Why Chapter 39 of My Immortal was due to an actual hacker
After considering some findings, I’m confident in this theory. And thus, I’m confident anyone who claims to be Tara Gilesbie while claiming the hacked chapter was faked is not being honest. Below I will explain why I believe so and how I came across this information in the first place.
All this was from a long chain of breadcrumbs. Let’s go back… all to the mid 2000s in the LiveJournal days when Tara Gilesbie had a dedicated fan club.
The Tara Gilesbie Fan Club
One thing that particularly stuck out was members mentioning finding Tara through IMDb. Yes, you heard right.
[Image description: Two comments on the Tara Gilesbie Fan Club LiveJournal.
The first is from ‘golden_helikaon’ on 2008-01-19 writing, “I found it on the Order of the Phoenix IMDb board. There were several long threads dedicated to ripping her apart with every new chapter.”
The second comment is from ‘heartdreamerz’ on 2008-01-20 writing, “It was almost 2 years ago and I’ve told this story many times. I knew Tara a month before My Immortal was published. It was on IMDb’s board for My Chemical Romance. When the story came out I knew about it but didn’t pay attention because I wasn’t into HP at the moment. Then, like icarus_malfoy wrote, there were the threads about her and that’s when my interest started. There were also another troll on the His Dark Materials…” (Image cuts off.) End description.]
According to this, Tara Gilesbie was already tyrannizing the internet before she posted My Immortal. This actually is very consistent with the fact “Tara Gliesbie is totlly Gottik” was a petition that existed in November 2005. (My Immortal was posted in March 2006.)
This IMDb profile seemed very intriguing. It hasn’t been mentioned much, and isn’t considered to be official by most people. Was it a legitimate account? If so, was there gothicness we were deprived of all along? I searched to try find out more about it, hoping screen captures or something would turn up. Luckily, one of the same members copied and pasted Tara’s bio in another comment.
[Image description: A comment on the Tara Gilesbie Fan Club Livejournal by ‘heartdreamerz’ on 2007-05-05 writing, “All her posts are deleted now. I can still visit her profile because she’s on my friend list. Her bio:
‘hi im tara. im a goth (n prode!). i have died blak hair n blu eyez. i wer eyeliner a lot of da time. i hav a bf. his naym is justin. he rox! i liv in Dubia.
likz: eyliner, goffik makep, beng goffik, GOOD CHRALOTTE, death, sleting my rists, drak colorz, hot topik _
dizliks: beng alive, bo, pop music, brite colors, pink, brabie, hiraly doof da music i lik: linen prak, GOOD CHRELOTE, evinezenz, simpl plan, akon, arvil levine, blink-183, panik! at da disko, foll oot boi, mcr. HIRALY DOOF IS A PSR!
fav moviez: when a stranger kallz, da grudge, da grudge 2, korps bird, da nitemare b4 krismas, da ring 2, da ring, shrak attak, undreworld 2, da texas chonsow massakre da bogenning ps 2 all da prepz nd pozers tryin 2 diz me u r jus jeloz!!!! so yolsentik nd hartdremer u kan go fok ur momz 4 al i ker ok U SUK!!!111′
I feel so special to be personally insulted by her on her profile.” End description.]
People like to copy & paste things stupid things to laugh at all the time (no offense Tara), so I thought: why not Google some of the bio? Maybe whoever did that posted additional stuff.
And it worked! (I found more content from Tara’s supposed IMDb, but more on that for a different post.)
When searching the bio, a Reddit thread about Rose Christo popped up.
During Rose Christo’s brief reign, a user said Rose’s claims seemed to check out. This user actually happens to be the same commenter, Heartdreamerz, in the LiveJournal thread. (Which makes sense, considering she’s the one who originally had the bio I was searching.)
If you don’t feel like clicking the Reddit link, basically she confirmed Rose’s claim that two Filipino users from the forums hacked the account.
Because of Heartdreamerz’ long involvement in My Immortal and the fact she never claimed to be Tara or Raven, I take a lot of trust in her word.
Heartdreamerz linked the FF.net profile of the original hacker: Coruscate Corruption.
Looking up “Coruscate Corruption” had me come across this from the Live journal fan club, which implies that there were two hackers.
[Image description: post on the Tara Gilesbie Fan Club Livejournal by ‘nicespice’ on Dec. 28th, 2006, writing,
“Just a little thing I drabbled down. Hope it’s not too horrible. What do you think?
There is an evil on FF.net and All who encounters it feels their Respiratory system give out And become too scared to scream.
Gruesome, it is. The anti-christ fanfiction, My Immortal, written by a total idiot. Does she Leave you to cry tears of blood, because I have before. EarnestInBerlin and Coruscate Corruption, the hackers, Sought to bring My Immortal redemption. Too Bad the real Tara had to come back so soon to ruin the fun. I wish she had at least continued her story, I look at her fic Everytime I go online, wishing she’d just update so I could laugh at…
Tara Gilesbie.” End description.]
While searching “Coruscate Corruption”, a few posts popped up from a forum for The Bartimaeus Sequence called Bartiforums.
[Image description: Two images showing 3 forum posts by Mwamba.
The first post was a reply to, “Mwamba, how did you crack both passys? Just guessing or what?”
On December 8th 2006, Mwamba replied, “Tara’s was just pure luck. It didn’t take long to get. The password was tara. snorts Post’s was just guessing too, but I remembered when his passy was cracked on here, so I tried out the same password. It worked. Oh yeah, and I wrote a fanfic for Post, it’s a rip off of Tara’s story, but meh.”
The last two posts were made on January 14th, 2007. The second post wrote, "It was me. I had complete control for two days. And then EarnestInBerlin had to hack in too and change the password. But then she told what it was and then the real Tara had to come back and rechange her passy so nobody could get in. But that’s old news. That account is most certainly not mine. I could not continue that fic for 39 chapters, I’d get bored after the first fifteen.”
The third post wrote, “ Shrug It doesn’t matter. Call me whatever. Though if I have to pick, I suppose you can call me by my FF.net name, Coruscate Corruption. What book category are you writing this fic in? Just curious.” End description.]
Chapter 39 was posted late November 2006, so that first post was only a few weeks after it happened.
The password was “tara”… does that ring a bell at all?
[Image description: A screencap from Rose Christo’s now-deleted blog. It says, “And My Immortal? You can come to your own conclusions. This was really never about the fic; it was the marketing team at SMP that decided to make My Immortal the main part of the story. Our email address was [email protected] and our password was tara?” End description.]
– Rose Christo’s claim before deleting
You may be asking, “Rose Christo? The woman who lied about her family, being Native American, and writing My Immortal to sell a book?” Yes, that Rose Christo. Yes, she was a fraud and a scammer, but she peppered in some little-known true details to make her claim seem more legit. For instance, she talked about a Voldemort rper in the reviews, and that ended up being true. You can actually find this Voldemort reviewer in the web archives of Raven’s stories. (Apparently, that Voldemort even came out and said “hey, that’s me!” Cannot find it unfortunately.)
Keep in mind the only way I found any of this was because Rose Christo made that claim. Without it, Heartdreamerz wouldn’t have made that post that led to Coruscate Corruption and those posts on Bartiforums. It’s possible Rose somehow came across the same information I did, but it’s more likely she was there. Rose Christo may not be the author of My Immortal, but it was likely she was a spectator as it all went down. (As I was a spectator for Rose’s ordeal when it all went down.)
Since it was said the hackers posted on the fanfiction forums, I sought to find it by searching “Tara”, “My Immortal”, etc. on FFnet’s search. The posts are unfortunately long gone, but there is a surviving forum called “My Immortal Forum Tara Gilesbie is a genius!”
[Image description: A screencap of “My Immortal Forum Tara Gilesbie is a genius!” from Fanfiction net. Someone named Ebony Dark’ness wrote, “I have personally logged on to Tara’s account when her password was revealed after she got hacked.” End description.]
TL;DR: Multiple, separate people made consistent claims over the span of years. Because of this, I personally believe Tara’s account was legitimately hacked. Since this is at odds at Todd/Toby in his authorship claim saying the hacking was faked by him, he is likely lying about being the author.
(Sources/links will be added in a reblog.)
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay
ellievsbear
kianamaiart
germansingergirl