AFTER Rant Review

hello everyone welcome back to my channel my name is Jordan and today I'd like to tell you a little story so grab some snacks and settle in once upon a time when fanfiction and One Direction were booming a story was written this story showed Harry in the limelight and fangirls were smitten it's spread was rapid the readers swarming like locusts and of course the publishers began to take notice unfortunately both Harry and the protagonists were terrible making the book for most people unbearable but despite its core themes and depictions of romance its financial success made its adaptation advance and that is when this little story exploded and online reviewers decoded its motives unfortunately this just helped to promote it and when I asked what you wanted me to read this is what you voted and so on this cold winter night we will discuss all that is broken what is wrong and abusive for the people have spoken [Music] hey guys so before we get into the video proper I do think it is important to talk seriously for a second I just felt while I was editing that it needed a little disclaimer of sorts this book is disturbing it made me sad it made me upset it made me angry and that's because I know for a fact that there are young people who haven't well read this book that will romanticize the abuse and the horrible actions of the characters in the same way that the author has and I think it's really heartbreaking I was talking to my brother about some of the the problematic tropes and issues of this book and he said something that really stuck with me he said there's nothing as damaging to young girls as other young girls perception of what romances and having read some Wattpad fan fictions in my day I know for a fact that it's a huge issue and originally I had thought that Anna Todd was 14 or 15 when she wrote the first Wattpad story and then I found out that she was actually 22 and that just upset me so much because she should have known better by that age the demographic on Wattpad and the One Direction demographic is very young especially at that time and the fact that she wrote this for that audience is like not okay and then simon and schuster looked at it and saw dollar signs instead of damage and then they made it into a movie and along this journey no one stopped to think whether or not this story should be shared because it was profitable and I just sucks you know so I won't be roasting this book for you guys but I want you to know that I feel guilty because I don't want to give this book more of a platform than it already has because that's how I found out about this book was through online reviewers and I'm pretty sure that's how a lot of you found out about this book so I don't want to support it any more than it already has been and I don't want anyone to find this book and be like oh it would be funny if I read it and give this publishing house and this author more money for a book that is so like wrong and bad and disturbing please don't pick up this book please but without out of the way I guess it's time to dive in [Music] the writing in this book is bad I know what a shock I figured we'd start here before I get too worked up about everything else basically over the break my siblings and I were hanging out and somehow through Google we ended up on a very obscure Wattpad original story that is unedited unprofessional just you know some kid writing at home and I came to the startling and horrible realization while I was reading this because I was also reading after at the same time that the quality of the writing was pretty much on par with each other despite having a professional editor hired by one of the big five publishers there were several obvious mistakes of words that were either missing or repeated and just consistent punctuation errors as well as just using the same gosh darn word over and over again in the same paragraph here's an example of that on page 245 hardens lips mold to mind and my hands travel up his back his narrow hips grind down on mine and a whimper escapes my lips he swallows my gasp as his lips trace mine movement for movement really one of the things that irritated me to an almost irrational degree though was the fact that she used contractions sparingly and inconsistently like way too sparingly they would be in a heated argument and would be like hardened you are so annoying instead of you're so annoying and it would really pull me out of those situations because when your heated no one talks like that like I don't know about you but if I was angry I wouldn't say Simon & Schuster should not have published this book which was not edited to the degree that it should have been I would say Simon & Schuster shouldn't have published this book which wasn't edited to the degree that it should have been but you know just an example another thing that I guess I'll include in the writing was just the inaccuracies and things that didn't make sense the first being that University classes don't work like high school class tessa goes to the same five classes all five of her classes everyday which just isn't how university operates and one would think that a 22 year old Anna Todd would know that but apparently not then she gets an internship and is supposed to go to classes three days a week and then to the internship the other two days a week and that is immediately abandoned after being established and she just goes to the internship every day so I don't really know what the purpose of that is also when does this girl get her period cuz she and Harden do the sexy times like every other day for months and she just never bleeds and we know for a fact that she's not on birth control because at one point harden says we've got to get you on birth control so that I could stop using a condom I really want to be able to feel you on page 555 which I have some issues with because why is his pleasure a priority over what she wants I mean she hasn't expressed that she doesn't want to take birth control but he says it like it demand but I'm getting ahead of myself more to come on that later another thing that gets brought up but isn't properly explained is hardens working situation like seriously when does this kid work apparently he has a job but he's constantly either with Tessa or exploiting her virginity for money but again I'm getting ahead of myself one of the things that bothered me the most of though as far as the inaccuracies is that despite being a supposedly low income family and implying that Tessa and her mother are fairly poor she does not value hers and other people's objects in the way that someone would if they actually grew up in a low-income household she readily throws out her sheets when she could easily wash them destroys hardens dad's computer and she goes shopping all the time when you don't have money it has a level of control over you that is not communicated in this book it just seems like it's written by and about someone who's upper class but is described as being poor just to gain sympathy or relatability from the reader which really doesn't sit well with me but now I think it's time to dive into the absolute train wreck that is the plot of this book right so it's a bit harder to talk about plot in contemporary coming-of-age romances rather than say fantasy because the plot is less overt they tend to be more character-driven which unfortunately is true to this too but I'm gonna do my best to encapsulate what happens in the 600 page masterpiece that is after tessa goes to university and gets put in a dorm room with a girl that has tattoos and piercings disgusting she is a classic young adult and our new adult for taking his - definitely isn't like other girls because she likes classic literature dresses conservatively and only shaves below the knee she has a very kind and loving boyfriend named Noah who's still in high school and is a two hour drive away which is convenient for when she repeatedly cheats on him this of course happens with Hardin Scott who is a friend of her roommate Stef he's a complete dick to her and everyone but who cares cuz he's physically attractive and puts his lip ring between his teeth Oh sexy after getting really drunk for the first time and almost getting assaulted at a party she runs to hardens room because she knows him he lets her in and then she kisses him and I'm just gonna say it even though she kisses him because she's drunk for the first time which he knows and because she's in a vulnerable state she was just about to be assaulted by a drunk man at a party I don't think he should have kissed her back but Hardin just doesn't have a moral code so of course he does and apparently neither does Tessa because she still has a boyfriend they fight a lot all the time and seemed to not get along at all but then she decides that she wants to be friends with him for some reason and goes to a river with him where he fingers her and baby has her first orgasm and she still has a boyfriend after getting in he had another fight with harden and feeling bad about herself because that's what always happens she calls her boyfriend Noah and asks him to skip class and sports practice and come visit her for the weekend which he does he drops everything he comes to visit her because he loves her and then on Saturday she gets a call from heartens soon-to-be stepbrother Landon who tells her that she needs to go to hardens father's house because harden got drunk and is breaking dishes and being super aggressive and of course she does she takes her boyfriend's car leaves him in her dorm room goes to this guy's house who's being super violent and aggressive and calms him down and then he asks her to stay the night and she just says yes and and they mess around while her boyfriend is stranded in her dorm room and she's ignoring his calls the next morning harden goes and finds her in her dorm when she gets back and is with Noah and he reveals that she has been cheating on Noah for a while now and of course Noah's heartbroken so he asks for some space to to think about it because he needs to process what's going on but apparently he doesn't need that much time because by the next weekend he's already forgiven her and says that he'll take her back as long as she doesn't hang out with Hardin anymore which fair enough given you know her history with him yeah that doesn't last very long though because pretty much immediately after she hangs up with her boyfriend Hardin comes and she goes with him and they mess around some more she cheats on Noah again and then again and eventually no it comes to surprise her at the University and finds out that she has been seeing Hardin some more and he is devastated when he realizes that she has continued to cheat on him and and then to kick him while he's down she breaks up with him and asks him to leave without even looking at him this guy that she supposedly loves and who has always been there and looked after her as you can tell this sets Tessa up to be a truly lovable protagonist and I think it's because of how kind-hearted and empathetic she is towards other people's emotions this brings us to section 2 of the book they fight they break up they kiss they make up and I think Katy Perry really nailed the third relationship in the head with the whole hot and cold song because that is what they constantly are towards each other this cycle is this he is an evil person and he makes her cry by being controlling or possessive or demanding or just straight-up mean and insulting and degrading towards her she then cries and yells I am a bit she tells him that she can't take it anymore but then he says he needs her and that he's sorry and he won't do it again she forgives him because he pleasures her sexually and also because he emotionally manipulates her rinse and repeat that is pretty much the majority of the rest of the book but we also get another love interest option who's dangled in front of us this comes in the form of Zedd who is another member of the friend group and it's really tragic because at the time it seems like he respects her he doesn't pressure her to do anything that she doesn't want to do he doesn't take advantage of her he takes her out on nice dates and does things with her rather than just banging and so yeah it really highlights how much she and Hardin shouldn't be together and how bad he is for her but of course it doesn't last because she just goes straight back to Hardin obviously I want to stress though that it is both Hardin and Tessa that are extremely hypocritical and toxic people to each other he is not the only one at fault and is not the only one to intentionally hurt or manipulate the other person and I want to make it clear that him being a dick does not excuse her actions towards him and vice-versa instead I think it should be said that if your relationship puts you in a position where you're constantly having to tiptoe around the other person so as not to set them off then that is not a healthy relationship if you do things to intentionally hurt the other person to the highest degree then you are not good for each other and bonus points if you do it semi-regularly if you keep seek from the other person don't trust the other person or feel pressured to be responsible for changing the other person then that is a toxic relationship and you should get out these characters are bad people but they are also bad for each other but instead this is romanticized because spicy sex scenes am i right and they move in together and fall in love she distances herself from her friends because he insists on keeping her a secret she also somehow Noah forgives her and Harden demands that she stopped talking to him despite him being her oldest friend just because he's jealous and on top of that Tessa's mom who is actually kind of a bad person sees that they're together living together and flips out on her and basically removes herself from Tesla's life which is bad because that leaves Tessa socially dependent on hardened because she's completely isolated and this all leads us to the grand finale part 3 which is this book sucks and should be burned and should just not exist because it's the worst and I hate it the end of this book reveals that this was worse than you even thought and that the emotional abuse experienced thus far was only the tip of the iceberg and that's because harden at the beginning of the book made a bet for money that he could take Tessa's virginity along with all of Tess's new friends he therefore has a monetary stake in all of his interactions with her and it means that their entire relationship was based on lie but of course the author ends the book with the repetition of the scene that all of this is revealed but through hardens perspective because of course there are other books in the series and they're meant to be together so she has to show the hardened truly does love her and that he fell in love with her despite all of the horrible things that he did to her so um you know it's fine right ah no it's disgusting and one of the worst bits too is that their entire friend group including Stef Tess's roommate is in on the BET and no one told her also harden had the audacity to show them the condom and Tessa's bloody sheets as evidence that he actually did end up taking her virginity I think this is maybe one of the reasons why he fetishizes her virginity and her purity or maybe he's just extra creepy just you know for fun regardless I hate every part of this and I cannot understand why a major publishing house decided to stand behind such a reckless damaging and disturbing story [Music] right it's time to the characters know the function outside of the purposes that they serve to either pardon or Tessa so I'll likely be talking about them in relation to one of the two protagonists let's start with Tessa Noah serves to be the safe boring guy who holds Tessa back from her sexual awakening because of his conservative values he is there so that when hard makes Tessa orgasm she discovers all that she's been missing we don't feel as bad about Tessa cheating because he's not satisfying her he also provides a roadblock for Tessa and the hardens relationship or at least I think that's what the intent was but unfortunately Tessa doesn't have a heart into this care about hurting him so he doesn't provide much of a barrier the whole good guy who's just too much of a square thing also backfired because I just feel bad for him because he's a genuinely good dude who's just trying to do his best and who really cares for Tessa whereas Tessa and Martin are both terrible people Steph is Tessa's door into the world of parties and alcohol and just normal college people who want to have a social life gossip ties Tessa to harm because of sheer proximity she's not the worst by any stretch but she does enable Tessa when she's cheating on Noah which I didn't love but I also understand because it would be awkward to tell someone to not be a dick but the thing that I find more inexcusable is the fact that she knew about the bet all along and the only thing she did was cryptically kind of mentioned that Tessa shouldn't get involved emotionally with Hardin but that actually telling her to not get with Hartman Tessa smog is an extremely judgmental controlling person who has instilled in Tessa some really bad habits and perspectives about people in the world she judges people who dress alternatively and extreme and frankly ridiculous degree you're supposed to hate her she's the reason that Tessa is the way she is at the beginning of the book and why she's been held back from truly living linden is another connection to harden he's hard in student to be stepbrother and he's there to I guess hi Tessa to hearten even more but he felt like he was going to be more important at the beginning of the book that he ended up being I think his main purpose was to get Tessa to Hardin's house on the night that Hardin is breaking all of his mom's China and being super aggressive and he also kind of pushes Tessa to be with Hardin rather than with his ed or with Noah and that's one thing that I found a really strange he also enables Tessa when he finds out that she's cheating on Noah but he definitely seems like the type of person who would find that morally reprehensible so it felt very out of character for him but of course if all the characters are okay that Tess is cheating then it minimizes how absolutely horrible what she's doing is right Zedd is used by Tessa to make part of jealous but he's also in on the BET and that's something that I found a little confusing because I wasn't clear to what degree he was involved in the bed I'm not sure if you bet against hardened by budding that he would be able to take Tessa's virginity or if he just bet against Hardin that Hardin would be able to do it which you know both are very bad just to a slightly different degree I originally assumed that you'd serve as a kind of a foil to harden but then of course he turns out to be in retrospect almost as bad his inclusion irritated me though because it really only served to highlight how bad Hardin is for Tessa because he was able to treat Tessa with respect and didn't push her or you know take advantage of her the bedroom with her at the party so it really just highlighted how wrong Hardin and Tessa are together which didn't help cuz of course Hardin doesn't care about those things and speaking of Hardin let's talk about some the side characters that pertained to him Malia's to harden what the Zen is to Tessa basically a tool for him to make the other person jealous and also to provide drama and tension to the relationship you know just healthy things she's not nice to toss up because of Tessa's constant and unwavering slut-shaming I find it very hard to hate her and instead it just makes me dislike Tessa even more but I didn't circle back to this point when we talked about the leading lady herself and her kind of plot importance is that at the end she's the one who makes hard and tell Tessa about the bet and relies hardens dad is an interesting inclusion he's supposed to be the root of all of hardens problems the reason he's so messed up he basically was a drunk when Hardin was a kid and one night he picked a fight with some soldiers at the bar across the street from their home he left of a bar and to go home and instead the soldiers broke in and ended up raping hardens mother and while Hardin was watching it's a truly horrific backstory and didn't feel like it was properly explored at all instead what we see is hardens dad in the present who is a nice guy and Chancellor of the University so his arc is fully complete but the whole purpose of him being there is to highlight hardens arc because of course Hardin doesn't have an art lutessa he's constantly abusive and manipulative because guys like that don't change so instead it's more of a forgiveness art with his dad but now I think it's time to talk about the man of the hour our charming love interest sorry I didn't get that sentence out without my body getting the notion this man is a laundry list of every problematic trope that exists and we are going to go through that list now to start he's extremely possessive he gets violent when she goes on a date with his egg and tries to completely remove Noah after he's forgiven tests from her life he also was extremely rude to one of Tessa's new co-workers at her internship because he's friendly with her and you know even if he was flirting with Tess there's no excuse to make her workplace super uncomfortable for her because he gets a little bit jealous that's not okay that's not cool speaking of violence though he does get extremely aggressive by breaking plates and punching walls breaking his dad's keyboard but he also beats several people off in the book some random strangers one of his friends and then Zen it's really unsettling especially because tests throughout the book insists that he would never get physical with her because she just feels that he loves her he would never do that but of course um I think that's sending a really damaging message to young girls and just not even young girls just women in general because that's not the case very likely if this was real life he would eventually hit her because that's what people who take their frustrations out and take her emotion though physically end up doing if he gets drunk and starts breaking things and punching things and beating up people and eventually it would happen with her he's also emotionally abusive and genuinely seems a bit sociopathic and I hate that you know because he would never physically hurt her it's painted as okay that he can get away with that it really sends another damaging message that the emotional and mental tormenting that he does is okay it diminishes the horror that is that type of abuse and roll and I hate it because that can be just as damaging if not more so than physical abuse he weaponized is his past and his nightmares that he has and uses those against her to gain sympathy and help get her to forgive him and to get close to him he also fetishizes her virginity and her purity which sends a message that if you were a girl like Molly men you're less important and less valuable than if you're a girl like Tess he's also super controlling and he freezes everything like a command or a demand he also consistently does things to intentionally hurt her he throws the fact that his dad Cochran we interview for the internship in her face and diminishes her role in getting the internship he also uses her drunk father who left her as a kid in an argument and the worst part is Tessa is aware of it all she knows that it's not okay she knows that he keeps doing it but she still gets sucked into the cycle of abuse over and over again and then of course it was all a bet I have no words but it's fine though because he's damaged and Tessa's fixing him am i right but yeah let's talk about Tessa because she's not innocent in this either she is a serial cheater she cheats on Noah five times and she doesn't care she just stomps all over his heart despite the fact that he cares for her and she supposedly cares for him and I honestly don't understand why Anna Todd wrote her to be such a heartless dick when we're clearly supposed to root for her she's never confronted with the consequences of that decision and his debt is easily forgiven and therefore she never learns from her actions because she never loses anything she's also extremely judgmental we're supposed to blame that on who mom and we can to a certain extent but judging people on their physical appearance and stereotyping people is an active decision and I think that it would be irresponsible to blame that solely on the way that she was raised instead of also giving some of that responsibility to her she like Hardin also has an extremely unhealthy relationship to jealousy which she takes out on Molly by using some of the most extreme slut-shaming I have ever read in my life I'm gonna I'm gonna read some of the things that she says just so that you understand how bad it really is page 193 she's so irritating with her stupid pink hair skanky clothes she is a page 309 we both turn around to see me and Molly walking towards us great Molly she's writing a tank top and a red leather skirt it's only Tuesday and she's almost used up her skank quota of the week she should save that stuff for the weekends but my personal favorite 3:18 hardens eyes dropped two slits but I ignore him Molly is still perched on his lap like the she is it's disgusting Molly may not be a nice person but she's also an adult having consenting sexual relations with other adults last time I checked Shannon even cheat on the boyfriend who loves her at one point Curtin also asks her if she's OCD and she says no not everyone's crazy just because they like things a certain way and last time I checked making fun of a mental disorder is gross so that is it I hate these characters I hate this book please do not support it instead what I'm gonna do is support a worthy cause so I pledge to donate whatever revenue my makes in this video and the first 30 days and then it's up to me Canadian women found which has a program called out of violence and here are a couple things that that program helps to do it aids in preventing sexual and labor exploitation it educates on safety as all supporting survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking I'll have a link down below if you would like to donate as well but that is it that's all for this video otto was a slightly brighter and lighter note I would like to thank you guys for 25,000 subscribers I'm really grateful for the community that we've kind of slowly built together and for all the support that you guys have given me so thank you and I will see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Jordan Harvey

Views: 45,667

Rating: 4.9372549 out of 5

Keywords: jordan, harvey

Id: pUle4dduQ6U

Length: 30min 8sec (1808 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 31 2019