Recently I was reading through one of my old fanfics. S’the one called Character Assassination, it’s a Harry Potter fic, it’s on my AO3. (In it, the Muggle relatives of Dolores Umbridge’s victims plot to kill her.)
I don’t know what to do with it. It’s weird. I wrote it in 2011, and it’s sort of I guess “baby’s first experiences with anything approaching social justice, as told via the medium of Harry Potter fanfic” with a slice of “Wow, the wizarding world FUCKING SUCKS.” But at least one of the characters I suspect is at the very least a stereotype – the ‘black guy whose anger is understandable but is also at the ‘extremist’ end of the spectrum’ trope (think, like Saw from Rogue One) – and I was wondering if I should just make him white, or is that whitewashing your own character?
And also the characters reference Nazis and 9/11 and Islamophobia and I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem… right. Not for a Harry Potter fanfiction. Unless I’m wrong and it is?
No-one really read the fic, which honestly I’m super relived about. I think there’s still a kernel of a good idea so maybe I should rewrite it entirely? I just dunno.