A Trainwreck Immortalized

The tale of Tara Gilesbe is a tragedy to be echoed throughout all generations. She wanted to create a book filled with love, heartbreak, and adventure all set in the familiar scenery of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter universe. Unfortunately, she did not succeed in doing any of these things. Rather, her work is often mocked and seen by many to be "the worst fanfiction ever written."  The horrific spelling, bland characters, pointless plot, and audience insulting authors' notes show exactly what NOT to do when writing a story, and how NOT to approach the diverse genre that is fan fiction.

 

Fanfiction, for those unaware, is a genre of fictitious writing based around pre-existing canon, typically of a well-known TV show, movie, book, or book series. Typically, fanfics (as they are abbreviated) are written by children or teenagers that are passionate about said canon. These young fans often try to either emulate a feeling a work made them experience or simply insert themselves into a story to live out their fantasy to interact with their favorite characters. These tales are generally distributed online on sites such as Fanfiction.net or Wattpad.com. Due to the ease of access of such works combined with the young demographic writing them, certain negative troupes are rampant throughout the genre. Fanfics have become synonymous with horrid storytelling. To make matters worse, awful sexual interactions with innocent characters from children's cartoons as well as nonsensical crossovers only present to fulfill the author's fantasies. This has led to ridicule and condescension of the genre by more professional writers, leading to a decline in the quality of works for fear of rejection. Despite all this, the more positive aspects of the genre do shine through. Many authors and creators get their start writing fan stories. Fanfics can be a useful tool for budding writers by offering them complex characters and a fleshed-out universe on a silver platter. Some tales are so well received that they have even been incorporated into the established cannon! My Immortal is not one of these stories. 

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Before one can review My Immortal, one must understand under what context it was written. Tara Gilesbe's work, in all its 144 glorious chapters, began to be posted on Fanfiction.net in 2006. It was posted chapter by chapter until the author stopped updating abruptly in 2007. From its inception, it was immediately regarded as one of the worst Fanfics ever written. It was lampooned for representing all things that made the genre terrible. Despite this, My Immortal became a cult classic due to its hilariously over-the-top mistakes, as well as the volatile nature of the author. Tara was characterized by her rambling author's notes asking "preps" to stop "FLAMIN TEHM STORIE (sic)". The more and more she wrote, the more and more the internet began to dig deeper into who she actually was. While her actual identity remains a mystery, the identity of another major player in the story is not. Rose Christo, later a successful young adult novelist, edited the first couple of chapters of the story under the pseudonym "Raven" before having a falling out with Gilesbe. Under Raven's editing, My Immortal's first few chapters, while still completely incompatible with Harry Potter continuity, were relatively tame when it came to grammatical errors. After the fight, not so much. Tara axed Rose's character in the story as an act of defiance, and the two went their separate ways. Christo would later release a memoir recounting her time editing on the project. On the other hand, there is still a huge mystery surrounding who Giblesbe was. Some internet historians speculated she was from the United Arab Emarites, due to the quote "omfg im leeving dubya pretty soon kant wait!!! (sic)", though other clues point to an origin in Connecticut. Regardless, the mystery behind the "goff" emo persona only known as Tara Gilesbe remains unsolved. All we know, is that Tara created the holy grail of bad fanfiction. 

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There is much more to be learned from My Immortal than meets the eye. Most of Gilesbe's storytelling mistakes are surprisingly easy to remedy, that is if she were able to accept criticism. For instance, when dealing with characters within an established universe, one must first study these characters to ensure their depictions are not somehow different than the established canon. Extreme variations in characters' attitudes and actions within a story tend to draw a reader out of it and can become very distracting when looking at the story as a whole. My Immortal famously showcased this when none other than Albus Dumbledore, misremembered as "Albert Dumbledore", screams "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS! (sic)" when he finds Ebony and Draco making love in the forbidden forest. J.K. Rowling specifically designed Dumbledore to be a kind, forgiving man who was almost like a representation of Jesus; a richeous son of man who sacrifices his life to save the entire world. Gilesbe's Dumbledore is much akin to the Jesus when he was punishing the money-lenders. People, rightfully, chastised her for this gross destruction of such a beloved character, so much so that Gilesbe made an excuse saying, "HE HAD A HEADAKE OK (sic)." Tara would try to remedy this later in the story by having "Albert" say "darn" instead of "damn", proving she did not completely understand the criticism leveled against her. 

A major weakness in My Immortal is one shared by many terrible books and fanfictions the world over: its treatment of the audience. Tara's hubris and lack of introspection is clear through her numerous author's notes where she states things such as "I sed stup flaming ok ebony’s name is ENOBY nut mary su OK! DRACO IS SOO IN LUV wif her dat he is acting defrent! dey nu eechodder b4 ok! (sic)" Her childish response to critical readers is downright insulting, and shows a certain naïveté common to many young authors. First and foremost, Gilesbe disregards one of the biggest rules of writing: DON'T INSULT YOUR AUDIENCE! Your audience is who consume your work and who pay your bills if you get so lucky as to be published. To essentially ostracize their criticisms as "flaming" (internet slang for intentionally saying inflammatory comments in order to evoke a response) and to treat your own work as somehow above criticism is to commit career suicide for a professional author. Even for young fanfiction authors, alienating yourself from your audience is a horrible idea. One of the main draws of fanfiction is that it comes with a built-in fanbase of individuals who already enjoy the subject being written about, and to simply disregard them and defile what they enjoy is throwing away an opportunity to grow your audience so you can later branch out into original works. 

 

Fanfiction as a genre in and of itself can be used very effectively but is often unfortunately looked down upon by more serious writers. It can be a great tool for exploring an interesting universe and can cut down on some unneeded exposition by being placed in a setting which the audience is familiar with. Putting well beloved characters in new and exciting situations can breathe new life into a once dead franchise, and the addition of new characters can spice it up all the same. This writing genre, as stated before, is a good way to gain exposure within a certain target audience who are willing to critique you and help you become a better author.  However, since writing fanfiction is often free and easy to do there is a flipside. Many authors take fanfiction not as an opportunity to look at narratives from new perspectives, but as vanity projects where their favorite fictional characters praise their own self-insertion. Since the dawn of fanfiction in the 1970s with Star Trek, this has been a huge issue plaguing the community, so much so that the term "Mary Sue" was coined by Paula Smith in her parody " A Trekkie's Tale" in 1973. This, added with the legal ramifications of copywrite infringement and plagiarism endemic to the fanfiction craft as a whole, have often made fanfiction a source of ire of more mainstream authors.  

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To wrap things up, My Immortal, has forever marred the fanfiction genre. It has put such a bad taste in people's mouths that many great works have been overlooked because they were fanfiction. Yet the genre is so much more than bad grammar and terrible writing, with an endless cosmos of ideas waiting to be explored. Still, Gilesbe's horrific nightmare of a story is still rather charming. It reminds us of the horrible stories we all used to write back in middle school, and allows us to look back and mock ourselves but also look at how much we've grown as writers. As much as it has ruined the genre, My Immortal will always hold a special place in many, many people's hearts.