This week, we're batting our best and bowling for the fences as we talk about fans of that popular English sport, Cricket! Why is it so popular? Is it really as slow as they say? Stay tuned! Next week, there'll be less qq and more pew-pew when we dive into fans of StarCraft! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **Origins:** Cricket is in some ways, not dissimilar from more familiar (to North Americans) sports such as baseball: > Cricket is a ... played between two teams of eleven players each on a cricket field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard-long pitch with a target called the wicket (a set of three wooden stumps topped by two bails) at each end. Each phase of play is called an innings during which one team bats, attempting to score as many runs as possible, whilst their opponents field. Depending on the type of match, the teams have one or two innings apiece and, when the first innings ends, the teams swap roles for the next innings. > > — [Wikipedia - Cricket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket) It is unclear when the sport began, but it is likely to have started around the middle of the 16th century and the first international matches took place in the second half of the 19th century (with the sport having grown globally as part of the expansion of the British Empire). Interestingly enough, the first international match took place between the United States and Canada (of all places) in 1844. **Most Active:** Unlike many recent fandoms we're explored, interest in cricket seems to be increasing! [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F09xp_,%2Fm%2F018jz) indicates a slow increase in interest in the sport since 2004, with a few spikes recently corresponding to the Cricket ...
[// Pregenerate link to episode ahead of time: - clicktotweet.com- sharelinkgenerator.com]: # This week, we're talking about the who, what, and why of Chiptunes! A few parts music theory, a few parts video games, and a lot of speculation! Next week, Nier, far, wherever you are, we know that your heart will be... drifting out in space, ready to take down aliens? We'll be talking about the Nier series! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **History and Origins:** Chiptune (also known as chip music or 8-bit music) is a style of synthesized electronic music which is made for a programmable sound generator (PSG) though the term is also often used for music made in the _tracker_ format, which is intended to sound like PSG-created music. This music is often composed from 'simple' wave forms such as pulse waves, square waves, triangle waves, and sawtooth waves. Although real-time synthesized has been possible since as early as 1951, it wasn't until the golden age of video arcade games (late 70s and early 80s) that chiptune music began to appear in video games (and by extension, reach the masses). Of particular note, artists such as Yello Magic Orchestra had started sampling video game music in the late 70s which had a major influence on music that would later come in the 8- and 16-bit eras. Various advances in computing, such as frequency modulation synthesis (FM synthesis), MIDI, and sample-based sound synthesis furthered chiptune music up until the end of the 1980s where chiptune music declined in popularity until a resurgence in interest in the mid-2000s with mainstream music leveraging the artform again (for example, _Girl_ by Beck, or _On Top_ by the Killers). We could likely have a whole episode ...
We got a stereo, you just got to turn the knob and baby we'll go as far as we can... but we're not garbage men. This week, we have special guest, [Matthew Tyler Di Leo (aka SonicMTD)](https://twitter.com/SonicMTD) to help talk us through the fandom of Scott Pilgrim... fans. Next week, we have [Jen Frankel, author of the Undead Redhead series](http://www.jenfrankel.com/) to chat with us about fans of speculative fiction! ## Where can I learn more about Matt? If you'd like to hear more from Matt or check out his work, you're in luck! - City in Wires, [his band](https://www.facebook.com/CityInWires/) - His [YouTube](https://youtube.com/SonicMTD) - His [Twitter](https://twitter.com/SonicMTD) - His [Facebook](https://facebook.com/SonicMTD) ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **History and Origins:** > Scott Pilgrim is a series of graphic stories by Bryan Lee O'Malley. The series is about Canadian Scott Pilgrim, a slacker and part-time musician who lives in Toronto, Ontario and plays bass guitar in a band. He falls in love with American delivery girl Ramona Flowers, but must defeat her seven evil exes in order to date her. > > The series consists of six digest size black-and-white volumes, released between August 2004 and July 2010, by Portland-based independent comic book publisher Oni Press. It was later republished by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins. Full-colour hardback volumes, coloured by Nathan Fairbairn, were released from August 2012 to April 2014. > > A film adaptation of the series titled Scott Pilgrim vs. the World starring actor Michael Cera in the title role was released in August 2010. A video game adaptation developed by Ubisoft for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade was released the same month. > > — [Wikipedia - Scott Pilgrim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim) **Search Data:** As far as Google trends data goes, Scott Pilgrim looks like a flash ...
