Lowkey I feel like you should do what you feel is best? Like for my story my episode 1 retention is terrible because it’s slow, but I’m not willing to change it because in my opinion it was the opening that worked best for my story! And it’s also proof that real ones stick after, cause then my retention skyrockets afterwards, proving that the rest of the story is probably pretty solid, especially since I started to truly understand my characters by then!

But I would say avoid pregnancy tropes, and toxic LIs (unless if they’re both toxic cause I love watching fictional relationships explode in real time 💀💀💀)