[Metal Man]

Each year since the last NC comic has progressed the same.

The layout no longer crashes my browser, I give it that; however it takes up a lot of vertical space. It may be wise to double it up again, just as in the last 'gold standard' layout SMBHQ had.

If SMBHQ deserves anything as a birthday present, it would be a refresh. Pages and pages of ancient content rot slowly as the world moves on; user made sections slowly cease to exist entirely. The site that Kyle and Jay built is gone; not because it has been destroyed, but simply its time has gone by.

But it is not my place to tell the site what to do. Long ago I learned that attempting to force anything on SMBHQ simply caused it to backlash in the opposite direction. Hence, I simply note that attempting to build a community of people around the site again would work more surely than anything else to rebuild the site;

For each site is a reflection of the people who maintain it, and currently I see the reflections of long-gone, past images of Kyle and Jay, the current image of Sean, the faded images of past fans, and the anomaly that is SSS, the last standing fan-based section on the site.

Do not fear any further commentary for me; my time for anything else but the occasional SSS match (and other SSS updates, as it has not lost my faith like SMBHQ has) is over. Destroy or remove this comment if you wish, Sean; mock this all you want, Jay; continue in silent absence, Kyle; my previous fire and anger was at SMBHQ not being something that, as a child, I had made it out to be, and which it had once been.

A site supported by the vivid humor of NC's comics, balanced by the quaint functionality and factual information Kyle provided, and later complemented by a rainbow of fan-maintained sites.

My anger at Sean Kelly was unfair; even if he was Jay or Kyle, he could not be both; his error, in my mind, is simply rejecting and ignoring help, and allowing his personal problems to dominate site work.

Now there is no Jay or Kyle, and an unfocused, overworked Sean alone; my previous wrath is replaced with simple apathy. The worst thing I can do is what I will do; cease to care about anything SMBHQ related besides that one thing which refuses to let me down: SSS.

I leave you, Sean, and anyone else who reads this hear to the oblivion of the near-silent SMBHQ forum. Not that I have particularly been around SMBHQ's main site or done anything for it, sans the SSS work... but I wished to bring an official end to my unofficial "attack Sean Kelly" phase; fueled by an irrational belief that SMBHQ's problems could be made by only one man, they were.

The whole site's broken, not just him. He's just trying to do something about it, and, at least for now, is somewhat swamped.

Although such apathy is the most destructive thing, it will have one benefit; I do not believe Sean will have anybody left to get angry at any more... that is probably the best I can do for SMBHQ besides my updates for SSS.

(Of course, this has no relation to my relatively active VGF posting trend, as I continue to post elsewhere on VGF uneffected. VGF may have no real functional main site, but the rest functions well enough... for my taste.)