15 Years Of My Immortal Conspiracies
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
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Outro Song: "Driving in The Rain" by Timecrawler 82
timecrawler82....
/ @timecrawler82
"My Immortal" walked so "The Bible" could run
My immortal 🙏
@@GA_131 An American classic
Mommy has pinned me against a wall. Grateful. Thankful. Blessed. Nourished. Thriving. Living. Crying. Pissing.
Amen
@@kaix-df9kt Spreading the gospel
"i wrote my immortal" is the modern equivalent of claiming to be princess anastasia 💀
LOl maybe they do a cartoon movie about it in the futur
💀
…Except Anastasia really was dead whereas SOMEONE out there really did write my immortal.
@@Savannah_Simpson I'd like to add onto this, it wasn't even Anastasia's body that was misplaced. Iirc it was Grand Duchess Maria's
this is SUCH a funny thing to say
Men will literally admit they wrote My Immortal rather than go to therapy
omg💀
THIS COMMENT IS VIOLENTLY UNDERRATED
I love your mind
this is the best comment
talk theraphy is not as effective for men
The fact that there’s *someone* out there who just goes about their day to day life knowing that they wrote my immortal and that nobody knows it was them is just completely mindboggling to me
they must feel like god.
I mean there's always the chance they died years ago
they probably wake up in a cold sweat every night after a nightmare of ebony dark’ness dementia raven way calling them a prep and a poser
They could be anybody they could be me or you
@@snakezase2998maybe the author is all of us ✨
we all wrote my immortal and we all stick our middle fingers up at preps and are goffik
"Who is the real writer of my immortal" is probably modern day true cinderella story, with everyone looking for who fits the black, heavy, gothic heeled leather boot.
Hi my name is Cinderella Pumpkin Ma’gic Mickey Mouse Disney and I have short curly blond hair that reaches my shoulders and I have to clean the fireplace and I get cinder all over me (that’s how I got my name) and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Helene Stanley (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Walt Disney but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a rich girl but my step-family makes me do all the household chores. I have pale white skin. I can also talk to animals, and I have a magic fairy godmother who’s going to help me go to the prince’s ball tonight (but I have to be back by midnight). I’m a maid (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly rags. I love my fairy godmother because she gave me new clothes. For example today I was wearing a blue ball gown with puffy sleeves and a black choker, pearls and glass slippers. I was wearing pink lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and nude eye shadow. I was walking into the ball. It was nighttime so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. My evil stepsisters stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
@@faithhunter7588 this is awesome
*Goffik
And black corset
@@faithhunter7588 I love this too muvh
Todd is 15 puppets in a trenchcoat and they're all pulling each other's strings.
THIS IS SO FUNNY
STOP THIS IS FUCKIGN HILARIOUS
So accurate
@GoodyBadApple -- Idk who Todd is (I haven't even gotten a minute in to this vid), but idc because your pithy quote is fanfreakintastic and I'm going to cherish it forever and ever. Thank you for interneting on one fine day about (checks comment posting date) a year back from now in May 2024.
I think you’ve earned a PhD in My Immortal studies by this point
It could almost qualify for a scientific research paper, but where could you find peers to review it?
I'm sure one could use this material for a PhD in many disciplines: psychology, anthropology, sociology, communications, history, English lit; and lots more, I'm sure
@@jbone877 Exactly, I have a teacher in uni finishing her PhD and her thesis is about fanwork surrounding tv shows. Her corpus seems to include Reddit and Tumblr posts, UA-cam roleplays and soundscape and fanfics. She even showed us a typology of fanfictions last class.
Dr Strange?
SA and Sarah Z could be the co-chairs of UA-cam University's Department of My Immortal Studies.
Tommy Talarico wrote My Immortal in 1998 and has 3 world records for it.
His mother is very proud
You made me laugh so fucking hard. Such a niche joke, but I love it sm 😭😭😭
THANK YOU SO MUCH...
God that was a video wasn't it
Oh wow! Is his mother very proud???
The problem with My Immortal is that in the middle of the night you have to pee
- A fanfic racist
Whoever Raven and Tara are, I'd like to think they're just going about their ordinary millennial lives having completely forgotten about this fanfiction they wrote when they were in their tweens, completely unaware of how much it's blown up and how many people have claimed to be them.
There's no way they could live "ordinary millennial lives" and also be unaware of the impact of My Immortal on internet culture - these are mutually exclusive
i feel like they must know and are taking it to their graves
@@jbone877 I’m 22 and have never heard about any of this until this video was suggested to me 😂 i just had to go on a deep dive to figure out what my immortal was lmao. It’s possible (not a millennial but I feel like Gen Z is even more chronically online)
@@phoebehrones2297 at the same time I’m gen z and have known it about it for years. Also if they were the type to write fanfic as a kid they’d probably at least still have some passing interest in it
@@jbone877 idk you have to be pretty into Internet culture to know about this. I wouldn’t know if I wasn’t so into UA-cam that I watch all of Strange Aeons’ videos lol
I love how a couple of completely unrelated girls parodying a cringy phase of their teen life did a better job at mimicking my immortal than all these slightly obsessed intentional schemer types. Iconic.
One thing I didn't see mentioned tho is that the account name is the "Slytherin password" from one of the old fics (can't remember if it raven or Tara's). This doesn't mean I actually think the youtube girls are the fanfic girls. In fact, I think the youtube girls just lied about not knowing about the fanfic.
@@k3y_sm4sh what is the word in question?
@@SS-xr7jf "bloody kiss" is the channel name, "bloody kisses" was the password in the fic (I'm pretty sure it was Raven's original fic not Tara's My Immortal). That on top of their names being the same is personally too much of a coincidence for me to believe is an accident. But still we should definitely leave that channel alone considering the woman is a SW'er at high risk of being harmed by doxxing, no internet conspiracy is worth real world harm.
@@k3y_sm4sh I would honestly just assume coincidence on that. The girls were clearly going for gothic/emo “no one understands my tortured beautiful soul”, edgy teenager vibes and “bloody kiss/es” very much fit the edgy, romantic goth aesthetic. Its so stereotypically that vibe that I would expect to find both bloody/ blood and kiss/kisses in, like, random generators around the topic. It’s even the name of a gothic metal album prior to all of this.
@@k3y_sm4sh I think more likely they were just parodying the same thing my immortal was, and that’s why they hit so much of the same things. There wouldn’t be any point in lying about being inspired by the fanfic, so that doesn’t really make sense to me. Though, yeah. People should absolutely leave them alone.
I genuinely don’t understand how people could possibly believe the “I wrote MI to find my brother” thing. It makes NO sense
Literally. But its so insane that people just wanted it to be true because of COURSE the most famous fanfic ever would have an equally nuts backstory. Its a ridiculous lie that wouldn't have worked anywhere else but Tumblr and for no other topic than this
Did anyone ever believe this?
It was a super clunky ruse. I would sooner buy that someone wrote it when they had weed and being a teen quit when they ran out of money/joints so couldn't get in the zone.
it was tumblr, drip feed them a story like hamsters and they'll take it and run with it in their little wheel.
I don’t know that she was saying that from the absolute beginning, I think she sort of led in to it? Firs it was like “yep I wrote it and I’m gay”
Well. As an Australian with Indigenous heritage who aged out of the foster system, I'm very dissapointed in myself for not writing the worst fanfic ever and getting a book deal.
I agree, it’s not too late
Indigenous Australian?
@@Nobodyimportant85 Yup, I worded it weird back then I know
hopefully you’re not a pretendian either lol
:points: ANOTHER ABORIGINAL!!! HELLO!!
After I broke up with my ex of many years he went off the deep end and started telling the internet and Tumblr that I wrote My Immortal.
I guess he just latched onto my favorite band being MCR, liking Harry Potter, and enjoying writing.
And completely forgot that I was *eight* when My Immortal was written. Or that I didn't have internet until I was 15.
You think someone would know you after so many years but people will believe *anything* they want for the hype.
That is probably the most hilarious break up revenge I've ever heard of.
damn you wrote my immortal so hard it just manifested on the internet, what an icon
@@Spidertheidiot I haven't logged onto Tumblr since lol. I still can't tell if it was 100% an act of revenge or just apart of the psychosis.
A likely story, Ms. Gilesbie.
@@starshapedseal Yeah it was actually telepathically transmitted from my developing child brain. Which explains both the absurdity, and poor spelling.
I just feel like 'My Immortal' is too unabashedly 'teenaged' that I can't imagine it being anything but earnest. Like, 'The Room' can't be made by someone trying to make a bad movie, you need passionate but incompetent direction and acting. There is a voice from the author in 'My Immortal', and it's excited to go to hot topic.
I agree, especially since they wrote 2 other stories with pretty much the same plot and tropes. This was just their favourite daydream at the time: to be a badass goth vampire with a hot boyfriend, and sure, also a witch at Hogwards, why not?
My theory is it started as completely authentic but somewhere in the later chapters it became a kind of self parody, with typos/spoonerisms commenters clearly found funny being reused over and over and increasingly ridiculous new ones added. Honestly I remember what I was like as a young teen and i aged out of phases extremely fast (though it didn't feel that way at the time), and easily became self critical about things I'd written or drawn. I can imagine her becoming fed up with My Immortal but deciding to write it a little longer to keep the readers happy, before eventually getting bored of that too. But like you say there is a serious authenticity to it at the start that make me confused by people who say it's all parody. My friend and I literally wrote fics like this at 13 or 14. 😂 Using 'da' instead of 'the' was an internet thing back then for some reason.
Funniest thing is that the real author might’ve very well come out already. They might’ve just gotten drowned out over all the other sensationalized stories. I wonder how bizarre it must be to see your fanfic so ironically beloved that people lie about creating it. Probably really weird.
that’s something i’ve been thinking is that the real author could be out there but with no proper proof because all of her accounts were nuked
They’re probably an indie writer with books out already and we just don’t know it!
I’m certain that they have. In some far flung corner of the net, the true author has come out and I dare think they’ve written something since. But no one’s going to know for sure bc I feel like it’s become part of the mythos. It’s everyone standing up in the cafeteria to say “I wrote My Immortal.” The mystery is part of the magic.
There's this one Tumblr account I've been wanting My Immortal people to investigate for ages now Becuase of exactly this.
I can't debunk it because I don't have the needed expertise. But is it real? Who knows.
The real author is me. I inhaled an entire cup of weed then wrote My Immortal in a drug fueled rampage
Self shame: I wrote cringy goth HP fanfic in my head when I was 12. That’s why I know in my heart of hearts that My Immortal is not a troll fic. I am not Tara but I would have unironically enjoyed My Immortal then as I do now. It just feels so nostalgic.
It didn't BEGIN as a troll-fic, but I still insist that it shifted authors at a certain point and did become a troll fic.
@@MarquisLeary34 you’re probably right. There are a lot of clever spelling “mistakes” that would point to it being/becoming a troll. Either way, I love it!
@@MarquisLeary34 See now that's an explanation that I could at least somewhat buy.
"I am not Tara" sounds like something Tara would say
cringy goth Hewlett Packard fanfic is a great achievement
oh wait nevermind
The biggest plot twist would be if Strange Aeons actually wrote My Immortal and this video was a front
Or maybe the real Tara was the friends we made along the way.
I don't know...tara and teya are pretty similar...🤔
She is a bit too young but then again that could explain the horrible grammar and spelling. I seriously don't know a 14 year old who writes like that unless they have some kind of learning disability or something else going on. Or they are much younger and just say they are 14/15.
@@DieAlteistwiederda It's pretty consistent with "teh penguin of dewm randomness!!!" style of the time.
I think she IS the author, honestly. She's also a genius.
@@F66x someone please take me back to 2005 i swear i will do better this time 😭😭😭😭
I hope that where ever the real Tara is nowadays, she's living her best life working in fashion and successfully ignoring the insane popularity of something cringy she made at 13
I like to think that Tara is deep into her passion and is somewhat unaware that My Immortal is still a phenomenon to this day. like she may once in a while remember her fanfic, but thinks that people have forgotten about it and is just living her happy life. she does have social media, but is either rarely active or she is deep into a niche culture and is just oblivious to whatever is going on in the other parts of the internet. I know it is highly unlikely but I like to think that she just doesn't know about the hunt for her because of what an icon she is.
We talk about November 5th being the day that broke Tumblr but if we ever ACTUALLY learn who Tara and Raven are, THAT will be the point of no return.
I hope I live to see that day.
The thing is, how could they prove that they are indeed Tara and Raven? It's been some months since I read all the available info about My Immortal, so I'm not sure, but maybe an old email adress?
@@misscrouch It seems likely that they could be locked out of the email too, unfortunately.
@@UshioKiss Yes, that's what I honestly thought too, I can't think of any way they could actually prove their claim :/
I pray we live to see it
that day will be glorious
I watched Sarah Z slowly lose her mind as every rock had Toby/Todd underneath it. It's almost nostalgic seeing Aeons experiencing the same thing.
as someone who posted cringe on quizilla in 2007 i can tell you spelling and typing weird was a huge part of having an emo/goth online persona (i think it was a myspace thing?) and you had to commit to it otherwise people might think you were a poser, which is why i'm not convinced by any of the fake authors covered in this video. if i still can't type normally after 15 years, someone like tara would definitely still have a distinctive typing style
this is a very important tidbit, because same
I'm an ex-emo and I still write like that lol. I still use lower case Is whenever I type without autocorrect.
Yeah, exactly. Like the usernames, clothes mentions and everything… those were staples in emo/scene/goth culture in the early 2000s. I had several xXx____xXx usernames at the time lol
Any of y'all remember Vampire Freaks? It was a blogging/social media site that was all the rage for teen goths and emos circa 2005-2007. The lingo of that entire website was identical to My Immortal, down to a T.
Source: I was a 13 year old emo kid with a Vampire Freaks profile in 2007
This my sisters texts still make no sense after all this time
The thing that always makes me suspicious about this "My Immortal confessions" is that everyone lean more into trollfic theory. Even if they say they were emo, it's always "bad on purpose" or "the worst fanfic" mastermind plan.
I was never really active early on the internet but I saw it with my own eyes. I saw people uNiRoNiCaLlY WrItInG LiKe tHiS, using "fff" instead of "th" (or "w" in my language), 1337, roleplaying edgy characters using fancy fonts that often didn't work well with websites. I was friend with an author of written very seriously (and very poorly) fanfic, HP-Twilight crossover, which was changing plot from chapter to chapter, depending on her current interests (IIRC g0ff :* Hermione was the protagonist). Ofc I can't know for sure, but the idea of My Immortal feels very genuine for me and people claiming to write it, yet completely degrading it, don't gain my trust.
Yeah it's honestly such a hilariously lame way to try and get clout - the reason for the mystery IS THAT IT IS BELIEVABLY GENUINE. You lot can't even commit to someone else's cringe and you expect us to find your fake confessionals funny? Smh.
It genuinely felt like an honest effort up until the hackings, and I will always believe at least the hackings part was true and the hackers either wrote or edited the drafts or just posted the messy drafts as a whole. And even if the real author did try to prove themselves I feel like they got disproved due to not being able to get back on the account cause of the hacking/ been so long that they don't have any of the recovery emails to try to get it back. Some of the weird oddities like Tom Bombadil or using Crookshanks as a spell couldve been from the author not knowing THAT much about HP (and either her or Raven caught it while editing) or the hackers doing. I just hope that both Tara and Raven are safe out there, no matter what alias their under now.
wait ppl seriously wrote that way? i did the whole "random roleplay to friends" thing, where i out of nowhere was roleplaying as a character, and i did use weird quirky writing when i was into homestuck in 2nd grade in highschool... but i never would imagine writing in the weird way constantly and actually in serious tone.
ofc i am not judging its just so weird to me
@@sollumi3014 some of this "rawr XD" speak was still around in 2014-15 and I witnessed it first hand!! I remember when I was below the age of 13 I would also type in that style because I thought it was funny and quirky 🧍 it was very common on the pastel anime chibi art side of deviantart and yes people would consistently type like that. a sentence that evokes a primal fear in me is "i liek wafflez XD"
@@sewerrat8096 you can still find people talking like that in some corners of the internet
My children, please, heed this elder millennial- Raven and Terra were characters on Teen Titans (and I guess still are on TTG), which was huge on Cartoon Network in the early-mid 2000s. I always assumed the actual My Immortal girls got their names from that and assume that other folks who use “Raven and Terra/Tara” are also pairing them together as an extension of that.
Oh shit, that’s a good theory
THANK YOU! I thought this, too! Lol. Also an elder millennial. Like, I was 16 when My Immortal came out in 2006 and was a self identified goth (though really more emo) since 2002, MCR replaced Linkin Park as my favorite band in 2005 which still hasn't changed to this day. I was also super into Harry Potter and LOTR, and other nerdy stuff. For all you know, I wrote My Immortal lmao. (I didn't tho... or did I? 🤷♀️)
Don't worry, Teen Titans GO has both characters and that show is going to continue past the heat-death of the universe, so all future generations will know about Terra and Raven
@@LilyoftheLake14 I wrote a lot of fanfiction circa 2003-2007, and it was primarily Harry Potter and Teen Titans crack fics, so of course My Immortal was entertaining to me. It wasn't the only one, but is the most iconic of that genre of fics characterized by self-inserts, absurdist humor, and intentional crappiness for the sake of comedy. There used to be a tons of fics of self-insert villains trapping the Teen Titans in their Tower and making them play truth or dare based on reader suggestions and shit like that and fics of that flavor occurred in other fandoms as well.
I'm just surprised there wasn't a third friend named Starfire lol
It would be such a power move if the real Tara releases a fashion line of all of Ebony's outfits. I would pay good money lol
+
Collab with Hot Topic when? lol
@@AnneliesDeroy So true
i like to imagine that in the future someone laying on their deathbed will pull their loved one close and whisper in their ear ‘my darling, it was me. I am terra. gerard 4eva’ and then immediately die
Fake. It’s spelled gerrd.
Just as a side note, many of Tara's mispellings are also consistent with intentional, sort of coded, mispellings seen in pre-teen and teen texts at the time. Sort of a weird predecessor to emojis and gifs. This and the fact that Raven's work is distinct from hers in this manner adds to the argument that this was probably sincere and not just a troll.
Yeah, as someone who was the same age as these girls, into the same goth/emo culture, and terminally online at that time like they were, this is how an *enormous* portion of that subculture spoke. I have *ZERO* doubts that this is legit. I knew way too many Tara and Ravens 😂
Every time I think I can be a great author I stop and remember my immortal, and realize it’s impossible, Tara is an impossible author to measure up to
Shakespeare reincarnated
I do hope Raven the Acidbath Princess & Tara are doing okay. They did NOT deserve to be harassed & threatened merely for fartin' around on the Tube.
My own Gothy alias back in the day was "Thorn." On the surface it sounded cool & poetic, but secretly I was a huge fan of "Bone" by Jeff Smith.
I've been recording a comedic reading of "Handbook for Mortals," & I can safely say it is the female answer to "Ready Player One."
Yeah, I said it!
Raven the Acidbath Princess is actually a professional dominatrix now based out of Dallas. Which is… a thing.
@@cleothehermetichermeticist8391 Really? Well, good for her!👍
@@cleothehermetichermeticist8391that was not a sentence i expected to ever read but here we are i guess
Bone was really good and Thorn was absolutely awesome to be fair, so I get it
In 2013 I dated a guy who went by Krow online I don’t think he grew out of his cringe emo girl on the internet phase 😂
If the author of My Immortal came out, that'd be a before and after moment on the internet. The BT (Before Tara) and PT (Post Tara) eras. Nay, human history. Move over Jesus, the new Messiah has appeared.
Don't tell Todd, he'll write more bible fiction about it
@@jazzycat8917 "Jesus was wearing a blood red robe..."
@@panqueque445 Oh no.... It has begun. lol
Yeah, I'll incorporate that into my belief system, sure.
I can't believe Tommy Tallarico worked hand-in-hand with Tara Gillespie for five years to create My Immortal. Raven is very proud.
I wonder if he reads it in his My Immortal themed room in his house (which was on MTV cribs BTW)
i pray to the queer weird kid gods that teya is the first to fully find and confirm who raven and tara are (in a legal way that wouldn't break anyones privacy of course) and can be the first to be able to interview them both and ask the questions everyone wants the answers too
That's an oddly specific thing to pray to, bro
20:23 Another detail: Toby/Todd allegedly doxxed Tara when he shared those emails. He didn’t censored anything when he posted them for the first time, so some subreddit users were able to trace the owner of Tara’s email address and posted their informations. If the emails were true, Toby/Todd was not only a weird guy, but also straight up violated Tara’s privacy
Raven and Tara are both Teen Titans characters, which anyone who was a teen in that era would know. I have to imagine that explains the parallel thought of my immortal and the yt videos
This was actually something that DawnDusk (Rose Christo’s brother) brought up, though it’s not mentioned in the video. Rose’s real first name was Terry, and she fucking LOVED Teen Titans.
This and I'm pretty sure the "Dementia" middle name is a reference to the end of Addams Family Values where uncle fester meets the creepy love interest nanny and she explains her name Dementia means madness.
My partner pointed this out to me while we were watching this and it blew my mind that I’d never noticed it before. I don’t know where exactly it fits on the My Immortal conspiracy board but I’m adding it.
I was a tween then and definitely didnt know that lol
As an ex HP fanfic writer, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of both of them are more active in different fandom circles on ao3. Whether earnest or trolling, they clearly loved the fanfic world and most HP writers have splintered into other fandoms as they’ve grown as writers.
I remain irritated that damn Christo book wasn't able to be released for free or hasn't been leaked or something. Because among all these mysteries, a proofreader or someone DOES know the answer to, "How would this fan fic have helped find a kid in the foster system?" And I'd be entertained to know the answer to that at the very least.
yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees
I've always wondered that too. I'm also curious as to why she didn't expect people would ask that exact question.
@@chrismorris6865 I imagine the proper explanation, however outlandish, was going to be in the memoir and she was just going to keep deflecting, "You'll learn the details in the book."
Well, now there's no book and we still don't know the details. Ugh.
That was the question that made me call bullshit early on.
and a super young kid too!! it would have been more believable if the brother was a tween when they were separated, and they used to love reading cringey fan fiction together or some other backstory where she could plausibly believe that if my immortal gained enough notoriety, the brother himself would find it and recognize their inside jokes or something. how does a bad fan fic help you track down a five year old??
There is absolutely no way a man wrote My Immortal LMFAO it touches on so many minor aspects of preteen girlhood, the true passion for the fashion and various outfit changes, but most of all the genuine desperate attempts to be grown and sexually active but having no concept of how is just so akin to girls writing fiction that I’m convinced no man could ever hope to mimic it so seamlessly
During his emo phase, Beethoven wrote his infamous "My Immortal Beloved" letter to Raven.
I hate how well this pun works 😭💀
the funniest part is when they say that “my immortal” was autobiographical ‘minus the emo shit and being a girl’ as if the hogwarts stuff was totally legit 😂
Late reply but literally what is left if you take out "the emo shit"
OKAY BUT: Did you find out which demon you should work with?
Don't ask Peter
Tara Gilesbie, clearly
inquiring minds want to know!
Probably the same demon working on chaotic lesbian nun merch I'm on hold with
Probably one of Simon's demons. lol
I'm glad Tara wants to be a fashion designer! You can totally see her passion for it in her long descriptions of Ebony's outfits each chapter!
My husband and I have a black friday tradition of watching the internet historians dramatic readings of my immortal before putting up Christmas decorations. I got him the published version for Christmas a few years back and he regularly refers to it as "the good book".
This legit made me LOL
You two sound adorable. Love that for you both!
I want this
"I was just warming up my vocal COR-DÉS"
I've always kind of believed that My Immortal was an earnest effort, because I was around the same age, on the same website, at the same time (though in different fandom). I VIVIDLY remember author notes interacting with comments, arguing with flamers, ridiculously bad and poorly written stories that nonetheless received a lot of positive attention (mostly because a lot of us were overactive kids feeding on each others ridiculousness). Fanfiction in 2004 was a very different thing and I think a lot of what "discredits" it as a troll these days is the ffn purge itself. A lot of stores similar to this one were mass reported for poor spelling/grammar/lack of structure and removed, so there isn't a lot of comparable media. As much as we say "cringe is dead, embrace your weird" I can't think of anyone who would happily unearth their fanfic from 2003-2007 to repost if it was taken down for being so poorly written.
Also I saw a comment in the previous video speculating that Raven and Tara were actually sisters (with Raven being maybe 2-3 years older, like 15 to Tara's 12) and now that idea is haunting me because it really seems so plausible on so many levels.
I mean, I was 13 in 2005, and Harry Potter fandom was how I learned about fanfiction. (Before quickly moving on to the YGO fandom.) and there has never NEVER been ANY doubt in my mind that "My Immortal" was a troll.
Fanfiction WAS very different back then. Primarily it was even more looked down on then it is now, and shit teen girls enjoy was also quite possibly even more whined about then it is now. There is zero doubt in my mind that it wasn't a semi-malicious troll trying to take the piss out of fanfic, and the fact that there's still folks who thing "Oh well, of COURSE there could be a fic this bad" is just sad. C'mon now. Like the poster earlier said about the "Crookshanks" spell if the author was really as knowledgeless about HP as they tried to portray, we wouldn't have got moments like that. It's just all too neat?
Conventions like authors notes and other weird relics might have died out, and there were definitely more intentionally wacky "I wrote this at 4am, uwu XD so RANDOM! Crack FIC!"'s back then perhaps, but honestly, from someone who's been reading fanfic since like 2003/4? It's not that disparate. (Especially when we take Wattpad into account, or hell almost EVERY creepy pasta for that matter, if we're willing to jumps genres and usual author's a bit.) Like, you can TELL a bad but genuine fic, and you can tell a troll. And My Immortal was absolutely a troll. Full stop. (Probably by a teen girl who was working through an "I'm not like other girls" complex if I had to guess. Maybe with an ex-friend who got into emo subculture or something. Just as a personal guess.) It's kind of absurd. People did not ever genuinely write or speak like that. Not even close.
The best you could hope for if you're a "genuine My Immortal" truther is that it was an intentional cutesy convention / speech and writing pattern. That would have still been very before it's time/without peers even if that were the case. It would have been a really weird outlier, and one that was clearly/specifically meant to be mocking/parody of the subculture it was supposed to be a part of. Even if some parts of the story were genuine, the grammar and voice simply could. not. have. been. Online cadence was different then, sure, but it at no point looked like My Immortal does. There's a VERY good reason that My Immortal doesn't have a slew of contemporaries with similar "funny bad" writing. It didn't fit the pattern back then, and it's silly that it's been long enough that some folk have started to think it might somehow have been genuine.
@@valkyrie-randgris Ive read fics since maybe 2009 to now and can agree. I remember reading past authors notes and funny time skip messages brought to you by something random or the author 4th wall breaking into the story with their own commentary and the characters confused. And that was its charm, now getting into more professional style writing and finding your footing you just gotta go back and read your roots. If the author is still out there writing improved fanfics or books with a new name or account or is truly off the face of the internet or got disproved cause they got hacked and that part of the entire story was true and those new updates were from hackers. I just hope their okay lol.
And if its just a trollfic or something the author doesnt want to own up with I dont mind that conclusion as well.
I DISAGREE VEHEMENTLY. I was part of the YGO fandom during that time. My Immortal has all the conventions of those fics, but IT’S WAY TOO NEAT. I go back and read the types of fics I liked as a kid, and they’re bad or lol random but in a way that’s very amateur. There’s a messiness that gets VERY exhausting to read, hence why most Fanfiction from that time is just “so bad” instead of “so bad it’s good.”
I think My Immortal’s charm is that it successfully copies the conventions of the time (flame wars, author’s notes, lolrandom humor, edginess, children writing) to parody them. Like, it has punchlines and comedically timed typos. It’s self-aware where 13 year olds aren’t.
You’re being fooled by how accurate it is to the conventions, but that’s just a sign of a clever writer who understood the conventions they were parodying. It’s why all the bajillion of fake My Immortal wannabe authors sequels fail to gain an audience-My Immortal is genuinely a clever, campy piece of writing, even if it’s a parody of bad fanfiction. The wannabes don’t understand that and assume that what made it infamous was how iconically bad it was, so they just make really shitty fanfiction that copy the conventions with a bajillion typos and assume that it’ll get just as big.
They don’t work because it’s genuinely hard to make fiction that captures the public as an amateur. It’s the difference between absurd typos and comedically timed absurd typos.
For example, Tara would consistently write “Ta Ebony.” It looks like her misspelling her main character’s name by first writing her own name before remembering, which is hilarious because it reminds us how she’s writing a thinly veiled self-insert, like we’re looking behind the curtain and laughing at her. The misspelling creates a whole ass joke.
But in real life, if someone were to write this, they’d be more likely to just write Tara, not catch it, and fail to edit it out with Ebony. Or, they’d start writing Tara, realize it should be Ebony, backspace, and rewrite it. It’s actually pretty implausible to catch yourself writing the wrong thing halfway through and replace it without deleting the wrong part.
This hilarious “Ta Ebony” typo is unlikely in real life because that’s just not how typos work IRL, but it’s made anyway because it’s an intentionally absurd joke on the author’s part to parody self-inserts and fanfiction’s frequent typos. The fake my Immortal author wannabes don’t understand that it’s not just a typo, it’s a typo making a joke. It’s genuinely hard to consistently do that sort of thing on accident, so they fail
@@allyli1718you're overthinking it I believe
You reminded me of how every emo was forbidden to call themselves emo and denied it with their whole heart xD
It was like fight club for labels. The first rule of being emo is to never admit you're emo
YES before the hipsters did it
hmmm that sounds familiar..... where can i read up on this?
"scene" was totally a word they used tho
@@transsexual_computer_faery Scene was okay to use because that term wasn't known in the wider population and was rather associated with the "popular kids" of myspace aka scene queens. Meanwhile emo quickly became a derogatory word to insult (sometimes gender non conforming) teens who wore alt fashion. Unfortunately I don't have any sources on this, we definitely need millenial youtubers dissecting emo culture from back in the day more.
@@Shirumoon hmmm. i see. i'll trust your word on it
@@Shirumoon hilariously, in my recollection "scene" became the new derogatory term once emo grew into the dominant alt subculture and lost its punch as an insult. people would get really mad if you called them scene because scene kids were perceived as coopting the aesthetics/music style of emo without being depressed enough to qualify lmao.
Todd: "I'm a compulsive liar lol"
Also Todd, 2 seconds later: "I did talk to the MI author I knew her!!!"
Either he knew one of them or he knew someone who had hacked their accounts and shared the password with him. He knows something but it sucks we can never trust any details that can't be independently corroborated.
it’s so much more magical to just believe raven and tara are real people
Hey, just wanted to bring this up because I'm genuinely surprised no one has mentioned it as an alternate theory to Tara and Jennie living in Dubai, my first thought when trying to figure out 'dubya' based on pronunciation was 'W,' which led me to think that she may have lived in Washington state. Their interests are so in line in North American emo culture during that time and Hot Topic style, that I just feel like its more believable than a group of IRL friends whose interest in these things were *entirely* online as personas.
yeah this was talked about in the earlier vids =D
@@transsexual_computer_faery I watched that one too though and she was more finding reasons it could be Dubai, and that Raven was more an online persona than we thought
@@ashetrash9534 sorry i mean the comments
@@transsexual_computer_faery ohh interesting, thanks for clarifying
The mere possibility that I could've lived in the same state as the writers of My Immortal is terrifying.
I love my immortal. It’s an important piece of fanfic history. As a consumer and writer, I respect it
"I am agonized by this BORING-ass man" is a phrase I intend to use frequently for the rest of my life.
If any of these fakers could just write a compelling and gothix ending to My Immortal, I would might consider it for a nanosecond. However They never do! How hard would it be for them to channel their gothic side from their teenage years?
is my immortal still in the internet? because i might... i kinda want to
Maybe they're prepz now!
@@danigirii the My Immortal wiki has all of the chapters.
@@danigirii the full thing is on the lolpasta wiki
idk I mean I write nothing like when I was a 7th grader and I'm a freshman in college now! idk I agree tho
“Were you serious when writing this email???” is too good, please it must be real
The one thing that has always convinced me that it's a troll is when (I think) Ebony uses 'Crookshanks!' as a spell. That is such a weirdly specific bastardisation of stuff in Harry Potter. How would a person who knows base level HP lore even know about Crookshanks? And if you assume that it is serious, then what could have lead Tara to using 'Crookshanks!' as a spell? Did she just zone out for most of Prisoner of Azkaban and latch on that that word specifically? And if Raven was editing and actually read/ liked HP, then surely she would have picked it up? idk maybe It slipped by her, but for me it's the kind of thing that points to an intent to annoy fans 🤷
Totally agree! There's also this one part where she calls one of the HP characters (I think it was Tom Riddle) Tom Bombadil. That's a Lord of the Rings character and he didn't appear in any of the LotR movies. I find it kinda hard to believe that this goth tween read LotR (which is not an easy read by any means) but not HP, memorized the name and accidentally confused Riddle with Bombadil. I mean, that's such a niche character and casual fans or normies most likely wouldn't know about him. In my personal opinion the fic was written by someone who was genuinely interested in fantasy books/movies and wrote MI as a joke.
@@LeylaKaratas YES! That was another example of it that escaped my memory lol. It's another weirdly specific example. It's like, the author sprinkles in these references to the art their parodying, but in a warped way that will just make most fans mad, but for someone who doesn't know the reference it just goes over their heads.
ok as someone who went through a phase like Tara did, my personal belief when it comes to parts like that is that she just thought it was funny. I don't think Tara really had any great love for Harry Potter and she probably just felt like saying something wrong for no reason, just bc it's funny.
@@LeylaKaratas ok ok with this one, I don't think Tara's life existed in a goffik vacuum, and I think that she probably just heard the name somewhere. Maybe from a dad or a brother? And then just decided to get it wrong on purpose, just because the sloppiness is fun and nobody can stop you. idk if I'm projecting but like these r things a kid going through this phase does, like just being strange and wrong about things on purpose just to get attention or a rise out of someone
@@lilyhatesgoogle not trying to argue, but how would she even know about it? I can see a person putting in a "wrong" spell for comedic effect, but if she was disinterested in HP lore then why would she reference such a niche character? It would be like saying "I've only seen the star wars movies once!" And then referencing Plo Koon in the next sentence. It just doesn't track for me.
i like to think that the writer has known about everyone searching for them basically the whole time but they were so embarassed by their crappy writing that they just dont dare let the world know who they are because itll follow them for the rest of their life, not to mention the hate theyd get. i hope tara and, if raven is a real seperate person, raven are living their best lives out there in the world, not having to deal with the stress of people knowing they wrote an infamous fanfic 16 years ago. with that said im gonna die so sad if we never find out one way or another lol
or my favorite is they did try to put out that they wrote it but was deemed fake by researchers cause they didnt remember the passwords or that they were genuinely hacked at that time or the FFNet purge was the OG creator trying to delete it before it got recovered.
YES SPOON FEED US MORE MY IMMORTAL CONTENT STRANGE
Raven and Tara are both the names of Teen Titans characters (Tara is Terra's real name in the comics) and Azar is the goddess Raven believes in, who gets mentioned a few times in the show. There's no way that didn't influence Raven and Tara the youtube channel
The MCR tank. The safety pins. The internet lore. I needed this today, thank you Strange 🙏🏻
I have a theory that My Immortal was written by a girl I went to high school with, because we had creative writing class together and she unironically writes like that
my gf's best friend has a theory that it was Stephine Meyer (yes, the author for Twilight) wrote it lol
@@LocalTorchwoodIntern i choose to believe
6:12 translation: “The next day, my band started to play. Draco decided to quit the band because of what we did last night. I was wearing a black Good Charlotte top which was ripped and a short leather skirt, which was also ripped. I had black lipstick on and white foundation and black eyeliner. I had a pentagram necklace around my neck and I had pointy high heeled boots on. My hair was all messed up. I wore black eye contacts. We (band) decided to write some new songs. One of them was called “Break Free of the System”. We played it.” It’s somewhat eligible if you add vowels and some grammar corrections.
*legible
Sorry, the irony was distracting lol. But great work nonetheless. Thank you. 🙂
The real reason we should've known that one was a fake sequel was because Tara would never have described an outfit that boringly
Whoever the real authors of My Immortal are, I hope that they have been enjoying the MCR return tour
"I'm gonna fucking bite someone!" Is my new favorite exasperated exclamation!
The beginning of the Christo section of the video reawakened so many memories of being on Tumblr at the time of the "a native american lesbian wrote my immortal" saga
People drew fanart of her and Raven, and wished her well, and generally found the whole situation of a seemingly cool person having wrote my immortal and is on tumblr (I also remember "any one of us could be the my immortal author" or "i cant believe that the my immortal author has a tumblr" type posts before the blog was revealed)
The opinion of the masses very quickly changed after the kiwifarms thing, but my memory is less clear on what people posted about at the time
It was a whole ass time to be on the site
Yo I was just thinking the same
Linin Prak is definitely an all time classic
Nub is shuc a great sonh
blink183 gets me EVERY SINGLE TIME tho
@@transsexual_computer_faery “all the molecular specimen” is my personal favorite song by them
@@bagofrazors2934 wheeze
At this point, there are 2 possibilities: 1. The real Raven and/or Tara is dead. Or, 2. The real Raven and Tara have actual lives now, and aren’t online often enough to even know that there’s this big online manhunt to find them lol
Either way, we’ll never know
i knew you wrote my immortal all along. this is so cool
4:20 The balls to switch from talking about Tara "xXxbloodyristsxXx" Gilesbie to doing an ad read for razors. Unparalleled. Very goffic
Oh gods, my partner's username in a lot of places was "bloodykisses" and they wrote fanfic around that time and they had a lot of common interests with Raven and Tara.
I just asked if they wrote My Immortal, and they've denied it, but hot damn I was spooked for several minutes 🤣
The My Immortal rabbit hole goes deep and gets very convoluted, very quickly. I feel like the true author will never reveal herself, because 1. The harassment she got as a child because of it and 2. There's been so many fakers that no one would probably believe her anyway.
father strange mispronouncing undyne reminds me that despite feeling like a tight knit community, tumblr is multifaceted. we do not frequent the same sides of tumblr. teya doesn't know what undertale is
No, no way she hasn't heard of Undertale. She may not know anything about it except maybe funny sans skeleton man, but there is no way she isn't at least aware Undertale exists and is a video game.
@@karhu7581she has surely mentioned sans, right?. Is he in the Tumblr sexyman video?
from the emails todd exchanged with tara i definitly believe she was a real teenager. my own personal thoughts on my immortal is that it started out as serious, but when tara and raven realized that people actually hated what they were writing they hammed it up, either to "stick it to the preps" even more or because they maybe hoped it would lessen the hate? idk, but i definitly think that behind the tara and raven personas were real teenage girls who genuinly enjoyed their work
also i think things like the obvious troll cues were just jokes that they put in because they thought it would be funny
that's my theory too, the fic starts off with decent grammar/spelling and has a relatively restrained plot. the true insanity comes later
My favorite theory pertaining to the author of my immortal is that it was written by Niel Cicierega. I think it had something to do with Potter puppet pals. Never struck me as his sense of humor though tbh
this is genuinely so funny to me bc like no imagine if it's true. imagine if neil confessed to being the author of my immortal in the year of our lord 2022. like what if he could prove it? imagine, neil cicierega, the potter puppet pals guy, the lemon demon guy, the touch tone telephone guy, having written my immortal. like, let it sink in. that would be such an off the walls thing to happen that it almost feels plausible, and it makes me wish we lived in that reality.
@@maimtubeTV oh it is definitely best case scenario imo. I would trust nobody else as highly as I would him if it was genuinely his God-given duty to write my immortal back in the day... But I think if it was really him it would've been even more off the walls crazy and surreal which is what makes me doubt it among other things
I meeean, maybe it was actually emmy, his younger sister. not that I seriously believe that, but it'd be funny, tho
I mean it obviously wasn't but it's so funny to think about yet another massive Internet phenomenon actually being Neil Cicierega
Nah honestly I believe it
Or it's actually Toby Fox and My Immortal actually foreshadows the end of Deltarune. Tara and Raven are stand ins for Kris and Noelle
The Rose Cristo thing was one of the wildest things I’ve ever heard. I was glad when she was exposed because I really didn’t want that to be the true story of My Immortal hahahah
i believe with all my heart that the real author will never come clean and she's snickering in a corner watching all this unravel
Tara must know about Todd stealing her identity, Rose Christo LARPing as her and the cultish obsession the internet has with her and her Harry Potter fanfic she and her friend wrote back in 2006.
I bet, she’s watched this video and is just sipping a cup of tea in Dubya watching this all happen.
lmao i think part of the reason why people use toby more often as a name for that person is because it could imply to someone who knows less about this that the man the myth himself, Toby Fox, made My Immortal
I hate that my second choice of someone making My Immortal as a trollfic was Neil Cicerga
The Dubai thing feels like Tara was told about internet safety and Raven or some parent in her life was like ‘oh; don’t use ur real name or say where ur from!’ And so she put a random country in there lmao (it’s just a theory I’ve never seen before)
I also personally remember being a kid and getting randomly obsessed with some other country I didn't actually know anything about but had heard of in a story, I don't think I ever claimed to be from any of those countries but I do remember writing random stories about make-believe animals from Vietnam, an elaborate cave system in Canada, a Chinese cat made of porcelain, and definitely others that I just can't recall the country names of.
The "bloody kiss" Raven and Tara may have come up with the name "Tara" since Teen Titans was pretty popular at the time, and the character Terra...well, she really hit home with a lot of emo kids in the early-mid 00s.
Also I can't stop laughing at the Ashley Tisdale "Never Gonna Give You Up," I didn't even know that existed
I initially thought their name was a reference to the Type O Negative album.
This in depth investigation/archaeological exploration of an arguably pointless topic is one of best things about UA-cam and social media in general. I don’t even like My Immortal, nor do I hate it, but I’m committed enough to this story and the well written video to watch it all the way through and still be honestly curious who the author was and where she is now.
This is the kind of thing I couldn’t show to any single person I know without seeming like a freak but it’s one of the channels I click on as soon as it comes out. Thank you for this cultural deep dive into our inbetweener generation’s childhood. I wasn’t allowed on social media as a tween until I was 18 so I missed out on all the tumblr stuff and never really got into fan fiction, so this is like a glance into an alternate childhood. I’m also trans so when I had the opportunity to hop on social media I became a typical redditor bro who thought tumblr was for girls and gays and therefore stayed off it. Childhood is so weird and I wish I still had half the imagination the average kid does.
Thank you
the way we are so close to stranges complete reading of my immortal
I literally cannot wait
One day we'll find out that a girl named Tara Galespe was hit by a train right when my immortal stopped updating and it will be very sad.
Regardless of original intention, Tara gave us a truly amazing narrative with My Immortal. And, even more interestingly, managed to give us another decade and a half of amazing content entirely out of her control with all these wild conspiracies. And from the looks of it we’ll probably have a years and years more of this kind of content because we’re no closer to Tara’s identity than we ever were.
I wrote my immortal. At the ripe old age of 1 years old I had been given access to the internet, and Harry Potter. After watching 2 movies, I considered myself an avid Harry Potter fan. I was in love with draco, and he surely with me. Although it could never be, not only because he is not in our universe, but mostly because despite wearing my favorite black eyeliner and red eyeshadow, and my most cursed corset, with red and purple in my hair, I unfortunately am an orange cat, who hates Mondays, and can't resist bloody lasagna, and draco could not see past my cat form, into my corpse green eyes. I also killed raven and drank her blood to absorb her goth powers (spelling and grammar). I have used these powers to pull draco out of Harry Potter and get married and have children with him. Our children's names are Gerard, Shadow, Raven, and Nightshade, and we love them very much. Draco is unemployed, and I got us super rich by selling clothes. I had no idea I was so popular. I really would've come back sooner if I knew. I appreciate every single one of you, as a battery for my gothic power. Fangs evry1!!!
The most realistic and flawless confession out there...Go home guys, we found 'em !
But what you don't know is that his name is actually Strange Aeons
When I was like 12 I wrote a story about how an obvious self-insert went on vacation and, all in one day, stayed at a custom-built hotel with Jhonen Vasquez murals on the walls, went to a private screening of Invader Zim episodes in a custom-built Zim themed theater, and toured the Nickelodeon Studios building that used to be in Universal, all while comic relief versions of the show's voice actors tagged along. Even though I think My Immortal has some pieces that seem to 100% have been made for comedy, there was definitely some real interest in emo and goth culture in there too. Never underestimate young girls having unlimited power to write whatever they want!
The fact my immortal has its own Wikipedia article is horrifying
wait it has???? omg
@RobotBlue ... How did you fall down that rabbit hole?
it's cultural relevance is unparalleled
Every thing and everyone with the _slightest_ significance has a wikipedia article, and, love or hate it, My Immortal is a hugely influential piece of internet culture! Yes that DOES feel weird to say, but as "internet culture" becomes more and more entwined with the society at large, these internet "artifacts" take on meaning akin to, well, any other cultural artifact...
You mean wonderful =)
The thing about Todd is that, like, yeah. It's funny that it's just all him. It's like the Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other. But it's also like...really sad? This guy feels so worthless that he has to bully *himself* to get attention. It's a form of self-harm and it's...really pitiful.
Don’t you think it’s weird how time is relative? 15 years ago teya was reading my immortal and twilight and I was being born.
I’m glad to see young people care about this stupid fanfic. It feels like it was published only yesterday.
I love how this fanfic indirectly got a bunch of random liars profiles to explode
I forgot how connected Handbook for Mortals was to the 2017 My Immortal scandal and the mention of it did unexpected psychic damage oh my god
as a former Girl Writing Cringe Fanfic Online during the late 2000s and early 2010s i've never been that convinced by the troll theories because it seems too much like the very earnest and genuine fics my friends and i used to write around that time, even down to the specific style of bad grammar
i could see myself having done this if i was 2-3 years younger at that time, definitely.
I paused the video to read the my immortal 2 screen and about half way through reading it it went from completely illegible to easier to read than most language. It's like a switch filpped in my brain or perhaps I was possessed by raven's ghost allowing me to understand Tara as she did. I have had 2 hours sleep in the last 48 hours so maybe that is why
You wrote my Immortal, she wrote my immortal, I wrote my Immortal! Are there any more my Immortal writers I should know about?!?
Meow
genuinely i'm so hyped for you to read my immortal. it's going to be both unbelievably terrible and extremely delightful
If anyone thinks Raven and Terra are too specific of names to be coincidence that those girls had never heard of My Immortal, remember Teen Titans was on TV at this time and it had two female characters named Raven and Terra who were rivals. Raven being an especially obvious goth character. So not that crazy.
If I was a hacky, totally-not-nutso, fanfic obsessed guy named Todd. I, too, would attempt to take credit for the chef's kiss that is My Immortal.
I hope Tara designs clothes for Hot Topic. Imagine if they released a whole My Immortal line...
I want those boots with Joel all over them. And the ones with Billie Joe Armstrong on them. And the Greenday shirt with Billy Joel with blonde hair.
My lesbian queen did you feel through the parasocial network that I was in a My Immortal mood? Outstanding! Blessings on you, your crops, and your hairless children!
“The biblical fanfiction community” is a combination of words I genuinely never thought I would hear
Definitely reccomend SarahZ's video as well, she goes super in depth on the connetions to the Bible fanfic and it's insane
I went on an internet search rabbit hole over the years to varying results.
Wound up with 2 sisters who were somewhere in the Dallas Fort Worth area, (evidence by the A/N referencing "Dubya")
Went off the surname Gillespie; figuring it was at the very least a family surname.
The ages match up. Not gonna name them but one is a lawyer and the other is a theater major or a creative sort from their linkedins. So if that's them then they're successful and having a great life. I hope whoever the authors are -- are having the times of their lives, and look back on their endeavors with fondness. Because whether it was a finely crafted troll (or a genuine creative outpouring, which is what I like to think) it grabbed the internet zeitgeist, and still provides fascination to this day.
That could make sense
Is that area commonly referred to as Dubya? That part was always unclear to me, I don’t think they were referencing Dubai or Dublin as the common theory seems to be
Wait why does this comment not have more attention I am 100% convinced this is them now :0
(Edit: The surname is Gilesbie I think? Did you try that one first and it got no results or smth)
I feel like at this point if the original author ever did come out, nobody would believe them lol
felt that too, that maybe the hackings were real on her end and cause she couldnt get on the account to confess or confirm it was her, people didnt believe her and went on with the research
"Todd the Confessor" is right, dude loves confessing