This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Shay Guy: The story does not have more than 3,000 more reviews than the next most popular story. As of this writing it has 11,964 reviews. There's a Snape/Harry fic called The Marriage Stone
with 10,474, and An Aunt's Love has 9,857.
Ange: Someone please tell me this story was a joke. It isn't possible that the author was serious when she wrote this. I already know that and I only read the first chapter.
Shay Guy: Hotly disputed.
Cakes: I'm thinking it's a joke. "Ebony"'s mistakes aren't consistent enough throughout the story to be the work of someone who actually honestly makes those mistakes (i.e. Her "author's notes" grammar is about fifteen times worse than the actual writing of her story). She obviously understands the rules of punctuation (she mostly uses it correctly, all fragmented sentences aside) and she capitalizes things (mostly) right. Also, the thing that really cemented it in my mind that this entire thing is an elaborate, somewhat genius joke is the fact that she correctly punctuates her dialogue - something that even decent writers tend not to do, and the way Ebony is portrayed it's completely unlikely that she was paying attention and taking notes that particular day in Grammar Class, but zoned out during every other lesson. So, the "real" Ebony might never reveal herself to the world because it's just easier to get popular through stupidity, but I'm betting she doesn't really like MCR, isn't "goffik", and has no interest in being a vampire.
Ethereal Mutation: From what I could gather from the introductory notes of every chapter, she has a friend that "proofreads" everything. Still doesn't quite explain why the chapter where they had a falling out over a shirt (or poster... or whatever) was still up to the same, ahem... "quality" standards.
Clerval: I'm with Cakes, some of the mistakes seem way too elaborate and/or comedic to be genuine - I mean "feces" for "face"? How would one do that by accident? And "virility" for "virginity" - both words that might be misspelled, but are unlikely to be confused, I would think, (no one would ever say "I lost my virility,") and I can't imagine how one could miss the spelling of one and hit the correct spelling of the other by sheer chance. And "icy blue eyes like limpid tears" may be a cliche, but it still shows a command of vocabulary and spelling that should be completely beyond the "author" as otherwise characterised. The only thing that keeps me from being perfectly sure it's a parody is that I can't quite believe the real author wouldn't have come forth to claim the glory by now.
Ethereal Mutation: Ooh, here's a theory: what if Raven was a Bored On Board saboteur all along? Taking the horrible excretion that her friend hands heIr and adding a ton of intentional crap to mock the whole thing? It would explain both sides of the argument (although it still doesn't explain the chapter mentioned earlier... unless there's a third person involved).
Aliaras: Well, the limpid tears thing is easy explained by the amount of Purple Prose around in things like Twilight. If the author was reading books like that, she might have a somewhat expansive vocabulary with no idea how to properly use it.
Clerval: But she doesn't ever seem to display that vocabulary again, and that's such a strong "Look, a Mary Sue!" marker at such a key point, the beginning of the story. It's odd that the comparative articulacy, however acquired, should kick in just to do that then never appear again. And odd that she could pick up the proper spelling and seemingly the meaning of an obscure word like "limpid" but not "not."
Cakes: The theory that this is really a mockery of someone else's story has potential - and, I suppose, that theory could very well answer the "Why hasn't the true 'Ebony' come forward?" question: they're afraid they might be found out be whoever the real writer of the story is. It is possible that the story was changed, mutilated, etc. so much that the real writer wouldn't recognise most of it, and wouldn't be able to do a sort of "plagiarism search" in Google for it. It would take a lot, but it's possible - especially with the extreme degree that My Immortal is so hacked up and terrible, and especially if the real author that "Ebony" is parodying is truly as stupid as she's making her out to be. I don't think we'll ever know, though. It's at its height of fame right now, and no one's fessing up, so My Immortal might remain an internet mystery forever... Personally speaking, I would've taken credit a long time ago. This thing is comic gold.
Ethereal Mutation: Close, but not quite. See, I think Raven got it through right under Tara's nose. That's the genius of it: Tara seems unable to form a coherent thought, much less have the intelligence to understand what is really being written. It also explains the "hacking" because honestly... what hacker capable of breaking into a server "in less than eight minutes" would do it exclusively to deface a single story with something that complex (unless they just got lucky and the password to the account was "goodcharlotte")? Odds are, that "hacking" was just Raven posting her farewell letter to the project (the story quality did become complete and utter nonsense after that).
Inkblot: Actually, the password was "tara". The hacker revealed him/herself on Tara's forums. It's not Raven.
Chronon: I'm pretty confident that it's a troll, for a couple reasons. 1: Some of the spelling mistakes are impossibly funny, like how Neville is always Navel, Slughorn is Slutborn, clapped is crapped, Fudge is Fuck, sit and shirt are both shit, and some other ones I think I'm forgetting. Also, the part where she spells MASTABATED "right". That was a bit of a giveaway for me, it seems too much of a standard, Hypocritical Humor thing.
2: The "hacking" makes no sense. Someone immediately guesses the password, doesn't change it, types up a chapter which Tara doesn't delete (or even make note of except for in one sentence in the Author's Note), no one else hacks it after learning that the password was easy to guess, and then the person never does anything else. I'm betting there was no hacker, and that the same dude wrote the "hacked" chapter, and all the other chapters.
3: The fic is abandoned with one chapter left to go. Who would honestly do that? "Tara" could either quickly finish the last chapter (after all, it probably took "her" about ten minutes per chapter to write) and get the satisfaction of having completed a work, OR just forget about it, and leave it unfinished forever. What probably happened, was that the real author realized that it kind would ruin the "bad fanfic" feel of it if the story was actually finished. I'm actually quite glad that the troll didn't bother to finish the story, because in many ways, that would have ruined it. Tara is definitely not the type to finish what she starts.
4: The fic gets more and more nonsensical as it goes. This, admittedly, could be because "Tara" lost interest in it and didn't work on the last chapters as hard as on the first, but still.
5: Everything that Cakes said earlier on.
6: She says at one part that she only saw one movie, but later in the fic she talks about Slughorn. True, she could have been dramatically understating and/or lying when she said she had only seen one movie, and true, she could have read the books in the period between those two chapters, but still.
Anyway, if it is written as a joke, the guy that wrote it is a GENIUS. If you're reading this, anonymous internet fiend, I would like to thank you for hours of entertainment in my life. It's the funniest thing I've ever read, and except for a few "giveaways" you never dropped you guise. I love you, man.
Clerval: Hey! Why does it being a work of genius (which it is) mean it's a guy?!
Inkblot: About the hacking, 2 people hacked into the account. The second person changed the password so no one could get in, not even Tara. Also, if anyone wants to try getting into her account again, DO EET.
Inkblot: Also, I tried a non-alcoholic version of the Drinking Game, where I took a gulp of water instead of a shot. I lasted 11 chapters before puking. Anyone who tried all 44 chapters would die of water poisoning.
brooked: I am also confident this is the work of a genius troll. The spelling mistakes, as mentioned, seem hilariously calculated, and the earlier chapters show evidence of a larger vocabulary that disappears once the fic becomes less about parodying other HP fics, and more about playing up everyone's hatred for the author's persona. Plus, at one point "Tara" calls Tom Riddle "Tom Bombodil." It's hysterically funny, but it also seems like a reference a little outside of Tara's persona.
spiritsunami: Yeah, definitely calculated. Not once is Sirius Black's name spelled correctly (although it does keep changing"...but EVERY time the word "seriously" is used, it's spelled s-i-r-i-u-s-l-y. Also, I think every word is misspelled at least once. Even Satan, which I was eagerly waiting for her to misspell. My conclusion: It's a parody. Oh, and also, she's not really a goth. It's not enough like a real goth, and too much like a stereotypical goth. I can tell that she's never actually been inside a Hot Topic before. Here's my favorite line: "He took out a heroin cabaret and spiked it, and gave it to me to spork." There is sooooo much wrong with that sentence.
- Some of the other words are replaced with another somewhat-similar word, which I take it to mean "lazy spellchecking". And some of the early mistakes, the correct letter is nearby on the keyboard, but later it gets harder to make that claim. The fact that it seems so much like a parody is probably the only reason it hasn't been taken down by the site admins.
Ethereal Mutation: The reason it doesn't get taken down by the admins is because it's a huge traffic generator. They could care less about how much it breaks their rules so long as it gets those pageviews and thus, the advertising bucks.
