It can't be much of a secret, and I'm sure if you're reading this page you've noticed. Uncle Gobbo went bye-bye. When did I leave, March sometime? It's been a while, and I pretty much split without a word or reason. Some of you, following or privy to the matters, knew the answer to why already. Maybe only some of what had happened was taken in. So, lemme give you the short of it: I got tired. Not of the site, no. Not of working here, oh my no. I got tired of the "staff".
When I came to work at this site, it was in disrepair and disheveled, a complete wreck. I hate to say that about it, but the thing had hidden chests for a scavenger hunt -- a contest years old that never even reached completion, still lingering around, pages had horrible HTML violations run rampant due to code generating software making them, and the only real updates posted were Mailbags and promises to do more. It was just that, however, a promise. Nothing ever came of it, a trend that this site has kept unbroken for years. And the 'Bags themselves were far and few between. Again, I don't like saying, "What a waste!", but that's just the truth of the matter.
Flash to 2008 (it seems like so much longer ago), and the latest and greatest of the "We're gonna be pimpin' up the site~!" claims, the infamous Project R.A.I.N.B.O.W., showed its hideous face. It started ugly, not even with a guise of glamor or grandeur. For those new comers, this pretty much sums up the Project: seven new features to the site, one for each letter and color of the rainbow. A noble endeavor, yes, if it weren't for there not even being features for each of the letters. Regardless, for the c. 50% that was thought up, no means of actually implementing these, any of it, was had. Now, on paper, this isn't bad. Bad came, no, horrible, when an all-too-eager staff plastered this announcement on the main page.
So, no features, no ability to perform any of the features, and no concern for raising folks' hopes. Boy, you can bet that one lousy silhouette of Kirby and this sham's name got the patrons of Rainbow Resort in an uproar. They lapped up the propaganda like the sweetest milk. The first feature rolled out was ... Mailbag, which already existed. But, oh, it sure was gonna be regular now! Spoiler, they kept it up for maybe two months. So one letter of seven, M, which I sure don't see in the word "rainbow", which wasn't even new, was tackled. As for the rest?
Someone will do them. That was the attitude. Someone. No one there really wanted to. Why they made all this fuss over just doing a feature that they should have already been doing is beyond me. I couldn't just let them look stupid, however. I was a working member at the site, small time really. I changed the Frontpage Picture Challenge every month, assuming anyone sent me in one. Still, I was sick of the staff getting egg on its face. So, this someone turned into me. I picked up slack at the Kirbypedia, I took on piddle chores here and there, but accepting the challenge before me changed the face of the site (hyperbole! yay!)
This is what ushered in a new era on good ol' RR because I actually did something. And what I couldn't do, I got help for. My brother, The Ometon, would become my man behind the curtain, pulling the strings and making things happen as he didn't want the credit. Together, what letters for the Project that had been fleshed out were addressed as able. The notion of some type of informative question answering in the Help Nook was simple enough to put in. I had redone the Mailbag question form about a year prior, since I thought I'd be taking it over (a task which someone else took up and fumbled), and this was pretty much the same thing. Next, Ability Reviews were a feature, why not? Say why you like what, kiddos. Aaand, RSS feeds? Sure. That works, too.
PRAINbow never got finished. We didn't care about, nor did we ever. RSS feeds are hardly a feature to celebrate; more of a modern web necessity. The Nook crumbled into just being Ask the Kirby Gurus Part II, now with only one sage. Reviews went over about as well as could be expected. And, of course, you already know the fate of the Mailbag. Further spoiler, I would eventually go to pluck that gem for my list of titles as well. By the way, it's worth noting that, at about this time, we were already quietly planning to renovate and rejuvinate the site with real substance and ideas, not blowing our horns with to just wallow in the spotlight.
Between the two of us, the site was constantly jumping with activity. For a year, about every other day if not daily, a new round of Guru questions got answered. We rolled out Mailbags about monthly once that post was abandoned. I made up new fan creation contests seasonally. The fan art gallery was bumping. Tons of fan comics were being submitted. All in all, there were multiple things happening each week. Before, Rainbow Resort was lucky if it updated monthly, seemingly just talking about what would happen rather than doing anything. This, my friends, was the Golden Gobbo Era, and it came to a crashing halt.
Oh, everyone loved what I was doing. All of the patrons to the site, that is. Excluded from this cluster is a few knaves who frequented the forums. This is the message board for KRR, but I don't consider that or them as part of the site. In fact, most goers there asked what an IF Contest even was. They had no idea what was going on for a year at the very site they worked at. They were oblivious because they never went to the site itself. Why should they? It never updated. At least, they never updated it. Same thing, I guess.
Anyhoo, they didn't like me. Do you know who did like me? Kindar Spirit, founder of this very website. You know who she didn't like? A lot of those guys. I mean, yeah, she liked them as friends, I'm sure, but they were horrible website workers. She was endlessly thankful for all that my brother and I had done for her site, couldn't be happier, and all she ever got was griping from those other few. When the site changed its server in 2008, she only gave the brothers Gobbo site access passwords since, well, no one else ever used them. If anything, they were just liable to screw up the website somehow. Still, they were kept around, just as impotent forum and chat mods as they had always done. Good, I don't care about those hellholes. They can keep order in the pit; I'll attend to matters of real importance.
This right here is how I liked it. My brother and I churned out updates, the fans were happy, Kindar was happy, and I never had to speak to the Forum people. They, after all, were why Kindar didn't come by all that much anymore. They annoyed her, and they bothered me, too. But, at this time, they'd only fuss about, oh, every three months until a new non-Kirby video game came out to distract them for a while, leaving me at peace. You'd be surprised how cyclical this all was. Bloody clockwork. It wouldn't last, of course. That's why I'm writing this. That's why I have all but disappeared since March and really stopped putting forth much of any effort six months prior to that.
The reason my brother and I weren't liked was since we were outsiders, nearest I can tell. We weren't members in their tight li'l clique who spent every waking minute in some stupid chat room. We had things to do, mostly at KRR. And boy, did we. What The Ometon did, no one could have dreamed to replace, but most of my duties were capable by anyone with the most basic understanding of HTML. Posting new fan comics or answering questions doesn't take anything more than an <img> or <p> tag, really. No one really bothered to try these chores. For years, they sat around with a loyal fanbase at their mercy and did nothing, and in less than a year two upstarts completely pull the rug from under their feet and this swarm away with it. Can I blame them for being upset? No, not really. Did they deserve to be? Absolutely not.
Every reason against us given was a blatant lie, usually misunderstood if not wholly fabricated. We were accused of harsh behavior, exclusion, and nasty other character flaws, among other things. Our "attitudes" and language was often pulled into the spotlight. Everything we did had been going on at the site for years. The only thing we did different was be clever about it, utilizing verbose and amusing methods of writing. The best part about this particular discussion is how, at the same time it was argued, they are trying to defend the appearance of F-bombs to a crowd largely populated with <15 year olds. So, witty sarcasm = boo; but vulgarity = f*** yeah! This is just the peak to the mountain of flawed logic we had to put up with and understand.
Finally, their anger against us overcame their inherent sloth. They badgered poor ol' Kindo until she cracked and gave them access to the site. First thing they do? Move Queen Amika ahead of everyone else on any staff list, despite never doing a damn thing, and removing my name as correspondence to various pages. Never was this discussed with me. Never was I told that my functions at the site were being taken over. Never did I say that I was struggling under the workload. Hell, I haven't gotten a single fan comic submission since January still, and that's just one of many submissions I take in. The jobs aren't demanding, which is why two blokes off the street took up the burden that a good handful had to poorly do before. I'm not calling anyone lazy, now, but the least amount of effort would have sufficed.
This last offense was part of a long and sorted many. The Ometon finally called for the kill switch, more than just Captain Charisma's new name for the Unprettier. This button effectively undid us. It's sad that he made all of those features knowing that, one day, we'd be pushed too far. Everything we had done for the site, all of the coding, forms, updaters, and features, were turned off. If they wanted to go over our heads and get control of the site, they could have it. We never forced anyone out; we encouraged help from anyone and everyone, but no one ever did. Their complete apathy is why Kindar just gave us two, out of all the staffers new and old, the key to the gates. We never asked for it, either. She felt we deserved it. They had to whine and beg for months until she finally caved.
So, from what I've barely bothered to see, the site seems to get about monthly updates, most of which have just been announcements to games or pending announcements (that's useful). There has been no content update outside of a few fan fictions that were already posted at someone's website who never felt like submitting them here. From many updates a week to a butt-scratch in months, the new KRR sure is a lot like the old: stale and dying. Every so often, I'll get contacted by someone praising what I did there, and I haven't even been gone that long. Also, not oddly, they seem to instantly identify a "tyrant" even though I speak ill of no one to them. Even other members on the staff, ones I either got along with or that didn't entirely hate me supported our side of the fight, but... didn't want to speak up. Again, they were friends and all. Well, who wants to be friends with a jerk?
I did plan some sort of secret resistance, encouraging the goers of the Resort to not stand idly by and fight for the site they love. Then, I came to a realization: it wasn't worth fighting for. What demon infests this place cannot be exorcised; it is too deeply rooted and will always rear up again. This devil is legacy, the past of KRR itself. These things hold right and pull weight, but never earned their place. They just happened to be friends with the right person, squatted there years ago, and don't want to move. I worked tirelessly, toiled my fingers to the bone day in and day out for a year, maybe longer, down in the trenches with those who loved this place to make it somewhere they could be proud of. I earned the place I had here, and that is why I say to you now simply this:
"Leave and don't look back." Any seeds sown here will be choked out by the weeds and never bear fruit. Seek fertile ground and start anew in this haven. Now is a golden time for the Kirby fan, what with the barrage and constant flow of titles hitting the shelves. There are many venues without this hypocrisy and vainglorious attitude. All that is here now is a bunch of dusty books and game "news" that is second hand and abridged. And jerks. And this too-long rant, the last from Uncle Gobbo.
Anyhoo, catch ya on the flip side, Dude Meisters. Bimblesnaff out.
