The Hyatt Regency Crystal City.

>in about 1998,

2001, I believe. It certainly wasn't in 1998; this happened at Katsucon, which wasn't there in '98.

>between a weary and bewildered yours
>truly (who was just in the "I think I may be coming down with
>something" stage of what ended up being an epic bout of budget airline
>syndrome) and a younger and, imagine it, more aggressive Merc.
>
>Who was wearing a T-shirt that said MEGAZONE AND GRYPHON ARE EVIL.
>JUST SAY NO TO EYRIE PRODUCTIONS.

Hey, let the historical record show that the first sentence was on the front and the second was on the back of that t-shirt. It wasn't all on one side. :)

I honestly don't know what I was thinking. Well, no. That's a foul lie. I know exactly what I was thinking, namely, that EPU were the 400-pound gorilla of the anime fanfiction world and I could attract some attention by throwing rocks at them. I may not have been willing to admit that even to myself at the time.

Also let the record show that Megazone was, as I recall, amused to the point he asked me if I had one in his size. I did not. Megazone is a robust man. He could probably have broken me in two by sneezing on me.

>Really.
>
>This is a little like if Reagan had shown up for the Reykjavik summit
>wearing a DEATH TO COMMIES lapel button,

I would bet real money he considered that.

>but surprisingly, I have
>vague and illness-corroded memories of it turning out reasonably all
>right by the end.

It did!

We covered some of this ground back in my "Hey, how you guys doing, great to be here, I'd like to pre-apologize for being an idiot" introduction thread on the forums last May, but to actually discuss things that are relevant to NXE, I recall three things.

Thing the first was Ben being rather forceful on the topic of DJ not being a self-insert, because his track record clearly showed that he wasn't at all shy about not even bothering to file the serial numbers off his author avatars. He was rather irked about it, as I recall, wishing that people would simply accuse him of writing a Sue, which was at least a colorable accusation.

Ben then segued into acting out about thirty seconds worth of "If Ben Hutchins were commanding NERV" for the benefit of the group. The line "Hey, everyone. Hey Misato, Ritsuko, looking good. Let's get this meeting started. I'd like you all to meet my son, Shinji. First item on the agenda, can anyone tell me why I've named my son Shinji?" was uttered.

(In hindsight, it probably should have been obvious you were getting a bit loopy, Chief.)

The second was Ben's firm commitment to the idea that all mission briefings and staff meetings at NERV would end with mandatory tacos. Not voluntary tacos; mandatory tacos.

The third was Ben and everyone within earshot evangelizing (yes, yes, you see what I did there) me about X-Com for awhile.

After that the conversation wandered over to UF for a bit, and then eventually we (there was like a big group of us, I know Zoner and Overstreet were there, pretty sure Doc as well) talked about the WEG Star Wars RPG for like an hour. I tried to convince Ben that Largo would have built himself some Torpedo Spheres to escort the AT&T, sort of a Christmas Ornament style arrangement, wanting the galaxy to look at his set of enormous balls, while Overstreet was firmly of the opinion that aesthetically, Largo was the kind of guy who would just want the one big impressive monolithic thing and cluttering it up with escorts wouldn't be his style.

... dammit, Hutchins. Now I kinda-sorta do want to go back over NXE and do some review work on it. What have you wrought, man?

This has been your bi-yearly "people who were reading fanfiction in the 1990s" retrospective.

-Merc
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