What do you guys think about the portrayal of women in episode stories? Sometimes I’ve read really good stories but honestly most of them were bad. Especially anything on the trending page!
Like mafia stories: MC is usually this innocent girl whose much younger than the LI and she’s the only good girl in a world of bad girls.
Like, the author would constantly slut shame every woman in that story and then go and have the MC explore her sexuality with the LI. Nobody on the episode forums talks about this even when they made a whole post making fun of mafia stories! Ex: a mafia story isn’t a mafia story without the side girl trying to steal the LI
Like think about it. If there’s a person and they’re constantly pinning after another then there is a serious communication issue/insecurity there. You shouldn’t shame them either!
You should never shame another person for what they decide to wear. Unless it’s like something that has a derogatory statement on it.
It just frustrates me so much as well that men in these stories are like powerful for being with so many women but the women are just seen as bad for it! And desperate! Why make them desperate?? Is your story so dry that you need some sort of conflict? Why do you have to include this cliche?
Tags: @Discussions @Episodians
This is also based on the conversation that I saw happening on the thread called “What episode guideline do you hate the most” so um thought I’d tag people who might enjoy this one. Sorry if you didn’t want to be tagged!
@liyahsdiamond @BrutallyBritish
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Added some tags I’ll give my opinion soon 
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In Episode there’s definitely a mix of good portrayals of women and bad ones.
In many stories the female characters just act the same way and don’t really have anything unique about them (and are sometimes quite mysoginistic), eventually that gets boring. But in terms of the Episode audience for many of them that formula works, if it didn’t then these stories wouldn’t be popular. Obviously popular doesn’t equal good at all. (It also doesn’t equal bad).
Another problem is women not really being portrayed well in other media so people just keep following bad examples.
But there have definitely been some good portrayals of women on Episode too 
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I find that in many stories on there, most of the characters are rather two dimensional.
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Oh yeah definitely. Tbh there are the really problematic mafia stories and then there are ones that are more subtle that just put a bad taste in my mouth. Then there are ones that are honestly just really boring.
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I usually read community stories that aren’t the first ones on the trending section, but I have discovered a few stories with very two-dimensional reader insert characters while doing read for reads or reviews.
One thing I hate about these nameless reader inserts is that they usually have a very bland personality and no actual interests or hobbies. Everyone in real life has a hobby or is obsessed with something, but some of these MCs just go to school or work, interact with her BFFs and the LI, and that’s about it.
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Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
You can find out more information about internalised misogyny on the thread I made about this. (LOL, why do I sound like I’m in the middle of a phone call or writing an e-mail)? 
Anyway, this is so true about Episode glorifying internalised misogyny. It makes no sense that they seem to normalise toxic love interests yet portray women poorly by labelling them as ‘weak’ or ‘submissive’ (in this context, I am not talking about the sexual kind like BDSM). For me, I think submissive is a negative connotation as it would mean that I’m some dog or something.
Also, I feel that the guys have some unrealistic expectations in women when you think about it. You know, they have this imagination in their head when they can’t really get them in real life i.e. wanting a girl that likes cheeseburgers and football (soccer) yet they only care when she’s conventionally attractive. There is a monologue from the book/film Gone Girl and trust me, it hit the nail on the topic of the Cool Girl trope.
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Omg this! Yeah I read a lot of stories for review and I still haven’t really thought about this. I’ll definitely look out for it the next time I’m reading a story tho!
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I think it depends on the story, the author, and the genre. Some are amazing! Others no so much.
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