How does such a small franchise maintain a strong fanbase almost thirty* years later? And just what is it about fuzzy pickles and odometers that reel people into the games in the first place? ## Episode Outline ### Fandom Facts **History and Origins:** > The Mother series ... consists of three role-playing video games: the 1989 Mother for the Famicom, the 1994 Mother 2, known as EarthBound outside of Japan, for the Super NES, and the 2006 Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance. Written by Shigesato Itoi and published by Nintendo, and featuring game mechanics modeled on the Dragon Quest series, the Mother series is known for its sense of humor, originality, and parody. The player uses weapons and psychic powers to fight hostile, everyday objects, aliens and brainwashed people. Signature elements of the series include the lighthearted plots, the battle sequences with psychedelic backgrounds, and the "rolling HP meter": as player health ticks down like an odometer (damage doesn't instantly subtract HP), players can outrun the meter to heal before dying. While the franchise is popular in Japan, in the United States, it is best associated with the cult following behind EarthBound. > — [Wikipedia - EarthBound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_(video_game_series)) **Names** Sometimes fandoms have a definitive name (e.g. "Whovians") other fandoms... struggle. Here are some of the names that [the community has come up with](https://earthboundcentral.com/2012/03/what-are-earthbound-fans/): - Starmen - Motherheads - Momma's Boys - Mother Lovers - EarthBounders - Boundies - Eagleandians **Search Data:** In a surprise twist, unlike most of the fandoms that we have covered on the show, [EarthBound fandom has been almost constant](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F01282w,%2Fm%2F01s7_9) (it's only decreased a little bit since 2004). The most notable spike in interest occured in October 2008, which likely coincides with the release of the unofficial English fan translation ...
This week, we make sure that everything is cleared by the ethics committee before we talk about SCP-001. That's right we're talking about fans of the SCP Foundation! ...And that's it for this season! Main episodes will be back in two weeks, but stay tuned because next week we have a special introduction to the podcast, our first regular minisode! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **History and Origins:** The SCP Foundation (Secure, Contain, Protect) is a fictional organization launched in 2008 that is the subject of web-based collaborative writing project of the same name. Stories from the project often describe situations that violate natural law, and are written in an academic, scientific writing style. The series of stories started with SCP-173 on 4chan's paranormal _/x/_ board. The SCP Foundation has hundreds of different stories about various SCPs and the SCP Foundation itself, and has also inspired many spin-off works such as _SCP - Containment Breach_. **Search Data:** Interest in the SCP Foundation [follows a strange trend](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fg%2F1q2xhks7f). From 2004 to January 2012, interest was on a steady decline. However, after that point there was a sharp increase in interest followed by a mostly upward trend in interest with spikes in May 2012 (Possibly Markiplier playing _Containment Breach_ ), August 2014, and April 2017 (Series IV opens up?). The top 10 countries, by search volume are: Japan, South Korea, Poland, United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan. **Fan Demographics:** Fortunately, the [SCP Foundation website holds an annual community survey](http://www.scp-wiki.net/2017-survey-results). Here are some interesting demographics and data points from the over 6000 responses for the 2017 survey. - _Age_ : The largest group is those 15-19 (~ 50%), then 20-24 (~ 21%), and under 15 (~ 11%) - _Gender_ ...
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 ...
