My Immortal / The Worst Fanfiction Ever
Part of a series on Harry Potter. [View Related Entries]
About
My Immortal is a Harry Potter-inspired fanfiction that is centered around Ebony "Enoby" Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, a 17-year-old vampire who attends the "Hogwarts School" in England. Upon its digital publication in 2006, the story became notoriously known as "the worst fanfiction ever written" for its large number of spelling and grammatical errors, as well as unwarranted depictions of sexual acts and allusions to popular emo rock bands such as My Chemical Romance and Evanescence. As a result, My Immortal has led to a series of copycat fanfictions and dramatic readings of the original manuscript.
Premise
The story centers around 17-year old wizarding student and Slytherin house member Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way (sometimes erroneously spelled as Enoby, . A half-vampire and self-proclaimed "goff," the series goes about her life at Hogwards including her romantic relationship with Draco Malfoy, also a"goff" as described by her, alongside the Golden Trio of Hermione "B'loody Mary Smith" Granger, Harry "Vampire" Potter. and Ron "Diabolo" Weasley, all three of which are described as "goffik" and are also Slytherin house members in contrast to the canon by Ebony, along with also showing a disdain towards "preps", which according to Enoby, are people like cheerleaders, stuck-up people, conformist, and are evil "non-goffiks." However as the story continues, she must eventually put a stop to the Dark Lord himself, Voldemort while also having her own struggles to deal with.
Origin
In 2006, a Fanfiction.net user named Tara Gillesbie (a.k.a "XXXbloodyrists666XXX") submitted the first installment of her story titled My Immortal, which follows a female protagonist named "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way" and a wayward storyline that is supposedly set in Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series, albeit without any similarities in characters or plot. After the author engaged in an ugly flamewar with a swarm of trolls, the story was eventually removed from the site by the staff, however, not before accumulating more than 8,000 negative reviews.
Spread
Most readers and users of Fanfiction.net refused to take My Immortal as a serious work of fanfiction, and believed Tara was blatantly trolling. The large number of spelling errors appeared to be intentional to some, and it used many cliches of poorly written fanfiction. A fanfiction.net user "TheBatman" wrote a confession claiming that he co-wrote the story. The confession has since been deleted, but a transcript has been posted online.[1]
Hacked
On November 21st, 2006, Tara's Fanfiction.net account was hacked by another author who proceeded to conclude the story herself. The hacker shared her own version of the story's ending in a post titled Chapter 39, while simultaneously leaking Tara's original version of Chapter 39. In the following months, Tara managed to recover her Fanfiction.net account and continued onwards with her My Immortal series up to _Chapter 44 until July 2007, when Tara reportedly took a leave of absence to go on vacation in England. Tara has yet to resume updating her series since then.
Web Series Adaptation
On May 23rd, 2013, the YouTube channel MyImmortalWebSeries was launched. Between June and July, the channel released two separate promotional trailers for its forthcoming web series titled My Immortal, starring a young woman dressed in gothic clothes. On July 15th, the pilot episode of My Immortal finally debuted on YouTube.
Notable Examples
Notable Quotes
We started tiling of each other’s cloves fevently. He took of my blak thong and my black leather bar. I took of his black boxers. Then……………………… he put his trobbing you-know-what in my tool sexily.
I cried sexily I just wanted 2 go 2 the commen room and slit my wrists with mi friends while we watched Shark Attak 3 and Saw 2 and do it with Draco but I knew I had 2 do somefing more impotent.
But den Draco looked at me sadly with his evil goffik red eyes dat looked so depressant and sexy. He lookd exactly like a pentragram (lol geddit koz im a satanist) between Kurt Cobain and Gerard. But then I looked at Vampire and he looked so smexy too wif his goffik black hair. I thought of da time when we screwed and the time I did it with Draco and Dumblydore came and the tame where Draco almost commited suicide and Vampire wuz so sportive.
"I luv u TaEbory." he whispered sexily and den we fel aspleep lol.
Dramatic Readings
Author's Notes
Whenever Tara posted a new chapter, she would preface with an author's note to tell the "preps" and "posers" to stop flaming her work, often prompting to refuse to post the next part unless she received positive reviews.
AN: fuk off PREPZ ok! Raven fangz 4 helpin agen. im sory ah kudnt update but I wuz derperessd n I had 2 go 2 da hospital kuz I slit muh rists. PS im nut updating til u giv me 10 god revoiws!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX666XXXXXXXXXX
WARNING: SUM OF DIS CHAPTA IS XTREMLY SCRAY. VIOWER EXCRETION ADVISD.
Author Revealed
On September 7th, 2017, Buzzfeed[5] confirmed the identity of My Immortal's author as Rose Christo. Christo is a Young Adult fiction writer who has already published a series of novels in a series called Gives Light.[6] Christo has written a memoir to be published in May of 2018 called Under the Same Stars: The Search for My Brother and the True Story of My Immortal in which she details how she was separated from her foster brother when she was 12 and he was 5. The book's description describes the composition of My Immortal as "a surprisingly funny story of how a young girl infiltrated and used the fanfiction community to search for her brother by baiting their attention with a deliberately badly written tale, creating a 10-year mystery that garnered pop culture media attention and remained unsolved -- until now."
Christo's Tumblr account[7] was also revealed. There she admits that My Immortal was intended to be a troll. She also reveals that she is Native American and of the Cree and Lenape tribes and that she was sexually abused and appeared in child pornography.
Christo's reveal comes a week after she emerged to deny that she was behind a recent scam that landed a book at the top of the New York Times YA bestseller list.
Search Interest
External References
[1] OhInternet (via Wayback Machine) – My Immortal/TheBatMan's confession / 2/13/2011
[3] My Immortal Parody (via Wayback Machine)
[4] New York Magazine – The Bizarre, Unsolved Mystery of ‘My Immortal,’ the World’s Worst Fanfiction Story
[5] Buzzfeed – The Story Of 'My Immortal' Is More Wild And Heartbreaking Than You Imagined
[6] Goodreads – Gives Light
[7] Tumblr (via Wayback Machine) – rosechristo1