'After' the changes: Anna Todd’s books final version after adults modified them (by Florencia A.)

Have you ever had that dream of writing a story, reaching success and getting published? In 2013, 24-year-old writer Anna Todd decided to publish a fan-fiction called After, with the famous singer Harry Styles as its protagonist in Wattpad, the widely-known platform for independent writers. The story had a huge positive response from readers and a year later, after reaching a billion readings, Todd got formally published by the editorial Simon & Schuster. Todd’s original work includes a considerable amount of explicit content on issues such as violence (physical and psychological), sexuality, relationships, etc. Simon & Schuster’s version underwent some changes before its launching. Yet, these books were received enthusiastically by readers –even by those who had already read the original version. Todd’s success continued increasing to the point that big film studios offered to turn the books into movies. She accepted and in 2019 the first movie, After, was released; but not without suffering more changes, erasing a bit more of the author’s original scent and adapting it for the cinematographic market. The final result was completely different from the 2013 books the Wattpad writer had created six years ago. This seems to imply that most books and film industries make continuous attempts to delimit young adults’ lives experiences as this is a story created by a young adult, the expected audience is young adults and the characters of the story are young adults too. The point the book and film industries have in common are two: the first one is that they are run by adults, and the second one is that they adapt their productions according to their own moral and ethical frameworks, basing these changes on what they consider youngsters should consume or not and how they should live their lives. Alongside this work, further discussion regarding how these changes represent an adult perspective which tries to limit and constrain young adults’ sincerity will be dealt with.

In Anna Todd’s After trilogy, the changes the publisher and the movie industry have made can be easily recognized if you have read the original books. These modifications the novel suffered range from the name of the male protagonist (he is named Hardin) to the total removal of fighting scenes and maltreatment, which unfortunately is common ground for young adults because these issues are experienced by most young adults in this period of their lives. violence, sex, drugs and infidelity are B side of young adults' lives; eliminating this from the book first and then from the film and pretending all these things do not happen seems pointless. In the original books, Hardin is a very toxic, aggressive and sometimes violent boy who has suffered a vast amount of traumatic situations since his childhood. Todd, the original version’s author, has made him a damaged boy and there was a balance between his suffering and the love Tessa, the female protagonist, gave him. The book publishers made minimal changes, but their final result is much more politically correct than the Wattpad version since the publishers managed to make the story a more innocent and naive one. This modified version of the original books depicts the model adults want young adults’ lives to be. Older generations perceive youngsters as objects they can influence on and modify the way adults would like them to be. Most older people think this B side of young adults has to be hidden, not exposed neither talked about. The objective of leaving sex, drugs or toxicity out of the book and film is to maintain the perfect stereotype adolescents and young adults have to follow.

When it comes to the movies, the story is even more different than the book the publishers launched, meaning that a vast quantity of the protagonist couple’s scenes have vanished and a central character has been modified: Molly, who was a spicy ingredient to the story’s love triangle, is now out of the romantic threesome because she is homosexual so, a lot of tense moments such as fights involving jealousness and toxicity due to Molly between Tessa and Hardin or fights between Tessa and Molly over Hardin have been removed and made the story lose its original scent and transformed the novel into a cliché story. There was a reason why those scenes and characters were there, and producing their disappearance is only one of the several modifications the movie has undergone. From the publisher’s edition to the movie industry’s version, some of the characters have suffered from the loss of their original scent. A good example of this is Hardin, the male protagonist. In the original version, he was a typically damaged boy; in the Simon & Schuster’s official book version, he was less damaged, and finally, in the movie, he was even nicer and less violent. His attitude towards Tessa is still toxic, but not as he was on the Wattpad books. Adults might have modified this to try to modify young adults’ attitudes and reflect their perspective on how young adults' lives should be, not considering that life for new generations is not what it was for them when they were younger.

Besides, there are more differences. The original story had been widely approved and socially accepted by young adults Wattpad readers and those who read the publishers’ version readers. It dealt with young people’s experiences to which most young adults could feel related. It was a reflection about a possible depiction of a young relationship, about college friendship and college experience. Why adapt those realities and try to shape them into a more naïve reality? Because adults might be constantly trying to have a say on how young people’s lives should be, what they should or shouldn’t experience and how they should react to a particular situation. Attempting to hide how young adults’ realities are is not going to make them disappear. The previously mentioned issues are intrinsically connected with young adults’ lives and trying to eradicate them would be a mistake, because even when these issues are the B side of young adults’ lives, they do still affect them. People suffering from at least one of these issues (alcoholism, toxicity or any other mentioned in this paper) need to feel understood and accompanied and one of the ways of doing so is by placing the focus on those issues. However, there is a fine line between integrating such issues for the sake of making them visible and triggering or encouraging them. It is a double-edged sword that needs to be thoroughly considered because there has been a lot of concern and criticism as regards the correctness of showing addiction problems, violent scenes, toxic relationships and all the other issues the story deals with. I believe that in order to change or to approach these situations in a more fruitful way, visualizing them is one way of doing this openness. Manipulation and modification of young adults’ stories might not be the best option when it comes to issues which are part of the B side of young adults. Adults should not impose their perspective on life, but instead, only acknowledge these issues are part of young adults’ lives. There is no success at pretending all these situations do not occur just by simply putting them under the carpet and avoiding their existence, which is experienced to a vast majority of young adults.

There are a lot of questions concerning how the factors that are part of young adults’ lives should be tackled or not. What is known for sure is that modifying some issues and pretending they do not occur as adults attempt to do to impose how things should be is not the most accurate, and even though adults want to model what young adults watch, pretending these issues do not take place in young adults’ lives is pointless. Stories similar to After are the clearest example of that. These Wattpad novels have been socially accepted and fostered by young adults because of their content. Being a young adult reading or consuming young adult literature is not the same if it is produced by young adults or by adults for them.