The act of reading My Immortal is painful in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who has never experienced it. There are occasional glimmers that might make you feel like it will all be worth it going forward ("VIOWER EXCRETION ADVISD" for instance), but ultimately, it can't be enjoyed. You get worn down by things you might have found amusing five chapters in. The appalling spelling, grammar and syntax; the comparatively pornographic level of detail committed to chapter-long descriptions of outfits compared to the lazy, dry excuses for world building elsewhere; the incessant need the author feels to make an appearance in the middle of sentences to explain puns or her crippled understanding of gothic subculture. Everything drags you down, as individual sentences seem to stretch themselves to the lengths of whole chapters. Details fade into a dark, muddled haze as you start to lose order of chaotic events. Instances of enjoyment become rarer and rarer, smaller and smaller. The weight builds and builds, the question of whether you'll make it to the end or give up answered only by your willpower, and no matter how far you go the tunnel never breaks to light.
My Immortal is ingenious, because the act of reading My Immortal is actually a meta-commentary on a losing battle with depression.
Stupid at face value, accidentally ingenious in retrospect.
The act of reading My Immortal is painful in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who has never experienced it. There are occasional glimmers that might make you feel like it will all be worth it going forward ("VIOWER EXCRETION ADVISD" for instance), but ultimately, it can't be enjoyed. You get worn down by things you might have found amusing five chapters in. The appalling spelling, grammar and syntax; the comparatively pornographic level of detail committed to chapter-long descriptions of outfits compared to the lazy, dry excuses for world building elsewhere; the incessant need the author feels to make an appearance in the middle of sentences to explain puns or her crippled understanding of gothic subculture. Everything drags you down, as individual sentences seem to stretch themselves to the lengths of whole chapters. Details fade into a dark, muddled haze as you start to lose order of chaotic events. Instances of enjoyment become rarer and rarer, smaller and smaller. The weight builds and builds, the question of whether you'll make it to the end or give up answered only by your willpower, and no matter how far you go the tunnel never breaks to light.
My Immortal is ingenious, because the act of reading My Immortal is actually a meta-commentary on a losing battle with depression.