The official summary:
Tara Gilesbie is failing her English class. No, she's not one of those honors kids who claim that they're failing when they really have a B. She has a literal F on her report card for English. So when she's asked to write a short story to bring up her grade, she does the only sane thing that a girl like her could do.
It can't be that hard to resurrect Oscar Wilde and get him to write her story, right?
But there's something a little bit...different about her teacher's favorite author. He can't spell or use grammar properly, so Tara gets Edgar Allan Poe to be his beta reader. The two of them have epic plans to write a "gothic reinterpretation of Harry Potter," but will it work out, or will the whole project crash and burn?
A brief tale of how the worst's worst piece of literature, "My Immortal," came about.
It can be found here.
Tropes:
- Back from the Dead: Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe both come back from the dead.
- Basement-Dweller: Poe and Wilde live in Tara's basement.
- Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Lampshaded In-Universe. One of Wilde's misattributed quotes is on a poster in Tara's room, and he claims that he never said that.
- Buffy Speak: Done deliberately in reference to My Immortal after Poe's Lame Comeback.
- And that was when Oscar Wilde gave him what could best be described as a dude-you’re-so-retarded look.
- Epic Fail: Not only did Tara fail to get Oscar Wilde to write her short story, she indirectly created one of the worst pieces of literature of all time.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Wilde and Poe. However, Tara does attempt to explain all of the social and political developments of the 20th and 21st centuries.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Tara is 136 years younger than Wilde and 181 years younger than Poe. She is friends with both of them.
- Minimalist Cast: There is a total of five characters in this story (Tara, Wilde, Poe, Mrs. Gilesbie, and Mrs. Turner).
- Moustache de Plume: Inverted. Oscar Wilde's pen name is "Tara Gilesbie," and Edgar Allan Poe uses the gender neutral pen name of "Raven."
- Resurrected for a Job: Wilde was resurrected to do Tara's English homework. Poe was resurrected to beta read My Immortal.
- Self-Plagiarism: Wilde steals several plot points for My Immortal from his own works, most notably The Picture of Dorian Gray.
- Shipper on Deck: Tara seems to ship Wilde and Poe.
- Shout-Out: Certainly fewer than this author's other works, but there are a few to Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allan Poe's works, as well as bands such as My Chemical Romance, Evanescence, and Panic! at the Disco.
- Skewed Priorities: Tara seems to have them, as she decides not to dig up Oscar Wilde's grave not because it is illegal, but because it is in France.
- Titled After the Song: Like My Immortal, this story is titled after an Evanescence song.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The story is set in 2006, even though it was written in 2016.
- Values Dissonance: Discussed In-Universe.
- To sum things up, you can't get arrested for being gay, but you can get arrested for marrying your thirteen year old cousin. Any questions?
- Weirdness Censor: Presumably this is why Tara's mother doesn't notice that Wilde and Poe are living in her house until near the end of the story.
