Entry 50: Literary Atrocities - My Immortal, Chapter 23

Welcome, once again, to the literary slaughterhouse. Chapter 23 of My Immortal offers a masterclass in catastrophic spelling errors, inappropriate dietary choices, and a confrontation with Voldemort that resembles a poorly directed high school pantomime.

The Breakfast of Champions

Following the revelation that Dumbledore is being forced to "retry" due to Alzheimer's, Ebony and her entourage enter the Great Hall for breakfast.

Well we all came in angrily. So did all the other students. I sat between Darkness and Draco and opposite B’loody Mary. Crab and Goyle started 2 make some morbid jokes. They both looked exactly like Ville Vollo. I eight some Count Chocula and drank som blood from a cup.

"I eight some Count Chocula".

Let us briefly unpack this. Ebony, an immortal vampire witch of unparalleled gothic darkness, is eating a General Mills cereal explicitly marketed to children. Furthermore, she "eight" it. Not 'ate'. Eight. The juxtaposition of drinking blood from a goblet while enthusiastically devouring a bowl of chocolate-flavored corn puffs is a comedic masterstroke, albeit entirely accidental on Tara's part.

The Great Seat Dispute

The tranquility of Count Chocula is immediately shattered by a violent altercation between Draco Malfoy and Harry "Vampire" Potter over who gets to sit next to Ebony.

“Vampire, Draco WTF?” I asked. “You fucking bustard!” yelled Draco at Vampire. “I want to shit next to her!1” “No I do!” shouted.

"I want to shit next to her!1".

One can only hope Draco meant 'sit'. If not, his conception of romantic proximity is profoundly, deeply disturbing. This is the second time in as many chapters that a catastrophic typo involving bodily functions has derailed the narrative (lest we forget Ebony crying onto her own "feces").

The Arrival of Volzemort/Darth Valer

The fight is interrupted by the dramatic entrance of the Dark Lord himself, who apparently cannot decide what cinematic universe he belongs to.

All of a sudden…… a terrible man with red eyes and no nose flew in on his broomstick. He had no nose and was wearing a gray robe. All the glass in the window he flew thru fell apart. Britney that fucking prep started to cry. Vampire and Draco stopped fighting….I shopped eating….Everyone gasped. Da room fell silent……………….Volzemort!

Tara reminds us twice in two sentences that he has no nose, just in case we forgot. He crashes through a window on a broomstick, prompting Ebony to stop eating her Count Chocula ("I shopped eating").

The Dark Lord then addresses Ebony, and Tara’s tenuous grasp on her own characters shatters completely.

“Eboby…..Ebony…….” Darth Valer sed evilly in his raspy voice. “Thou havfe failed ur mission. Now I shall kill thou and I shall kill Vampire as well. If thou does not kill him before then I shall kill Draco too!”

Darth Valer.

Voldemort is now Darth Valer. He speaks in a dialect that exists somewhere between a Renaissance Faire actor having a stroke and early 2000s text speak ("Thou havfe failed ur mission"). His threat is also logically incoherent: he demands Ebony kill Vampire, but threatens to kill Vampire himself, and if she doesn't kill him, he will kill Draco. It is a logistical nightmare of villainy.

Screaming Sexily

Voldemort (or Darth Valer) cackles and flies away. Ebony bursts into tears, and her boyfriends rush to her aid.

I bust into tears. Draco and Vampire came to contort me. Suddenly my eyes rolled up so they looked all cool and gothic. I had a vision were I saw some lighting flash and then Voldremot coming to kill Draco while Draco slit his wrists in a depressed way. “No!” I screamed sexily. Suddenly I locked up and stopped having the vision.

Draco and Vampire rush to "contort" her. One assumes she meant "comfort," but given the physical logistics of this love triangle, contortion might be accurate.

Ebony then has a psychic vision of Draco slitting his wrists while Voldemort attempts to murder him. Her reaction to witnessing the impending brutal death of her lover?

"No!" I screamed sexily.

How, exactly, does one scream sexily in response to a vision of murder and suicide? Tara Gilesbie's commitment to making every single action Ebony takes erotically charged, regardless of the horrifying context, is a testament to her profound lack of psychological realism.

The chapter ends with Ebony recovering from her vision, reassured by a "sensetive" Vampire. The plot, such as it is, hurtles forward into an abyss of grammatical ruin. Join me next time for Chapter 24.

• Professor Bartholomew Barrington