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 ...
“Critical Role is an American web series in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The show started streaming in March 2015, partway through the cast's first campaign” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role) \ \ Fandom Facts * Holy **crap** Critical Role is popular: is is the most popular it has ever been (aside from March 2019), but also, its popularity coincides with a [massive increase in popularity in Dungeons and Dragons](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fg%2F11clghjr0y,%2Fm%2F026q9,%2Fm%2F04dzk1_) (but _not _Pathfinder) * There is a site entirely devoted to [stats about the critical role game](https://www.critrolestats.com): d20 rolls, puns, lore, you name it! * “After the split from Geek and Sundry, the cast announced a fundraiser for an animation of the popular Whitebriar arc. The campaign asked for $750,000 but reached $1 million within an hour, ending with a record-breaking $11.3 million in donations.” ### First Impressions **T:** I honestly had very little impression of what CR actually was. My only exposure was through following ItsGinnyDi on Twitter and seeing various Jester-related cosplay (I actually forgot that the show’s premise was voice-actors playing Dungeons and Dragons)! I might have seen some humourous animatics with Jester too… but when G said that the episodes are like three hours long and unedited, I was skeptical. **Z:** I think I first heard about this from G, and I thought it sounded kind of like The Adventure Zone. And that was kind of it. Not because I don’t find D&D interesting, but instead because I felt like I’d heard The Adventure Zone and I was good on the recorded tabletop RPG playing front. Aside from that, though, it seemed to me like it was kind of like the Game Grumps ...
What happens when you take strong subtext, immortal beings, and over forty years of writing? It's not fanfic, but it is a fascinating history of the Vampire Chronicles fandom! **History and Origins:** > The Vampire Chronicles is a series of novels by American writer Anne Rice that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century. > > — [Wikipedia - The Vampire Chronicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampire_Chronicles) The book series encompasses 16 separate novels (including crossovers) from 1976 to 2018, and has been adapted into films—Interview with the Vampire in 1994, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, and Kirsten Dunst; and The Queen of the Damned in 2002—and as of July 2018, it was announced that a TV series adaptation of the novels is in development by Hulu. **Search Data:** Interest in _The Vampire Chronicles_ [has been on a slow decline since 2004](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F02f5gv,%2Fm%2F02p76f9,%2Fm%2F0mb0). The series enjoyed a small lift in interest around November 2009 which buoyed interest in the series for several years afterwards until July 2018 where interest spiked again (most likely due to the Hulu's announcement). The top ten countries differ slightly depending on whether or not you're looking at the entire series, or _Interview with the Vampire_: - _The Vampire Chronicles_: Spain, Romania, Hungary, Mexico, Chile, Philippines, Uruguay, United States, Poland, Venezuela (Canada is 13th). - _Interview with the Vampire_: Mexico, Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Chile, China, Latvia (United States is 20th, Canada is 23rd). [//2005 Anne Rice Spike - Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt]: # **Fanac Fast Facts:** - Archive of our own has [almost 1000 works related to the Vampire Chronicles](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Vampire%20Chronicles%20-%20All%20Media%20Types/works) - Top 3 Categories: M/M (657), Gen (215), ...
