The My Immortal memoir has been canceled, and the mystery of the notorious fanfic deepens

The author, “Tara,” probably wasn't a lesbian Cree teen in foster care, and nothing is real.

Rose Christo, the alleged author of the legendary 2006 Harry Potter fanfic My Immortal, has had her tell-all memoir canceled by the publisher following revelations that she had Photoshopped documents of proof about her identity.

In a Tumblr post, Christo confessed to forging documents of identification, allegedly to protect her family. Previously, she claimed to have been extensively vetted by her publisher, St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing. Though Christo’s memoir, Under the Same Stars, is currently still listed on Amazon as being available for preorder, Macmillan has pulled the title from its upcoming release list. A St. Martin’s representative confirmed to Vox via email that the book had been canceled, but gave no other comment or details about the process of uncovering Christo’s false claims.

Macmillan had previously declined to answer emailed questions from Vox about the vetting process by which Rose Christo’s identity had initially been established. Additionally, Christo’s agent did not respond to an email request for clarification about whether Christo was still under representation, or to repeated emailed requests to discuss whether and how the agency had vetted Christo’s claims.

Christo’s story ended as it began: in melodrama and mystery, and possibly a high degree of trolling

The odd series of twists leading to Christo being unveiled as the author of famously terrible fanfic My Immortal captivated the story’s many fans — particularly since Christo’s story seemed like some sort of social justice fairy tale readymade for Tumblr. She claimed to be a Native American Cree lesbian, and her memoir purportedly discussed her search for her younger brother as a teen after being placed in New York City foster care as a victim of child abuse and child pornography.

Christo claimed that My Immortal’s bad writing was intentional — thus offering a potential solution to the biggest mystery about the fic — intended to help her infiltrate the fandom community and use its resources to help her find her sibling. (Christo has not responded to a request to elaborate on this aspect of the memoir.)

Initially, readers of Christo’s Tumblr, where she first came forward as the author, were skeptical of this highly dramatic tale; however, Christo claimed to have provided substantial proof to her publisher that she was the author of My Immortal, including an old flash drive containing copies of the fic and account credentials to the site where it was originally posted. On a now-deleted FAQ page on her Tumblr, she also claimed to have copies of official court records proving her family identity — presumably the same court records she later confessed to Photoshopping.

Her claims began unraveling when a forum user on Kiwifarms, a community dedicated to mocking internet drama, claiming to be Christo’s brother came forward on September 23, in the wake of the media blitz surrounding the memoir and the apparent discovery of the My Immortal author’s identity. The user, who claimed Rose Christo’s real name was Theresa Christodoulopoulos, was later “verified” as authentic by forum mods because he identified himself to them via Facebook — though the meaning of this designation is unclear given how much of Christo’s real identity, and by extension her alleged brother’s, has been thrown into question.

Over multiple threads discussing the upcoming memoir, the user stated that he was never in foster care, that her stories of abuse had been exaggerated, allegedly in order to sell books. He also claimed that her frequently asserted racial identity as a Native American Cree was also false and that the family is white.

Subsequently, Rose Christo issued a series of increasingly impassioned tweets, apparently in direct address to the person claiming to be her brother. Shortly afterward, she posted on her Tumblr that the book was canceled.

So where does all this leave us? Pretty much where we began.

Ironically, Christo’s claim to being the author of My Immortal is the part of her story that appears to be the most tenable. Her alleged brother claimed that in her teens she went by the name “Tara,” the handle used by My Immortal’s fabled author; she also logged into a Fiction Press account associated with Tara, and she was generally more specific about detailing proofs regarding her authorship of the fic than she was about proofs regarding her real-life identity.

But there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about this claim. A widely circulated Tumblr post pointed out that her Fiction Press account appeared to have been renamed, and just because she provided the publisher a flash drive from 2006 with a copy of the fic on it doesn’t mean she wrote the fic herself.

And even if she really wrote My Immortal, then that information does little to solve all the new mysteries that have come with the latest update to the saga. In particular, it’s unclear how writing a fanfic that became an internet phenomenon was supposed to help her locate her brother, let alone why it would have been necessary if he was never in foster care to begin with. It’s also unclear whether her claim that she is a Cree Native American was fabricated intentionally, or whether she created it to appeal to (or possibly even troll) Tumblr’s progressive culture.

Above all, the reigning question of who “Tara” is and whether she wrote My Immortal as an intentional parody of bad fanfic is more up in the air than ever. And somehow that seems appropriate for one of the internet’s longest-running mysteries.

from Vox - All http://ift.tt/2y4PXmk