*Warning: This review contains spoilers for My Immortal. It also may significantly harm your eyes.*

Usually, book reviews contain thoughtful statements about the tone and pacing of the story, but My Immortal was not thoughtfully written, so why waste the digital paper to talk about it? Instead, this will be the list of trigger warnings contained in this fanfiction: suicide, self-harm, homophobia, racism, pedophilia, rape, addiction, and sex. That being said, here is the link to one of the many copy-pastes of the original work. My Immortal was written in the depressed equals cool era of early Shane Dawson videos and Creepypastas. Although that does not make the list of offensive trigger warnings acceptable, it is an explanation as to why it is written… the way it was. The fact that this was considered at least semi-normal in the fanfiction space gives credit to the big debate surrounding My Immortal. Was it a sincere pre-teen girl wanting to write about Harry Potter or a meme-lord troll that wanted to make fun of genuine writers of Gilesbie’s style? 

The two girls' relationship seemed to have started off well as they had worked on writing together. However, they presumably got into a fight and they started yelling at each other through their authors' notes. Raven wrote, “TARA IS DA BIGGEST F*****G B**** EVER AND BY THE WAY I’M A BIGGER MCR FAN AND GERARD IS MINE 4EVER SO F*** U! AND I’M NOT GIVING U UR SWEATER BACK!” This was followed by Raven sending Tara’s character back to the first year and sorting her into the preppy Gryffindor house. It is also around this time that Tara’s writing sees a dip in quality, insinuating that Raven quit being her editor. The number of similarities raised suspicions on whether or not Raven and Tara were actually the same person. In this theory, the troll would have started out with Raven’s account and posted I’m Not Okay. However, the story did not blow up as much as they wished, so they created a second account to further exaggerate the “cringe”, hoping to gain traction from their second account. The author made their characters (Tara and Raven) friends, hoping to draw some attention back to their original account. This would explain the similar plots and characters, as well as why the spelling and grammar in My Immortal is so bad, despite Raven, who was shown to be decent in this area, being the editor. Or, of course, this could just be a genuine fight between friends. More evidence that points to the fakeness of the author is how unhinged the story became towards the end. It began to include some things that were so outlandish that the excuse of it being an edgy tween girl seemed no longer relevant. For example, one of the lines towards the end of the fanfiction says, “I ran sexily down the staris in2 da Grate Hall while da portraits looked around at me scaredly. There was hardly ne1 else in the stairs nd tere was an atmosphere of horror.” Strangely, the writer seemed to have no problem spelling "atmosphere" or even using ‘an’ instead of ‘a’. At one point, she even correctly spelled Alzheimer's, a word that even certain high school sophomores have to look up to spell. 

The first thing that comes up when Googling the author of the fanfiction is a woman by the name of Rose Christo. Christo had originally made a post after finding the login password of her FictionPress account updating her fans about how “Tara” was doing. Up until then, it was a popular theory that the author of Handbook for Mortals, Lani Sarem, was the author of My Immortal. Handbook for Mortals is a notoriously bad book where the author pre-ordered so many of her own books that she scammed her way to the top of The New York Times List. The writing shares many similarities with My Immortal, which is why so many people had fun believing Tara grew up to continue writing horrible literature. However, that theory was quickly shut down. According to Aja Romano, a culture writer for Vox, “At the same time, an editorial assistant at Macmillan Publishers, attempting to interject amid the speculation over Handbook for Mortals, blurted out the news no one was expecting, in a pair of since-deleted tweets: that Sarem couldn’t be the author of My Immortal because the real author of My Immortal was publishing a memoir with Macmillan.” This true author of My Immortal was revealed to be Christo, as fans hungrily hunted down her Tumblr and proof of her identity. Christo had all of the unedited chapters of the fanfiction saved on a hard drive as well as all of the passwords to the accounts so it seemed like the case was closed as everyone eagerly awaited her memoir detailing what led her to the iconic story. She had given a few details as to why she wrote My Immortal, like how she claimed to have purposely written an outrageous fanfiction to catch the attention of her brother, whom she was separated from in the foster care system. 

There are many more instances of people confessing that they are the author of My Immortal, such as TheBatMan’s confession. He has a whole different crazy story that is simply too much to get into, but it involves him owning multiple different accounts and cosplaying as different people who all start drama with each other. There is also Raven the Acid Bath Princess of the Darkness and Tara on Youtube, also known as xXblo0dyxkissxX, who garnered a popular theory among fans because of their same names and general demeanor. Unfortunately, this was proven false when, years later, the grown-up Raven came back to confirm they were trolling and did not even know about My Immortal at the time they came up with their names. However, this does prove that this same style of goth content was very popular even outside of My Immortal. After all of the conspiracies, book deals, and confessions, the world is still no closer to finding the author of the world's worst fanfiction. 

It is no wonder why My Immortal became as popular as it did. The horrible writing is absolutely hilarious and the fact it may have been written with serious intent only makes it better. Being able to theorize about the author, as well as Raven, was fun for all of the fans and just made the reading experience even more interactive. Everyone who has read the fanfiction has their own theories about whether it was written sincerely or not, where the author may be now, and why exactly they are still in hiding. My Immortal was a cultural reset and one can only hope it continues its reign of terror on pop culture. C u laterr prepz.