Message to Royal Road (Patreon)

First, I, as the writer of Shadow of the Soul King, am the one trying to repost my story to RoyalRoad.

Second, in case the reviewer from RoyalRoad is not aware, I was banned from posting on RoyalRoad a year and a half ago for artificially boosting my story’s rating and this is an attempt to now get that ban removed, hoping one and a half years is long enough given the following factors:

1. Ignorance: While I was aware artificially boosting my story’s rating would usually be frowned upon, I could not find anywhere on the site that banned doing so. I was later given a link to the knowledge base (https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase) after I was banned which had a buried mention I had missed, but I had read the terms of service and confirmed I wasn’t violating them, so I honestly—and stupidly—just thought RoyalRoad didn’t care.
2. Complete Lack of Malice: I artificially boosted my own rating only*, never voting down any other stories, and I deliberately tried to make it as obvious as possible to RoyalRoad what I was doing so RoyalRoad could easily clean up any fake accounts if RoyalRoad ever cared to do so. I have the knowledge to have easily made it impossible for RoyalRoad to figure out what I was doing, but I deliberately used the same IP address, the same computer, and made the accounts using the exact same gmail email address** because I wanted RoyalRoad to have an easy time if RoyalRoad wanted me to stop.
3. Lack of Warning: I kept a list of every fake account I used for padding my story’s rating so if RoyalRoad ever wanted me to clean up my accounts myself I could do so, but I was never given a warning before being banned or any sign RoyalRoad disapproved, so I didn’t get to use it.
4. Transparency: I’m pretty sure I’m not the only author who has been silently banned from RoyalRoad, but, at least as far as I can tell, I’m the only one who has admitted to it on the internet. You can find my post here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/author-corner-6-67375167

For anyone who has read Shadow of the Soul King, they’ve probably already figured out the character of Aalam, the autistic idiot responsible for most of the main character’s problems for the first 200 chapters, is partially based on me, so it’s likely not much of a surprise I would get myself into this type of situation without someone like Mila to forcibly stop me, but just like Aalam, all it really takes to change my behavior is for someone to tell me I am doing something the other party doesn’t like.

I’ve been told RoyalRoad doesn’t want me to artificially boost my rating in response to trolls and bad actors, so I won’t do so if allowed to post again, and I’m hoping 1.5 years of punishment is enough for accidentally doing something RoyalRoad has now told me they don’t want.

For my own sanity, I’m going to assume this attempt at being unbanned won’t work, but, at the same time, I really hope it does. The day I was banned from RoyalRoad was the worst day of my life, and being unbanned would lessen the pain of that memory so much. I could reread and catch up on some of my favorite stories I’ve been unable to touch without having a slight panic attack and I could probably actually advertise my story without having to worry about a nice reader accidentally triggering the same.

Thanks so much,

Thirteen Life Legion

Footnotes:

* I think on 3-5 of my fake accounts I gave 5 star reviews to some good stories who’d obviously had their ratings artificially lowered by bad actors, but then I stopped.

** I used some other email addresses at first but then realized that would be slightly more difficult for RoyalRoad to notice, so I stuck with the (username)+[random number]@gmail.com email address format of one email address instead.