Elizabeth ColtonFollow

Date Collected

Winter 12-2-2018

Place item was collected

Online

Informant

Rebecca Whelan

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Rebecca Whelan (Bex) is a young adult from England. She joined the fanfiction community in 2013 and has taken part in multiple Harry Potter related fanfiction competitions since 2014. She is considered one of the most knowledgeable of the forums since she has stayed with them for a significant amount of time. She spends most of her time reading, writing, drawing, and finding new zoos.

Context

My Immortal is the name of a fanfic that is constantly floating around the Harry Potter fanfiction community, which I have recently become a rather large part of. I’ve entered into some Harry Potter fanfiction competitions and have met people who have been a part of them for a significant amount of time, Bex being one of them. I’ve learned, just through my time in this community, that My Immortal is a bit of a legend. I read it a year and a half ago, and could honestly not really explain what it’s about, and only can describe it through the keywords that everyone uses: the ultimate troll, legendary, hilarious, cringey, a slightly horrifying but also beautiful piece of not literature. You don’t even need to say the name of the fic to get people laughing and talking about it. You could simply say, “does anybody remember that one fic…” and chances are, the group of fanfic readers would probably end up connecting your half thought to My Immortal. When I asked Bex about it, she was immediately willing to share. She is always willing to share (we talk over an app called Whatsapp). We were talking about famous fics, and I just said the title, and she typed back immediately, taking care to put it in italics and everything: Everyone knows My Immprtal.

Text

Everyone knows My Immortal.

It is one of the greatest examples of online trolling ever to exist.

It’s about an OC called Ebony (which the author consistently misspells) and an utter destruction of canon as we know it.

It’s actually pretty well done in the fact that it got so popular for being so bad which I’m fairly sure is what the author was actually aiming at.

I heard about it... I think when I’d just started reading Fanfiction, but it took me about a year to actually read it. I found it hilarious personally.

(Also, ask Amber about her dramatic reading of it because it was beautiful)

Texture

Bex was hilarious and super forthcoming with her summary and explanation of this fic. She’s known for knowing things, and she did not disappoint. She’s also known for being a huge sweetheart, and she didn’t disappoint there either. At the end, she mentioned a mutual friend, who likes to send voice recordings of her dramatically reading bad fics. Unfortunately, I’m not able to collect that, but just Bex’s mention of our friend’s dramatic reading let me know that Bex was equally excited to talk about My Immortal with me.

Course

Folklore 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2018

Theme

G9: E-mail, including instant messaging

EAD Number

7.1.1

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