What I meant was that while nerds, fanbases, and divergent subcultures have existed peacefully in the past, they were marginalised as not desirable for the status quo. Nerds would be considered socially awkward, fanbases would get their weekly fanclub meetings and subcultures would at best be ignored and at worst reported…
I'm a pretty big Sonic fan and I'm just as amazed at the weird avenues parts of the fanbase move into. I would say: Mario has a pop-culture penetration of mostly his game appearances and some branded novelties (not counting the live action movie). Mostly his incarnation is exactly the same, as Nintendo has made sure that…