YMMV / My Immortal

• Accidental Innuendo: Whether it's actually accidental depends on whether the fic actually is a parody or not, but regular words are occasionally "accidentally" spelled wrong and turned into obscenities, such as "Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge" becoming "Mystery of Magic Cornelio Fuck" and "Professor Slughorn" becoming "Professor Slutborn". This dramatic reading interprets almost every use of the word "come" and "came" this way, which is easy since a character's arrival in a scene is usually signalled with something like "and then Draco came" without any qualifiers.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: When Ebony shows that she doesn't know Voldemort has telekinesis, Voldemort gives her a "dude-ur-so-retarded" look. Is this something like a Death Glare or a Disapproving Look? Or did he do a sterotypical "stupid person" expression to mock her?
• Ass Pull: Many examples. At one point the characters need to find Draco, who's inexplicably alive after committing suicide two chapters earlier, because "Volfemort has him bondage" (whatever that means). To solve this, Vampire "has an idea" and teleports them into Voldemort's lair. Enoby whines endlessly about stuff much easier to solve than this, like choosing between Draco and Vampire.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Well, most of the plot really comes off like this, but Chapter 11 really stands out. The author's notes say it deals with "serious issues"... and it proceeds to be extremely bizarre even by the standards of the rest of the fic, with Enoby shooting Snap and Loopin "a bazillion times" to seemingly no effect, Dumbledore suddenly coming in and shooting them with his wand, and Hagrid declaring his love for Enoby out of nowhere. (The latter seems to be Retconned out in the next chapter, with it apparently being Cedric instead who did that... except the narrative seems to think they're the same character. Maybe.)
  • Another example is Chapter 39, in which a hacker claims to have taken over the original author's account and found their fanfiction so laughably terrible that they're going to add a new chapter of their own. What follows is a better written (and as a result, not that funny) chapter in which Ebony dies and goes to Hell where she's punished (for being a terrible Mary-Sue of a character) by having to wear preppy clothes for all eternity, while the canon Harry Potter characters go back to normal, with Ebony's poisonous presence having been what made them look and act so different all along. Following all of this, the hacker then just posts the author's original text for the chapter anyway, which plays out like the rest of the fanfic has thus far, leaving the start of Chapter 39 as nothing more than a brief interlude that ultimately just interrupts the 'story' and goes nowhere.
• Bile Fascination: Seriously, this was the most popular thing on Fanfiction.net if the reviews were anything to go by, and it's the first thing that comes up when people ask Google for the "worst fanfiction ever".
• Broken Base: The spectators are split between those who think it's a story written with genuine intent although with a less-than-stellar grasp of the English language, and those who believe it's a masterfully crafted Troll Fic. Just look at any message board discussing the story, and chances are that you'll see an equal amount of both viewpoints.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Possibly intentional. The story describes the scary man approaching Ebony as having red eyes and no nose, with a footnote saying he looks "basically like Voldemort in the movie". A sentence later, his identity is revealed to be Voldemort. Wow!
• Crack Pairing: Hedwig/Voldemort. Well, human male Hedwig/young Voldemort.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Middle-aged men perving on a high school-age girl, gratuitous self-harm, mistreating an old man who's suffering from both Alzheimer's and "kancer", and people threatening suicide (and, in one case, actually going through with it) should not be amusing. And yet, the story is so over-the-top and badly written that it's hilarious.
• Designated Hero: Ebony often does things far worse than any of the so-called villains of the story. One of the few character traits that actually remains consistent is that she judges your morals by the way you dress.
• Designated Villain:
  • Britney doesn't do anything aside from being a "prep". Except in chapter 42 where it's stated by "Proffessor Trevolry" that Britney freed Snap, Loopin and Hargrid from "Azerbaijan". How or why exactly she did that, Trevolry (and Tara) never goes into.
  • Dumblydore is an odd case. He is still treated as a respected and "wise" wizard (although most of the "wise" things he does are barely more intelligent than what Enoby does). Throughout the story, he saves Ebony and her friends and organizes attacks against Volxemort. But he also sides with the preps, protects them from Ebony, and gets mad at Ebony and Draco for having sex in the Forbidden Forest — which, aside from the issue of teenage students having sex, is also a pretty dangerous place to do it. The only genuinely evil thing he does is refuse to save Draco from Voldemort.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Dumbledore, largely for his ever-quotable introduction.
  • Professor McGonagall, or rather, "Preacher McGoogle". Every time she shows up, it's either to shout something absolutely hilarious or to lay down the law on the heroes, or both.
  • Britney the prep is pretty much the face of every reader, since she's treated unfairly despite having done nothing to deserve it (until the end, at least).
  • To a lesser extent, this version of Umbridge is positively received, since she's actually a decent human being.
• Fan Nickname: Due to the constantly-changing names and spellings for some characters, the Harry Potter fandom has seemed to come to a consensus on what to call each character.
  • The main character is referred to as Enoby^note The fandom rather gleefully took the author's note "Ebonys name is ENOBY!" quite literally, as opposed to her many other names. Sometimes also as Tara or TaEbory.
  • Malfoy is sometimes called Donnie Drako.
  • Voldemort's preferred(mis)spelling is Vloxemort and his alter ego, rather than be Tom Riddle, is Tom Bombadil.
  • Dumbledore's preferred misspelling is Dumblydore.^note A similar spelling, "Dumbly-dorr," appears in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in which it represents how "Dumbledore" is pronounced with Madame Maxime's Funetik Aksent.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Three words: Voldemort in heels.
• Faux Symbolism: At one point, Ebony and B'loody Mary watch das niteMARE b4 Xmas. Said film is about being yourself and not trying to be someone you don't understand. While it was likely included in the fic because it's "goffik", the message ties in well to the preps/posers/goffs conflict.
• Fetish Retardant: The whole thing. It's very hard to get titillation out of lines like "He put his thingy in my you-know-what".
• Fountain of Memes: The more memorable lines became general-purpose memes, but among experienced fanfic writers and fans, just about every possible standout line can be considered a meme.
• Fridge Horror: A literal interpretation of many passages in this story will give you a rather disturbing mental picture. "He put his boys thingie in mine", coming from Ebony, anyone? Try to avoid literal interpretations.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Tara speculates on the then-unreleased Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, claiming that "hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!111" And she turned out to be right (in a sense).
  • Ebony denies being a slut in chapter 10 and then proceeds to have sex with a majority of the male "goffik" characters for the rest of the fanfic.
  • Satan is described as looking "jist like Brandan Urie", who would later star in a music video for his solo project’s song "Emperor's New Clothes", focusing on Urie turning into a demon who is implied to be Satan.
  • Marty McFly being rendered as "Morty McFli" would later evoke images of Marty's Expy Morty from Rick and Morty. The Wiki acknowledges by depicting him as a Stylistic Suck edit of a "goffik" Morty.
  • At one point, Professor McGonagall is refered to as, "Preacher McGongel". This was years before Pottermore revealed that Professor McGonagall's father was a Presbyterian preacher.
  • Chapter 16 has brooms mispelled as "broms". One of the most well known fanfic of the author Hans Von Hozel is Harry's Brom, though the story uses "bromine" of all words as a plural for "brom".
• Memetic Mutation: This story has become memetic enough for Know Your Meme to cover it in detail. For hardcore fanfic aficionados, it's hit Fountain of Memes status, with at least five quotable lines in every chapter. Tumblr had a meme of just posting the first paragraph of the fic (sometimes with names and places changed to align with a different fandom).
  • "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!"
  • "...and Loopin was masticating to it!"
  • "And there was ______, looking extremely fucking hot."
  • Describing things as being done "sexily", making fun of this being Enoby's default way of doing... well, anything really.
• Narm: Oh so much. In the author's notes, Tara often states that the story deals with "sris issus", but all the spelling and grammar mistakes make it unintentionally hilarious.
• Nightmare Retardant: The warning "SOME OF DIS CHAPTA IS XTREMLY SCRAY. VIOWER EXCRETION ADVISD" is just so funny that almost nothing in the chapter — as long as it was written in the same style — could ever hope to be that scary.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: This fic became one of the most popular on the Internet for all the wrong reasons. Tara kept showing up, despite the trolls and the flames, and despite her threats of self-harm in response to negative reviews, and seemed almost galvanized at its popularity.
• One-Scene Wonder: Dobby shows up for only one scene, but it's easily one of the most memorable ones.
• Recurring Fanon Character: Ebony has become one for the Harry Potter series. She has appeared in many other fan works and is one of the most well known non-canon characters associated with the series.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Most of the plot is focused on a Vampire/Ebony/Draco Love Triangle. Even Voldemort forcing Ebony to kill "Vampire" is treated as though it were simply a complication to all the romantic drama.
• Rooting for the Empire: The villains and other characters who oppose Ebony are usually harmless, and the heroes are more than likely flat, as well as so unheroic and unsympathetic that people find the villains far more interesting.
• Sequelitis: The original is generally considered to be So Bad, It's Good, but most of the parody/fake sequels are just plain painful. No matter how hard many may try, none can match Ms. Gilesbie's literary... um, achievement.
• Signature Scene: When it comes to the story's top insane and funny moments, the scene in the Forbidden Forest stands out. Awkward dialogue and typos lead up to Ebony and Draco having Ikea Erotica sex. In the middle of the Forbidden Forest. Topping it all off nicely is Dumbledore's over-the-top reaction. One, two, three, all together: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!"
• So Bad, It's Good: The main reason to read it is to laugh your ass off at how terrible it is. Nobody's really sure if this was the intent or not, but it was certainly the result.
• So Bad, It Was Better: There exists a sister work of sorts to it, I'm Not Okay, supposedly written by Raven, the story's beta reader and Tara's friend. It is incredibly similar to My Immortal, but is far less famous, owing to the fact that it is significantly better-written and therefore merely bad.
• Strangled by the Red String: Ebony and everybody she hooks up with.
• Strawman Has a Point: If the story genuinely isn't parody, then Ebony's "enemies" can verge into this when they criticize her. At one point Dumbledore calls her a snob, which, given her elitest attitude towards those who are not sufficiently "goffic," is not inaccurate.
• Unexpected Character: Let's be honest, Marty McFly (or rather, Morty Mcfli) is probably the absolute last person you'd expect to appear in a Harry Potter fanfic, let alone in something like this.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Regardless of whether or not it's a parody, the story's fixation on the Goth and Emo subcultures, as well as the various other media that it references (A Cinderella Story, House of Wax (2005), the Resident Evil Film Series, and suchlike) make it pretty clear that it's a product of the mid-to-late 2000s.
  • The story's music references, being primarily Emo and pop, are also firmly rooted in the mid 2000s. Ebony's favorite bands include Evanescence, Good Charlotte, and My Chemical Romance, and even attends a concert for the latter at one point. Meanwhile, Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne are treated with contempt for being "preppy" and "poser" music, respectively. There's also a reference to Hilary Duff dating Joel Madden, who broke up near the end of 2006.
  • Since this is, at least ostensibly, a Harry Potter fanfic, it's noteworthy that Tara's author's notes reference the then-upcoming releases of the seventh book and the fifth movie. Also, note the singular when she says that Voldemort didn't have a nose "in the movie." At the time of writing, Goblet of Fire was the only released Potter film in which Voldemort had sported the noseless look.
  • Interestingly, the fic's release date range can be pinned down to the mid-to-late 2000s simply because there doesn't seem to be any mention of the Twilight books and their fandom, given how much of an infamous Fandom Rivalry it had with the Harry Potter series from 2008 to around 2014.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Britney. Ebony constantly flips her off and insults her for no reason other than "being a prep." By the time Britney releases the villains from Azerbaijan, Ebony and Co. are thoroughly established to be as bad as them, or even worse.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Pretty much most of the cast, especially Enoby, since she's an asshole even towards the people who are supposed to be her friends. Of course, it could have very well been intentional if it was a troll fic.
• Wangst: Ebony's constant whining. And this gem from Draco:
  "No one fucking understands me!1" he shouted angrily as his black hare went in his big blue eyes like Billie Joe in Boulevard of Borken Dreamz.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Some of Tara's clothing choices are truly hideous. Standout examples include boots with pictures of Billie Joe Armstrong on them, a dress with "silt up the leg", "Crab" and Goyle wearing "ripped gothic black dresses with a lace-up top thing", and in Chapter 15, Enoby has boots with "Joel" written all over them.

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