Mivel tov�bbra is be vagyok z�rva a lak�sba, van id�m firk�lni-irk�lni. Egyel�re a saj�t �r�saimhoz kev�s ihletem �s kapacit�som van, de addig is, ezek a cikk-szer�s�gek j� gyakorl�snak t�nnek.

A k�vetkez� cikk angol nyelv�, st�lus�ban az �l�besz�det igyekszik kiss� ut�nozni, ez�rt nem szerkesztettem meg �gy, mint az el�z� k�nyvkritik�t. Amint l�thatj�tok is majd, nem is teljesen tartozik a k�nyvkritik�k k�z�, ink�bb csak alapul vesz egy alkot�st egy jelens�g bemutat�s�hoz.

A sz�ban forg� alkot�s pedig a Miut�n (After). Szerz�: Anna Todd.

Tov�bbiakban maga a cikk.

My Problems with After

… and what it represents

So, for those who don’t know this, ‘After’ is now a movie series about two young adults who start their first year at the university and fall in love. Sort of.

If you are familiar with any 90’s teen movie plotline, or ’The Bet’ in particular, you are familiar with this plot as well. It’s a straight up copy of that. Except its worse. A lot worse. While in the 90’s, early 20’s the horrible, downgrading and humiliating bet was about taking an „ugly” girl and making her prom queen, this time, it is taking a conventionally beautiful, but somewhat unconventionally conservative and inexperienced girl’s virginity. For a bet.

Seriously, people, where the fuck has the world of teenagers gone in just twenty short years?? What the hell? (I know the characters featured are of age, but really, the target audience is not. Trust me.)

((Okay a bit of author’s nerdy notes here: I think essentially all of these stories are slightly (or more) based on the 1782’s French novel Les liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Its more commonly known adaptations are Christopher Hampton’s play debuted in 1985, Stephen Frears’s movie, Dangerous Liasons released in 1988, or Roger Kumble’s movie, Cruel Intentions, made in 1999. The original story is even more horrifying than ‘After’. But the guy there is not portrayed as a good guy, his relationship is not framed as something okay, and he does not get a happy ending.))

Now, back to my original point:

First of all, I have actually been a college student. It’s nothing like the author described here. We don’t make bets about taking people’s virginity, because by the time we get there, we are (more or less) adults. How utterly, terribly demented and stupid do you have to be to do something like that? That is juvenile and immature at best, and horribly psychotic at worst.

The movies try to make it better and change the point of the bet from taking her virginity to making her fall in love, which is even less believable. Why would you do that? (I mean, with sex there’s at least the pleasure involved.)

The point where I essentially stopped reading the second book in the series, was where Hardin tells Tessa how (also for a bet) he had sex with a girl, taped her without her knowing, then his mate shared that video with their entire school. Consequently, their parents kicked the girl out (which is really overly dramatic and not something that would realistically happen, by the way) and when she asked Hardin to stay with her for a while, he did not let him, because he did not care. And the guy does not even really regret it. He did not care first time around, he only cares this time, because this time it is Tessa who is involved. But that is the shittiest part about it, if you ask me. Doing something this horrible and messed up to anyone is not justified, not even if said person is not a nice person. But in this story, the other girl was not even mean or bitchy, her only sin was that she was hot.

To be fair, this situation is not portrayed as something that’s okay to do, but if you ask me, it is not just not okay, it is well beyond redeemable. It is a serious, punishable offence (filming someone without their consent during sexual activities) and I believe if Hardin was over 14 at that point, he should be legally accountable for it. But I am no legal expert, so I might be wrong about this.

And the most shocking thing about this is that none of the reviews or critics that I watched or read, touched on this. Which kind of leads me to believe that worse things happen later on that I did not read, and that was more horrifying to them, than this one. Yay. (What seemed to trigger most people is that our supposedly “pure” heroin cheats on her boyfriend repeatedly, and it’s treated as okay because she was uninterested in her boyfriend. This happens relatively early on and we were still supposed to empathise with her through I’m not even sure how many books. But that did not bother me that much because people unfortunately do cheat on people and she seemed to regret it. A bit. Kind of. I mean, it’s not okay, but it’s nowhere near as horrifying as the other stuff that happens.)

Anyhow, this rant was not really supposed to be about my issues with the story itself, so I am just going to leave it at that.

I tried to read (as in skimmed through) the books because I tried to understand how publishers viewed it, what they saw in it, when they decided that it was worth publishing as a series.

I guess, they saw none other than the (scary) success it was on Wattpad. The most horrifying part about this, is that the whole thing capitulates on the success of the British music band One Direction, because, I kid you not, “After” was first a Harry Styles fanfic. In the sense, that the love interest/dirtbag/psychopath was originally the band leader and singer Harry Styles. (I am a bit too old to be a fan of the band, and I know absolutely nothing about the singer, but it seems he distances himself from the story.)

Now, I watched an interview recently where the author, Anna Todd, was asked about this slightly problematic premise. To be fair, she handled it as gracefully as she could, given the situation. She claimed that her MC, Hardin, is his own person and Harry was merely an inspiration. She emphasised the fact that Harry Styles is a real person. But, I mean…, she could have thought of that a bit earlier, couldn’t she? I am all for fanfiction, but real person fanfics creep me out. Also, from where I am standing, to capitalize your stories on someone’s success and then later claim that it really was not about him, he was just the inspiration for it… It still is problematic. I mean, he was just an inspiration, but the success of the band was what had drawn people’s interest to the book in the first place. It is like claiming I have an appreciation for Professor Tolkien, but essentially my fanfics are my own works. They are, to a point, but no one would give a damn about them, if they were not set in a universe that the Professor had created.

And this leads me to my main issue with the current development of fanfiction writing.

We have seen it with Fifty Shades of Grey where an author (E. L. James) shamelessly copied another author’s storyline and characters and sold it as her own work. Granted, some people call her out on this, but James still has gotten all this fame and fortune riding Stephenie Meyers’ wave of success. (And I won’t get into the fact that even Twilight is a highly questionable piece of work in terms of literary quality). And E.L. James even stole Meyers’ (marketing?) ideas not just her storyline and characters.

And we are okay with this. We are still paying for movie tickets and still paying for copies of the books. (Well, not me. But people are. Loads of people are.)

As much as I am fond of fanfiction, fond of reading and writing what I consider and aim to be quality work, I would never even think of making money of it. I am honestly afraid that somewhere, at some point, somebody will call this out and things will blow up big time. And that it will put an end to writing and publishing fanfiction online for free. It will destroy this creative scene; one if not the only places where most publishers honestly truly write and publish for the joy of writing and getting reviews. Because fanfiction was supposed to be this creative outlet. And nobody was ever supposed to make money of it. I understand that plagiarism is not always very clearly defined and I am not familiar with the legal aspects of it. People may get inspired by things but still put enough of their own ideas and creativity into the story to have it be considered their own, I get that.

But if you were to ask me where I would draw the line… Well, if I know for a fact, that when I began my story it was a fanfiction and I published it as a fanfiction… That is where I would draw the line.

I quite honestly am disgusted by the fact, that once an author milked the opportunities provided by online fanfiction sharing platforms (namely easily getting readers and reviews, at least more easily than you would get with your original stories), they then go on essentially abandoning those honest readers who took their time to encourage, give free critique and reviews, and proceed to make money for themselves, of the same story.
(Even for a blasted thesis for your diploma, you have to testify that you have not published this same, or similar material anywhere else before. And that is a damned thesis that probably nobody’s even going to read. Not a million dollar book deal.)
 

Again, I aim to be fair, I probably could not resist if somebody offered to make an original book out of my fanfictions. (If my fanfics were book material. They are not.) And I am not sure, I blame publishers either. Their main goal is to publish and market stuff that’ll probably sell well and be popular, so why would they not use the success of fanfictions or boy bands?
But I wish this would not be an existing issue. I wish all fanfiction writers would separate their own original work from their fanfictions, because this current trend or tendency is very problematic. And, though it kind of made fanfiction more well-known and popular, I sense that these glory days inevitably carry the downfall of the entire genre of fanfiction within themselves.

As you can see, this review is not really about ‘After’ or Anna Todd. (If I am being honest, the entire thing is not even worth an in depth review.) It’s not even a real review.

These were mostly just my thoughts on the recent, ethically and legally questionable ascend of fanfiction and my fears of its approaching decline.

Thanks for reading!