I feel like she’s unnecessarily trying to pin people against each other and it rubs me the wrong way.
12 Likes
the.butterfly is E.R Gurney right? Author of Austentatious?
I do agree, the hate to popular authors is unnecessary. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of these popular authors copy the same pattern of being ignorant towards requests for more diversity, poorly handling constructive criticism and conflating hate with valid criticism. I’m not saying the hate is ok, but I can see why it happens.
The trending section has always been messy and hated on. There is little to no difference in comparison the featured section in terms of story covers, storyline and glamorising things that shouldn’t be glamorised.
Lastly, the “anger towards those that are successful” bit is rubbing me the wrong way. I feel like the whole “hate=jealousy” mentality is just self-centred. Most hate for popular Episode stories is because they romanticise toxic things such as abuse, unwanted pregnancies, gangs. etc or from the fact that the premise is just morally wrong, not because the stories are successful.
8 Likes
She’s not calling out anyone specific and to me, it’s no different than people saying “popular authors are all rude” or “popular authors get away with murder” however I don’t recall seeing those comments that she’s mentioned and I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration on her part? I could have missed something though.
7 Likes
Yeah that’s what I think. The criticism about the trending section is valid and something we’ve all seen is turning into a mess. That’s not to say all of the stories are bad but it clearly is a pattern and she sounds like she is condoning the problematic things that go on in the trending section which I find wrong. Also I also agree about the self-centered part too because just because someone says something about more popular stories doesn’t mean it’s jealousy and it seems like she’s saying that stories that are not trending aren’t successful and that success is measured on how many reads one has. It seems like she is using her position of power as someone with a bigger platform to point fingers at smaller forum users instead of looking at the bigger picture. This causes division among the community and deflects from the core issue.
3 Likes
I agree with her on this to be honest but at the same time, I’m sceptical about this.
A lot of bigger authors are getting smack talk for no reason. I may not like some stories by popular authors on there but I feel that it’s petty of certain people to heavily smack talk a certain story with like a 1000 word comment.
But then again, I would rather read Sandra G stories than read Miss MJ or Bukkii but I ain’t gonna write a super long paragraph on why I can’t stand them and so on.
Also, I’m not gonna name drop but I have seen a certain user on the Episode Forum proper smack talk a popular author and obviously that particular author responded and I can see why she got upset about it. Okay fair enough if you want to make a constructive criticism but throwing shade does take the cake.
3 Likes
We don’t “hate” on popular authors for no goddang reason, and it’s not hate, issa strong word. Their stories are in the trending stories full of toxic romance, mafias, romance, and romance 
with the samee fricken’ plotline!
5 Likes
I mean I’m kinda glad that something is finally being done about those trending stories, but no need to be rude about it. It’s Episode’s fault for letting the authors write these kinds of things and make it onto trending, it’s Episode’s fault that it advertised this type of stuff and now all those authors have to change everything in their stories. No need to be rude about it, or at least to them.
6 Likes
My thoughts exactly!
They shouldn’t have contradicted themselves in the first place. They’re literally encouraging the youngsters to read these inappropriate stories!
Also, it should be mandatory for authors to put warnings in their stories.
4 Likes
I agree with what E.R Gurney said… My whole attitude towards popular authors have changed over a few months, but I’ve never hated them.
1 Like
I mean I don’t think the popular authors who write these kinds of toxic stories are blameless just because Episode is at fault for letting these stories happen. Hell, the readerbase isn’t blameless either. If toxic and weird stories didn’t get massive amounts of attention then they probably wouldn’t be what Episode was advertising and pushing. They are a business after all.
6 Likes
Also there’s a difference between being rude and being blunt. Some people are sick and tired of Episode’s crap, whereas some people really are just plain rude. It’s a pretty blurred line but it’s there
8 Likes
I don’t have a problem with it. I call out a lot of popular authors regularly. And I respect that she isn’t saying everyone on the forums is like that. It’s the same with popular authors. Not all of them are bad. There can be a correlation with behaviour in both of those circles, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re all bad
7 Likes
Yeah, some people are not rude but some people are, and some people are nice about it. And yeah, they aren’t blameless, but I do think that it is Episode’s fault for allowing it to go this far.
2 Likes
I don’t blame them as much simply because people make the mistake of thinking that Episode is different from any other business.
They are malicious in nature, every business is. Just like I don’t blame a cat for eating mice
5 Likes
well, she’s talking about official forums, and she is not wrong. People are so unnecessarily happy about this and it boggles my mind. While I do agree with some new rules, some are just bonkers and stupid from a business point of view, so I don’t understand what Episode is doing at the moment.
6 Likes
She’s right at some point, but like… how does she know other people don’t work just as hard? Because their story don’t trend high? Well, I’d hate shatter the glass, but not everyone took advantage of the broken cover system.
I get frustrated when I see these, because Butterfly herself said that she got inspired for Under You when she lost the H&V. I remember her saying “It wasn’t a bad story, it just wasn’t for Episode” clearly. So YOU know it, you know only romance -steamy, may I add- sells on Episode. Figuratively & literally. So why? Why be mad at people who still haven’t give up on other genres?
So, Butterfly, (or anyone else who thinks like this) if you ever see this please try to give other genres a chance, see how bad they do and how careful you have to be with them. For a long time, romance stories were literally privileged with guideline breaking. I understand why people are upset, so I’m not gonna try to stop them, but I’m definitely not gonna dance because of others’ downfall or something. I’m just gonna dance because I’m glad this app is back on track.
7 Likes
Although if she wants to know why they feel this way, I can explain my own thoughts on the matter.
I don’t feel anger towards popular authors in general. I feel anger towards the ones who change when they get popular or the ones who think their popularity makes them better than the rest of us, but not all of the popular authors out there are like that. It just happens a lot more with popular authors because it’s the popularity that fuels behaviour like that.
Personally, this situation does give me a little bit of schadenfreude for a few different reasons:
-
Some of the authors I dislike are being forced to change their stories — both popular and undiscovered alike — and I’m a petty, petty human being.
-
Some of the stories I dislike are being edited. And I dislike them because I dislike the themes that have gotten popular over the years. Bad boys being glorified when they emotionally abuse the MC and teenage pregnancies? No thanks
-
Because episode is going to turn itself apart with this. The trending section is screwed and they’re going to lose money. This is super fun for me because my story fit all of the rules. Every single one of them. Still got banned
6 Likes
Ummmmmm no one hates popular authors just because they are popular. People usually dislike some authors because:
a) Their stories are problematic
b) They use their success to bully others
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone saying “I hate insert author because they have 1 000 000+ reads” 
4 Likes
It’s not calling out c’mon. And I will side with her. I saw forum posts and it was a bit yikes.
1 Like
Yeah, she didn’t mention anyone by name so it’s not a “call out” in my opinion. Also Butterfly happens to be one of my fave big authors who has responded to DMs with funny gifs and just been a sweet person so, yeah, I’m biased.
I do think the pettiness/schadenfreude got a bit out of hand when people on Episode forums were calling her out by name. I agree with Shannii here and couldn’t help but be happy that some stories I dislike would have to be changed because in her words, I too am a
But there’s a balance, so I think being kinda petty/betchy in DMs to friends (or even here if it’s not likely that she’ll see it when we talk about her by name, even though ppl should criticize her ideas not her as a person) about her or other authors, it’s a normal release of human emotions.
So I get the impulse to criticize her here, but I didn’t take this as an insult to anyone who isn’t popular, but I could see how it could be construed this way. I think she was addressing the apparent glee that people had when posting things like “Bye trending section” (which I did see a lot) and other things that she took personally.
5 Likes