If elected, T will ensure that all fans, no matter what they believe, will be able to walk around with Dakimakura in public, without being ridiculed. If Z is elected, only the true fans will be allowed to follow their manifest destiny in the world of fandom. G eats a sandwich. Pandemonium ensues? This week, we're talking about how far fandom has (or hasn't) come into the mainstream and what any of that means! All this in 20 minutes or less! **Sources** - Opening music, ["Diggin' til the Very End"](http://music.djcutman.com/album/volume-iv) by Dj CUTMAN used under [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) - Ending music, ["Bounty Hunter"](http://music.djcutman.com/album/volume-iv) by Dj CUTMAN used under [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) ...
Our fandom journey this season takes us all the way to Japan to talk about fans of the world's most famous _virtual_ pop idol: Hatsune Miku! How did such a relatively niche thing become a global phenomenon? And who is pulling the strings?? Next week, we're off to Mexico to talk about fans of that exciting sport: Lucha Libre! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **Origins:** Hatsune Miku is a VOCALOID. What is a VOCALOID? A VOCALOID is a singing synthesizer application developed by YAMAHA. It was an international effort to create a synthesizer to act as a replacement singer. The original VOCALOID engine was release in 2004. Hatsune Miku was the second VOCALOID released as part of the VOCALOID2 engine and the first member of the Character Vocal Series created by Crypton Future Media Inc. Her name literally means "the first sound from the future." She is also a humanoid persona: a 16-year-old girl with long turquoise twintails and her voice is modelled after Saki Fujita. In September of 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported over 57 million yen (Over a half-million USD) in sales for the Hatsune Miku software, and she has recorded over 100 000 songs. She has since been portrayed in many different media, and is also a Japanese pop idol, among other things. [// A SPREAD IN JAPANESE PLAYBOY??? ]: # **Size of Fandom:** The vocaloid subreddit has over 15000 subscribers, and the Hatsune Miku subreddit has over 2600. The actual number of fans is probably somewhere in the low hundreds of thousands though: > She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s immensely popular…and she’s not real. Hatsune Miku the virtual popstar creation of Crypton Future Media in Japan, has sold out another concert. Her much anticipated second ...
What if you only had 60 minutes to _escape from this podcast_? To unravel the puzzles of _Crimson Room_ or the (surprisingly) lucrative business of locking people in a room? Well, you'd probably fail (but so would we). Listen in as we talk about fans of an even more puzzling experience: Escape Rooms! Next week, we wrap up the season with a Nickscast favourite (and a special guest) as we talk about fans... of the _Legend of Zelda_ series! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **Origins and history:** Escape rooms, also known as _room escape_, _escape games_, _escape the room_, and so on, are physical adventure games where participants are required to solve a variety of puzzles using riddles, clues, and hints contained in the room within a fixed time limit. Sometimes, the rooms are thematically linked (e.g. a museum heist) or they can be a series of abstract puzzles with no linking theme. The concept of an escape room is heavily inspired by the similarly named video game genre where players are required to escape a room by pointing and clicking around a room to exploit their surroundings. The earliest example of this style of game is likely the 1988 text adventure, _Behind Closed Doors_, where the player has to escape a restroom, but some better known examples might include _MOTAS_ (Mystery Of Time And Space, 2001), _Crimson Room_ (2004), and _Viridian Room_. Arguably... fans of escape rooms are fans of this genre of video games, but that remains to be seen! The first escape room was created in Japan by SCRAP in 2007 and the concept later spread to other parts of Asia, then Europe... then, the world! There are now almost ...
