My Immortal

November 19, 2010 2:17 PM

My Immortal is an infamous piece of fanfiction by Tara Gilesbie that has the distinction of being the top Google result for "worst fanfic ever". It's a fascinating read, both for its unique turns-of-word (like when Draco and the author begin to "make out keenly"), and for how effectively it reveals the author's culture and insecurities — the way it alternates between denunciations of superficial "prep" culture and elaborate descriptions of its protagonist's wardrobe, its constant obsession with sex mixed with a squeamish aversion of any eroticism, and its desire, chapter by chapter, to both denounce its critics and to prove them somehow wrong. TVtropes, Urban Dictionary, and Encyclopedia Dramatica each debate whether the piece is sincere or satirical. "If it's fake," says UD, "it's complete genius; and if it's real it's total desecration of a perfectly good book/movie series."
posted by Rory Marinich (85 comments total)

It also seems sort of not very nice to make a post poking fun at it, especially with the author's name attached. I'm a big supporter of fanfiction and talking about fanworks, but there doesn't really seem to be any point to this post besides "here's something bad and places that talk about it being bad." There's lots of bad fanfic on the net, singling this one out, even with the top google result thrown in the mix, just seems mean spirited.
posted by stoneweaver at 2:22 PM on November 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

She's no Stephen Ratliff.
posted by inturnaround at 2:27 PM on November 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

And Ratliff has been good-natured about being skewered by MSTies. Good guy.
posted by inturnaround at 2:27 PM on November 19, 2010

But how does it compare to The Eye of Argon?
posted by kenko at 2:29 PM on November 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

I don't wish to make fun of the author, but sometimes it is worthwhile to look at epic mistakes to learn what not to do.
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:29 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

It's no "Thirty Hs".
posted by KChasm at 2:30 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

It also seems sort of not very nice to make a post poking fun at it

It's kind of a thoroughly obvious fake.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 2:30 PM on November 19, 2010 [16 favorites]

“Very well.” Dumbledore said angrily. “Butt we cannot do this. We can’t close the school. There is only one person who is capable of killing Voldemort and she is in the school. And her name is…………………………………………………………………..Enony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.”

Draco, Crab, Goyle, Darkness, Willow, Vampire and B’loody Mary looked at each other………I gasped.

My friendly neighborhood pizza girl recommended this fanfic to me a few months ago. It really is an incredible trainwre...piece of work. I think the pizza girl will be glad to hear of its "worst fanfic ever" googlibility.
posted by redsparkler at 2:32 PM on November 19, 2010

Yeah, I'm 5 "chapters" in and it seems obviously a joke. Just contrast the prose of the fiction to the prose in the "author's notes" -- they're both parodic but of totally different styles of bad writing. This is clearly a goof on fanfic.
posted by TheWash at 2:34 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

The next day I woke up in my bedroom. It was snowing and raining again. I opened the door of my coffin and drank some blood from a bottle I had.

All right. This is satire, and it's excellent.
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:35 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

"He pot his wetnes in my u-know-what sexily. I gut an orgy. "Oh Draco!111111!1 Oh mi fuking gud Draco!1111" I screemed passively as he got an eructation."

YES
posted by bewilderbeast at 2:37 PM on November 19, 2010 [18 favorites]

MetaFilter: constant obsession with sex mixed with a squeamish aversion of any eroticism
posted by Confess, Fletch at 2:37 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Sincerity is always much, much worse.
posted by verb at 2:37 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

We both smoked cigarettes and drugs.
posted by Astro Zombie at 2:38 PM on November 19, 2010 [10 favorites]

Fake or not, I can't read this. It hurts my eyes, with both its awfulness and its white-on-blackness.

For some good terrible fanfic, I'll take Marigold from Questionable Content: Hermione and Ginny Vs. The Space Wizards!

So they totally had sex, and it was the most amazing sex in the history of wizarding or muggles or even Space Wizards (who had a lot of sex but it was really bad sex because they were all evil).
posted by Gator at 2:39 PM on November 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

It's no Doom: Repercussions of Evil
posted by empath at 2:40 PM on November 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Ginny took Hermione’s hand because she was nervous but also because she had noticed how beautiful Hermione was even though she was wearing a bulky space suit, but she didn’t say this out lout to Hermione because she didn’t understand the feelings she was feeling and was confused. ._.;;

This is why I love Questionable Content.
posted by verb at 2:41 PM on November 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

For some truly bad sex scenes from written fiction of all kinds be it profic, fanfic, whatever, there's always the Weeping Cock comm. SFWness is obviously questionable.
posted by kmz at 2:44 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

TVTropes and ED in the same FPP. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Anyways, you could at least include the Newgrounds flash video.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:45 PM on November 19, 2010

To me it seems to be a joke but not a particularly good one - hitting all the easy targets (I shop at Hot Topic? My name is Ebony Raven Darkness blahblah?) without any surprises that you wouldn't think of but that fit so perfectly once they're there. That's what makes something funny - unexpected accuracy. This is just cliche (as far as I can see, admittedly not very far since I got bored).
posted by mdn at 2:46 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Is it available in MSTed form yet?
posted by Wolfdog at 2:48 PM on November 19, 2010

I'm only on "chapter" (aka page) 2, but this is not so bad. I immediately also thought of Marissa Picard (which stories I'd forgotten were written by Stephen Ratliff) and the Eye of Argon. This is just sort of straight-forward, simplistic teen-age writing. When I was that age, I was much, much worse, because I thought I was much better.
posted by jb at 2:49 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm so glad to see this on Metafilter! Quoting this fanfic has been a pastime among my social circle for YEARS now. I remember originally stumbling across it back when it was on fanfiction.net shortly after it was posted. I remember REVIEWING it and then e-mailing it to all my friends. I don't really care if it's sincere or if it's some sort of parody at this point, My Immortal is deeply beloved to me since it has brought me so many laughs over the years. I can't wait to tell my friends that it is considered the worst fanfic of all time!

Great post.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 2:52 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I spent entirely too much time reading this last year, and if it's satire, what's really incredible is the amount of attention paid to the details of the thing. House of Leaves has nothing on this for metafiction: In addition to the text, you've got the existence of the inflammatory author's notes, the author's fraught relationship with her beta Raven (who has her own fanfiction.net account with multiple stories written in an equally awful but fairly different style), and various social media profiles (some fake, some less obviously so.) Then on top of that, you've got multiple alleged hackings of the author's fanfiction account, which are either genuine or an intentional part of the drama.

It's like the hypertext version of a story written by a less literate Holden Caulfield. It contains multitudes. Crazy, crazy multitudes.
posted by Tubalcain at 2:53 PM on November 19, 2010 [14 favorites]

It also seems sort of not very nice to make a post poking fun at it, especially with the author's name attached. I'm a big supporter of fanfiction and talking about fanworks, but there doesn't really seem to be any point to this post besides "here's something bad and places that talk about it being bad." There's lots of bad fanfic on the net, singling this one out, even with the top google result thrown in the mix, just seems mean spirited.

Would you believe I wasn't poking fun at it? I love My Immortal the way that I love The Room. I spend more time thinking about it than I've spent thinking about Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, which I think is bad on a different label and maybe a more dishonest one (but which technically is a much, much better story). I don't necessarily look at it the way Astro Zombie does, though: I genuinely love when people make something so bad that it exposes you to parts of their personality/character/soul that they'd never reveal otherwise.

I don't agree with some posters here that this is obviously fake. I've met a lot of people who are capable of writing decently but who will casually dissolve into a muddle of misspellings and slang. I've always felt like this was real, simply because it went on too long and got into too many subjects for it too seem like a reasonable spoof. (If it IS a spoof I think it should be held up as a sublime document of growing up in the 00s.) I just assumed the author's somebody who misspells things casually, but tried to mature up in her writing of the actual story, hence the change in character between ANs and the actual story.

I mean it too that the misuses of language in this story are occasionally brilliant and the pacing, while conventionally bad, has got terrific comic timing. I love it the same way I love Tim And Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, though Tim and Eric have spent years honing their craft and this person's unintentionally providing it. If I could deliberately write as poorly as this person writes, I'd consider it a skill.

Then there are passages like this, which in three short paragraphs seem to perfectly sum up the entirety of American teen drama:

We both looked at each other for some time. Harry had beautiful red gothic eyes so much like Dracos. Then……… we jumped on each other and started screwing each other.

“STOP IT NOW YOU HORNY SIMPLETONS!” shouted Professor McGoggle who was watching us and so was everyone else.

“Vampire you fucker!” I said slapping him. “Stop trying to screw me. You know I loved Draco!” I shouted and then I ran away angrily.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:54 PM on November 19, 2010 [8 favorites]

Okay - I'm laughing outloud at the voice of the cheery, Hot-Topic shopping Goth. Real vampires have their clothes handsewn by wizened, possibly hunchbacked Hungarian tailors.
posted by jb at 2:54 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, can somebody PLEASE explain to me why people read Questionable Content. I'm sure there's something incredible about it, because I have friends who like it, but every time I look at it it seems like crappy melodramatic crap with overly telecast jokes. What am I missing? Anybody who used to hate it but now loves it want to tell me the trick to getting started?
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:56 PM on November 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

Ok, Rory. You've won me over. I'm really glad that I was grumpy out loud about it, because I love your long follow up comment about why you love it.
posted by stoneweaver at 2:59 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Rory Marinich,

It helps to have a friend with great comedic timing read the story to you. My friend read me a couple chapter of My Immortal, and just thinking of her saying "Stop flaming my story preps!!!!!" is enough to make me laugh now.
posted by mmmbacon at 3:00 PM on November 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

I don't agree with some posters here that this is obviously fake.

...

"In the Great Hall, I ate some Count Chocula cereal with blood instead of milk, and a glass of red blood. Suddenly someone bumped into me. All the blood spilled over my top."
posted by theodolite at 3:02 PM on November 19, 2010

I just got to the sex scene. Wow, that was super bad.

Though I'm being reassured that it was, nonetheless, better than the Marissa Picard sex scenes (which I have not have the ..... to have read).
posted by jb at 3:02 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've never hated nor loved QC, but in the past I found it uninteresting and didn't see what the big deal was. Then one day I decided to start reading from the beginning and wasted several hours going through the archives, and found myself gradually becoming interested in the characters. Some long-form comics (probably a lot or even most of them, actually) are like that, you really need to have either been there since the beginning, or invest a certain chunk of time getting familiar with the backstory in order to get any enjoyment out of them. It's different from the gag-a-day strips where you don't need to know who's who in order to get the joke, assuming there is one.
posted by Gator at 3:05 PM on November 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

der wuz also a goffik blak Beatles calander with a picture of the beetlez werring iyeliner and blak cloves. On it said ‘1980.’
posted by incandenza at 3:05 PM on November 19, 2010

Vis a vis Questionable Content. My QC Story:

I started reading Questionable Content at an impressionable age, primarily for the music references. I was a kid growing up in rural nowhere, and QC was my gateway drug to indie music. Knowing as little as I did, QC's early comics, before the entire thing degenerated into an increasingly-complex Wacom tablet soap opera, were packed with references that seemed tremendously sophisticated: The Arcade Fire! Flaming Lips! I routinely used QC and Scary Go Round comics as album purchasing guides, because the people in QC were the kind of hipsters that I would envy until midway through college.

After a while, though, I forgot about its bookmark, and when I went back, it had been visited by the Suck Fairy spoken of earlier on the Blue. The music references seemed forced, the characters all looked the same, and the humor seemed like watered-down references to memes and jokes I'd seen better versions of on other sites. It felt like a slightly edgier version of a newspaper comic, with a mix of gimmicky characters and hackneyed observations. But most of all, I'd spent enough time in my college indie collective to know that I could find music I liked without idolizing Jeph Jacques, and that hipsters weren't actually all that cool. But still, Jeph, thanks for turning me on to Funeral.
posted by Tubalcain at 3:06 PM on November 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

“Hi Ebony.” he said back. We walked into his flying black Mercedes-Benz (the license plate said 666) and flew to the place with the concert. On the way we listened excitedly to Good Charlotte and Marilyn Manson. We both smoked cigarettes and drugs. When we got there, we both hopped out of the car. We went to the mosh pit at the front of the stage and jumped up and down as we listened to Good Charlotte.

There are so many totally awesome things about that paragraph I don't even know where to start. If it's a genuine attempt at fanfic, it's dreadful, sure. But it's dreadful in the way that SyFy original movies are. I can't help but enjoy it.

And if it's satire, which I suspect it is (for fuck's sake, "Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way?"), it's is still totally totally awesome.
posted by eyeballkid at 3:11 PM on November 19, 2010

Also:

On the night of the concert I put on my black lace-up boots with high heels. Underneath them were ripped red fishnets. Then I put on a black leather minidress with all this corset stuff on the back and front. I put on matching fishnet on my arms. I straightened my hair and made it look all spiky. I felt a little depressed then, so I slit one of my wrists. I read a depressing book while I waited for it to stop bleeding and I listened to some GC. I painted my nails black and put on TONS of black eyeliner. Then I put on some black lipstick. I didn’t put on foundation because I was pale anyway. I drank some human blood so I was ready to go to the concert.

There is no way that's not fake.
posted by eyeballkid at 3:15 PM on November 19, 2010

It's kind of a thoroughly obvious fake.

Ayep.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:16 PM on November 19, 2010

Well, if we're talking QC:

I started reading it at least 3 or so years ago, I guess, and also did the whole "go back to the first one and immerse myself for several hours catching up" thing. I am about as far from being a hipster and indie-music-aware as you can get, but I found the characters compelling (that is, I cared about them), and stuck with it. The evolution of the art has been kind of seamless for me (it's extraordinarily jarring when Jeph or someone else links to an old one and they basically look like stick figures), and it's not as much a part of my daily ritual as it once was, but I still enjoy it and catch up every week or ten days or so.

I also follow Jeph's Twitter feed, and have therefore been privy (along with however many thousands of other followers he has) to HIS insecurities, struggles with and history of depression, and other foibles, which makes the characters in the comic that much more real.
posted by yiftach at 3:18 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

See: James Frey for why this makes a difference.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:18 PM on November 19, 2010

Goddam it, now I may have to read this.
posted by everichon at 3:19 PM on November 19, 2010

In the Great Hall I ate a bowl of Count Chocula with blood instead of milk
posted by Senor Cardgage at 3:23 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, can somebody PLEASE explain to me why people read Questionable Content. I'm sure there's something incredible about it, because I have friends who like it, but every time I look at it it seems like crappy melodramatic crap with overly telecast jokes. What am I missing? Anybody who used to hate it but now loves it want to tell me the trick to getting started?

Tubalcain has some solid insights. Basically, QC is a melodramatic comic with a little too much lead-up on the jokes, when they are there.

It started as a garden variety twentysomething indie relationship drama, and when it hit its stride about a year or so in it was a lot more nuanced and interesting than comparable offerings. It had a female protagonist who was ambivalent about relationships but not a wallflower, a male protagonist who wasn't a total asshole but also wasn't the author's Avatar Of Nice Guyness, and so on.

It does feel like it's been coasting for a couple years now; some of its in-jokeyness feels like it's ossified into self-absorbed posing.. Most of the affection for it boils down to affection for the specific characters: I can totally understand why someone picking it up today might feel very 'meh' about it.

But at times? Like when Marigold writes the Harry Potter slashfic to say 'thank you' to the lesbian she meets who encouraged her to keep writing? Yeah, it's gold.
posted by verb at 3:26 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ahh, misty water coloured memories. OH FANDOM. I WISH I COULD QUIT YOU.
posted by elizardbits at 3:30 PM on November 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

I think the author is depressed. The emo bands speak to her, for real, but she is aware of how much of a cliche this is, so she exaggerates the "scene" for comic effect.

I don't see why this story has to be either "unintentionally funny" or "a parody by someone who secretly hates emo-pop". You can also parody the things that you love.
posted by subdee at 3:30 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I gut an orgy from it.
posted by Artw at 3:34 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

The TV Tropes entry for this (linked in OP) is gold, folks.

* My Immortal is a real-life attempt at a Brown Note
* Tara Gilesbie is a Time Lord.
* My Immortal was an experiment in psychological warfare
* My Immortal is based on Gone With The Wind.

...YAY MY IMMORTAL!
posted by everichon at 3:36 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

He was so sexy that my body went all hot when I saw him kind of like an erection only I’m a girl so I didn’t get one you sicko.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 3:37 PM on November 19, 2010

She's no Stephen Ratliff.

Oh man, him. I thought I had forgotten. That boy ain't right.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:51 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

My sister and her friend used to write fanfic together. They delighted in writing pieces that started out only subtly terrible, but which grew worse, more bizarre, less coherent, with each installment. The comments were hilarious. People would respond to the first piece quite kindly. The second would receive gentle critique regarding punctuation, grammar, dialogue, character development. The third solicited expressions of puzzlement. (My sister and her friend, posing as a single writer, would give fabulously obtuse replies to these comments, which only spurred further engagement from the crowd.)

By the fifth installment, however, the comments would be full of rage. I do mean rage: utterly livid demands to know if this was a joke or not. I've no idea how they mastered this art of incitement but it was flat-out hilarious.

Anyway, it got to the point where people were actually soliciting them for interviews and there were communities established to discuss their work and debate whether they were serious or pranksters.

This was six or seven years ago. Since then both auteurs have gone on to become fully functioning, responsible members of society. Ha. I don't think they're still entertaining themselves in this fashion, but when I started to read the fanfic in question, here, I did wonder, for a few seconds, whether I should email my sister and ask if she was behind this.
posted by artemisia at 3:59 PM on November 19, 2010 [31 favorites]

Anyway, it got to the point where people were actually soliciting them for interviews and there were communities established to discuss their work and debate whether they were serious or pranksters.

Now, of course, I must read your sister's work.
posted by verb at 4:08 PM on November 19, 2010

Is there really anyone who doesn't know this is a joke? It was obvious to me about two sentences in.

I've read a lot of stuff that's unintentionally jaw-droppingly bad, and it has a certain quality to it that this doesn't have ... This is too self-conscious, and contains too many clearly deliberate jokes and malaproprisms, to really be that kind of outsider art.
posted by kyrademon at 4:12 PM on November 19, 2010

I vote for fake.

My guess is multiple authors who love taking the piss on Goths, emo, Harry Potter, and fanfic.

This is totally like something my college friends and I would have done if Harry Potter and the Internet had been around back then.

Be glad it was the 80s!
posted by xenophile at 4:14 PM on November 19, 2010

More bad fanfic:
squirrelking
Peter Chaemera
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 4:26 PM on November 19, 2010

My Immortal is a great work. Seriously. Just thinking about it fills me with joy. It is so, so, so fake, and it is brilliant.

Reasons why it is fake:

1) It switched trolling tactics as it gained an audience. The first chapters are mostly coherent with a minimum of spelling errors, and there are a lots of obvious points of satire: a Mary Sue protagonist, over-the-top descriptions of what people are wearing, use of words like "limpid," etc. When people became more and more enraged by it, the spelling got worse and worse and the situations got more outlandish (my favorite part is when it suddenly becomes Back to the Future).

2) The typos and mispellings are hilariously calculated to be as dirty or silly as possible. At one point Ebony is talking about someone's cock and she calls it a "spock." In the space of a paragraph, she says a gun fires ballots and ballets.

3) Everyone's names are mangled beyond recognition, but at one point when she's trying to say "Tom Riddle," she calls him "Tom Bombadil" instead. That's a pretty specific Lord of the Rings reference that isn't in any of the movies, and is unlikely to be in the cultural wheelhouse of a My Chemical Romance-loving, Hot Topic-obsessed goffick girl.

It's amazing. How can you top the genius that is this cliffhanger ending:

Sudenly a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong black bread. He wus werring a blak robe dat sed ‘avril lavigne’ on da back. He shotted a spel and Vlodemort ran away. It was…………………………………DUMBLYDORE!
posted by brookedel at 4:27 PM on November 19, 2010 [11 favorites]

I feel the need to start enumerating things that I like about this.

1) The he-X'ed-she-X'ed structure of the dialogue:

“That’s all right. What’s your name?” I questioned.
“My name’s Harry Potter, although most people call me Vampire these days.” he grumbled.
“Why?” I exclaimed.
“Because I love the taste of human blood.” he giggled.
“Well, I am a vampire.” I confessed.
“Really?” he whimpered.
“Yeah.” I roared.

2) "Ludicrous" misspellings:

“You ludacris fools!” he shouted.

3) Voldemort's Olde English:

Voldemort got a dude-ur-so-retarded look on his face. “I hath telekinesis.” he answered cruelly. “And if you doth not kill Vampire, then thou know what will happen to Draco!” he shouted. Then he flew away angrily on his broomstick.

4) The way that the narrator unexpectedly and abruptly becomes Draco for a single paragraph in chapter 8.
posted by painquale at 4:32 PM on November 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

None of you have read bad fanfic if you have not entered the depths of Xena: Warrior Princess fanfic. Trust me. There's a particular combination of utter sincerity along with total incompetence that you just don't find anywhere else.
posted by jokeefe at 4:37 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

The recent reboot of Sherlock Holmes which aired this summer on the BBC (I think), however, has generated some small wonders of prose. Erm, or so I've heard.
posted by jokeefe at 4:41 PM on November 19, 2010

OMG. I...I...(Runs upstairs and pulls out a lighter. Heads to the attic to burn the spiral bound Mead notebook circa 1979 containing a fanfic mash-up of Harrison Ford from Star Wars and a bunch of characters from Anne McCaffrey novels. Because it can never, ever, ever be as awesome as My Immortal.)
posted by jeanmari at 4:53 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't know what this is - but I love it. I am laughing out loud in my office at the sheer craziness of it. I have to keep the Globe and Mail nearby so that people think I am chuckling at Margaret Wente's ridiculous column - which are just as full of gaps in logic.

Perfect Friday afternoon slack off!
posted by helmutdog at 4:57 PM on November 19, 2010

BTW - My Immortal is immeasurably improved by listening to old Cocteau Twins at the same time.
posted by helmutdog at 4:59 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, there are days that I bless the universe for ensuring that the internet didn't exist during my Alice Cooper phase back in 1973.
posted by jokeefe at 5:10 PM on November 19, 2010

I preferred the version rewritten for bros.
posted by NoraReed at 5:35 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

As someone who's written and read a lot of fanfiction, I have to agree that this could definitely be a sincere work. It has a lot of elements you'll find in similar pieces, even if My Immortal really ... stands out. Banging out tomes of this length is pretty uncommon as well, and parts of it just kill me. It's one of the few works of fanfiction that even people who have never read fanfiction recognize at least the title of. Thousands may have read it, exceeding the readership that much better writers of fanfiction will ever see. Even if it is an ironic work, it's still exceptional in those regards.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:59 PM on November 19, 2010

OK, for a second I thought this was going to be about Evanescence. Heh.
posted by limeonaire at 6:30 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

When I woke up this morning I had no idea My Immortal existed. On my way to a meeting I listen to an Icelandic literary radioshow that. The episode starts out as a fairly serious discussion about the history of copyright law, then morphs into an overview of fan fiction, slides into slash fiction, before devolving into a very detailed examination of My Immortal, accompanied by translated excerpts of the story* read by a man in a really, really poor approximation of a teenage girl voice. Like any good netizen I looked My Immortal up on Wikipedia, finding only a page about the Evanescence song, I suddenly found myself arguing for My Immortal (fan fiction)'s notability as a subject for Wikipedia on the talk page. And now this thread. I've gone from blissfully unaware to painfully cognizant in one day.


* Ponder this: Tara Gilesbie has been translated into Icelandic, Jonathan Franzen hasn't.
posted by Kattullus at 7:19 PM on November 19, 2010 [10 favorites]

I was going to say something, but then Marisa Stole the Precious Thing said what I was going to say, except with words and better words.
posted by KChasm at 7:27 PM on November 19, 2010

Goddammit, I shouldn't have clicked that link. Now I'm going to remember bits of this during the new Harry Potter movie, break into uncontrollable giggles and all the die-hard fans will hate me and plot my death by magic wand-stabbing.

this is still better than bestiality fanfic - I still can't fathom how that exists
posted by zennish at 7:53 PM on November 19, 2010

Maybe it's fake, and maybe it isn't, but it's exactly the same as the stuff the more emotionally crippled roleplayers I knew write. 30-something years old and still writing stuff that starts:

"G'wendo'lynne B'karayth'e Darkkenfange looked at herself in the mirror. She was 5' 6" / 165cm tall and weighed 132 lbs / 60 kg. She brushed her white hair away from her green eyes in a way that revealed her high dexterity that was beneficial to spell casting."
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:07 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

“You ludacris fools!” he shouted.

Southern style, get wild.
posted by doublehappy at 8:29 PM on November 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

I am so glad the internet exists; if there were no internet, this would have remained in a spiral notebook for all eternity with nobody to read it.
posted by not_on_display at 8:30 PM on November 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

I'm in the camp that thinks this is fake/parody, but upon reading the first couple of installments, and some of the excerpts above, it's made me laugh out loud so many times that I don't care. I'm actually going to have to read this thing, damn it.
posted by OolooKitty at 10:02 PM on November 19, 2010

“I MAY BE A HOGWARTS STUDENT….” Hargirid paused angrily. “BUT I AM ALSO A SATANIST!”
posted by escabeche at 10:58 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

obiwanwasabi, please. Show me one spellcasting class with DEX as their primary modifier.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:14 PM on November 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

It's probably some obscure feat.
posted by Zalzidrax at 12:13 AM on November 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

I had forgotten that Tara is also a strident supporter of gay rights:

“Draco please come!” he began to cry. Tears of blood came down his pail face. I wuz so turned on cuz I love sensitive bi guyz. (if ur a homophone den fuk of!)
posted by brookedel at 12:16 AM on November 20, 2010

I love this, and I'm pretty sure it's fake. It's pretty common for people to write purposely horrible fanfic; even authors that usually write serious, decent fanfic do it for laughs. Generally I tend not to like the hit-every-trope-and-misspell-everything approach, though, despite liking this; I think it's a lot funnier when you play it as serious as possible.

I've never wrote normal fanfiction or posted it to a normal fanfiction-y audience, but the appeal of some absurd stuff has forced my hand for my own amusement before. I have been working on a Hagrid/Souljah Boy slash fic in small bits here and there. I intend to give it as a birthday gift some year to my friend who hates fanfics. I've also written Knuckles/Tails (from Sonic the Hedgehog) slash before, because come on, we've all thought about that and its time had come.
posted by Nattie at 1:00 AM on November 20, 2010

...Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace...

Mesa just sayin'
posted by Poet_Lariat at 1:09 AM on November 20, 2010

I put on a black leather shirt that showed off my boobs
posted by Rumpled at 3:55 AM on November 20, 2010

It's also worth noting that My Immortal is nowhere near the nadir of geekiness, either.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:23 AM on November 20, 2010 [2 favorites]

I don't know. If they Eye of Argon was real . . .
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:43 AM on November 20, 2010

"the," too. That'll teach me to post pre-coffee.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:07 AM on November 20, 2010

This is amazing. Within one sentence I was laughing, because the story starts: "Hi my name is..." The Hot Topic goff stuff, whatever -- it's a little funny, though sort of an easy target -- but even without the trappings of angsty adolescence that sentence would still be a wonderful travesty.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:14 AM on November 20, 2010

looks up from keyboard, right eye twitching

I hate you soulless snarkers.

I. Had. This. Out. Of. My. Head.

Now, I want to put something into your heads.

pulls out a 42' chainsaw

I want to put THIS in your heads....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
posted by Samizdata at 3:02 PM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

“Oh! Oh! Oh! ” I screamed. I was beginning to get an orgasm. We started to kiss everywhere and my pale body became all warm. And then….

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”

It was…………………………………………………….Dumbledore!

Chapter 5.

AN: STOP flaming! if u flam it menz ur a prep or a posr! Da only reson Dumbledeor swor is coz he had a hedache ok an on tup of dat he wuz mad at dem 4 having sexx!



This is one of the funniest things I've ever read on the Internet. I want it to be real.
posted by coppermoss at 10:05 AM on November 22, 2010

My littlest sister, who is now 19, went through a phase where her myspace page, and those of her friends, very closely resembled the diction, style and subject matter here. Pseudo-punk/goth attire, obsession with My Chemical Romance (glad she gave up the idea of getting a tattoo in their honor!), un-ironic love for Hot Topic. My inclination is that it's real, although it does get so, SO bizarre at the end.

My favorite part: Ebony gradually becomes Tara!

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way...
...

“Yeah I am actually.” I looked back at him. “Hey BTW my name’s ebondy dark’ness dementia TARA way what’s yours?” [emphasis hers]
...

“OMG dat’s terrible!!!!!!!!” I gasped. Satan was still asleep, so he couldn’t tell what was going on. Then I said “Lizzen evry1, I have sumthing imptent to do. in hr evry1 stay!!!!!!!!!” wiv dat I ran out.

“Good luck Tara!!!!!!!11” everyone cried.
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 10:02 AM on November 24, 2010