know? That October 2017 WR, which I held for nearly 5 years and is one of my greatest achievements, was my walk into speedrunning and I hit the ground REALLY hard on Kid Icarus Uprising. I eventually branched into other stuff like Mario Kart Wii, Tetris 99, Mario Tennis Power Tour, and eventually realized that while I didn't like speedrunning all too much, speedrunning Kid Icarus Uprising in the long term just made me miserable. I only came back recently after the WR was finally shattered, and honestly it was nice to see some level of in-game tech applied even if I only got WR back for a short amount of time (shoutout to Apuriko, you're awesome, keep truckin). But yeah, my burnout is strike 2.

For strike 3, that's the direction this game is going in, and is something that's been talked about pretty recently in the Kid Icarus Uprising Discord. You see, someone has created a tool for basically creating whatever weapon you want, and so long as it's within game bounds, in theory this weapon is fair play. I took heavy issue with this given it's a tool being used outside of the game to assist in the speedrun (by definition TASing the game), and made several motions to combat this all of which were ignored or rejected (admittedly by everyone save for nes as he wasn't there). These suggestions included separating out runs that use the weapon tool onto a different board, adding a variable if those weapons were made with that tool, and putting a limit on how high the value of the weapon could be for both cart and tool. The goal of all of this is simple -- to make sure that people who have a legitimate cart do not need to utilize an outside tool in order to, eventually, even have viable runs. Better weapons lead to faster times, I don't think I need to break that down dramatically. But, unfortunately, this is where the game is going, and is not something I can fully endorse. This change in direction is my Strike 3, and my breaking point. For the runners that will soon be affected by this change for the worse, best of luck to you truly. I will now abdicate my title, with the core speedrunning group here burning me out emotionally and taking this in a direction I do not want to see. Goodbye.

PS: I had my name in the KI:U Discord as "Do Not Disturb" for the longest time (more than a few years). No one really asked why, just kinda left to sit in it so thanks for that ig.