(This post is long but please give it a thorough read)

I would like to take the time to inform everyone on the general situation and quality of our community. Please keep in mind this is not a personal attack to specific people by any means. With the release of Kingdom Hearts III, several new people picked up speedrunning and became more active in our community discord with the intent of being a part of something much bigger. The past two and a half years that I have had the honor to call myself a Kingdom Hearts Speedrunner have been the best of my life. I have met several new and close friends through here: khfreak, boker; and then had the chance to talk to some of the people I looked up to long ago: Cyber, Biz, BB. But with all good things come the bad. We want to see the growth in our community increase exponentially all the time. What growth can be achieved if, when a theory is brought up, it is almost instantly shot down and rejected as "slower" or "inconsistent"? What grounds bring these on? Was there sufficient testing in the three seconds it took for the person to shoot it down? To ensure growth and positivity in our community, all things should be considered at least enough to warrant testing. Now, obviously, as speedrunners, we do know when things are blatantly slower, but things like strats or small optimizations shouldn't be struck down so quickly. If people of our community think it's significant, who are we to turn away the second it's presented? People see our community negatively because their few interactions were met with passive-aggressiveness and impoliteness. No one knows enough about Kingdom Hearts III to speak in absolutes, and I believe no one should unless they have a video to prove it. We have lost several great community members due to toxicity like this, a runner named Kasa, who organized a Kingdom Hearts Marathon and was knowledgeable of the games, renounced his title as a Kingdom Hearts Speedrunner. Another, who is still part of the community, but was one of our most reliable LB mods, stepped down because no one knew when to stop giving them trouble. This issue needs to be remedied in order to keep our community as a community.

Another matter this community is facing is the SGDQ Submissions. It was brought to my attention that being negative about it on social media is no way to approach it (by KBM, a renowned KH2 Speedrunner), so I took that advice to heart and created this post. My stance on SGDQ Submissions for KH3 should be that people can submit what they want without question. I understand, however, how that mindset can affect the community. As a part of any speedrunning community, we want our games and our communities to be "properly" represented and to show it's full extent and optimization for our time. Other questions arise with this, such as "Is the run interesting to watch?". This question alone has sparked so much controversy within us as speedrunners. To some, no, it is not. A point was made by a former runner on Twitter, that the game has an unlimited amount of options, but only a handful are used. This is a statement against the game, not the runners. The runners who submitted KH3 are phenomenal and will represent the community well. The game itself, however, may not be how the community wants to be represented, due to the sheer quality of the speedrun. But berating the runners of their game and their time towards the run is no way to handle it.

This forum post was not an attack to anyone, nor is it intended to spark argument-- but rather change instead. I am not a moderator in any sense, but please, all I ask is we stop with the toxicity and function as a proper community that values each and every one of it's members equally. Thank you for reading, and while I'm proud to be a KH Speedrunner, I'd like everyone to be, as well.