My Immortal (Harry Potter story)

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Fanfiction
Title: My Immortal
Author(s): Tara Gilesbie
Date(s): 2006 - 2007 (incomplete)
Length: ~23,000 words; 44 chapters
Genre: badfic
Fandom: Harry Potter
External Links: Full story at the My Immortal Wiki

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My Immortal is a Harry Potter fanfic, originally published on FanFiction.Net by Tara Gilesbie under the username xxxbloodyrists666xxx. Tara was reportedly assisted by her friend and beta, Raven (bloodytearz666). Written in the presumed style of beginning amateur authors who try to pile everything on at once, it is the story of original character Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, a vampire who attends Harry Potter's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

My Immortal is extremely poorly written, with odd grammar and story elements. It is also representative of trends in internet culture and amateur fanfiction that were common at the time. The main character is generally regarded as a Mary Sue self-insert who is overly preoccupied with the emo style aesthetic. It showcases the "Mall Goth"/emo trend of the early 2000s, and Tara demonstrates the self-serious attitude of young people interested in the culture.

The work includes sex, violence, and mature themes which are handled immaturely and unrealistically. The author seems to have a poor grasp of Harry Potter canon and often references other popular culture, and also reacted strongly to criticism in her author's notes. As a result, My Immortal gained notoriety as the quintessential badfic, and is one of the most infamous works of fanfiction in the world.

The work's quality is so poor and extreme that it is increasingly believed by many to have been written as an intentional badfic, crackfic, or parody. According to this view, all of My Immortal's badly written, odd, and extreme content is intentional lampooning of the kind of fanfiction written by pre-teen and teenage fangirls from an outside perspective. However, this interpretation of the work's true meaning and intentions are speculation without confirmation from the author herself. The actual identity of the fan behind the pseud Tara Gilesbie has also inspired much speculation, encouraged by people periodically coming forward to claim authorship of this work.

The work was apparently abandoned before completion, and was removed from FFnet for unknown reasons in 2008. Nonetheless, copies of the work are still shared and widely discussed. In recent years, My Immortal has been viewed fondly, as a notable story from an earlier generation of fandom. It is often a source of fandom nostalgia and has even been called a fandom classic.

Contents

Summary

The story follows Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way (frequently referred to as "Enoby"), an original character who is a 17-year old witch, vampire, and Goth (also known as "goff" or "goffic" in the story) who attends Hogwarts. Ebony is almost effortlessly beautiful, powerful, and popular, as is common for Mary Sues.

Ebony forms a romantic attachment to Draco Malfoy, an elegant Goth in the story, in spite of her concern that he has had a relationship with "Vampire Potter" and may still be interested in him. Voldemort, claiming to know of Ebony's relationship with Draco through "telekinesis," commands her to kill Harry. Various people confess that they love Ebony, while she often has sex with Draco. "Snap" and "Loopin" are both lovers and "pedofiles" who scheme against Ebony. Ebony begins to have precognitive visions. "Professor Sinister" tells Ebony that if Voldemort had ever had people who loved him he would not have become evil. Using a time machine, Ebony befriends the young Voldemort (a goth in a band) and gets him to reconcile with his ex, a bisexual man named Hedwig. Ebony then takes Voldemort to back to her time, accidentally making him evil again. The fic is apparently abandoned and incomplete, ending with a cliffhanger in Chapter 44 as Ebony shoots an "Abra Kedabra" curse at Voldemort.

Chapter 39 of the story was, apparently, written and posted by a self-described troll who explains that she hacked into Tara's FFN account for fun, accessed Tara's drafts, then edited and rewrote Chapter 39.[1] The chapter takes a very different tone from the rest of the story, being better-edited and more coherant, disparaging My Immortal and Tara, returning the canon characters to normal (see Protectors of the Plot Continuum), and killing off Ebony. Tara's original draft of the chapter is provided for comparison. The hacker also posted Tara's draft of Chapter 40, unedited. Tara herself did not delete the hacker's chapters, only saying at the start of Chapter 41, "AN: 2 every1 hu kepz flaming diz GIT S LIF!!!!! I bet u proly odnt no hu gerod way is ur proly al prepz and pozers!!!!!!!!11111 neway sum1 hakked in2 mi akkount in November and dey put up my last chaptah but now der is a new 1," and apologizing for slower updates while she has been on vacation.

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). [[I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

“Hey Ebony!” shouted a voice. I looked up. It was…. Draco Malfoy!

“What’s up Draco?” I asked.

“Nothing.” he said shyly.

But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

AN: IS it good? PLZ tell me fangz!

The full first chapter of My Immortal

Part 1 of All the outfits of Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way by juliettecatherinedn (2015)

Writing Style & References

My Immortal is known for its abundance of poor grammar and spelling, exemplified by even the main character's name being frequently misspelled. There is also wide, seemingly random variation in the errors and lack of them, as well as errors that are obvious and extreme to the point of hilarity; this contributes to the speculation that the poor quality of the work is intentional.

The work include long author's notes from Tara, as was common on FFnet. These notes are even more misspelled than the story, an intentional typing quirk popular in some internet circles. Tara used slang and frequently reacted negatively to criticism, calling out haters, preps, posers, and flamers, demonstrating a similar attitude to Ebony.

Characters from the Harry Potter series who appear in My Immortal frequently bear little resemblance to canon or are referred to by incorrect names, such as "Albert Dumblydore," "Serious Blak," or "Snaketail" instead of "Wormtail." It is unclear if the characters are OOC because the logic of the entire story is strange, or if the author genuinely has a poor grasp of HP canon. Readers often refer to the characters by their My Immortal misnomers while discussing the fic, acknowledging that they are twisted into almost new characters.

The work often includes long, detailed descriptions of outfits, usually Ebony's, which are invariably goth/emo/scene in style. Long descriptions of outfits are somewhat common in amateur fanfiction.

There are references throughout the work to various other fandoms and popular media. The most obvious include emo music such as Evanescence and My Chemical Romance; the work's title comes from the song "My Immortal" by Evanescence and Ebony's surname comes from Gerard Way. There are references to popular vampire media such as Twilight and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. There are also more obscure references; these range from complex literature to extremely obscure movies and media factoids."[2] These include Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and more.

Quotes

Albert Dumblydore's most infamous line. Photo manip by Unknown artist

Whenever I see people quoting/referencing/parodying My Immortal it’s always one of the same four or five lines. You know the ones.

The iconic opening paragraph, “Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair… (et cetera).”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!”

“I MAY BE A HOGWARTS STUDENT… BUT I AM ALSO A SATANIST!”

“Then he put his thingie into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.”

“And Loopin was masticating to it!”

As great as those are, I’d like to throw a spotlight on what I think are some of the underappreciated parts of this classic work of fanfiction. [...][3]

Reception

It's fair to say that at the time of posting, My Immortal was received negatively, as the writing was widely considered unskilled and incomprehensible. However, while the work was updating, the drama and conflict surrounding My Immortal had its own appeal that drew a large following. A significant factor was the author's notes, in which Tara increasingly railed at the flamers, haters, and "preps" who wrote critical reviews; many found Tara's comments as interesting as the fic itself. The earliest fan debates and theories began in the FFnet reviews section of the fic itself; readers recall the reviews on the site numbering in the thousands,[note 1] though these were lost in the deletion. Discussion also spread to various other chat boards.

Fan Activity

My Immortal has inspired huge amounts of fan activity. It was well known in fandom spaces before articles about the fanfic appeared on several non-fandom news websites in late July 2013, following the announcement of a Youtube web series adaptation, (My) Immortal: The Web Series.[4][5] According to The Daily Dot,

No one can truly hold the illustrious title of “worst fanfic on the internet”, but “My Immortal” (named after the Evanescence song, because of course) is surely a strong contender.[6]

Several (presumably) unauthorized print versions have been offered from time to time.[7] Dramatic readings can also be found on Youtube:[8] My Immortal has also been translated into several different languages, a spectacular accomplishment as many do not believe the original text was written in English. There were also attempts at English translations. These differ from sites and users reposting the story in its original form. One such English translation corrected the spelling and grammar, and removed the unofficial Chapter 39, which already had perfect spelling and grammar thanks to, supposedly, the hacker.[9]

My Immortal has inspired fanart, photo manips and fan comics. In 2010, the My Immortal Wiki was created, and currently hosts >300 files that include many examples of fanart and photo manips inspired by this work. Several fanfics imitating the style and tone of My Immortal have also been written in multiple fandoms. Some of them can be found in the My Immortal AU tag on Ao3. My Immortal's title character Ebony has also been the subject of cosplay.[10]

Beginning in 2019, some fans unhappy with J.K. Rowling's increasingly transphobic rhetoric began to credit Tara Gilesbie as the author of Harry Potter.[11][12][13]

Theories & Interpretation

There are multiple questions about this fic and its author that remain unanswered. Fans still debate the intentions of the author, and fan communities often see renewed activity when people come forward claiming to be Tara Gilesbie. In fact, the fake Taras are often fans of the fic who were reading as it was been posted and are able to provide new information to this community. Rose Christo's claims of authorship were built on obscure details much of the fandom had overlooked. After admitting he was not Tara, xxxmidnightgoffxxx shared his observations of Tara's unique writing style with fans at r/MyImmortalDrama.

It is unlikely that these questions will ever be answered, but within the fandom theorizing about the fic and its author remains a common fan activity. There are three main theories that fans ascribe to:

  • Theory One: My Immortal was a genuine fic written by a young and inexperienced fanfiction writer
    • Fans of this theory point to Tara's fannish activity prior to posting My Immortal, and believe the fic's style is consistent with young emo/goth fic writers.
  • Theory Two: My Immortal was an intentional badfic or troll fic.
    • Fans of this theory point to exaggerated and unbelievable inconsistencies in Tara's spelling. They also suspect the story was not hacked, and Tara was the author of the hacker's Chapter 39. Fans of this theory may also believe that Raven, Tara's friend/co-author/beta, was a sock used by Tara.
  • Theory Three: My Immortal began as a genuine fic, but after a massive negative reaction the author began to troll her readers
    • This theory allows for Tara and Raven to be genuine young fic writers, and My Immortal's deteriorating spelling and increasingly incomprehensible story may have been an intentional troll of the fics' critics.

Speculation about the author

There has long be speculation about the identity of Tara Gilesbie, and whether or not she is the young teen girl she presents herself as. This speculation is related to the theory that My Immortal is an intentional badfic and parody - these questions cannot be definitively answered without the author's word.

Several people have come forward to claim authorship of My Immortal, or have been speculated to be Tara. Prominent suspects have been the AcidBath Sisters; Rose Christo, whom Buzzfeed claimed in 2017 was the true author of My Immortal,[14] and xxxmidnightgoffxxx (aka Tod/Toby/thebratman). No one has definitively proven that they are Tara. In fact, the AcidBath Sisters and xxxmidnightgoffxxx eventually came forward to say they are not Tara Gilesbie and did not write My Immortal.

The identity of My Immortal's author is still in dispute/unknown. (See Tara Gilesbie for more information.)

While many fans are interested in the mystery of My Immortal and its author, many of them are also respectful of the author's privacy and right to anonymity. In 2020, and in response to recent fannish interest in Tara's real life identity, /r/myImmortalDrama implemented a new rule:

Do not post about Tara or Raven's real life identity

We are not here to doxx Tara or Raven. If Tara or Raven wish to come forward themselves they are welcome to, but nobody can post identifying information about them without their permission and proof of that permission. Investigation into their online presence linked to their accounts is okay[15]

The Hacker

There is speculation about whether or not the hacking of Chapters 39 and 40 was genuine. The two theories are:

  • The situation is as the hacker described: She easily hacked Tara's account, accessed her drafts, and rewrote Chapter 39 as an insult to the author.
  • There was no hacker: Tara wrote Chapter 39, and it showcases her true writing ability.

The main point against the hack being real is the fact that Tara acknowledged the hack only briefly and did not remove or edit anything the hacker wrote, despite it being insulting to Tara and My Immortal.

People who believe that Tara was the young, amateur fan she described herself as generally believe that the hack was real: a young internet user would likely have an easy to guess password and would not have been able to write with Chapter 39's correct grammar. She did not delete the hacked chapters because she didn't know how to or simply didn't care. Subscribers to this theory are likely to suspect that a hacker, either the same or a new one, deleted My Immortal in 2008.

People who believe My Immortal is a trollfic and parody usually believe the supposed hacking was another part of the writer's elaborate performance, done to create more drama and analysis. This would explain why the hacked chapters and insults were left up.

Deletion

Immortal was deleted without warning in 2008, to the disappointment of many. There were rumors the fic had been removed by Fanfiction.net staff. The question of who deleted My Immortal ties into the theories about the author. If a fan believes that the fic was intended as a troll fic, then the only possibilities are either Tara deleted the fic or it was deleted by FFnet.

There was an unsuccessful petition to put it back up, which received 2650 signatures.[16]

The fanfiction was available at the My Immortal rehost site, and is currently hosted at the My Immortal Wiki. However the reviews (comments) on this fic, were lost with the deletion of this work from fanfiction.net.

Comments

A fan, xXMidnightEssenceXx, posted the story to FanFiction.Net in March 2011, and included this introduction:

Obviously I did not write this, it was published on this site 5 years ago, then removed. There are probably other copies of this on FanFiction as well as other sites, but I though I'd post it anyway. Those who remember My Immortal well should also remember the first few chapters (1-15) were co-written with 'Raven' hence they were spelt better etc but don't worry Raven leaves in chapter 16 (which is where her character Willow gets expelled from Hogwarts). However, she seems to return... The copy on here I'm pretty sure is the 100% original version of My Immortal with no edits at all outside those by Raven (which were in the original). This version will include the 'hacker' chapter 39 and the original chapter 39, and the possibly fake "My Immortal 2" if I can find it! [note 2][17]

Some examples of fans explaining the My Immortal phenomenon to those new to fandom, or unfamiliar with this story.

I Googled it but still have no idea so for people who only started being in the fandom a few years ago what's up with My Immortal? And why is it read ironically/unironically?

*cracks knuckles*

Okay so here’s some fandom history for you.

So back in the mid nineties, when grunge was really taking off, there was a small resurgence of the old glam-goth style that had been really popular for a while in the eighties (via the Cure, David Bowie, Lost Boys etc). Between 1996-1999, it was this sort of taboo culture which got picked up by a couple of really popular bands (Marilyn Manson being the forefront, and a handful of bands that were one-hit wonders-Kitty for example, then bigger bands caught on, like Korn in the late nineties). It gave birth to the scene/emo culture where suddenly bands like Evanescence and My Chemical Romance began to rocket up the charts–based on both music and a particular style.

In about 2004, there were several young kids, between the ages of 12-15, who were pouring their hearts out into “song fic” which you would constantly see in author’s notes at the beginning of fic– “MCR inspired Drarry Song-fic” which usually had Harry taking his angst and rage out on some black eyeliner and the really barmy early internet slang, exploring bisexuality with fics using a lot of spit-lube and black lipstick, and homophobic Ron, and Father-Figure Snape, accompanied by mid-sentence author’s notes and song lyrics every other paragraph.

In I think it was 2006 or something–there was the birth of My Immortal, which was a fic that took all those early, scene-kid, emo tropes and bad slang and horrendous cliches–bad spelling, bad grammar, loads of goths v preps, and poured them into the masterpiece that was My Immortal.

The song-fic, scene-kid, emo group of people were all growing older and growing out of that early angst, so it’s hard to tell if this was just the last hurrah of these stories, or if it was someone who really wanted to troll the early fandom and take the piss by writing something so comically horrible, that it was an instant sensation. Like a fanfic B-movie–Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but worse.

It has been re-uploaded HERE, as well as turned into a Web Series HERE. But if you really want to do this to yourself, feel free to read it. If you want a real treat, see if you can search back on ffnet to the early 2000s, using the keywords Drarry, MCR, and Evanescence, and you’ll find some truly, unironic gems that was the horror of the early HP fandom. [18]

I have seen that 'story' go around a lot and I still don't know what it is. WHAT is My Immortal??

Let’s go all the way back to 2006, when the internet was just becoming a thing to young people. Back when a majority of the websites we know today were either just starting out or just starting to pick up in popularity, including fanfiction.net. A lot of fanfictions had already filled the archives, both bad and good, but one fanfiction in particular caught people’s attention almost immediately. And it was ‘My Immortal’ by “Tara Gilesbie”, or ‘XXXbloodyrists666XXX’ as was her username on the website. Supposedly taking place in the world of Harry Potter, this particular fanfic gets to a point where, had it not been for the actual characters’ names being present, you can’t really tell what it’s supposed to be referencing as it has very little acknowledgement of the source material’s canon. The story’s main focus is “Tara’s” self-insert OC, Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way. Also known as Enoby, Egogy, Evony, Ibony, or just Tara. To anyone who has only heard of ‘My Immortal’, it just sounds like your typical run of the mill “mary sue” fanfiction. But what made ‘My Immortal’ stand above the rest were three things: the butchered grammar, the author’s seemingly obsession with the gothic subculture, and the mary sue herself.

[...] But what truly, TRULY made ‘My Immortal’ such a phenomenon is that no one knew if it was legit. There were two sides to how people felt about it, those who thought it was a real story and Tara at the time was another young angsty teen who had just been introduced to the internet (which would explain the terrible grammar and botched sex scenes), and those who thought the story was one big joke written by a genius troll who made Tara up as a persona, which was extremely plausible since everything about the story was so wrong and completely blown out of proportion that there was no possible way someone could’ve come up with it and been completely serious. But people on the other side have argued that they’d have a very, VERY dedicated troll.[19]

My Immortal is a notoriously bad Harry Potter (and also possible Back to the Future and Star Wars crossover) fanfiction that was published on Fanfiction.net in 2006 by someone under the name Tara Gilesbie. it’s a pretty blatant self-insert fic of a teenage girl living out her fantasy of being a sexy vampire who all the hot guys fight over and there’s time travel and it’s fucking batshit and the writing becomes more and more illegible as the story goes on and I love every part of it. it’s hilarious and a great insight into the mind of the author (regardless of whether Tara Gilesbie was actually a teenage girl who wrote the fic in seriousness, or if it was a parody and Tara is a character herself). many people have speculated over the years that it is a trollfic but I’ve always disagreed; the main reason people think this is because the genre has become so diluted with its own parodies of My Immortal that it seems to blend in with all the parodies and thus seems like a joke to the average person (see: this trope). it’s unlikely for My Immortal to be a parody because before My Immortal, there were no fanfics quite like it. bad fanfiction was an entirely different type of thing. also. every single person from age 10 to 18 I knew on the internet in 2006 wrote exactly like this. so I think My Immortal is genuine.[20]

What the hell is this “my inmortal” thing everyone’s been talking about?! I’ve seen people talking about it everywhere and idk what it is? Is it a fanfic or something?! I can seriously only think of My Inmortal by Evanescence

Oh my sweet summer child. My Immortal is commonly known as the worst fanfic in existence. To this day people are divided on whether the work was meant to be written as a troll fic or if it was just genuinely terrible writing. The fic stars Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way who is a Hot Topic shopping Goth who hates preps. The character is portrayed as a thinly veiled self insert for its unknown author. The spelling and grammar within the work are eyebleedingly bad. The canonical characters are shreds of their former selves. For example Harry Potter has been renamed Vampire and instead of a lightning bolt scar he bears a Pentagram scar on his forehead. The fic was so polarizingly bad that it was actually removed from fanfic.net; however, it still exists today because some people decided to preserve it so that it could continue to rear its ugly head on humanity.

I’ve never actually managed to finish reading this fic. Because the few times I’ve tried I always end up giving up because as an English major it makes me want to physically gouge my own eyes out and pour bleach in my brain. Part of me hopes this fic is an elaborate joke simply because it would restore my faith in humanity. Another part of me has worked retail for over five years and knows people are genuinely this stupid. The one saving grace is that in a typo it refers to Sirius Black as Harry’s dogfather and honestly I’m pretty sure he’d approve of that title.

If you search my blog under the tag My Immortal you should be able to find some samples of the fic. But I don’t hate myself enough right now to reread those phrases for you here.[21]

From Encyclopedia Dramatica:

My Immortal is the most famous, notoriously bad fan fiction ever written. Based very loosely in the Harry Potter universe and featuring the blatant Mary-Sue protagonist Ebony (or often times "Enoby") Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, it reads like a detailed list of everything a fanfic author could ever possibly do wrong, only taken to exaggerated, horrifying extremes. Written by super-tard Tara Gilesbie, My Immortal was originally posted to sometime in 2006, but was subsequently deleted by the staff after causing a severe drop in the site's collective IQ. In fact, the fanfic is so unbelievably bad that many refuse to accept that it's real, insisting that Tara was only trolling and that the story is really a parody. Regardless of the author's intent, My Immortal remains one of the most cringe-worthy, unintentionally hilarious, so-bad-it's-good pieces of literature the internets have ever shat out.

Fan comments looking back at My Immortal fondly:

While the story was up I had seen some of the best comments in the world in the reviews. People were actually role playing the characters and leaving notes in the review section. There was a Lord Voldemort that was fucking hilarious, but the James was the best. Now, the fic has been taken down and we are thus left with the memory of it.[22]

My Immortal is an absolute treasure. From the bottom of my heart, I fucking love it. It has made me laugh so hard I was crying, like, a hundred times. I love it in the same way I grew to love the whole Twilight series. I reference "Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way" and say "goffick" like once a month. I was about 16/17 when I first found it around 2007/8 and it was one of my first experiences with "so bad, it's good!"[23]

Related & Inspired

A version of the hand-washing meme that circulated in early 2020, with the opening lines of My Immortal. Creator: ao3commentoftheday

The Fan Creations of My Immortal is an infographic that gives a brief overview of the different types of fanworks inspired by My Immortal.

Fanfiction

My Immortal AUs

Full blown AUs often take characters from other source materials and choose an existing character to be the Mary Sue/Ebony Way stand in. Not all of these works are set in Hogwarts, but almost all works follow the same style and tone as the original My Immortal.

  • My Miraculous, Archived version by nervoussurfer, It's a new year at Hogwarts, and Ebony Mari’nette Dementia Raven Dupain-Cheng Maé has come back to dominate one last time for her seventh year. A Miraculous Ladybug My Immortal AU. (2016)

Short fics/parodies

The first paragraph of My Immortal has inspired many short related works written in a similar style. Many of these are parodies and some are also a meta commentary on the source material they parody.

Fanart

Translations

Meta

Communities & Links

Further Reading

Notes & References

Notes

  1. ^ A reader of the original fic on FFN, Kim, recalls "at least one post whose comments section contained more than 10,000 reviews". In The Bizarre, Unsolved Mystery of 'My Immortal,' the World’s Worst Fanfiction Story in Vulture, March 2015.
  2. ^ In 2020, it was confirmed that My Immortal 2 was written by Tod/Toby/TheBratman, who was pretending to be Tara Gilesbie at that time. It is still available on Wattpad, where it was reposted and incorrectly credited to xxxbloodyrists666xxx

References

  1. ^ An-Anon-Author-Who-Will-Silently-Not-Reveal-Her-Identity-Because-She's-A-Coward on the My Immortal Wiki
  2. ^ List of possible references on My Immortal Wiki, retrieved October 2020
  3. ^ 2016-10-31 by fiddler-on-the-starship
  4. ^ Abraham Riesman, The Bizarre, Unsolved Mystery of 'My Immortal,' the World’s Worst Fanfiction Story in Vulture, March 2015.
  5. ^ See The Atlantic Wire, Jul 29, 2013. See also Mediajunkie Studios - YouTube, Archived version
  6. ^ Gavia Baker-Whitelaw. The worst "Harry Potter" fanfic ever is now a hilarious webseries. The Daily Dot. July 29, 2013
  7. ^ My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie (Paperback) - Lulu, Archived version; My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie (Paperback) - Lulu, Archived version; My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie (Amazon), Archived version
  8. ^ My Immortal Ch 1 - A Dramatic Reading - YouTube, Archived version; A Dramatic Reading: My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie. Chapter One. - YouTube, Archived version.
  9. ^ An English Translation of My Immortal on Wattpad by audiodelta0206.
  10. ^ comment by u/redcommodore, r/HobbyDrama post Goffick Harry Potter and Fabricated Child Abuse: The Saga of My Immortal, Sept 2019. I cosplayed as Enoby. Only one person recognized who I was (at least she was really enthusiastic)
  11. ^ Tweet by @LitteOverheard, Dec 20 2019. Wow I can't believe Tara Gilesbie wrote the whole Hardy Potter series. Accessed July 8 2020
  12. ^ Tweet thread by @ShartiTheClown, Dec 19 2019.I love the real author of Harry Potter, Tara Gilesbie. Iconic. Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way would never do me like this. Accessed July 8 2020.
  13. ^ The only Harry Potter author I respect is Tara Gilesbie by @TheLastGherkin, June 30 2020.
  14. ^ The Story Of "My Immortal" Is More Wild And Heartbreaking Than You Imagined on Buzzfeed (accessed 9 September 2017)
  15. ^ r/myimmortaldrama accessed 17/11/2020
  16. ^ Keep My Immortal Online, archived link to the petition.
  17. ^ At Fanfiction.net. xXMidnightEssenceXx's repost of the story only includes the first 35 of the total 44 chapters.
  18. ^ An anonymous ask, and an explanation at lala-loony-lupin.tumblr, Archived version April 27, 2016
  19. ^ Extracts from a response to a Tumblr ask, Archived version by arsenic-colada, 2017. (accessed 22 June 2020)
  20. ^ Extract from Tumblr reply to an anonymous asked, answered by rindeservedbetter-deactivated20, 2017.
  21. ^ Ask response by Hogwarts House Friends, Tumblr. Published January 11, 2020 (Accessed November 23, 2020).
  22. ^ My Immortal by Tara Gilesbie UPDATED 1-01-10, excerpt from introductory note, posted by Livejournal user suedestroyer453, 2009.
  23. ^ Comment by u/daisytits on r/HobbyDrama post Goffick Harry Potter and Fabricated Child Abuse: The Saga of My Immortal, Sept 2019./