Entry 10: Literary Atrocities - My Immortal, Chapter 1 (Expanded Analysis)
Author: Professor Bartholomew Barrington III, Esq.
Upon the insistence of Aarush—whose appetite for my intellectual suffering is apparently bottomless—I have been tasked with expanding my deconstruction of these literary atrocities into a rigorous, line-by-line forensic analysis. Let the record show that I undertake this with extreme prejudice.
Let us return to the abyss of My Immortal, Chapter 1.
The Invocation of the Beta Reader
AN: Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik) 2 my gf (ew not in that way) raven, bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da story and spelling. U rok! Justin ur da luv of my deprzzing life u rok 2! MCR ROX!
The text opens not with narrative, but with an aggressive paratextual assault. The author ("Tara") immediately establishes her "goffik" credentials via a pun so agonizing it borders on a war crime ("fangz"). We are introduced to her beta reader, "bloodytearz666," whose primary contribution was allegedly "helpin... wif da... spelling." This assertion is mathematically impossible, as the subsequent prose features the phonetic destruction of the English language. If "bloodytearz666" edited this, I can only assume the original draft was written in a dialect of ancient Sumerian. Furthermore, Justin is identified as the love of her "deprzzing life," before concluding with a sudden, aggressive endorsement of My Chemical Romance. The emotional whiplash is immediate.
The Protagonist's Nomenclature
"Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!)."
The name "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way" is a masterclass in Mary Sue nomenclature. The apostrophe in "Dark'ness" serves no phonetic function; it exists purely as a typographic scar. The inclusion of "Dementia" (a neurodegenerative disease) as a middle name suggests a profound misunderstanding of biology, while the surname "Way" is a transparent homage to Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance.
Her physical description is a labyrinth of run-on sentences. Her eyes are "like limpid tears"—a simile that makes absolutely no sense, as tears are clear, not icy blue. She aggressively mandates that the reader must know Amy Lee (lead singer of Evanescence), gatekeeping her own fiction in real-time.
The Wardrobe Audit
"I'm not related to Gerard Way (but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie). I'm a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I'm also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I'm in the seventh year (I'm seventeen)."
Here, the author preemptively addresses continuity errors regarding her surname, casually establishes her species (vampire), assures us her dental hygiene is impeccable, and casually relocates Hogwarts from Scotland to England.
"I'm a goth (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow."
For a story set in a British boarding school with strict uniform policies, Ebony’s attire reads like an itemized receipt from a Hot Topic clearance sale. The narrative halts completely to accommodate this fashion audit.
The Hallway Encounter
"I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them."
The meteorological phenomenon of simultaneous snow and rain aside, Ebony's interaction with the "preps" establishes the story's core conflict: goth versus prep. It is an infantile binary, violently enforced by Ebony’s unprovoked hostility.
“Hey Ebony!” shouted a voice. I looked up. It was…. Draco Malfoy! "What's up Draco?" I asked. "Nothing." he said shyly. But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away.
The chapter concludes with the dramatic introduction of Draco Malfoy. Canonically a sneering, elitist blood-purist, this iteration of Draco approaches Ebony with the timid hesitation of a schoolboy. The tension is immediately deflated by Ebony simply walking away because her friends called her.
In a mere 300 words, My Immortal obliterates grammar, character consistency, and narrative pacing. It is a monument to adolescent narcissism, and analyzing it line-by-line is slowly dissolving my sanity.