#but with Celia from tmagp- her voice actor is white but you have a LOT of ethnically diverse designs out there which I think is very fun

[potato-lord-but-not]

Followed you a long time ago for just how cool your art looks, finally decided to look into the podcast characters you like to draw! I just saw one ask asking if the character Oscar is POC, and I wonder are characters in those podcasts usually unclear in ethnicity, and the fandom can freely headcanon? Like I know if info is clearly very mentioned in the original work or there is official concept art then it would be easy, but I'm really scared if I headcanoned something that is completely different from implied canon info I didn't pick up/ info that showed up in an obscure interview. Do you have any advice in navigating information in podcast fandoms?

Usually with podcasts, you can go off of official art and or descriptions from the podcast. In the case of malevolent, hardly any characters, aside from the eldritch monsters that John likes to describe in detail, have a solid description of their looks. that’s why you get so many different variations of Noel and Oscar. Ofc there are context clues that can help you inform your design choices (or just context. like Oscar’s Scottish accent and the Butcher’s Irish accent. he may even have been described as being Irish but idk that’s besides the point, you can tell).

But even then you can play with it, like how I made Oscar mixed Scottish and Jamaican. And honestly! sometimes you can ignore it! like with Gordon from red valley, who I already had a design I liked before he was described as being pale and even implied to look white. but like I said ! you can have fun with it !

I also sometimes check voice actors, because in some instances you can’t tell someone’s ethnicity from their voice alone, and I’d hate to misinterpret their character because I couldn’t pick up on that. that’s more so a concern when the voice actor is POC tho. With malevolent tho it’s all done by Harlan, who is white, so I think headcanoning characters as different ethnicities is more important, and also way more fun.

Oh also! fandom wikis are a good place to double check. cus they’d definitely have something like that you may have missed- like something from an interview or the character’s full name, which can sometimes indicate their ethnicity ( like Parker Yang from malevolent, only shows up as a corpse in the show but important enough to Arthur that he’s still a fan favorite to make content about)

ghugh I’m rambling- I’d say the majority of the time you’re free to do whatever, just be open to change your design if descriptions come up later on (I’d say more importantly if they’re described to be POC, cus like with Gordon I think my design for him with more Afro centric features looks way cooler and feels more like him than anything I could come up with that would be more canon compliant). Also you can go off common fanon designs, but those are just mutually agreed upon and it’s not wrong to go against that. Like with the Magnus Archives there are no official designs and they let the people make whatever designs they please.

OKAY IG TLDR- do what you want, keep your ears open for character descriptions when listening, double check with character wikis or their voice actors, don’t be afraid to make more POC characters even of the cast is played by mostly white people because the more diverse cast the more fun and interesting your art will be.