Everyone has an opinion. The problem arises when people feel the need to voice them all the time.
The story works, better than the vast majority of others on this site as it turns out. And thats okay. 

Gratz! only four more hops till you reach first. :D

B. Wrote: Totally ignoring any of the gross debates probably going on that I'm not going to look at, to say that the story absolutely does not fit on Royal Road according to its own rules. Maybe the actual content of the fiction isn't purely smut, but the title, and especially the cover, certainly break the SPIRIT of RR's decidedly anti-smut rules, which are of course there partially because advertisers may drop out of a website with too much sex stuff. The cover literally has a woman taking off her underwear and somehow this has remained on the site for years.

The story's a lot more popular than anything else I've written, but it's terrible optics for Royal Road and likely driving away plenty of potential RR fans who browse the site a couple times, see that story, and bounce. It's a fiction much deserving of, uh, Scribble Hub lol

I think it's bringing a lot more readers than it's "driving away" 

I'm not sure what "gross debates" there are; frankly I'm a little surprised that so many people seem scandalized by this. I suspect it's fairly tame, typical stuff, as far as smut goes. 

That being said, it definitely seems like it's smut? It even self-tags as "erotica" in the description. Sexual content is not banned, but it is limited, specifically:

"Do note that descriptions (fiction and chapter titles) cannot have mature content and that even with the sexual content warning, your fiction is not allowed to focus on sexual content. If we suspect that your fiction might go down this path in the future we will contact you to ask for extra information so we can better judge the situation."

And

"Uploading sexual artwork or images will result in an immediate ban."

I haven't read it, but I suspect if the fiction describes *itself* as erotica that there is a very good chance it "focuses" on sexual content. And the cover art definitely does seem like a "sexual image" (but maybe the 'immediate ban' part implies that it would have to be more explicit.) 

I have no moral problem with stories like this, but I did always think that RR's regulation of smut was a good idea (because smut tends to dominate sites where smut is allowed without regulation.) I would think a story like this, from the cover art and description, is definitely pushing the boundaries at the very least. But who knows, maybe outright sexual content is a relatively small part of the story (it is a whopping 2,100 pages at this point). 

*capitalistic laughing* 


People gonna get mad that an escapist literature website has escapist literature. "But slavery bad!" so is murder and all the other crimes Protagonists commit. lol