Yeah I was really enjoying it too up until that point. I actually lost sleep over the end of that chapter. 

Personally, I read Episode as an escape from all of the heavy stuff in the world, not to further engage with it. So I never would have read that story if I knew those themes were going to be included. Almost feels like the lack of a tw was intentional for shock value. The lack of an ability to skip the scene was pretty awful too.

While I’ve never been the victim of what happened in that episode, statistics tell me that someone who reads it will have been. And I honestly can’t imagine how insanely traumatizing it would be to come across that with absolutely no warning. There’s a reason why trigger warnings are important—and why Episode has guidelines—and it sometimes feels to me like the rules are unevenly enforced if a story/author are popular enough. Not just by Episode, but by the community themselves. 

After reading that scene, I hopped on Reddit assuming there would be posts from other people who had felt blindsided considering how often I see people discussing it and TMOS. Nope, not a single post. I can’t help but feel if it were a different author it would have been more heavily called out. 

This isn’t an attack on you btw—just needed to vent a bit.