Welcome to the hipster dystopia
The first fully scripted podcast by Maximum Fun, Bubble is the story of the community of Fairhaven, a "deliberate community" developed by Tandem Corp. sealed within a dome to protect it from the terrors of the outside world known only as The Brush. Overall Fairhaven is a pretty decent place to live, full of hipsters, coffee bars, yoga studios, and only the occasional mauling by a venomous imp. Totally cool place to live, or at least survive.
The genre, as mentioned under the page image, is best described as "hipster dystopia", dealing with a lot of themes relevant to the millennial generation (such as the gig economy, sexual awakenings, class imbalance, social media, and reliance on corporations despite seemingly opposing them), all lain against a backdrop of a Death World that mankind can barely cope with and occasionally profit off of.
One season of eight episodes premiered on June 13th, 2018.
Bubble provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: In the podcast the Bitcoin Bro who pesters Morgan on her jog later holds a party where Mitch gets bitten by an imp, in the graphic novel Morgan knocks him out and he’s never seen again. Instead Mitch gets bitten while delivering a burrito to Morgan and Annie’s apartment. Pastor Doug doesn’t appear at all.
- Affectionate Parody: Van is one of hipsters who jump from interest to interest.
- Apocalypse How: It's unknown if the world outside of the deliberate communities has always been the Death World that it is, but given the curated nature of Fairhaven it's safe to assume that some catastrophe turned the world this way.
- Badass Normal: Of the main protagonist group Morgan and Van are probably the least mutated and most effective combatants. Unlike Annie who's largely a noncombatant except when taking some of her drugs and Mitch who's pretty much useless without the Sting.
- Death World: Outside of Fairhaven the world is a nightmarish hell-scape with a blood red sky and marauding beasts that will kill you as soon as look at you. Despite this, the "brush babies", people who grew up out there and were taken into Fairhaven, have some fond memories of the outside.
- Domed Hometown: Fairhaven and other Tandem bubbles.
- Earth That Used to Be Better: Earth is referred to on and off as "a shitshow" but not much is known beyond that.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Mitch becomes a meme called "laserdong" after an unfortunate video of him shooting the Sting from a hand that was holding up his pants.
- Fantastic Drug: Many species of imp have bodily fluids that when properly processed act as hallucinogens, if taken raw they tend to kill or mutate. Annie frequently drains Morgan's kills for product.
- Had to Be Sharp: All the brush people who managed to survive outside the domes, given that daily life involves fighting alien monsters. Even "brush babies" who've gone full hipster like Van are rather badass.
- Hive Mind: The book club after imp blood drips into their wine.
- Hunter of Monsters: Morgan is introduced killing imps that got past the dome out of boredom and for Annie's drugs. Then Tandem blackmails her into testing out their new "Huntr" app.
- Left Hanging: The first season ended with a half—plant Pastor Doug emerging from the planet’s core and taking the stone, while Mitch is in critical condition but Bonnie shows off a room full of Mitch clones. The graphic novel is a bit less dire, with Annie using the stone to heal Mitch after they beat Bonnie up and running off to join the bush people, though Bonnie still has the Mitch clones.
- Lost Colony: The first wave of colonists reverted to a hunter-gatherer state.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: "The Sting" is a beam of light and biological sludge that certain people who survive imp bites can use.
- MegaCorp: Tandem.
- Modern Stasis: Fairhaven is practically a slice of 2010s California transplanted onto a Death World. It's implied that Tandem deliberately engineered it that way.
- NGO Super Power: Tandem Corp. employs most of the people living in Fairhaven and has enough capital to be the sole provider and sustainer of the deliberate communities that they create, giving the this distinct vibe.
- Prehensile Hair: The beards of the beer snobs who drank too much of Van's homebrew. Which form tentacles that consume other people's hair.
- Wrong Assumption: Mitch initially mistakes the party that Chad is throwing and inviting him to as some sort of giant orgy (of the BDSM variety due to the various sharp implements he saw laid out), but in actuality it is a killing party where the participants plan to torture a chained up imp.
