It is with a heavy heart I must announce that On Astral Tides has been deleted from Royal Road. Recently I've had a spate of very similar reviews criticising one aspect of the story (largely without basis, at least at the parts they reached) and while I am in no way privy to their motives... I have my suspicions. In any case, while the part in question likely does not breach the content guidelines, there are some later things that probably do, in a modest way. Now I could fix these, but honestly... I'm disinclined to do so.
While I have no complaints that the moderation team asked me to remove the story, as they can do so, it's their site and their guidelines, I do have issue with the language used in their addressing of the complaint. But that's by the by. While I've supported this site, doing author premium and taking part in writeathons, etc... I'm just a single writer, and while I do not believe my content is what has been described, and indeed, as I have stressed numerous times, in my own country and the country OAT takes place it it's not anything particularly unusual, I support the right of the staff and site owners to make their own choices about what content they want here. If I could offer some advice, perhaps be less pointed about it, and less Americo-centric. It ruined any motivation I had to make the changes that would have been able to keep OAT on the site.
For now... the story continues on ScribbleHub, but like I said, I've had the spate of above reviews, which has spread there too, so... we'll see if it continues there as well.
To the readers, sorry we couldn't finish here on RR, I mean, I wasn't that popular, 900-odd followers is small fry indeed. What I will say (and this isn't relevant for me, as I'm done here, but...) is that while I never asked for ratings/reviews, if you are reading other stories, and do enjoy them... take time to leave a rating, or better yet a review. All I was getting towards the end was negative reviews, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. If you like a story, try and make the author feel better about themselves because god damn, it's hard to right now. So, it's too late for me, but go through your follows, rate them all at the least, and drop a review or two. Be the better person and give an author a good day. God knows many of us need it.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
So what's next? OAT will NOT stop. I've had a setback, and I feel like shit right now, but I've long promised to see it to the end even if I'm only writing for myself. We'll continue on SH (for now) and no, losing RR hasn't cost me any money, since I've never charged anything for OAT, and have offered it purely to bring people sone joy. It's sad that some people don't want that. Hell, maybe I'll take the advice of my fellow authors, make the needed changes and go onto Kindle Unlimited, as I've been told I stand a good chance of making some decent bank with nearly 3 million words ready to go with a few months of revision.
I lost the battle here, but not the war. Just like Aki and the others, we fight on against the odds and our enemies, and we do it together. OAT was about love, friendship, bonds and character growth. Something we sorely need nowadays. So, while I'm immensely disappointed, and am certain I'll lose some readers from here to wherever I end up... I'll see some of you again. It's a shame... we were just about to have a scene where
Aki finds out he's going to be a father. It would have been very touching and is the sort of thing the story stands for, despite what those who have spited me say.
Anyway, that's all from me. My discord https://discord.gg/4dm5WrHsHD will probably be the place to be for updates for a while, specially if we hit SH trouble too, which I do expect. Laters, on this rather sad day.
Edit: Comments now locked as we're done here. There's no benefit to anyone in rehashing this, and I've left Royal Road.