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Of the Characters
- It's only too easy to see the "preps" as the good guys and the "goffs" as the bad guys. After all, the "goffs" are all utter jerks, and we never see the "preps" do anything to deserve the treatment they get. In particular, the fic wants us to see Britney as the Alpha Bitch and Enoby as the "cool loser". But who's the one judging the other for how she dresses? Who's the one who sits by and takes the other's abuse without retaliating until the end? Who's the one gets followed around by a large group of friends while the other one always seems to be on her own? The only time Britney does anything bad is towards the end of the story when she breaks Snap, Loopin, and Hargrid out of Azerbaijan and tells Ebony that Voldemort "will, like, totally kill your friends." And Ebony immediately tortures her afterwards.
- Is "Dumblydore" a "poser" just trying to be cool like Ebony thinks? Is he a brilliant Chessmaster Obfuscating Stupidity to manipulate Ebony into destroying "Volsemort"? Or is he just an old, senile guy who does things at random? Was he mad at Ebony and Draco for having sex in the Forbidden Forest because it was irresponsible and dangerous or because they had sex?
- When Enoby used the Killing Curse at the end, did she aim it at Voldemort or herself?
- Satan Bombadil Anderson: Attractive 80s goth or Time Traveling Con Man?
- Why did Dobby run away crying after witnessing Snap and Loopin doing it? Was he simply horrified by stumbling across such a sight? Or was he actually enjoying it and fled in tears out of embarrassment when Evony caught him watching?
- Did Draco actually commit suicide, but came back to life (possibly because he was a vampire)? Did Voldemort replace him with a dummy that everyone mistook for a corpse? Or was this just an error, and Tara meant to write that he attempted suicide, but wrote "committed" by mistake? When Dumbledore tells Ebony in the next chapter, "It has been revealed that someone has…" before getting distracted, was this supposed to be him telling her Draco's corpse was fake but Tara forgot to get that revelation through?
- "Doris Rumbridge" was meant to be in the wrong, according to one of Tara's author's notes, for saying that Dumblydore had to "retry" (retire) because he had Alzheimer's. However, was she correct that Dumblydore had Alzheimer's, but was in the wrong for thinking it was dangerous, or was she lying about Dumblydore having Alzheimer's?
- Why doesn't Ebony have a nickname for Draco like she does with all her other friends? Is it because she's lovesick and so sees everything about him, including his name, as already perfect? Or is it because "Draco" is already gothic-sounding enough to her because it means "dragon"?
- When Snape and Lupin aren't affected by the "gazillion" bullets Ebony shoots at them, is it because they're Immune to Bullets, or does Ebony have terrible aim?
Of the story
There is substantial debate over whether My Immortal itself is a genuinely bad but sincere fanfic or a brilliant Troll Fic, with Tara Gilesbie being one of the greatest trolls of all time. There's all sorts of evidence pointing in both directions.
- The grammar and spelling are downright awful. Now, it's sadly quite common to see terrible grammar on the Internet. But some of the fic's misspellings are utterly hilarious, and many of the funniest are different words spelled correctly, like "masturbating" becoming "masticating", "orgasm" becoming "orgy", "clapped" becoming "crapped", "Azkaban" becoming "Azerbaijan", and "seductively pointing" becoming "selectively pontificating". One might think that the spellchecker did a "Cupertino effect
" on the fic, but most of the rest of it has clearly never been exposed to a spellchecker. The "Tom Bombadil" misspelling also suggests that she read The Lord of the Rings (as Tom Bombadil doesn't appear in the films), which would be inconsistent with the level of literacy displayed elsewhere in the fic. - The spelling and grammar also goes through a rather noticeable arc. Early chapters are actually fairly good about it, though they still feature awkward prose and punctuation and the occasional instance of Rouge Angles of Satin. Later chapters tend to feature at least one spelling error, grammar error, or incorrectly-used word per sentence. The author's notes claim that she lost Raven, her main proofreader, around the midpoint of the story, but the grammar around that stage more or less just keeps up with the decline rather than sharply falling off like you'd expect it to.
- On the subject of reading, there's also evidence that she's read the Harry Potter books. At one point in the author's notes, Tara claims that she's only familiar with the films, which is a beautiful way to push the fandom's buttons, but she also references characters and elements who don't appear in the films, like Professor Sinistra and Arithmancy. Similarly, characters from later books like Umbridge show up when the fic may have been written before they appeared in film. Then again, it's suggested that her friend Raven who has read the books suggested that she add in those elements.
- What to make of the "hack"? It's certainly a very dedicated troll who would continue a troll fic after their account got hacked. It's similarly a very dedicated troll who would fake their account getting hacked and then go back to writing in the same semi-literate style — although there is some improvement in the writing after that point.
- What to make of the constant references to My Chemical Romance? At first glance, they're about as "goff" as you can get. But the band has consistently rejected the "emo" label, and several of their songs — "Teenagers" in particular — criticize their fans who only like them so that they can claim not to be "mainstream" but wind up conforming to a different norm. My Immortal falls smack into that Misaimed Fandom (right down to the protagonist adopting the frontman's surname), and again, it's your guess as to whether or not that was intentional.
- While much of the story seems to be the embodiment of the fanfics of a certain breed of scene kid in the 2000s, one character that stands out is Snape (or "Snap"). At the time, it was de rigeur to portray him as far more likeable than in canon, especially among fans of the films by way of experiencing Alan Rickman's portrayal, and especially among female fans who enjoyed that kind of Tall, Dark, and Snarky character type—Snape being revealed as some manner of sexy vampire was practically a Fandom-Specific Plot. However, despite Tara overlapping perfectly with that kind of Snape fan, she portrays him as wholly evil, aligned with the preps, and a pedophile. Why this has occurred is heavily up to debate. If the story is a Troll Fic, is it intended as a sort of subversion of expectation? If it's not, why does Tara seem to have so much antipathy towards Snape? While some of the more bizarre alterations come across as an exaggerated form of the mutation that would occur from a writer far more familiar with fan material than the original source, Snape remains a rather strange outlier.
- YouTube commentator Red Bard, who believes it's a Troll Fic, thinks My Immortal is a Nested Story that's part of a larger metanarrative. Basically, Tara and Raven are fictional characters created by whoever masterminded the whole thing, and My Immortal, along with Raven's I'm Not Okay, are their In-Universe creations.
- There's the Take a Third Option possibility that Tara was a real Emo Teen writing a sincere fanfic, but was going for a Fantastic Comedy tone and didn't quite know how to do it properly. It's pretty clear she has some kind of a sense of humor, with a number of puns (though she constantly violates Don't Explain the Joke with them) throughout the piece, and deliberately absurd jokes, like Count Chocula cereal apparently being a crucial part of the "goffik" lifestyle (because its mascot is a vampire, y'see). The IKEA Erotica bits also seem like they're meant to be funny.
- Some people have suggested that the story started as a sincere effort, only for Tara to deliberately double down on everything wrong with it for one reason or another. On the other hand, there are also people who attribute the story's sudden decline in quality to Tara having a mental breakdown or some other kind of personal crisis.
- If Tara is a troll, does this mean she made Raven up? Or is it that there were two trolls?
- What's to make of Tara claiming she won't update the story until she gets a certain number of good reviews, only for her to update the story anyway? Were people ironically giving the story good reviews and she thought they were sincere? Was it Tara's friends giving the story good reviews? Was it just an empty threat (since at one point, she says, "And this time I mean it!" implying at at least sometimes she wasn't sincere)? Or was she a troll, and the claims not to update the story until she got good reviews were just part of the trolling?
- Was Sirius/Serious called a "dogfather" as a pun because of his Animagus being a dog? Was it just a typo? Or was it part of the Running Gag of Ebony refusing to say religious words (e.g. saying, "pentagram" instead of "cross" regardless of context)?
- In one author's note, Tara says that she is "leeving dubya" soon. Many believe this to be Dubai, but some think it's Dublin, or a Russian city called Dubna, or that Tara is referring to George W. Bush (since he was president at the time and it could have been a mockery of his pronunciation of "W"). Neither Dubai, nor Russia, nor Ireland have a Hot Topic, where Tara apparently goes a lot, so she probably doesn't live in any of those places. Therefore, is Tara pretending to live in Dubai, Dubna, or Dublin, did one or both of her parents take her to one of those places on a trip and she didn't want to go, or is she going on a trip and talking about leaving George W. Bush?
- Tara sometimes claims that she didn't update the story in a while because she cut her wrists and had to go to the hospital. Some readers took this as true, subscribing to the theory that the reason the story declined in quality was because Tara had some sort of breakdown. However, other people believe that Tara was just lying — either because she's a troll, or to make an excuse for forgetting to update the story. In one author's note, she instead claims she went to Transylvania and saw the set of Dracula despite Dracula not being filmed in Transylvania. Does this mean Tara made the entire trip up, or that she got confused because she saw the castle that inspired Dracula's castle?
- Was Fudge's name spelled "Fuck" deliberately as a joke (perhaps because "fudge" is sometimes used as a euphemism for "fuck") or was it just another typo?
- Why did the story end so abruptly? Was it because Tara's goth persona was just a phase that she outgrew, was Voldemort supposed to have been killed by Ebony, did Tara simply forget to update the story, or if the troll theory is true, was it making fun of authors who don't end their stories?
