DISCUSSION: My Brother's Best Friend

I really want to talk about this particular featured story today because, well, I find it rather concerning tbh.

My Brother’s Best Friend must have been published about 2 or 3 years ago if I’m remembering correctly… Maybe even four years ago now :flushed: It was one of the first stories I read on the app and also a big reason I deleted it at one point too. It was a wattpad story that was adapted to Episode. I mentioned it to a few people on a different thread a little while ago, remembering how alarming I had found it and so I recently decided to read it again to see if it was as bad as I remember.

SPOILER: It’s much worse

The story is about Emily moving back in with her brother after being away for a year. We don’t know at first why she was away for a year, but later on it’s revealed she was at a clinic in London for girls with eating disorders. When she moves back in with her twin brother (their parents are super rich and super busy so don’t live with them of course), she finds his best friend has also moved in too and basically that’s the “premise”.

The rest of my rant is going to be in a drop-down because some of these themes might be troubling for some people. They contain Emily experiencing a relapse and there’s also an almost-sexual assault scene. If you’re sensitive to either of these themes, I’d advise you not to click these drop downs and not to read this story either.

First of all… I just want to show you a small sample of some of the choices Episode gives you throughout this story.

Choices

All of these options are lies. You choose how Emily gets to lie about her relapse.

One of these is a flat out lie as specified and the other is honestly just as bad. I picked it, but I’m pretty sure something gets in the way and Emily ever eats

Me: picks the first option because I want to be honest!
Emily’s mum: interrupts me every time I try to speak until she has to go :expressionless:

No matter what you choose here, your family judges you big time for eating light(?) I’ll have you know, this scene is also before the relapse.

Emily doesn’t have her own gym membership as it was a place she used to go often when she was sick… Naturally her friends and family don’t want her to go alone but Emily wasn’t having that so here are your choices… How are you going to get Emily into the gym?

There comes a point where the gym isn’t enough for Emily so she gets the urge to buy suppressants. No surprise here, but I chose the third option… She walks out of the store, takes two steps and then runs back in and buys the pills

I just… I can’t even anymore :confused:

Eventually, Parker - your brother’s best friend and your love interest - finds your pills



Your parents send you to a therapist once they hear of your relapse. It costs gems to talk about Parker… you don’t talk through your issues with food or your body at all because this is a romance story, thanks.

This is later on, once Emily has “recovered” she is hit with the flu and Parker shows her these pills that will help her. Idek what the “right” choice is here, but I didn’t want her to take them and she ended up spewing at a thanksgiving dinner which apparently gave away that Parker and her had kissed :roll_eyes:

Next are just some overall scenes that I feel best sum up why this story is so concerning.

Emily's dream

Emily has a dream sequence about her time in the clinic.











Dress Up Game

Idk if this is just me but this felt like weird dialogue






Parker's backstory

More here for the fact that it’s so unrealistic, but you know… It’s Episode








Family moments


There was three choices, Mrs Winston! That’s not a large selection



Attempted Sexual Assault Scene







There’s a few more stills of that scene, but the major concern is the choice you have the next morning…




Naturally, I pick to go to the station because in my fictional world that is Episode, justice is always easy to get so idek why you’d contemplate this choice WTF…
And so then I pick Rick out of a line up and this happens:




And yes, they give you the choice to let him get away with it :unamused:

This last part is just miscellaneous screenshots that I couldn’t categorise, but still wanted to share

After Emily’s relapse, I noticed a lot of the choices were suddenly the opposite of what they were before. All the non gem choices became about eating. She even once said pizza was her enemy and then a few episodes later, it was a choice to stay home and eat pizza

Default character

From when she had the flu…

In a story where the MC has serious self image issues, let’s name the PE teacher “Fat Man”. Makes sense :woman_shrugging:

No comment

Also while she had the flu and a consequence of me not choosing to take Parker’s pills

Who needs professional help when your teenage brother has a “plan”? Amirite?

I totally forget what this was in a response to but just looking at it makes me feel uneasy.

LAYERS!!!

RIP Athletic Body… Also nice tattoo there

There’s a lot going on with Mrs Grant, but um… Ashy lips and no bra or singlet with a jacket that drops that low? I’m concerned.

I honestly have a lot more screenshots than just those ones and I’m not even at the end of the story yet. It might be important to mention that you can only CC Parker, your love interest. I feel like this was so you wouldn’t be able to insert yourself into this story considering the serious themes, however I still feel like having everything written in first person makes it feel like you are Emily anyway. You’re making choices that affect her health and for someone who’s eating disorder was as serious as hers, I don’t think this should be looked over.

I really can’t fathom how this has managed to be looked over by so many people. I feel sick thinking that multiple fully grown adults over at Episode must have read this before it went live, fully believed there was nothing wrong with providing this content to teens as young as 12/13 and given it the green light. I thought I had been exaggerating most of this when I was telling my friends about it, but no… This inaccurate and triggering portrayal of a serious mental health topic is literally at the top of most pages on the app. Does it break guidelines? No, and I think that’s what scares me the most. There is technically nothing “wrong” with this story, as per Episode. I have absolutely no grounds to report this and that really frustrates me.

So feel free to share your thoughts on this story. If you haven’t read it, you’re welcome to comment on my albeit bias opinion. All I ask is that you put anything triggering in a drop-down/hide-details thing like I did :v:

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I’m so glad that this is being talked about and mentioned. The fact that this story has been out for a while and nobody has called it out for being problematic is beneath me. If Episode feels ashamed about something. It should be about this story. Thank you for speaking up about it! :relieved:

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Thank you so much for making this thread, and bringing awareness to this story. It is deeply troubling and saddens me that it has been published and made readily available to children as young as 13. I won’t delve too much into the specifics, as I know a lot of the topics raised in this story can be triggering but there is something so alarming about the fact that there are gem choices in this story. Yes, it is a featured story and gem choices are basically a requirement for those, but the very fact that there is a possibility that revenue is being collected makes me sick.

I hope this thread serves as a wake-up call and it is removed entirely. No amount of editing and revision can be done to save this. This isn’t In My Bed 2.0

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This is disgusting. All of it really, Eating Disorders, Rape, Anxiety and it’s all about her brothers best friend? I don’t even think this should have made its way into Episode Original.

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I think what makes all this so shameful is that the issues that come with Emily’s eating disorder feel like they’re being written to either (a) exist as a temporary hurdle in your relationship with Parker or (b) act as a way to bring you and Parker closer together. I’m not against interactive fiction being used to depict serious topics, but when it’s written as the backdrop to romance (and on an app geared towards teens especially), something’s wrong.

I’ve seen mental illness, date rape, sexual assault, and more used as mere obstacles to the greater plot of romance in featured and user stories alike. It’s beyond irresponsible.

This is just abominable to me.

You don’t write a scene that narratively supports the idea that attempted rapists might deserve a second chance and get to go on without consequences. Ever.

As much as this stirs up a righteous anger within me, I’m glad to see the community discuss and be more involved in issues like it. I didn’t sense that critical eye early on with the app, but I feel like I’m seeing it more now.

Agreed.

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Wow.

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This is interesting, since I don’t think I even got that option, a lot of male characters had the Full lips :worried:

I mean, true. If this story was truly meant to discuss these types of issues, they would at least have given the option to customise the MC. Then again, I think it may be also because the story didn’t have really advanced directing to begin with.

Same! This just seems unreal the topic of this was first introduced when there was a post about Content Warnings. This old story had none!

EDIT: And about the letting the attempted rapist get away scene, it wasn’t even adequately written. This Ricky character only appeared in two scenes, this being one of them. There is no out-story explanation for the reader to even comprehend wanting him to get off scotch-free

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Yes! Agreed. I think even though that scene was 100% there just for Parker to “save” you, Episode could have used it as a learning tool. The fact of the matter is that so many readers who have come past that scene will in one way or another be harassed or assaulted in their lifetime and as sad as it is, I don’t want people to think that reporting it is going to ruin the culprit’s life so you should just give them a “second chance.”

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So, since finding out this story came from Wattpad, I found the story there. In the content warning, the story also said it had self-harm in too.

Now, Episode 3-4 years ago, why?!?

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I think that scene was a bad lesson "If you get harassed a man will pop out and save you EVERY. TIME.

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Honestly, I think Episode can write a story about having a condition the right way, by the looks, they didn’t even try. 3-4 yrs ago.

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And it’s just an extremely dangerous ideology to be putting in a story on top of it. When your market is on an app for teens, your biggest demographic by far is young women, and your story is saying “but what about your attempted rapist? are you sure you want to do this?” How many young women are plagued by the laments of “oh but he had such a bright future!”

This hurts real victims and survivors every single day, so I don’t want to hear any excuses. Fix it.

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The was one of the first stories I read on Episode, and it immediately put me off the app. I deleted it and then downloaded it months later again. I just found the whole plot disturbing.

Totally off topic but, the characters were hella ugly too.

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Reading it as far as I am, the ED scenes were frustrating to bear through. The assault scene is just in poor taste, having choices for choices sake, and that there is no other reason otherwise to let Ricky go :pensive:.

About Lee

For me though, for some reason, the Lee scenes also rubbed me the wrong way. I’m not exactly sure how accurately BP is depicted, but still some of them may Well, aside from the fact it was a way for the reader to sympathize with Parker. Parker said it himself: Lee is bipolar and has anxiety problems. I think it was the first scene Lee gets introduced, that Lee was very hyper and excitable (and also tends to pick on social cues), and most of his scenes is him in his manic episode. I don’t remember the exact dialogue, but there was a point which Parker shouts at him (or at least uses the shout animation). Most of the other scenes is about him speaking and doing wacky things, which the gang would laugh at. There was even a choice for MC to make fun of him for something. (Too bad I didn’t get screenshots of them, sorry)
The most serious his bipolar disorder was shown was before he had to fly back to his school. He had run away because he thought he thought he was a burden on Parker and the rest, and he also didn’t take his medication. There was this thing about making taquitos to help Lee ingest the pills. But it seems like the bipolarity was kinda played for laughs (downplaying the more serious symptoms), while at times the scenes with Parker kinda show him in a weird light when he gets impatient with him. I don’t know how to say it more clearly, but people teasing someone with a stigmatised condition (though it mostly isn’t the focus) sends the wrong message.

Mental Health in general

These are primarily about the therapist scenes. Luckily, later in the story Emily is able to talk openly to her. But every scene with her still has a choice to either tell her everything or nothing. Like there is no middle ground to talk about anything. I get not explicitly talking about ED in length to not trigger readers, but other scenes were like that, so I’m not sure.
I guess it connects to Emily’s dream that she is intimidated by intense questioning. But it should have been discussed more deeply as a result.

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Oh gosh. I don’t think I’m even up to that second half. I’ll make sure to update with screenshots once I get to it. It does sound concerning

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The butchered spelling of “bi-polar” in Amber’s screenshots certainly didn’t put me at ease. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how much, but I’m sure it’s off and another example of irresponsible writing in this story.

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I hope so. At best/worst, I worry I’m wording these scenes badly. The pills in the food thing was especially a bit iff since I read Luna Rose’s Dream Job story which had a pair of similar scenes which were done with intended maliciousness. Even the taquito thing isn’t really suited for a suitable diet to help with mania/depression, I just checked.

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As someone who’s had an EDNOS for more than half my life now, I actually related to that aspect of the character. That said, I remember quite vividly being put off by the fact that there were choices involved in that aspect of the story. If this were an 18+ app, maybe… it could be OK to tell that story with trigger warnings and without choices about how to starve the MC.

I write adult and YA novels off episode, and recently I was thinking of writing an MC with an eating disorder, as it’s a big part of my life, but I couldn’t think of a way to incorporate it in a YA that seemed responsible to the target demographic. It would HAVE to be a story of recovery, and my experience isn’t one of recovering, but of life-long struggle.

I can’t remember how this plot-line in MBBF was resolved. I’m pretty sure I finished the story, but the thing I remember most vividly is choosing how to lie to cover up the ED. I didn’t recall the option to report the assailant until you mentioned it, but I definitely recall now being upset that it was even up for discussion.

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Thanks for sharing your experiences Cee.

Also I found out that the choice to report it originally cost gems. Not sure if someone already mentioned that but if you’re like me, you might not have remembered it simply because you couldn’t afford it at the time :confused:

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I honestly felt the portrayal wasn’t going to get any better when I first read the story. It really isn’t… convincing and it’s kind of offensive.

I do notice, though, that the only eating disorders featured a lot of the time are bulimia and anorexia.

Slight Rant/my experiences

Episode, there’s many more disorders than just that—as I’ve said before on separate threads, I have ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder), also called food aversion.
It’s worse than picky eating because it isn’t deliberate.

I subconsciously prevent myself from eating certain things based on their smell, appearance, taste, even their color! I miss out of all kinds of food because of this disorder, and therapy would help, but I’m just resistant because of it.

Thankfully, I’ve made progress, and I can finally enjoy apples again. In addition to this, I love finally managed to stomach iceberg lettuce, pomegranates, and a few other foods I can’t think of.

Even when you can eat foods, there’s still strict conditions as to how you eat it. In my case, the apples have to be red delicious, crunchy, not soft, and have to be eaten either the same day or the day after they’re bought.

It’s still progress, and I’ll take it…

The story wasn’t exactly bad, just… very stereotypical in some ways and kind of half-assed.

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