Toby (aka Todd Gilesbie, XXXmidnitegoffXXX, and Toby Alt) is an internet user who has claimed to be Tara Gilesbie several times. All of his claims have been proven false.
Authorship claims[]
Toby's authorship claims date as early as 2008 to as recent as September 2020.
One more confession and sockpuppet accounts[]
On November 28, 2019, a YouTuber known as Sarah Z[1] (who will be referred to as Sarah onwards) uploaded a video titled, "The Mystery Behind The World's Worst Fanfiction". In the video, Sarah goes into the background of My Immortal and some of the mysteries surrounding it. On May 22, 2020, another YouTuber known as Red Bard (AKA Kennedy) uploaded a similar video titled, "Demystifying My Immortal". Kennedy's video went into more detail about some authorship claims, such as Rose Christo's, Lani Sarem (who also wrote a horrendously bad story), as well as one of Toby's. Just like the other authorship claims, Toby's was deemed false.
Something that Kennedy mentioned in the video was a situation involving the hacking of Tara Gilesbie's account and it being held hostage in 2008. She said that the situation was too messy to explain due to the scarcity of reliable information and the abundance of sockpuppet accounts involved in the situation.
On September 29, 2020, Sarah Z uploaded another video related to My Immortal called, "The 'Author' of My Immortal Emailed Me, And Then It Got Worse". In the video, Sarah explained that she got an email from someone claiming to be Tara who just so happened to say to consult XXXmidnitegoffXXX on Fanfiction.net. When she did, she and Toby had a private message conversation where he claimed to be the author of My Immortal yet again. Sarah did some research to find out who XXXmidnitegoffXXX was and found out how he was one of Tara's favorite authors, he had a Deviantart account where he called himself Todd Gilesbie, and that he originally had fanfictions on his account that were deleted before his 2011 authorship claim. He then told Sarah that he would be glad to answer any questions she had about him and My Immortal, to which she asked him many questions. His answers included that:
- My Immortal was a troll and neither Tara nor Raven existed.
- XXXmidnitegoffXXX was a backup account incase anything ever happened to Tara's account.
- The last time he could access XXXBloodyrists666XXX was in 2008.
- Interestingly, her profile was last updated in 2009.
- The hacking was fake.
- Tara and Raven's favorite authors that are neither him, Tara, nor Raven are unrelated to the mystery of My Immortal.
- Dubya is Dublin, the capital of Ireland. His family is from Ireland, though he himself is not.
- My Immortal is unfinished because he lost interest in the story and when he did try to log back into Tara's account, he lost access.
- My Immortal was deleted by Fanfiction.net themselves.
- He deleted the fanfictions on XXXmidnitegoffXXX himself. He was afraid of Critics United (a group on Fanfiction.net with a bad reputation for policing the site by mass-reporting users and stories for minor or petty mistakes in their writing) deleting them.
- He planned to write a Twilight fanfiction on Tara's account but never got around to doing it.
One of the questions Sarah asked persistently was why Tara's account was last updated in 2009 despite the fact that Toby claimed he last had access to her account in 2008. He kept avoiding the question and Sarah was left without an answer. This made her suspicious about his authorship claim.
Sarah made a post on Twitter about her conversation with Toby. Afterwards, she received an email from Kennedy, who detailed that she also had her own history investigating authorship claims for My Immortal. Sarah ended up private messaging her on Twitter where she was told by Kennedy that Toby was lying to her about his claim.
As a result of their exchange, Sarah and Kennedy worked together to investigate who Toby really was. In the process, they found out that Toby had over 20 different accounts across Fanfiction.net, Fictionpress, Deviantart, and a Bible RPG forum which he used to fight with himself, create several fanfictions and stories, leave (mostly negative) reviews on them, pretend to hack into other accounts, and make several confessions as the author of My Immortal.
With their investigation, the two accidentally discovered Toby's real life identity. They tried to keep details of his life secret, however, some people found out who Toby really was, including his real name.
With the information they had gathered, Sarah made a theory that Toby may have hacked into Tara's account and is the one responsible for deleting My Immortal. Her main line of evidence is that one of Tara's hackings coincides with the time when XXXmidnitegoffXXX was favorited.
Aftermath[]
After Sarah Z's video on September 29, Toby updated XXXmidnitegoffXXX on October 10. He renamed the account to Toby Alt, uploaded a fanfiction, and wrote in his bio, "BIBLE FANFICTION THEMED POETRY!!!!!!1111". He would upload another fanfiction 3 days later.
He would later be active in the subreddit r/MyImmortalDrama, where people investigate the mysteries surrounding My Immortal, Tara, Raven, and their associates. He would often give whatever he could to the users to aid them in their investigations into people. Some members of the subreddit did not trust him and saw him as unreliable. Many also didn't trust his claim that Dubya is Dublin.
On March 16, 2021, Toby, on his Reddit account, posted a farewell message on r/MyImmortalDrama. He said that he was done with My Immortal and would be moving on from it, encouraging others to do the same. He also left an email where people could contact if they wanted to. With his farewell, his Reddit account was deleted and the Toby Alt account on FFN was updated so that his profile picture was removed and the bio was deleted.
Toby would return several times to the My Immortal community from 2021 onwards to share various details, including more info on his emails with Tara. He frequently alternated between and deleted accounts, often abruptly declaring his exit only to return weeks later. As of May 2022, he is no longer involved with My Immortal.
Other Trollfics[]
Toby is also the author of My Immortal 2: Wake Me Up Inside, a faux My Immortal "sekwel", and The Prayer Warriors. He has stated that he fully regrets both.[2][3]