u/Forward-Turnip-2683

I have very mixed feelings about this remake — another Star Fox 64 retread, the new character designs took some getting used to, and honestly I'm still not sure Nintendo needed to go this route again. But my kids, who have never touched a Star Fox game in their lives, are absolutely losing their minds over it.

I genuinely thought the redesigns might trip them up, especially after Fox McCloud's cameo in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie I figured they'd get whiplash going from that version of the character to the new more animalistic look in the remake. But they genuinely don't care. They just want to fly the Arwing and blow stuff up.

I was fully prepared to skip this one. Now I'm buying it on June 25th because the small persons in my house won't stop asking about it.

Anyone else in this boat? Parents who are lukewarm on the game but have kids who are super excited for it? I'm curious whether this is Nintendo's actual play here. The new generation instead of nostalgic adults.

I was recently discussing how hard it is to gain traction on Royal Road with straight African Fantasy. Without levels, stats, or LitRPG elements, a unique setting with new gods and mythology can be a daunting barrier for readers used to the norm.

My friend's suggestion? Just slap on some stat screens, levels, and more traditional monsters and call it a day. He’s right that it wouldn't fundamentally break the plot or the world, yet I still won't do it.

Writing is a hobby for me, so "numbers" aren't my primary metric. More importantly, forcing in elements that don't belong feels dishonest to my vision. Even if readers would never realize it.

But I'm curious: for those of you writing off-meta fiction here and want better numbers, why haven't you just made the jump and changed your story?

I’m close to the end of book 3 and I'm at the point where I’m getting ready to move my first book over to Kindle Unlimited, which means stubbing the first 60ish chapters on Royal Road(leaving the first 5-6 chapters for new readers to discover it). For those of you who have already made the jump, I have a few questions about how it affected your momentum:

Did you see a significant dip in new readers finding your story on Royal Road once the beginning was gone, or did the "Stubbed" in the title actually help your credibility?

Should I still be doing shoutout swaps for the ongoing chapters on RR, or is that a waste of time once the start of the story is on Kindle?

Do you find it better to use ads directing people to the RR page, or do you just shift all your energy into directing new readers straight to Kindle as more of the series gets stubbed?

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I’ve been working on an Afro-Fantasy novel, and I’ve run into a weird wall with a few readers. I’ve always loved the Final Fantasy 7 or 8 world where you have magic, swords, and demons existing right alongside guns, cars, and people still using horses or Chocobos and carriages.

But as I’ve been posting chapters, people seem completely flabbergasted by the mix. I’ll have a scene with a gunfight against a demon in one chapter, and someone training with a traditional sword in the next, and the comments are always like, "Wait, why do they have guns if there’s magic?" or "How can a sword keep up with a car?"

It’s weird because, even in the real world, we have villages without electricity using spears only a few hundred miles away from high-tech cities with drones. To me, that contrast makes the world feel bigger and more immersive, but I'm starting to wonder if modern readers just want "pure" fantasy or "pure" sci-fi without the overlap.

Are stories with this kind of genre-clash just unpopular on royalroad? I'm sticking to my guns and swords for my series, but I’m curious if anyone else feels like this style of world-building is a hard sell these days.