#with the epicenter of those clusterfucks varying between solely the podcast's fault and solely the fandom's fault but mostly lying in

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

Hey! After seeing all That with the birdname terf going down and what you said, I, the person who submitted Cyrille (from 5 Minuten Harry Podcast) wanna clarify some stuff:

First off, I'm trans. Maybe not be that relevant but let's establish that. And yes, I do condemn JKR, don't think anyone should give her money and frankly even frown upon most fanworks that weren't started before it became widely known.

Secondly, the podcast does in fact criticise JKR (tho unfortunately not for the stuff that matters) very frequently and the creator has gotten in legal trouble with her and Warner Bros before (over copyright, she made an extremely popular abridged HP series when I and most of the german tumblr population were teens and some pre-teens) so even though she sometimes pays lip service to them, we can probably take that with a grain of salt.

Thirdly, outside the podcast itself, coldmirror (the pod's creator) has criticised JKR more than on it, including calling her an idiot or something to that effect for "everything she's doing right now" back when her being a terf became widely known tho she didn't get more specific than that. Also, the podcast started wayyy before then, it started so long ago, Alan Rickman was still alive. There's even a mention of his then recent death a few episodes in since coldmirror had a major crush on him for decades and he's how she got into HP. The format doesn't really allow for changing the subject matter after the fact and it was massively popular from the get go, coldmirror's most successful project in years, possibly even outshining that abridged series by now and so I get she was incentivised to continue it.

Fourthly, coldmirror herself is very much a problematic fave and we all know it. Due to the massive influence that abridged series and all of her later works had on my generation, we do still love her, but we know she's far from flawless. Even so, all the times after JKR's terfness became known that coldmirror mentioned spending money on HP stuff for research (eg different versions of the movie that show different parts of the screen since the whole podcast is about overanalyzing every frame and background details) she has always bought it second hand. She did go to Wizarding World pretty early on and took pics of props etc there but that was before. Still tho, we know she's not that great a person, even tho we all love her. And that's not just me talking, I dare you to find me three germans above the age of 20 on this site who dislike coldmirror. It'll be very difficult.

So, was it a great submission? No. Is the podcast problematic? Yes. However,

Lastly, Cyrille was never intended as a serious submission. Iirc it was very late, I had submitted like five in a row and I got a little silly with it. I did not intend for her to end up in the tournament, I 100% counted on her being disqualified and simply you mentioning her as a little shout out to my fellow germans. I think I mentioned something to that effect in the submission but it appears I was not unambiguous enough about her not being a serious submission. Sorry about that.

(Oh, and the playing with gender part wasn't intentional btw, coldmirror read the name Cyrille, assumed it to be feminine and from that sprang the fictionalised Cyrille, even tho the real Cyrille is a man. She did acknowledge this way, way later in the podcast.)

None of this ofc is all that relevant to the discussion regarding the bird terf, but I figured you, personally, might appreciate the extra context.

(In response to this post for those seeking context.)

Don't worry, you were perfectly clear about it being a joke, but including it I only had 62 characters for the bracket (and I wanted 64) so I seeded it in last place behind my own choices.

And yeah, pretty much every podcast (and book and television show and-) I have at least some issues with, and some of those issues are large enough that I no longer derive enjoyment from the show despite liking other aspects. I think recognizing the "problematic" aspects of art is necessary to have any useful or fun conversations about it, and acting like everything must have both ideological and executed purity only results in people ignoring, denying, or trying to hide the issues that are there. Which personally I find boring, frustrating, and can often ruin my enjoyment much faster than the problematic aspects themselves.

Thank you for submitting the characters, and for your insight into 5 Minuten Harry Podcast!