Discussion/Poll: Kids in Episodes

Hey there, with the recent drama that’s been going on in the forums with the guideline changes I thought it would be nice to host a discussion, take part if you would like. So recently I made a wish list post about adding kids to Episode. (link attached) And I made a lot of statements about how it might be beneficial, and how kid style clothes and such would be useful even outside of using them for kids. To be clear, when I said I suggested Episode add “kids” I mean that I suggested Episode create clothes, animations, hairstyles, face molds, to make the current models look more like kids. Not that Episode actually make kid models because I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I go over everything in more detail in the post, but anyway, that’s not my point-

The point is I really wanted to hear from people wheater or not adding kids in the first place is a good idea?

Whether they think this will ever happen.

What they would do if they did add kids to Episode

It wouldn’t be that big of a change really, I just feel like there may be some issues with the idea.

Personally Idk if it’s a good idea or not. The guidelines update brought up a good point that some people like to write about edgy, racey subject matter. Personally I’ve read stories where there were “kid” characters in them and the subject matter was pretty disturbing. Maybe there’s a reason Episode never tried to even suggest the presence of children in Episode. Maybe they were afraid of what kind of stuff people would write about and what kind of stuff they would involve kids in. On the other hand it is pretty weird to watch an Episode with lost of people but like zero kids, it feels kind of dystopian. Also if there were kids, they wouldn’t even be allowed to be on the cover because of the new guidelines. So you could write a story with your MC being a kid but not be able to put them on the cover, which might be inconvenient, and maybe there’s a reason?

This is also why I feel like Episode really doesn’t want kids to be featured in stories, and why I really don’t think it will ever become an update or art release. I really want it to, but even at it’s simplest form, I feel like Episode wouldn’t do it just because of their target demographic and the for mentioned racey subject matter most Episodes like to have.

Lastly, what I would I do if they actually did implement such a thing? That’s really simple. First I would make like a million kid characters to put in the background of my episodes and create alot of families. Then I would make kid versions of all my MC’s just because. I also have this idea to make the main villain a kid, kind of like the movie Resident Evil where the hologram child was the villain that was trying to keep them in the facility? I really thought that was an effective use of a child character. But anyway, these are my thoughts. I’m really interested to know your’s and what you would do with kid characters if Episode had them.
Thnks for reading :heart:

  • Great idea but never going to happen
  • I think it could happen
  • I don’t care either way
  • It’s a bad idea

0 voters

link to post

CHARACTERS: Adding children

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Hi

Well, the kids can’t be the main focus, like zooming on them and showing only the kids, but they can still be on covers

The minimum age for the MC is 16, you can show the childhood with flashbacks but you can’t do a story with a MC younger than 16.

Well, Episode not having kids didn’t stop me of having kids in my story. Because my characters are young adults/adults (23-27 y.o.) and they’ve kids, as none went through a teenage pregnancy, the oldest that I’ve is 5 y.o… I use the girliest clothes I’ve with her to go around the boobs. :woman_shrugging:t5:

True to be said not giving the assets because people will misuse them is something I don’t agree as people will do it anyway. Actually, as you said here :point_down:t5:

They already do. But as it has been said recently that adding other body types means more money…

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I didn’t know that they don’t allow MC’s to be younger than 16. I mean I feel like that really limits the kind of story you’re allowed to tell.

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Please explain what do you really mean with this…
It’s true you can’t have an adventure story like Narnia’s Chronicles or The Golden Compass.
But you can still have school stories, the problem is people always portray the senior year when there’s the freshman and the year between. In my country, highschool lasts 3 years.
Or use the school as a second plan and bring hobbies like ballet or Olympic sports to light.
And you can have students doing part-time jobs as the characters have the minimum age :woman_shrugging:t5:

As someone wise said, think about the “restrictions” as your way to pursue creativity

Thank you @amberose for such words

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The stories you mentioned work because they are based around kids. People who don’t have any control over their own lives and are more susceptible to danger, and lack the physical strength to over power their opponent. No one would read Oliver Twist if he was an adult or teen perfectly capable of finding a way to care for himself, but because he is a child we know as the audience that his journey will be a lot harder. Also, kids just bring way more innocence and wonder to a story that adults and teens just don’t. They are more able to be vitimize and easier to root for because we know they don’t know any better. It’s a whole point of view we aren’t allowed to write from, that’s very limiting. Even still if there was nothing appealing about writing from that point of view why make it a rule to begin with?

I feel like that philosophy only works if the restrictions are necessary but in this case, they’re not. It’s just a rule made up by Episode to limit what the people who create their content can write about. That way we create content for their target demographic so they can make money off of our free labor by attracting more people using our stories on the app. Even though episode pays the most popular writers to make content they are inevitably doing it with the money they make off of all the other writers who aren’t popular enough to get paid but still bring in users. This rule is stupid because it’s an obvious ploy by Episode to get us to write demographic approved stories without paying us.

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I think it could happen. But, to be frank, I don’t want them adding kids. :sweat_smile:

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First, I’m rather calm. I wasn’t, you would know.

Second as much as I want them to have kids better portrayed, that would mean that Episode would have to spend more money adding different body types and that’s unlikely to happen.

Third, we’ve different pov about the rule you find dumb. And let’s leave it at that.

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But if you write a post about something, almost expect every time someone wanting to discuss or argue though… (and personally the following posts happen to be more or less on-topic)

Anyways, not having kids is for the best so far. There might be people who would abuse this feature and justify it for portraying domestic violence or whatever ‘accurately’. Especially if the kid MC would be the protagonist in a mature-themed story (not about sex of course but other mature concepts) parents of readers wouldn’t want their kid to accidentally read something scary

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It’s unrealistic to only have a complete cast of characters 16 and up. People have younger siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews. I write about school from the perspective of a teacher; of course I want to have kid characters. They aren’t the MC or main focus in the story, but they’re characters nonetheless.

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While I do agree that adding children to stories opens many possibilities and makes them more realistic, Episode writers have proven that they are not trustworthy enough to be allowed children in their stories. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that horrible things don’t happen to children in real life - the problem is how writers portray these events.

Episode is a company trying to keep a pg-13 rating, so it’s understandable they wouldn’t give authors clothing or character models to authors who produce content they often can’t control to their young, impressionable audience. So, while I would like to see children clothing and models in the platform, I completely understand why Episode hasn’t allowed it yet (probably never will).

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I already mentioned in the original post that, that is not what I suggested they do, if you are interested to know more about it I also put a link to my suggested assets to get around that fact. I appreciate that you are calm, it’s just hard to tell when you say things like “Let’s start remembering people are using assets to write and animated story-ect” to you’re own rhetorical question. Kind of comes off as angry or snappy even if that’s not the way you intended it. Just something to consider. But this is again off topic, so I will leave it at that.

I’m just trying to follow the rules of the forum which forbids people from arguing off-topic things, I would love to have a debate but I literally can’t without this post being taken down or something.

Yeah, I think I can agree with that but I kinda also don’t like the fact that it means people can’t have kids or there can’t be kids in a story. Idk, though because you’re right. It can be used in a negative way. I mean can’t episode just add kids and flag any Episodes misusing them though? That’s basically what they do with stories already. :woman_shrugging:

I mean, you can use kids in your story, they are just not allowed to be the main focus of your story. Though I understand that not everyone agrees with this, there is a lot of evil out there and people on her would most definitely misuse children.

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I do think adding kid models would be a nice thing, but probably not worth the amount of effort and money they’d have to invest.

I don’t quite like the idea of adding ways to make the current adult models look more like kids through clothing or animations and so on. not everybody would put in the directing required to make them small, and then you’d have adults running around dressed like kids and acting like kids and being treated like kids, and I can’t quite imagine anything more disconcerting. it’s not even about misuse; it’s just that any immersion would be gone.

as for ‘people will misuse them’, people can misuse anything they want anyway. there’s nothing stopping me from going on Episode and writing dark, dark things that don’t involve any children. nothing besides the rules, of course.
if potential misuse is such a concern, we’ll have to shut the entire app down, and any and all writing and creative work anywhere that doesn’t go through a sorting process before publishing.

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Don’t get me wrong, you can still have kids in your story, they just obviously cannot be the main focus in a story

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(upload://6Mhx3fGOTREuEGygHqFvmC0bbhK.jpeg) CARACTERS KIDS