My Immortal (fan fiction)

Plot

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, a seventeen-year-old vampire, attends Hogwarts as a Slytherin student. The school is divided between "goffs" and "preps", with sympathetic characters in the former group. Many canonical characters are given goth makeovers: Harry, now called "Vampire", has a pentagram scar and claims to love human blood; Hermione, renamed "B'loody Mary Smith", is a goth vampire Satanist; Ron, as "Diabolo", dates Willow, an insert for the author's friend.

Ebony begins a relationship with Draco Malfoy, depicted as shy, sensitive, and bisexual. He invites her to a Good Charlotte concert in Hogsmeade, flying there in his black flying Mercedes-Benz. After the concert, they have sexual intercourse in the Forbidden Forest and are discovered by Albus Dumbledore, who derides them as "motherfukers". Later, Ebony learns from a tattoo on Draco's arm that he used to date Vampire.

Angry, she runs into the Forbidden Forest, where Lord Voldemort gives her a gun and demands she kill Vampire, threatening Draco's life. She refuses, and when Draco learns of this, he kills himself by slitting his wrists.

Style and genre

The work is split into 44 chapters with author's notes, indicated by "AN", that precede and interrupt the narrative. These notes use phonetic spelling and text speak, characterizing the author as standoffish; as the work progresses, they become increasingly defensive and prone to mentioning suicide attempts. The prose has been described as having awkward rhythm, strange digressions, and stultifyingly purple prose, and it employs many hated tropes of fan fiction.

The quality of the prose declined after the twelfth chapter, when the editor had a falling out with the author; even after reconciliation, the prose never recovered. The work features hundreds of grammar and spelling mistakes, a nonsensical storyline, and a Mary Sue protagonist, with numerous descriptions of her Hot Topic outfits. A 2011 analysis found approximately 5,200 spelling mistakes and nearly 700 grammar errors, though most sentences are technically well-formed and fairly complex.

The spelling mistakes include provocative malapropisms, such as replacing "prediction" with "perdition", which refers to eternal damnation and fits the story's gothic and sadist themes.

Authorship

The true identity of the author has never been confirmed. The work was published on FanFiction.net under the username "XXXbloodyrists666XXX", with the author using the name "Tara Gilesbie". Author's notes identified a friend nicknamed Raven, under username "bloodytearz666", as the editor and beta reader. The work was published between early 2006 and 2007, totaling 44 chapters and nearly 22,700 words.

The forty-fourth chapter included an author's note saying the author was leaving "dubya" and that the chapter would be the last until her return, but no further chapters were published. The work was removed from the site in 2008, a few months after the last chapter. In 2008 and 2009, videos on a YouTube account named "xXblo0dyxkissxX" featured two teenagers calling themselves Tara and Raven making fun of goth subculture; they were interviewed in 2014 and claimed they were not the authors, with their real names being Sarah and Rachel.

In September 2017, someone claiming to be the author updated a FictionPress account, leading to the account of young adult novelist Rose Christo. Christo stated she was one of two co-authors and provided evidence to Macmillan Publishers, but controversy over factual errors in her memoirs led to doubts about her authorship.

Reception and legacy

Before its removal from FanFiction.net, My Immortal reportedly gained between 8,000 and 10,000 reviews, most of which were negative and contained flaming. The writing quality and the author's apparent goth lifestyle drew attacks and mockery from users on Encyclopedia Dramatica, TV Tropes, LiveJournal, Something Awful, YTMND, and YouTube. It has been described as a masterpiece of weirdness and a masterpiece of literary disaster, and is often cited as the worst fan fiction ever written or a strong contender for that title.

The work is considered iconic within the Harry Potter fandom and the larger fan fiction community. Evanescence singer Amy Lee, whose song inspired the title, expressed confusion about the work's earnestness and found it comical. The infamy of the work is considered a constant millstone around the necks of fanfiction enthusiasts who struggle to bring legitimacy to the genre. My Immortal inspired fan art, further fan fiction, numerous YouTube dramatic readings, and a fifteen-episode web series satirizing the work.