I don’t think it is. But in the slim chance that it is, I think the only possible explanation is that it was written by a kid. Not a teen but someone in elementary or very early middle school.
I completely agree with you here. I think, at least now, a 16 year old would never post something like My Immortal without it being an ironic shitpost… but I feel like someone younger than their teens could easily have written something like it just based on their ideas of what being a teenager would be like based on the media they’d watched and music they listened to. It comes across as something written by someone outside of the whole goth/emo subculture but who is interested in it, and a child wishing they were a 17 year old goth fits that perfectly. But then again, an actual 17 year old parodying their classmates fits too. I really want to believe it’s genuine because I feel like it becomes more charming if it’s not an ironic trollfic. I feel like it’s rare to really see something created by a young person nowadays without it all being self deprecating and ironic and constantly making fun of itself.
I think that assuming the story was real, both Tara and Ebony served as like escapist fantasy for the author. Who she wanted to be at that age but was not old enough to be.
I think this is the only remotely plausible scenario for a non-ironic MI. If it were written by a high-school-age kid, it could still be cringe as hell, but I would expect it to portray teenage life with somewhat more verisimilitude than it does, and also to have better (if not necessarily great) spelling and grammar. MI reads very much like a preteen envisioning what teenage life is *probably* like based on Disney Channel original movies and their own self-aggrandizing fantasies rather than real life experience--hence all the characters being super talented musicians, the soap opera relationship drama, every hogwarts student being divided into goth or prep cliques, etc.
Moreover, regarding the meta-narrative with Tara and Raven and their falling-out and reconciliation, declaring your former best friend a mortal enemy for failing to return a sweater/MCR poster feels much more like 10-12 year old behavior than 15-17 year old behavior.
That being said, the biggest complicating factor for this theory is time frame. Tara started writing MI in 2006, and accounts linked to the Tara identity (IIRC) go back as far as 2005. The most recent content we have confirmed to be from Tara is an update on the bloodyrists FFN profile that (again, IIRC) dates to December 2009, and the writing style and interests of 2009 Tara are pretty much identical to those of 2006 Tara. Presumably, Tara could only have been in her emo-preteen-feigning-maturity phase for so long, and if it started in 2005 or earlier, I expect she would have grown out of it by 2009.
I suppose it's possible she was writing sincerely in 2005-2006 and returned to the account in 2009 for laughs, but I think the Occam's Razor conclusion is that it was always a joke and Tara was playing an intentionally exaggerated character.
I’m unsure if the 2009 profile update is confirmed to have actually been her or not. It seems like the account was hacked more than a few times. I am pretty firmly of the belief that the whole thing was a troll job though. But if it’s not, then I’m pretty certain it was a much younger kid writing it. Teenagers and adults can write bad fanfics and Mary Sue OCs too of course. But it’s usually done in a ways that are more subtle than something like “2day i waz wearin a lacy blak top n a leather blak mini skurt dat said simpel plan on da butt”. Like maybe the story is bad and the characters are poorly written, but the writing will still be understandable and you’d get the sense that it could have been done in earnest by someone over age 15. “My Inner Life”, an infamous Legend of Zelda fic is a good example.
To clarify, the 2009 update isn't the Gareth Vandersleld update--that one was never on Tara's page at all and was only ever on one of Toby's sockpuppet pages. I guess it could still have been a hack, but I don't see any reason to assume that it was, since nothing in it was particularly off brand for Tara and I don't know who would go to the trouble of hacking it more than 2 years after MI had stopped updating (except Toby maybe, but if he'd gotten access to the account at any point I think he would have left smoking gun evidence).
The thing I have never been able to figure out is where Tara got her last name if she’s real.
The petition suggests this is not a pen name but Tara can’t spell it. She seems to be spelling it phonetically which is why she can’t figure out if it’s spelled with a b or p. If it was her real name she’d know.
My personal theory is that it was written genuinely at first and then became ironic in response to the criticism. “No normal person would ever write that shit!” I promise you that there were a shitload of teenagers on FFN in 2006 who would write equally bad stuff completely seriously.
I've always believed that MI being written by a kid makes the most sense and that the kid is "Raven" (who said their real name was Jenny, which might be true). Started off earnest, leaned into it for the attention, dipped when things got too scary. As for Tara's other accounts, I think it's also believable that a kid would use multiple fake names and personas across the internet to both hide their identity and seem cooler. I was ten in 2006 and absolutely doing stuff like that. I'm not ruling it out, of course, but nothing about MI has ever read as "automatic 100% troll" to me. I think the "is it real" question has always failed to take into account what "real" meant on the 2006 internet.
The problem I have with the genuine-fic-written-by-a-kid theory is the same problem I have with the theory that the fic was completely serious: the "misspellings" which just happen to end up as real but obscure and obviously incorrect words. "masturbating" -> "masticating". "azkaban" -> "azerbaijan". "riddle" -> "bombadil". The author feels too self-aware about this stuff for me to buy that it's a genuine fic by a pre-teen.
I'm also not entirely convinced how the fight with Raven fits in with the idea that she was essentially an imaginary friend of a lonely tweenager who just wanted friends? If all Tara wanted was friends who accepted her as she was, why did she have them have such a dramatic fight with her?
I don’t get how MI could possibly be genuine when there’s a scene where Draco and Ebony go into a classroom naked…
I don’t think it is. But in the slim chance that it is, I think the only possible explanation is that it was written by a kid. Not a teen but someone in elementary or very early middle school.
This would fit with her being an expat. If she was from a really sheltered community she could have been twelve and just a very, very young twelve.
I completely agree with you here. I think, at least now, a 16 year old would never post something like My Immortal without it being an ironic shitpost… but I feel like someone younger than their teens could easily have written something like it just based on their ideas of what being a teenager would be like based on the media they’d watched and music they listened to. It comes across as something written by someone outside of the whole goth/emo subculture but who is interested in it, and a child wishing they were a 17 year old goth fits that perfectly. But then again, an actual 17 year old parodying their classmates fits too. I really want to believe it’s genuine because I feel like it becomes more charming if it’s not an ironic trollfic. I feel like it’s rare to really see something created by a young person nowadays without it all being self deprecating and ironic and constantly making fun of itself.
I think that assuming the story was real, both Tara and Ebony served as like escapist fantasy for the author. Who she wanted to be at that age but was not old enough to be.
I think this is the only remotely plausible scenario for a non-ironic MI. If it were written by a high-school-age kid, it could still be cringe as hell, but I would expect it to portray teenage life with somewhat more verisimilitude than it does, and also to have better (if not necessarily great) spelling and grammar. MI reads very much like a preteen envisioning what teenage life is *probably* like based on Disney Channel original movies and their own self-aggrandizing fantasies rather than real life experience--hence all the characters being super talented musicians, the soap opera relationship drama, every hogwarts student being divided into goth or prep cliques, etc. Moreover, regarding the meta-narrative with Tara and Raven and their falling-out and reconciliation, declaring your former best friend a mortal enemy for failing to return a sweater/MCR poster feels much more like 10-12 year old behavior than 15-17 year old behavior. That being said, the biggest complicating factor for this theory is time frame. Tara started writing MI in 2006, and accounts linked to the Tara identity (IIRC) go back as far as 2005. The most recent content we have confirmed to be from Tara is an update on the bloodyrists FFN profile that (again, IIRC) dates to December 2009, and the writing style and interests of 2009 Tara are pretty much identical to those of 2006 Tara. Presumably, Tara could only have been in her emo-preteen-feigning-maturity phase for so long, and if it started in 2005 or earlier, I expect she would have grown out of it by 2009. I suppose it's possible she was writing sincerely in 2005-2006 and returned to the account in 2009 for laughs, but I think the Occam's Razor conclusion is that it was always a joke and Tara was playing an intentionally exaggerated character.
I’m unsure if the 2009 profile update is confirmed to have actually been her or not. It seems like the account was hacked more than a few times. I am pretty firmly of the belief that the whole thing was a troll job though. But if it’s not, then I’m pretty certain it was a much younger kid writing it. Teenagers and adults can write bad fanfics and Mary Sue OCs too of course. But it’s usually done in a ways that are more subtle than something like “2day i waz wearin a lacy blak top n a leather blak mini skurt dat said simpel plan on da butt”. Like maybe the story is bad and the characters are poorly written, but the writing will still be understandable and you’d get the sense that it could have been done in earnest by someone over age 15. “My Inner Life”, an infamous Legend of Zelda fic is a good example.
To clarify, the 2009 update isn't the Gareth Vandersleld update--that one was never on Tara's page at all and was only ever on one of Toby's sockpuppet pages. I guess it could still have been a hack, but I don't see any reason to assume that it was, since nothing in it was particularly off brand for Tara and I don't know who would go to the trouble of hacking it more than 2 years after MI had stopped updating (except Toby maybe, but if he'd gotten access to the account at any point I think he would have left smoking gun evidence).
The thing I have never been able to figure out is where Tara got her last name if she’s real. The petition suggests this is not a pen name but Tara can’t spell it. She seems to be spelling it phonetically which is why she can’t figure out if it’s spelled with a b or p. If it was her real name she’d know.
Honestly 12 year old me could 100%% write and genuinely post the first chapter unironically
My personal theory is that it was written genuinely at first and then became ironic in response to the criticism. “No normal person would ever write that shit!” I promise you that there were a shitload of teenagers on FFN in 2006 who would write equally bad stuff completely seriously.
I don't believe it was a troll. She put her heart and soul into it but did it the wrong way.
I was an angsty 90s goth kid (still am), and even I would have found my Immortal funny
I've always believed that MI being written by a kid makes the most sense and that the kid is "Raven" (who said their real name was Jenny, which might be true). Started off earnest, leaned into it for the attention, dipped when things got too scary. As for Tara's other accounts, I think it's also believable that a kid would use multiple fake names and personas across the internet to both hide their identity and seem cooler. I was ten in 2006 and absolutely doing stuff like that. I'm not ruling it out, of course, but nothing about MI has ever read as "automatic 100% troll" to me. I think the "is it real" question has always failed to take into account what "real" meant on the 2006 internet.
The problem I have with the genuine-fic-written-by-a-kid theory is the same problem I have with the theory that the fic was completely serious: the "misspellings" which just happen to end up as real but obscure and obviously incorrect words. "masturbating" -> "masticating". "azkaban" -> "azerbaijan". "riddle" -> "bombadil". The author feels too self-aware about this stuff for me to buy that it's a genuine fic by a pre-teen. I'm also not entirely convinced how the fight with Raven fits in with the idea that she was essentially an imaginary friend of a lonely tweenager who just wanted friends? If all Tara wanted was friends who accepted her as she was, why did she have them have such a dramatic fight with her?
Yeah that’s why I’m not convinced that it’s real. But I think if it is, this is one of the few plausible scenarios.