Also tbh I thought it seemed to convenient for an author to just suddenly pop up while her new books are being published just as she solved one of the greatest internet mysteries of all time
I was doubting it myself.
And to be honest, what the fuck is up with My Immortal. Like, now I’m just more curious.
I guess nobody remembered that I was on FictionPress, too.
So, hi. I’m the girl you all knew as Tara. My FF.net account really was hacked (twice!), once in 2006 and again in 2009. As of 2017, Support still doesn’t answer my requests to regain it, although I can’t say I blame them. They’re probably scared I’ll flood their site with poorly written sex scenes again.
I’m lucky the hackers never migrated to this account, considering it had the exact same login credentials. (They’ve since been changed, don’t worry.)
I’ll let the account’s creation date speak as to whether it’s legitimate or not.
Thank you all so, so much for keeping My Immortal alive over the years. You fill my heart with so much love. (Preppy moment, oops.)
That’s about all I have to say for now.
—
Because I’ve received several messages asking this, and predict I may receive more, I’ll answer it here. No, I am not Lani Sarem. Really bad fiction simply tends to read the same. No, I’m not on Facebook. Or Deviantart. Or MySpace. Or Youtube. (Etc.) I am on Tumblr. But I use my real name there, and it’s not Tara.
I’m five foot nine. My hair is long and it’s dark brown. I wear leather a great deal, high boots always, and sometimes glove-soft vests and even leather skirts now and then, and I wear lace, especially when I can find the kind I like: intricate, very old-fashioned lace, snow white. I have light skin that tans easily, large breasts, and long legs. And though I don’t feel beautiful and never have, I know that I am. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be a trainer at The Club.
–Exit to Eden by Anne Rice (aka Rampling), 1985
Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
I think the younger you are the more likely you are to be certain My Immortal was written as a joke, partially because it’s the progenitor of pretty much all modern Bad Fanfiction Tropes, so when you read it now you think “oh they were trying to use as many bad fanfic tropes as possible, it’s clearly a joke” even though those tropes exist to make fun of My Immortal. My Immortal could have been written as a parody of bad fanfiction but it made such an impact on that subculture that it’s entirely possible that it only seems like a satire because it’s the original thing being satired.
My Immortal could’ve been an intentionally bad fanfic but that’s not a given. The uncertainty comes from the fact that My Immortal was written in a pre-My Immortal world, and the only reason it seems like a parody now is because we already know about My Immortal.
The other reason is “nobody talks like this, nobody writes like this, it has to be someone making a joke” but the thing is, I was a moderator on a fanfic site when My Immortal dropped, and yes, they really really did talk like that. There is not a single line in My Immortal that would’ve been out of place in 2006.
I should say that Mary Sue parody fics had been done before – hell, the name comes from a fic from 1974 – but never, at least to my knowledge, with that level of dedication and immersion. This wasn’t just a oneshot, a little “teehee, look how silly this overpowered, ridiculously-named character is!” fic. This was 44 chapters long, each with a fairly impressive wordcount, an IRL sideplot (an argument between the author and her beta reader that caused a visible drop in spelling), and accounts on multiple websites, including Quizilla.
Like, there’s trolling and then there’s trolling, and if it was indeed a parody, it was done with a level of mastery that would be impossible to recreate now.
I strongly suspect that the authorship and authorial intent of My Immortal will one day be as hotly contested within academic circles as that of Shakespeare.
Notes: If is a different day, I opted to only draw
what Tara described of the outfit, if she didn’t mention her make-up or shoes I
believe Ebony didn’t wear any.
Unless the fic says explicitly that it’s a
different day I tried to keep some of the aspects of the last outfit that Tara
didn’t change or didn’t mention. (Like her make-up or shoes).
The little icons that appear in like three of the outfits are the earrings she was wearing that chapter.
Doing this was beyond confusing but fun.
I’m so fucking happy this exists this is hilarious
you are a hero op
I’m surprised by Tara’s consistency, her hair colour only changes once and she rewears several items like real people do
Whenever
I see people quoting/referencing/parodying My
Immortal it’s always one of the same four or five lines. You know the ones.
The
iconic opening paragraph, “Hi my name is
Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair… (et
cetera).”
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU
DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”
“I MAY BE A HOGWARTS
STUDENT… BUT I AM ALSO A SATANIST!”
“Then he put his thingie
into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.”
“And Loopin was
masticating to it!”
As
great as those are, I’d like to throw a spotlight on what I think are some
of the underappreciated parts of this classic work of fanfiction.
Ebony puts blood on her Count Chocula cereal instead of milk.
Enoby is canonically a weeaboo and speaks to her friends in Fangirl Japanese.
Harry’s scar is now a pentagram instead of a lightning bolt, so either he found
some sort of spell to alter the appearance of the scar or he actually took the time to carve a
pentagram into his forehead.
There is an OC named either Tom Riddle or Tom Rid who works at a “punkgoff” store
in Hogsmeade and has absolutely nothing to do with Voldemort, he just happens
to have the exact same name.
Tara somehow got Fred and George mixed up with Crabbe and Goyle.
The reason Snape doesn’t like Harry in this fic is because Snape is Christian
and Harry is a Satanist.
Marty McFly literally appears out of nowhere to help Enoby travel through “tim”
with his “tim machine.”
Chapter 11 ends with Hagrid singing along to “a gothic version of a song by 50
Cent.”
Voldemort inexplicably speaks in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
Voldemort wears high heels.
Draco has a flying black Mercedes-Benz and a black MCR broom.
Snape has a Dork Mark on his penis.
Speaking of penises, Draco is apparently “hung like a stallone.” I guess Tara
is a Rambo fan?
The Hedwig/Voldemort sex scene, wherein Hedwig is a male human instead of a
female owl, for some reason.
Dumbledore flies around on his broomstick while holding a loaf of rye bread. At
least, that’s what I think Tara meant by “Sudenly
a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong
black bread.”
Oh yeah, and Dumbledore is an Avril Lavigne fanboy, because of course he is.
James Potter’s “goff” nickname is Samoro, because Tara erroneously believes
this to be the masculine form of the name Samara.
Draco’s singing voice is described as “a
cross between Gerard, Joel, Chester, Pierre and Marilyn Manson.”
Tara’s brief feud with her editor Raven, as chronicled in the author’s notes, may or may not have had something to do with Raven borrowing Tara’s sweater
and not giving it back. IDK, it’s unclear.
Voldemort smokes a “gothic blak Nightmare b4 Christmas cigar.”
McGonagall has the best insults, like “horny simpletons” and “mediocre dunces” and probably some others I’m forgetting.
Dobby only appears once in the entire fic and literally all he does is watch
Snape and Lupin have sex, and then run away crying.
Sirius is referred to as Harry’s dogfather, and not gonna lie, even if it was a typo I
think that is a genuinely clever pun.
The Hogwarts janitor may or may not be Chuck Norris.
Tara accurately predicted how Harry would defeat Voldemort in Deathly Hallows. No, really. “nd den hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so
voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111”
This line: “Snap stated loafing
meanly. He took out a kamera anvilly.”
And this one: “‘Crosio!’ I shited pointing my wound.
Snoop scremed and started running around da room screming.”
“Azerbaijan”
“Hoes of Wax”
“Tom Bombodil”
“Cornelio Fuck”
“Professor Slutborn”
“Preacher McGongol”
“Lumpkin”
“TaEbory”
“The Bark Lord”
“Vadermort”
This is truly the classic of our generation. I want students to explicate this for AP tests.
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