i'm sitting feeling sorry in the Thirsty Dog

A couple of days ago, I had a dream about Eyeshield 21.

It wasn't weird, since ES21 is one of my first and long-lasting fandoms. What happened in the dream though, was super duper weird.

The starring roles were played by Seijuro Shin and Himuro "Maria" Maruko. They were dating.

Even with my strong tendency and love for rarepair and crackship, this is a pairing that never, not even once, in more than a decade in the fandom, crossed my mind.

Like, Shin/Maruko? Shin/Maruko? Shin/Maruko?

The only thing that I could come up with was ... they do look alike?

So, they were walking home, and Maruko was wondering if she should accept an athletic scholarship abroad. Shin encouraged her to do it (hey, at least he was somewhat IC). In the next scene, they were lying on futon in Maruko's living room, in front of the tv. Maruko's granddad(!) was there too. They kept arguing about the scholarship, and her granddad was so annoyed by their voices that he kicked them out of the room. So now these two had to sleep in Maruko's room, where there was, naturally, only one bed.

I couldn't make this up.

Anyway, Maruko ended up going, and the last scene of my dream was Maruko doing sit-ups, smiling and thinking about Shin.

I'm still so curious about where this dream came from.

Day 5: Compare and/or contrast your very first fandom obsession and your very latest fandom obsession.

Very first fandom obsession: Eyeshield 21. Latest fandom obsession: Medium.

Well, one of them is a manga about a high school Japanese student who becomes an American Football athlete, and the other is about an American psychic woman who goes crime-solving. The Venn diagram doesn't really overlap here.

As for similarity, both fandoms are of the "come for X, stay for Y" type of fandoms. ES21 is "come for the cracky humour, stay for the emotional roller-coaster". Medium is "come for the premise, stay for the extremely lovable Dubois family".

Day 3: What's a favorite, or at least memorable fandom meeting/interaction that you've had?

yelp  wrote me this amazing fic for Gen Freeform Exchange 2021. I love it, but I also realised how niche my request was. It was gen, it featured two minor characters that are often overlooked.

So, imagine how excited I was seeing other people enjoying the fic! On top of that, someone created a gorgeous illustration for it!

Day 1: What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?

More time for fannish stuff! I've been WFH since March last year. Before that, I had >2 hours of commute every day, which was so exhausting that I had no energy for anything else but going straight to bed each night. Even on weekends I was still too tired to do much anything.

Since WFH, though, I've been spending most evenings consuming canons, writing, or just logging in to AO3 and DW and keep up with fandoms. This free time is why I managed to reach a couple of milestones: writing my first >5k fic and participating in exchanges for the first time.

In the last year, I also got into new canons and revisited old ones. Of the new ones, the most significant is Watchmen. Of the old ones, I reread Eyeshield 21 (baby's first fandom!) and got around to watch the entirety of Medium!

On Friday, I watched the last two episodes of Medium's final season. Now I feel empty.

I first saw Medium around a decade ago, I think? I watched any episodes that came up on reruns, so not in order and definitely not all episodes. This February I was looking for something light-hearted to watch and picked Medium. (I could've picked Peaky Blinders or The Man in the High Castle, but they were too dark and heavy and I just didn't have the emotional bandwidth).

Medium turns out to be perfect. This pandemic definitely affects that - relentless realism depresses me, sheer escapism irritates me. Medium provides a perfect balance: it has enough mundane realism (especially the Dubois's struggle with money) mixed with my kind of escapism (psychic woman goes crime-solving!).

I didn't expect to be so heavily invested in the show, but well, here I am, moping because I want more.

So apparently the Russian Eyeshield 21 fandom is having an event. There's been a steady stream of new contents uploaded over at AO3, some fanart but mostly fanfics.

And normally I'll be having a field day with it ... but I'm not. I'm just not in the mood to read google translate's kooky translation and try to make sense of it.

Ugly crying every time.