We Got Moxie

 I'm a pretty obvious enthusiast for weird food, especially weird old-fashioned food.  So when one of my compadres from work brought in four cans of Diet Moxie soda, I couldn't resist trying one in-house and taking another can home to my most excellent spouse.  Moxie, you see, is one of the contenders for "oldest soft drink the in US," up there with Hires Root Beer, Cel-Ray, and Detroit's own Vernor's ginger ale.  Apparently it's featured in Stephen King's books, as it's very much a regional specialty these days.  These four cans originated in Maine and made their way to Michigan courtesy of my co-worker's parents (he's a weird-food guy, too).

The verdict?  Diet Moxie is closer to Dr. Pepper or sarsaparilla than it is a cola.  It tastes like several different flavors of Necco wafer dissolved in soda water with a dash of aspartame added to make things extra gross.  I would actually like it if not for the Nutrasweet (given a choice between no dessert, and dessert made with aspartame, I'm going with nothing), so the spouse and I resolved to track down some cans of the real stuff.

-x-

I have also had Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Soda.  It was good, actually.  Did you know celery used to be an aphrodisiac, one allegedly favored by Louis XV of France?  Put that one down in the plotbunny pile.

Neon Emblem Evangelion

 LMAO off at the fact that other people are interested in a crossover.

See, that's what "Starchild" started as-- a Fire Emblem/EVA fusion.  Only I got really, really sick of dealing with EVAbabble like LCL, progressive knives, sync ratios, and whatever the hell Angels would translate to in an FE mash-up.  So I said, "OK, Mark, throw all that shit out the window and go with what you actually know about," which is spaceflight circa 1961-1972.  And I proceeded to have sheer awesome fun with it.

Anyway, here are some notes for the aborted Neon Emblem Evangelion thingamajig.  They're not necessarily spoilers for "Starchild," though if you've read that you may see how one story draft went into the other.

( Beware. Crazy ahead. )

Basically, it was fucked-up to the point where it was headache-inducing, and it was a great relief to take the damn thing and rework it as "Starchild"-- not least because I no longer had to think about EVA-based physics and biology.