My Immortal

"My Immortal" is a Harry Potter fanfic authored by Tara Gilesbie (under the penname of "XXXbloodyrists666XXX"), with assistance from a friend named "Raven" (penname "bloodytearz666") and an additional, "unofficial" contribution from an anonymous "hacker."

The story is infamous for its astoundingly bad quality, to the point that many readers assume it's actually satire, along with the minor Internet phenomenon of dramatic readings and interpretations. Sadly, it was the single most reviewed story on Fanfiction.net and, by extension, probably the most read and talked about fanfic in existence. The story is no longer on Fanfiction.net, but numerous other sites now host it.

Characters
None of the characters in this story resemble their canon counterparts in even the most vestigial way&mdash;not even their names. Everybody has been derailed into either a "goff" or a "prep," represented by Slytherin and Gryffindor, respectively; and in the case of Hufflepuff, food for vampires (because apparently Ravenclaw no longer exists or something). Most of the canon Gryffindor students have been moved to Slytherin (as that's where all the "Goffs" are), and the entire canon arrangement of friendships and alliances has been eliminated.


 * Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way
 * The protagonist and one of the only original characters. She is a seventh-year Slytherin girl with "long ebony black hair with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears" who is apparently so beautiful, it's a curse. She wears "goff" fashion (which you will get to read a lot about, in great purple prose detail) while listening to emo music (which she apparently has confused with the goth scene) and slitting her wrists when she gets depressed/bored.


 * She's also a vampire, which basically translates into her being largely invincible and drinking blood. Apparently Ebony is the only person capable of stopping Voldemort's evil plans&mdash;nobody really knows why. Spelling mistakes include: Enoby, Eboby, Enobby, Egogy, Ibony, Evony, Ebory, and even Tara and Tata (proving that not only was she not even trying to hide the Sue-ness by that point, but that she couldn't even spell her own name).


 * Obviously a Mary Sue, but not really that big of one, shockingly enough. The story is a bit too incoherent to really appreciate the character's universe-bending.


 * Willow
 * The other original character. She's meant to represent Raven (Tara's real life friend and beta reader), but gets almost no screen time whatsoever. Gets expelled, killed and raped (in that order) offscreen after a real life spat between Tara and Raven involving a sweater and a poster of Gerard Way, then comes back without so much as a word of explanation after they resolve their fight.


 * Draco Malfoy
 * One of the few canon characters to retain his original name (but not much else). In this story, Draco is a bisexual who is Ebony's boyfriend and "Vampire" Potter's ex-boyfriend. He wears "goff" fashion and has a tattoo of a heart with "Vampire's" name in it. His acerbic wit and nasty temperament is removed, with him being Ebony's fawning doormat. Beyond just doing it with Ebony and being the target of her rants, he doesn't really do anything else. Voldemort threatens to kill him in an attempt to force Ebony to kill Harry. Commits suicide on two different occasions (and succeeds both times). Obviously out of character. Spelling mistakes include: Drako, Drake, Drago, Darko, Dracko, Drico.


 * Harry "Vampire" Potter
 * A bisexual "goff" who gets his name from his love for human blood. Also wears "goff" fashion and replaces his scar with a pentagram. He was moved into Slytherin House for some inadequately explored reason and seems to have forgotten about Voldemort. He also inexplicably possesses a womb for the space of a single chapter, which he tries to use as a wand while attacking Snipe and a masticating Loopin. His role in the story is mostly to be yelled at by Ebony. Out of character. Spelling mistakes include: Vampir, Vampure, Vampira, and Vrompire.


 * Hermione "B'loody Mary Smith" Granger
 * Another one of Ebony's friends. Turns out that her real parents are vampires who "dyed in a car crash," which resulted in her getting put in Slytherin House. Also wears "goff" fashion. Out of character. Spelling mistakes include: Blody Mary and B'loody Mart. Also, she speaks gratuitous pseudo-Japanese.


 * Neville "Dracula" Longbottom
 * Another "goff". Like Hermione, turns out his parents are vampires and he got switched while in the hospital. Also, he converted to Satanism Stanism. Out of character. Spelling mistakes include Navel and Nevel.


 * Albus "Albert" Dumbledore
 * Obstructive bureaucrat that constantly gets in Ebony's way. He's a prep that wears an Avril Lavigne robe, but tries to incorporate himself with the "goffs" later on. Gets headaches and swears at students. Later is sent to Azkaban Azerbaijan, but somehow still continues to teach at Hogwarts. Out of character. Spelling mistakes include: Dumbledum, Dumblydore, Dubledork, Dumbeldork, and Dumblewhore.


 * Severus Snape and Remus Lupin
 * Preps and "Death Deelers" that spy on Ebony and friends and are apparently gay lovers who spend most of their time "doin it" in the Great Hall (in front of Dobby, no less). Snape was banished to Gryffindor for some indeterminate reason. On several occasions, they are sent to "St. Mango's" and "Abkhazian," yet somehow return to Hogwarts the next day.


 * Ebony refers to them as "pedofiles" because of their attraction to her, even though she is seventeen and therefore an adult. At one point, they film Ebony taking a bath and threaten to spread it across the school if she does not kill Vampire (and for whatever reason, Lupin chews on something while filming Ebony). Both are out of character. Snape's spelling mistakes include: Snip, Snipe, Snoop, Snake, and Snap. Lupin's spelling mistakes include: Loopin, Lumpin, and Lumpkin.


 * Profesor Sybill "Sinatra/Sinister" Trelawney
 * A "goff" teacher that helps Ebony with her psychic visions and trains her for her mission to go back to the past. Gets addicted to something called "Voldemortserum." She is later sent to Azkaban Abkhazian by "Rumbridge" for being "too gottik," but like Willow, returns without explanation. Out of character.


 * Voldemort
 * A card-carrying villain of the highest order. Speaks in butchered old English that would make Shakespeare weep. He apparently "hath telekinesis," which somehow allows him to know all about Ebony's relationship with Draco&mdash;although this power is never expanded on. Defeated by Ebony in his first appearance when she uses the Cruciatus Curse to make him submit (and mixes up "Crucio" with "Crookshanks" in the process). Seems to only care about making Ebony kill Harry, and threatens to kill Draco if she does not. He also appears to wear high heels. Repeatedly hijacks My Chemical Romance performances (apparently, they let Muggles in Hogsmeade if they're goffik enough). Out of character. Spelling mistakes include: Voldemont, Volsemort, Voldemprt, Vlodemort, Voldemint, Volxemort,Voldemprt, Volzemort, Voldimort, Voldement, Volcemort, Volfemort, The Bark Lord, The Dork Lord and one time even as Darth "Valer."


 * Tom "Satan" Riddle
 * Initially Voldemort's younger self, but he seems to become a completely separate character with no relation to Voldemort. He has a goffik band called XBlakXTearX consisting of himself, Snap, Lucian (Lucius Malfoy), Serious Blak, and James "Samoro" Potter&mdash;in the 1980s. He apparently turned into Voldemort because nobody loved him, so Ebony is sent back in time to seduce him. Somehow, he knows what will happen to him in the future. Later, he turns into his older self. Out of character. Inexplicably referred to as Tom Andorson and Tom Bombodil.


 * Brittney
 * Another original character and the only Gryffindor student in the story. Apparently named in reference to Britney Spears, she is a prep who wears Hilary Duff T-shirts and clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch. Ebony and friends consider this sufficient reason to essentially bully her.


 * Hedwig
 * A "totally sexi goffik bi guy" with "bleched blond hair wiv blak streaks up 2 his ears" and a Green Day shirt. Tom "Satan" Riddle's bisexual ex-boyfriend. Bears no resemblance to the canonical Hedwig, who is Harry's female pet owl.

There are also minor appearances from Ron (Diabolo), Ginny (Darkness), Professor McGonagall (McGoogle), Hagrid (Hargrid), Wormtail (Snaketail), Cornelius Fudge (Cornelio F**k), and Umbridge (Rumbridge). Marty McFly, Spartacus, and Socrates also make bizarre cameo appearances. These are probably the result of the author not paying attention when writing characters' names, but in this fic it's hard to tell.

"Plot" Summary
The story is (mostly) written in a first person perspective from Ebony's point of view. The story starts out by introducing her in extensive detail, then segueing into Draco asking her to go to a Good Charlotte concert in Hogsmeade. They go to the concert and end up having sex in the Forbidden Forest. Dumbledore catches them and brings them before the rest of the teachers, who just let them go free. This is only the start of a total disregard for the rules that Ebony and friends are allowed to maintain.

The plot mostly centers around Ebony doing it with Draco and bitching about his old relationship with "Vampire" Potter. Nothing really happens until Voldemort appears and tells Ebony to kill Harry, giving her a gun (yes... a gun... why didn't the real Voldemort think of that?). After a suicide mix-up, Snape getting caught spying on Ebony from outside the bathroom window, more appearances by Voldemort telling Ebony to kill Harry, and a confusing sequence of MCR concerts crashed by Voldemort (along with lots of sex with Draco and a ton of whining), Ebony is eventually enlisted to go back in time to seduce Voldemort before he became evil.

At this point, the story loses all semblance of coherency (which, combined with the rapidly slipping quality standards in spelling, grammar, and structure, makes the thing increasingly less readable). Dumbledore announces that Ebony is, for unexplained reasons, the only person with a chance of stopping Voldemort. Voldemort is apparently only evil because nobody loved him, so Ebony is given a "tim machine" (or something) and goes back to some indeterminate time period (seems to be the late 80s or early 90s... which is wrong on so many levels) to seduce Voldemort (who went by the oh-so-subtle name of "Satan" back then). Along the way, she joins a "goff" band headed by James Potter, Lucius Malfoy, and others. Marty McFly also makes a bizarre cameo appearance (as if the rest of the story made any sense). Meanwhile, in the present, the "Mystery of Magic" takes over the school, sending faculty members to "Abkazian" for ridiculous reasons (yes, even by the standards of the canon Ministry). Ebony makes several trips back in time, until her band gets into a fight on stage and she escapes to the present.

Brief salvation is found in a chapter added by another author who hacked into Tara's Fanfiction.net account, which "ends" the story with the whole canon snapping back in place as Ebony is teleported directly to Hell (where her punishment is to wear preppy clothing by American Eagle and Abercrombie for all eternity). The story then goes back to Tara's writing, continuing with the nonsensical plot as Ebony returns to the present time and Voldemort attacks the school (his younger self having somehow turned into his present version). Everyone rushes into the room to witness Voldemort's attack, at which point the story reaches a rather ambiguous ending of Ebony casting Avada Kedavra.

List of Offenses
Where to begin? First, the story has a tenuous at best grasp of the English language. It actually starts out with fairly proper spelling and grammar, but the frequency of mistakes (either in word usage or spelling) increases as it goes along, until there is at least one incorrectly spelled/used word per sentence, with numbers and "leet" acronyms appearing more and more often (characters frequently say OMFG). Additionally, strings of exclamation marks and "1"s appear in order to denote emphasis. Names seem to provide a problem for Tara and Raven, with everybody's name getting misspelled on a regular basis (there's probably more instances of "Enoby" or "Eboby" than "Ebony"). To top things off, entire sections of text are occasionally repeated verbatim (perhaps she simply couldn't be bothered to write any more that day). The story is just flat out offensive to every standard of common decency and writing etiquette.

Misspellings are constant and often take the form of somewhat amusing "wrong word" errors. Ebony has spawned a host of Mini-Sues by repeatedly misspelling her own name, as well as an even larger army of Mini-Aragogs from misspelled canon names.

As mentioned previously, the story pretty much completely destroys everybody's original characterization and replaces it with thin shells and labels. There is almost nothing to mark this as Harry Potter fanfiction (it takes a dozen chapters before anybody even casts a spell, for example. Ebony also spells several famous names and places wrong, like "St. Mango's"). It mostly reads like the fantasy of a culturally confused emo girl.

Additionally, much of this story's plot has no logical premise whatsoever. Probably the biggest example of this is the fact that characters who have travelled through time cannot be killed in the time they have travelled to, and taking a potion back to before the time it was invented stops it from working. In the latter case, this also raises the question as to how "amnesia" potion has anything to do with seducing someone (possibly, it's a misspelling of "Amortentia"). Countless other blatant violations of common sense abound throughout the story (such as Good Charlotte, and a Muggle band giving a concert in the Wizards-only town of Hogsmeade).

Ebony herself is a blatant self-insert of Tara and pretty much just exists to be the ultimate "goff" while having sex with Draco. She reads like somebody used a Mary Sue litmus test as a checklist, complete with her whining about being "too beautiful."

Parody?
The story may or may not be a parody written to troll the Harry Potter fandom, and fanfiction in general. If it's a parody, it's one of the most meticulous ones ever created. There are several things that suggest that it's a work of parody. First, the character of Ebony is so specifically synthesized out of traits meant to evoke Mary Sue that it seems like references were used. To support that, there's the phrase about "icy blue eyes like limpid tears," which is both incredibly cliched but also begs the question of how the author is able to very clearly employ the relatively obscure word "limpid," but then struggle with words such as "not."

Also of note is the random appearance of three technical terms ("statistically," "torque," and "photons") in the same sentence. The nature of some of the typos suggests that they were deliberate malapropisms, as the word "masturbating" is repeatedly spelled as "masticating" (which means "chewing"), while every so often a regular word is exchanged for a swear word, as demonstrated by the replacement of Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge with "Mystery of Magic Cornelio Fuck," Draco and "Vampire" fighting over who gets to "shit" next to Ebony, and the movie "Hoes of Wax."

The author's name is accidentally substituted, or partially substituted, for that of the main character on three occasions, rendering Ebony as "Tara," "Tata," and "TaEbory." There's also the casual attitude behind the author's notes about slitting her wrists and going to the hospital and the fact that she didn't bother to remove the chapter that the "hacker" added. However, the fact that nobody has stepped forward to claim the story as their own, even with it at this height of popularity, seems to suggest that it really was a genuine story and just managed to hit all the wrong notes, so to speak. Tara's "goffik" persona is repeated in her profiles on Fanfiction.net and elsewhere, suggesting that if a troll is involved, they would have had to create the entire persona (and the persona of Raven and all of her stories as well), not just the story itself. It's unlikely we'll ever find out its true status.

Quotes

 * "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!" It was............ Dumbledore!


 * "I MAY BE A HOGWARTS STUDENT"" Hargirid paused angrily. "BUT I AM ALSO A SATANIST!"


 * "BECAUSE I LOVE HER!!!!"


 * "Why couldn't Satan have made me less beautiful?"


 * Snake and Loopin were in da middle of da empty hall, doin it, and Dobby was watching!


 * “You fucking bustard!” yelled Draco at Vampire. “I want to shit next to her!1”


 * “Snaketail what art thou doing?” called Voldemort. Then…… he started coming! We could hear his high heels clacking to us.


 * The door opened and Proffesor Rumbridge and Cornelia Fudge stomped out angrily. Then Dumbledum and Rumbridge sawed us.


 * “MR. WAY WHAT THE BEEP ARE YOU DOING!” Rumbridge shouted angrily. Dumbledore blared at her. “Oops she made a mistake!” he corrupted her. “She means hi everybody cum in!”


 * Dubleodre started to cockle. “Hahahaha! And How due u aspect me to know Ebony’s not divisional?”


 * “Crosio!” I shouted. Snap stated 2 scram he dropd da gun. But it was too late. Both of them had run out of ballets. I STOPPED DA CURSE. Profesor McGoogle did a spell so that we were all chained up. She took out a box of tools. Den she said “OK Serverus I’m going 2 go now.” She left. Snap started to laugh evilly. Vampire started to cry.


 * Snoop laughed meanly. He polled down his pants. I gasped- there was a Dork Mark on his you-know-wut!11!


 * “But u r so sexy and wonderful aneway Tata,” said Vampire. “Why would u need it?”


 * “YOU ARE NOT FIT TO BE THE PRINCIPAL ANY LONGER!” yelled Rumbridge. “YOU ARE TOO OLD AND YOUR ALZHEIMERS IS DANGEROUS! YOU MUST RETRY OR VOLDEMORT WILL KILL YOUR STUDENTS!”


 * Voldemort got a dude-ur-so-retarded look on his face. “I hath telekinesis.” he answered cruelly.


 * “Eboby…..Ebony…….” Darth Valer sed evilly in his raspy voice. “Thou havfe failed ur mission.


 * Snape ejaculated menacingly.

PPC Mission
It has been claimed by Iximaz and a mission is forthcoming.

The Fic

 * My Immortal Wiki - On the My Immortal Wiki can be found...
 * Four pages dedicated to rehosting the full text of the fic
 * A summary of the fic's spiritual successor, "Ghost of You"
 * As much info as you could ever want about the hunt for Tara Gilesbie and whether or not she's trolling
 * And more!
 * The former home of the text of "My Immortal"

Adaptations

 * My Immortal - the Comic
 * (My) Immortal: The Web Series
 * Episode 1 on Vimeo (it was removed from YouTube)

Dramatic Readings

 * Sopranocath and BigDumbNerd's dramatic reading of the fic:
 * Chapters 1-3
 * Chapters 4-6
 * Chapters 7-9
 * Chapters 10-11
 * Chapter 12
 * Chapters 13-15


 * Dramatic reading that's actually more of an MST because of the snarky comments put in by the readers. That's part one, the next parts are in order the sidebar thingymajigy. It also has the plus of being read by three Scottish guys. Yay accents!


 * A New Dramatic Reading/Audio Drama by Lemursrule


 * Internet Historian's animated dramatic reading:
 * Part 1
 * Part 2
 * Part 3