Basically, the story I've read was that there really were two guys involved, one legitimately shitty fanfiction writer — with a legitimate case of dyslexia — and the mastermind who stumbled across his work and convinced him to own up to his suckiness and parlay it into the best trollfic of all time. Where Raven's account and her own fanfics play into this was not elaborated on, but if there were really multiple people working on it, I can see how they'd have time between them to launch spinoffs to keep up the ruse.
Here's the entire post (original source unknown; I got it off an archived copy of Oh Internet, the work-safe site that Encyclopedia Dramatica was briefly retooled as), attributed to one "TheBatMan":
After some considerations, I decided to confess something that I've kept pretty well a secret. Here goes nothing, I help co-write My Immortal.
For those who never heard of My Immortal before… well… eh… is regarded as the worst fanfic of all time… serious. Just goggle Worst Fanfic ever, and you will get you answer. Or type the Best Fanfic ever, and you will get the same results. Before we go any further, I would very well like to explain how and why I wrote My Immortal. The story start way back in the good year of 2004…
My first year of high school… year 9, I'm not sure what that translates to in other places around the world, but I just turned 13. Well, one day, I was goggle Spyro… looking for the next game to come out, which was a Hero`s Tale, which was completely crap. Well, while looking for some info on this new game, I came across a website called . I don't know why I went to this site… not too sure why I stayed, but I was able to read a large library of free stories, all based on my favourite programs, movies, books and games. I came across a few pretty good fanfics, mainly from the Spyro section, but a few from other places. After some time, I decided to create an account and write my own fanfic. I wrote what at that point was the greatest fanfic of all time. It was called A Day in the Life (Nope, it wasn't named after that Beatles song, which is regarded as the greatest song of all time. The name was an accident). It got a lot more bad reviews and flames than getting good reviews. I don't why, but some random person discover my really bad fic and decided that him and me could work together to create the worst fanfic ever.
After talking to him on msn (I have decided to not tell everyone his name. I don't think he really want to be revealed to the world. Nor Have I got permission. So from now onwards, I will call him the other guy) we dotted an out a rough plotline. We decided to make the main character a female; we knew we couldn't get away with a male main character. From these conversations, we decided that she would have to fall in love with one of the characters. After debating if she should fall in love with Harry or Draco, we decided that she should fall in love with both of them. It was also decided at this point that she would be ordered by Voldemort to kill Harry, who would later be renamed Vampire. I was against naming him Vampire, but I lost that debate. Also some of the misspellings I was against also, but looking back at it, the spelling errors were all part of its charm. You could help smiling every time you heard the name Dumblydore, even though you know it was completely wrong.
From these basic ideas, we started to write the fanfic. I was in charge of all the pop culture reference, and because I was into all that emo music at that time, I mostly wrote about MCR and Good Charlotte (I would like to admit that I done listen to these bands anymore, other than that new MCR song which is really cool, and Panic at the Disco, which are a pretty cool band). The other guy was in charge of all the fashion parts. I have to admit that I don't have much of a fashion sense, so I let him deal with it all. To be honest, I skimmed read most of it all.
I was the mastermind behind the raining and snowing at the same time thing. At that point I thought it was completely impossible, until later, when it actually can rain and snow at the same time… its called sleet.
I couldn't actually write the first sex scene, it was too much, even for me. Reading it the first time, something inside of me died. It was so funny that we had to keep it in. That scene might have been why the fic was deleted in 2009. Or it might have been that we had used lyrics to a Good Charlotte song without permission… I don't think they record company would be happy. Nor would Draco… being dragged to a Muggle band.
To be honest, I didn't expect My Immortal to be so successful. At no point in writing it did I realise that it would get those many reviews. God, I didn't think it was possible, nor do I think it could ever happen again. There could only be ONE My Immortal. But somehow, it became a thing of legend. I don't think any over fanfics have been translated into a dozen languages (but not English, of course) and be read by over a million readers worldwide. It's just unbelievable.
However, a thing wasn't going well in the goffik cave, and as the debates turned into arguments, things had boiled over, and I was locked out of the account after Chapter 15 was uploaded. What ever happened chapter 16 onwards, I couldn't care less. I didn't have a single part in creating it. I tried to create other troll account since then, but none of them were as great as Tara Gilesbie. I'm now officially retired from trolling.
You can flame as much as you liked, I don't really care. You might not believe me, I still don't care. All I wanted to do is get this out of my system. At least I can proudly say that I made a million people laugh… or smile… or say "God, I hope that author dies. How can this world keep going with people like that?" Well here is you answer, I actually DO have dyslexia.
This definitely explains why the typos and misspellings got more and more comically absurd after a while; I'm not sure if I can be bothered to go back and see if the turning point was chapter 16 or not.