I love Episode! But no hate, sometimes there are some stories that really affects me. When I internalise the MC it is either boosting my confidence or I feel sympathy. Do you guys can relate?
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Of course! I think that one of the best and most important things about stories is how they are a precedent of one’s imaginations, real life, and how they relate to people. Stories are, in many ways, an escape from reality and into the mind in the fact that you connect with another character and their story and either relate to their struggles or build your understanding of someone else’s. There are, of course, stories that are a lot more extreme or unrealistic in comparison to real life, but all of them tend to have characters, settings, or themes that are based on the author’s own experiences, observations, and beliefs whether they are conscious of it or not. The reason people fall in love with stories or even cry or laugh when reading stories is because they feel some connection with the characters or their situations.
When you see characters lift each other up or give advise to other characters, they are, in some ways, giving this boost to you as a reader as well. In addition, when you read about characters that are in the same situation or experience the same feelings as you, you don’t feel as alone. Then, by seeing those characters deal with those situations or feelings, you are able to build your confidence or at least open yourself to the idea of I can do this, too. And, when facing characters that are in harder or different situations or struggles, you can also sympathize with them or realize that there are other people struggling as well. When people deal with hardships more extreme than yours, it sometimes can act as a dampener to what is going on in real life. Like a Maybe it’s not so bad. Overall, experiencing other people or characters go through these situations and emotions and struggles help us to deal with our own situations (or at least escape from them) and understand others’.
As for whether it affects your mental health… I do believe that in some ways you are mentally affected by stories. Otherwise, you most likely wouldn’t feel these emotions (laughing when characters laugh and crying when characters cry). I also believe that a story relatable or captivating enough can also affect the way a person can act or feel in real life. If not, people probably wouldn’t be influenced by people around them as much either as stories are just written versions of real people’s thoughts, actions, and imaginations. In some ways, that means that a person who is easily influenced by other people or what they read could be affected negatively–like reading about a story where the characters use unnecessary violence regularly. However, the majority of people do understand that certain behaviors and actions are wrong and will always be wrong, whether written about or not. (Stories aren’t actually real even if they are based on real events.) For the most part, I believe that stories, though they can influence a person’s mental health, are more of a positive influence and more like a temporary stress relief than a long-term behavioral change. People will always be affected by the things around them, fiction or fact, but won’t always change their whole opinions or mindsets.
I hope that helps. (I apologize for the long explanation.)
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Yes. I think that happens to most people. Feeling sympathy, anger, annoyance, happiness or cringing is very common for me when I read stories. But never (by an Episode story, to clarify) has a story taken a massive toll on my mental health.
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Yeah, it actually happens to me. I’ve got serious anger issues, so sometimes if a character does something I don’t like, I snap and shout and exit the story. Then I calm down and resume. 
However, I soon ‘forget’ about it, so it only nags at the back of my head for some time.
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Stories have never affected my mental health. But I have had to calm down and exit the story because I get mad or the story is really sad.
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They’ve never really affected me in the long run, but I do feel sympathy with some characters. Most times I just feel 2nd hand embarrassment from the characters though lol.
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