D4rlin9 recommended FullofIt's channel to me and I ended up watching a video over one hour long. (video above)

Hello everyone. Today we are going to tackle the topic of how much books affect readers. Feel free to disagree/ correct me at any point, we all wanna learn and grow here!

Back story: I watched the video above (a review of the popular AFTER series, which was originally a wattpad fanfiction. The review was negative, but I did feel that the reviewer gave pretty balanced points, and enjoyed it. If you don't wanna watch the whole thing, that's fine, you can still understand this chapter!

So after I read the review I scrolled through the comments and found this (I know all of you are cool peeps, but gotta put this out there: please don't go find the original commenter unless you wanna comfort her of course. I disagree with her to some extent, but what she says is valid and respected. )

(And in case you're reading offline, I'll copy paste the paragraphs and let you know my thoughts one by one)

I read the original After 'books' on Wattpad in 2014 (back when it was "Harry" instead of "Hardin", "Zayn" instead of "Zed", so on and so forth) and what so many people absolutely refuse to acknowledge is how much worse the fanfics were. I don't remember everything of course but not only was the writing even more atrocious and robotic, but the abuse was somehow even worse (without things getting physical SOMEHOW). Anna Todd had to cut out and rewrite so much of the fanfics in order to get the fanfics published - she didn't just change the names. 

(I haven't read the full original book. I read a few chapters and got bored, so I didn't know this).

Growing up on Wattpad was detrimental to my perception of relationships in the first place, especially as a 13-year-old obsessing over 1D fanfics, but After was the nail in the coffin. I, like many other young girls, learned that emotional abuse was love - especially with Anna Todd explaining that he WASN'T abusive. She was an older female writer that we trusted and looked up to, and if she was telling us that 'Harry' wasn't abusive (even though she was just trying to get away from the valid critiques of the older readers who were like... hey Anna... this is abuse). Long story short, my perception of healthy relationships was warped in my formative years.  

1D fanfics are pretty sucky. I think writers should be open to critique and not blatantly defend their characters. Also, it's fine to write grey/ abusive/ evil characters, as long as you're not showing them as a role model in your book. 

I did not know books influenced people's perception of romance this much, so it was interesting to hear OP's point of view.

It's not fair to blame Anna Todd for what I'm going to say next, but when I was 16-18 I was in an incredibly emotionally abusive (and sexually abusive) relationship. I was young and I thought that I was in love, and books and fanfics like After convinced me that he wasn't abusive, that I could fix him, that I just needed to earn his love - all while he was telling me that he wanted to hurt me, implied that he would k*ll me, sa'd me, cheated on me, openly degraded me, screamed at me, punched things, mentioned that the only reason he would never h*t me was because he couldn't afford to "ruin his future", became extremely possessive over me and isolated me, and then when I would try to leave him he would come crawling to me (like Hardin) and promise to change. He never did.  

Whenever I'd even begin to have concerns about his behavior I'd remember After as well as all of the other books and movies that glorified abusive behaviors and relationships, and I'd remind myself that my now-ex wasn't abusive, he was just damaged - like Hardin - and I just needed to look past the abusive behaviors and see the little progress that he HAD made - even though it was always temporary and always fleeting.  

(Extremely unfortunate that things like this do happen in real life, more times than we expect)

Books like After are detrimental to young readers whose first exposure to emotionally abusive relationships very well could be After. It's beyond irresponsible to write the 'love story' that Anna Todd did while knowing that her audience was dominantly 13-16 year-old young girls; especially with the penultimate conclusion of the whole series being Harry and Tessa happily being together with the "look at what we went through and now we're happy! Yay!" ... What the actual fuck, Anna? She really went and taught young girls that if you can tough it out for long enough MAYBE your abuser will be considerably not-as-shitty and you can "move past" the abuse.  

Now here's where I disagree with OP, and please feel free to point out anything I say that's wrong. What OP went through is horrible, no doubt about that. If it was my sister I would never be able to forgive the guy. 

But I feel like OP is taking out her anger on Anna Todd (and in a way, herself). I don't think Anna Todd is the main problem here. The guy who came into her life is seriously messed up. I am not sure if her being in an abusive relationship is a result of reading After. I think it's more to do with her low self-esteem at that time, but I'm just guessing. 

And while Anna Todd's book seems to preach really damaging stuff, I can't really blame her for the effect on younger girls. I think younger girls should not be in relationships in the first place. When you are young it's best to focus on self-improvement. No matter how mature teenagers think they are, I don't think they are ever mature enough to be in relationships. And I think people only stay in abusive relationships because they don't really love themselves.

 (Furthermore (not related to OP btw), teenagers who are in relationships should share DETAILS with their parents. Even if they want to have sex with their partners (apparently many American teenagers lose their virginity as teenagers) they should still tell their parents. Yeah, their parents would most probably be sensible and say NO, but that is to protect them. )

To sum it up, I'm not sure if it's fair to shift the blame towards Anna Todd here.

IF LOVING SOMEONE CAUSED YOU TO GET HURT OVER AND OVER AGAIN, IT'S NOT LOVE. Love isn't just passion, it's mutual respect. Hardin doesn't respect Tessa; he actively sabotages everything good in her life in order to push her back to him and that's what abusers do. If he actually loved her then he would want to see her happy; if he actually loved her then he would leave her so that she could be with someone who is ready to give her the love that she deserves (that Hardin knows he can't give her). 

TRUE.

Anyways, spiel over. Tldr = After pisses me off and Anna Todd is kind of a scumbag.

So, while I do agree with OP's take on the book (that it preached wrong things to teen girls) I don't think a writer can be blamed for someone getting into a toxic relationship.

I'm not saying writers should just write whatever and say 'YEAH BAD BOIS DATE THEM INSTEAD OF EMOTIONALLY STABLE MEN'. Writers should try their best to write something that influences teens POSITIVELY. 

I really don't agree with calling Anna Todd a scumbag just because she wrote a horrible book. At the same time, if Anna Todd is implying 'stay with your boyfriend even if he's abusive' in her books, I wonder if Anna Todd actually believes in that. In that case, her life would be horrible too (and I hope it's not).

The thing is, the book would never have so much reach if every publisher rejected it. But no, a publisher accepted the book and distributed it worldwide. In Traditional Publishing, lots of people see your book, including beta readers, editors and perhaps even cover designers. Did they not find any flaws in the book? Why didn't they point it out to the author? Did the author refuse to make changes? I'm not sure what happened in there. 

So overall, I disagree that Anna Todd is to blame for what happens in anyone's life after they read the book. She could have given a better message, but she didn't, which is sad. But readers could be more wary of the book's message. Young people could me more careful with relationships in general. 

Another thing I want to touch on: What does this mean for writers? 

People might hate you, there's always a huge chance of that. 

Personally, I like writing flawed characters. Anna Todd's characters were extremely flawed and badly written, and while she could have written a better ending, I am a little surprised that many readers thought this was a healthy relationship. 

I'm kind of scared that if I write flawed characters in a toxic relationship with poor writing skills, some people might think the relationship of the fictional characters is healthy. Which kind of haunts me. I don't want to be the reason that someone stays in a horrible relationship- no one wants to be that person. And propagating these ideas in my books, even if unintentionally, has the potential to harm people. 

Let me know what you think. How much is Anna Todd to blame? Do you feel like I've taken her side too much because I write myself? Feel free to disagree with me in anything and point out my mistakes.