TMA fanon character designs are all based on stereotypes. Every single one of them.
Well, yeah.
And then there’s Angry At Everything Melanie. I feel bad for this treatment she got.
True. I was gonna mention her too but I got tired. And Peter Lukas being made into this huge gruffy bearded guy to contrast the fanon design of evil twink Elias. Feels like people just googled “sea captain” and ran with it - again a stereotype just not a harmful one
Also referring to your tags: I wouldn’t have such a problem with the differences between fanon and canon if people actually separated them. But a lot of fans act as if fanon is sacred (esp concerning the designs but yknow. Personalities too)
To be honest, before interacting with the fandom, I imagined Peter to look basically like how they draw Martin.
There’s also something to be said Michael and Helen, but I’m not familiar enough with how Helen is presented to say anything about it.
The Michael design is actually close to canon I think. Long, curly blonde hair and weird, blotchy hands are all in the podcast description. He’s made a twink probably because it fit with the image of him looking like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. Helen however…
One of the only canon elements of her description is that she’s a Tory, which if i understand correctly is a British conservative. In fanon she’s made black despite it having no actual ties to her character, so it’s possibly just for aesthetic reasons (so that the Distortions contrast). Being black and simultaneously against multiculturalism and immigration… it doesn’t really add up from a logical point of view. I mean it could work, but only if fans actually acknowledged that aspect of her character cause from what I’ve gathered it’s totally overlooked.