Regarding Race in our Early Artwork

We are no longer using this image and associated images as the visual representation of these characters. In 2015, when we and our friends began the amateur project that would become The Penumbra Podcast, we did not intend to make use of visual artwork, but when the show developed a small fan following near the end of 2016, we were surprised and delighted to discover fanartist Mikaela Buckley’s beautiful original Penumbra character designs and hired her to create our official illustrations. After she left The Penumbra in 2018 to move onto her own projects, the team realized that the show had grown in such a way that the illustrations were no longer “bonus” material, as we had envisioned them, but rather many listeners’ first impression of the characters. Thus, many people understandably assumed that these characters were written to tell stories specifically about POC and that the actors playing the roles in question were also POC. Though that was not our intention, we realize that our early art decisions were misleading to many listeners, and we are sorry to those who felt hurt or betrayed by it. 

When we brought new artists (Sharon Oh for the Juno Steel series and Milo Ellersick for the Second Citadel series) onto the team, we changed our art direction accordingly. We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. 

We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.

If you are interested in supporting podcasts that do tell POC’s stories—and we hope that you are—here are some our team enjoys: 

Adventures in New America (fiction)

Alice Isn’t Dead (fiction)

Janus Descending (fiction)

The Left Right Game (fiction)

The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel (fiction)

Code Switch (non-fiction)

The Nod (non-fiction)

1619 (non-fiction)