National Tea Month – Fandom

One of my favorite tea brands and companies is Adagio Teas. They have all the regular teas that you love plus accessories and gifts, but they have a special section on fandom teas.

I started my collection with gifts from friends, and not every tea has agreed with my palate, but they’ve opened me up to try new things.

I have two favorites in particular – The Walking Dead Daryl and Supernatural Survival Tea. I tried the sample tins, and reordered the bulk bags.

There is also an option to mix and create your own blend, which I have yet to try; it is definitely on my to-do list.

In recent days, I’ve been enjoying a morning cup of tea, and I hope to continue with my fandom favorites.

Fandom Sample from Adagio Teas. Represented are Harry Potter, The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, Supernatural, and The Avengers: Civil War.
(c)2021

The Walking Dead Daryl sample tin with my tea strainer and favorite cup.
(c)2021

National Tea Month – Adagio’s Fandom Tea Blend

Today’s Tea:

The Walking Dead Daryl

This tea consists of mambo, honeybush vanilla, mocha nut mate, cocoa nibs, and cloves. This blend is perfect both for a morning, get ready for work drink or a late afternoon treat. It’s a dark blend that works with and without milk. (I prefer without.) The cocoa nibs give it a bit of sweetness, but adding sugar perfects the flavor in my opinion.

This was a gift from a close friend. It came in a sampler box with four other teas from four other fandoms. Also included in this custom made set were Loyalty House Blend (Harry Potter/Hufflepuff), Supernatural Survival Tea (Supernatural), Donna Noble (Doctor Who), and Civil War Remedy Tea (Captain America). What was so very funny about the Civil War one was the box was a light sepia color and had a picture of an old-fashioned medicine bottle. When I didn’t look very closely at it, it took me until I actually tried it to realize that it wasn’t tea in retrospect of the American Civil War, but of the Captain America movie subtitled Civil War.

Each tea has its own unique flavor that is ver reminiscent of the fandom and characters it is made to represent. These are all loose teas, but for those new to loose tea, there are make your own tea bags, tea balls, tea strainers, and other methods for brewing loose tea.

Fandom teas is something of a specialty of Adagio, although they also offer all of the regular teas and tea blends that you might be looking for as well as accessories and teaware. Their teas are reasonably priced as is shipping and they run sales throughout the year. It’s definitely worth a visit to their website to see what interests you.

Cosplay – Candy – Creepy Crawlies

Yesterday was Halloween, and for those of us with children this is second in planning and importance only to Christmas. I’ve always loved Halloween. I like getting dressed up, I like decorating, I like theme desserts and meals, and the specialness of the different time of the year.

I have been somewhat lazy in the last couple of years, and my daughter discovered my holiday boxes. She has taken it upon herself to drag them up from the basement, and make the house, inside and out, look magical and perfectly balanced for the holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas. And I hate to admit, because I was really good at it, but she is better. She’s faster, she’s creative, she thinks outside the box, and it’s just a beautiful display.

This year, her costume was the the 13th Doctor as portrayed by Jodie Whittaker. There were some things that she wanted, and needed to buy, but there were others that I just refused – no to $20 yellow suspenders (“but I’ll wear them more than once,” and she probably would) and I said no to the $30 new sonic screwdriver, and she borrowed my boots that coincidentally are almost exactly the same at the Doctor’s. For the sonic screwdriver, she spent $2 on orange sparkly lights from Target and used aluminum foil and built herself a sonic screwdriver, pictured below.

My son grabbed his Flash t-shirt and ring, and went to school as Barry Allen, the Flash’s alter-ego. He has his own wonderful way of being creative and creating costumes and decorations from what he already has. I’m glad that they’re both so independent minded and creative.

My cosplay was a riff on the one I did in 2016. In 2016, I saw an everwidening chasm towards the vilification of journalists, and it concerned me. I’m a strong proponent of free speech and a free press. They are so important to our country, to our ideals, to our democracy. This Halloween I had intended to be a professor from the Harry Potter world, a Hufflepuff, of course. And then the President continued with the enemy of the people rhetoric, Gianforte is running for re-election (google Ben Jacobs, journalist), Bob Woodward published a very frightening look at the Trump White House (and he and Carl Bernstein are personal heroes of mine), and then The Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi walked into a Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey, and never walkied out. He was murdered, assassinated, but not just that, the level of response from the White House and from the Republican side of Congress appalled me, so I thought it was important to take a stand, especially this week before Election Day.

My Pin Collection – 1

This is post 1, but it is only a small selection of the pins that I’ve collected over the years.

L-R, Top to bottom: Supernatural’s Devil’s Trap, prison food, The Walking Dead’s Michonne, Supernatural’s Anti-Possession Symbol, Just one more episode, Star Labs from The Flash, piss me off, not nailed down, Harry Potter’s Hufflepuff House. (c)2017

L-R, Top to bottom: Green Lantern symbol, Free Comic Book Day Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Doctor Who’s The Tardis, Guardians of the Galaxy’s Groot, Batman, GOTG’s Groot, Green Lantern symbol, The Flash symbol, Doctor Who’s Starry Night Tardis. (c)2017

Fandom Merchandise and Where to Find It

As I look at my Christmas gifts, and my recent birthday gifts before that, I am struck, but not terribly surprised by how much relates to the variety of fandoms and pop culture things I am involved in. Many of these things have stayed with me since my teen years, to the point that I no longer participate, but they still hold an important place in my heart. The one example that comes to mind was my getting a new messenger bag: ThinkGeek’s Bag of Holding. It’s so glorious that I’ll be writing a separate review of it. My son was a little annoyed that I would be getting it – it was a little expensive, but with the thirty percent discount that was offered, it was well worth it. He was still a little annoyed and exclaimed, “You don’t even like Dungeons & Dragons!” I think I may have snorted. I was momentarily speechless.

I don’t like Dungeons & Dragons?! Do you even know me?! I had been playing Dungeons & Dragons since high school. In our school cafeteria, we would use the half-pint milk container as a six-sided die. Every weekend in college, we’d get together in the blue room to play. Dave, our DM (dungeon master) would not let us have any alcohol. We got stupid. We were probably the only group on a Saturday night not drunk. We would play all weekend, talking time only to sleep before the next night’s game.

I met my college roommate in a study hall through a conversation about character sheets.

My oldest son used my original books when he and his friends played Dungeons & Dragons.

Not a fan?! Harumph!

Glancing at The Walking Dead trivia box, the Hufflepuff necklace, the Supernatural zipper bag, the Star Trek 50th anniversary gold ornament with sound, I saw just how many fandom things there are, and I also realized how difficult it was to get some of them.

Tea for Tuesday

A belated birthday gift from my bestie! Fandom blends from Adagio Teas. My first choice for this morning is The Walking Dead’s Daryl blend.

The blend consists of Mambo, Honeybush Vanilla, Mocha Nut Mate, Cocoa Nibs, and Cloves.

I use about a teaspoon and pour the boiling water over my strainer. I give it a taste and almost always add sugar, two teaspoons. With the mocha and cocoa, I think it would be very nice with a bit of milk, but our house is short of milk at the moment.

What I love most about these teas is that they almost always taste like their description on the tin.

This blend is smooth, enough caffeine to perk me up when I didn’t really want to be perked up, but morning has come, so… The cloves, vanilla, and cocoa give it a hint of the holidays, but not out of place in the cold of January.

Despite being really strong flavors – cloves, vanilla, and cocoa – they are very subtle in this blend, and no aftertaste that I sometimes get with flavored tea. This is also a black tea base, which is my personal preference.

Reviews from at least four more fandom blends to come including The Avengers, Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter.

Can’t wait to try them all!

Fandom and Smart Tech

In Vintage Supernatural, I mentioned how for me, and many others who are fans or in fandom, have a broader relationship with the source material. In other words, when the television show ends for the week, it doesn’t always end for the viewer.

In the case of Supernatural, I am often also on Tumblr, reading the liveblogging and commentary from two of my friends there. It gives the feel of a viewing party, hearing (or reading) others’ exclamations of surprise, their mocking of something unbelievable. They/we applaud the writer, and gush, and we have other fans to gush with. Since I’m the only one in my family who watches Supernatural, this gives me a less solitary experience, and makes it more enjoyable to me.

When I watch The Walking Dead, I watch with my family, so we have that camaraderie and interaction throughout and after the show. I also go online and either read, write or enjoy the new gifsets that seemingly appear as if by magic minutes after the scenes air.

In Vintage Supernatural, I talked about googling the Lizzie Borden House, and discovering its existence.

A similar thing happened in last week’s Doctor Who episode, The Zygon Inversion, they mentioned a town where the action was taking place: Truth of Consequences, New Mexico. It was named after the game show according to Clara, the Doctor’s Companion.

I snorted. Can’t be true. I paused a mere second before googling it, and guess what? It’s real. It exists. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I learned something new.

I’ve found that I’ve been searching for terms and actors’ names and previous works while watching the show in real time. I don’t have to sit and wonder who is that guy fore the entirety of the hour. I wait for the commercial, pull out my Kindle, and hit the Google page. I avoid spoilers, but I get my curiosity satisfied without distracting me from the current show.

We simultaneously complain and applaud new technology, but using smart tech for series watching can really enhance the experience and introduce another level of fandom interaction that you haven’t realized you were missing.

I love it!

It’s the best of both worlds.

For anyone else who’s interested in getting another perspective of their favorite show, here are a few of my resources:

Google
Wikipedia
imdb (Internet Movie Database)
Tumblr (search for your television show)

You can also go to the website and specific page for the series you are interested in.

Nigel Terry (1945-2015)

This is one of those losses that can only be described as devastating. So sad to hear this. As I said in a comment earlier, Nigel Terry was one of my favorites of all time, and the main reason I looked forward to the television series, Covington Cross (which I still have on videotape somewhere). Excalibur was a favorite movie; he will always be King Arthur in my head. He was also recently (2008?) on new Who in the episode The Doctor’s Daughter.

He will be sorely missed.