Interview: Amy Lee of Evanescence in Inspiring Legendary My Immortal Fanfic

If you mention the name “My Immortal”, it can mean one of two things. The first is the hit 2003 song by rock band Evanescence. The second is a Harry Potter So transcendentally, mysteriously bad fanfic that it has haunted the Internet for years.

The fanfic My inmortal it is about a teenage vampire magician who travels in time and is a gothic vampire (called “Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way”) who is obsessed with Evanescence and a variety of rock bands with gothic inflections. It’s supposed to look like Amy Lee, the lead singer, pianist, and lead songwriter for Evanescence. And to this day, no one is sure who wrote the story or if they were serious.

Back in the real world, Lee and the rest of Evanescence have spent months on orders to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic. They have used that time to shoot two music videos in collaboration with director PR Brown, each shot by members of the band and their families. The last one is a surreal video for “The Game Is Over”, a song from their next album. The bitter truth. In Lee’s words, it is filmed as a “psychological thriller,” filled with images based on each member’s specific fear or inner demon.

Filmed in living rooms, cars, and other personal spaces, these videos give fans a new kind of look at the lives of band members. But I was curious about a different kind of relationship with fans: did the creators of “My Immortal” know about My inmortal? I spoke to Lee, and the answer is yes; in fact, it’s part of a long-standing family prank. However, I had never read it until last week.

The following interview has been summarized and slightly edited for clarity.

You made two videos in quarantine and they took very different approaches. What was the process behind each of them?

We really had to think a little fast. We were working on another video treatment that would have been full production, all of this with great equipment and things that we could no longer have due to the pandemic, including the fact that we weren’t even able to physically meet because we all live on earth.

We recognized that “Wasted on You” had a lot of lyrical content that suddenly seemed like where we were. So we went for it. I really wanted it to be real on a level like people have never seen us before: in our own homes, in our real lives, no costumes, no makeup, just the real, the raw.

For the second, it’s like “Okay, how do we take what we’ve learned and amplify it further to make it look like a real video rather than just ourselves?” We’ve all been very serious about blocking, so we’ve been completely alone for the most part during this time, and that’s cool in some ways as a creator. But you really have to live with yourself all the time.

Some of us have been through difficult things in recent years. [Bassist Tim McCord] and we both experience losses in our immediate family. There has simply been a lot of hard work. So when you’re finally forced to stop being distracted by all the things that keep us happy, there is silence, and those things come to light. So each of us had a kind of private confession with [P.R. Brown] about what we’re struggling with.

We were simply sharing deeply in a way that we don’t normally use when it comes to at least our images. When I put my lyrics on my music, it’s always really raw. But in this, it’s like, we’re not going to stop at the video side and just make it beautiful, we’re going to go for it and let it be ugly and share the dark parts of ourselves.

I think a lot of your music is open and vulnerable, and you interact with fans online. What makes filming a video at home like this communicate that your normal presence and music on social media do not?

I hope it shows more and more that willingness to be vulnerable because, difficult as it is, it always leaves me more satisfied than just putting on a pretty face.

Social media is a very strange world for me. I love it, I am grateful for the idea that we can have a direct relationship with our fans. But it is a kind of double-edged sword. It is such an open platform for everyone to criticize everything about you. And when you go there, you’re going to see that. I think it is true for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a celebrity or not. It’s just a place where people don’t have to show their faces to say things, and there are a lot of ugly things out there.

Photo by Mark Horton / Getty Images

What is your relationship specifically with fanworks? Do people send you things inspired by you?

OMG it’s so wonderful. We have a lot of art. I have this great collection of things that I’ve held onto from the beginning. There are so many talented people who dedicate their efforts to making a visual artwork that is either something in the world of Evanescence or just something else that came out of them while listening to our music.

Then there are other things to keep because they are so much fun. People will make a crazy poem that doesn’t make any sense, but I am a character within it, which is incredible. It’s like, I know this person is about 12 years old and he’s totally honest, but this is so much fun. I have a small studio, and I spent a bit of time during our unexpected free time covering it wall-to-wall in the bathroom with all the fan stuff.

Which brings me to my next question: have you ever heard of My inmortal?

I think for a long time I didn’t notice. And then my cynical Reddit-loving younger sister, who is also an English teacher, somewhere during the holidays every year, when the family is together, will come up for some reason. And she says, “Wait, you still haven’t read My inmortal? And I say, “No, what do you mean?” She is like, “You have to. Okay, hold on. Let me read you an excerpt. And then you’ll pick up your phone and read an amazing paragraph of the craziest and funniest thing that ever makes sense.

It’s one of her favorite things that she thinks is the funniest thing in the world, and she still didn’t read it. It was a kind of continuous joke with us. And then I got a call a few days ago that you wanted to talk about it, so I said, “Oh shit. I have to read a little bit of it.”

I read that I don’t think it’s half, but it made me cry. I was laughing very, very hard at one point, just for nonsense. And then I started to wonder, is this real? I can not say it. I am totally undecided. Is it sincere I feel like it started maybe sincere, but they got in there and started playing for the haters. I can not tell! What you think?

It would have to be very elaborate, but there are a lot of cases that really make it seem like this person knows much, much more than the character he’s putting on.

I noticed a misspelling which, instead of triumphantly, was “triumelephantly”. And I was like, come on, you don’t think “elephant” is inside “triumphant”. There is no way.

At one point, the main character’s name is spelled two different ways with three words from each other.

I totally saw it too! I’m torn because I want him to be honest, something like that … but I don’t know.

There are things that are not great to talk about. As if talking about cutting her wrists wasn’t fun. So it takes me a second to get over that joke, which is so recurring.

Yes, if you go back to the old internet culture, a lot of it is really ugly. And it’s weird trying to separate those things.

Is it better now?

I don’t know because now I’m too old to know what’s going on. But Children seem kinder. They often seem more pleasant.

I would like to believe that we have grown a bit as a society from that. Perhaps all of us who have a little more microphone have taught us some things that we should keep in mind that are outside our perception and our personal experiences. There are other people who are seeing that in a different way. I think it would be great if that’s true.

I was a teenager when My inmortal It came out, and it feels like it’s describing a very recognizable “goths versus preps” rivalry. Did you feel that?

I think this is making fun of that world, I mean it should be like this, come on, and that part really resonates with me in a real way. But I didn’t consider myself Gothic! Part of what’s weird and fun is: okay, this is describing hating trainers, and you’re the best, you’re the underground, you understand real life and the severity of death, and I get it. But if you are so depressed and everything is so difficult and you are so real and they are so false, why do you try so hard in your appearance?

That was what always turned me off of the word “goth” when it began to be assigned to me in our early days. If I was 15 years old and you had asked me what it was, I am grunge. I buy all my clothes at the garage sales, I don’t screw up in my appearance, I prepare two seconds before school, and all the preparations are those that focus on their appearance and the party they are going to. go.

But yeah, that part was fun for me. That part existed.

I love the idea that you know about this for years without reading it.

I want to thank you because last night I laughed a lot. Not that, when I have free time, I am motivated to go read something horribly wrong. But it is actually quite interesting.

And you must love all the characters going into a song to sing My Chemical Romance songs. Is very good