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National Tea Month – Fandom

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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

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​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.

Sampler size tin, tea strainer, mug. (c)2019

EXCELSIOR

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Stan Lee (1922-2018)
It was announced today that Stan Lee, Marvel Legend, co-creator of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and several of The Avengers, including Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, and Falcon as well as Black Panther and Doctor Strange, passed away today at the age of 95, just about eighteen months after his beloved wife, Joan, passed away.

In 2010, he started the non-profit Stan Lee Foundation, which seeks to provide literacy, education, and the arts throughout the United States.

This past weekend, our family was watching Teen Titans Go to the Movies, and we were surprised and delighted to see a cameo from Stan Lee despite this being a DC production. Stan Lee worked at times in his long career for both DC and Marvel, but his long relationship with Marvel is primarily what fans recall. He was also a veteran of World War II, serving in the Signal Corps and the Army Training Film Division. He was inducted into the Signal Corps Association last year (2017). 

We always looked forward to his cameos in the recent Marvel films, and can’t wait to see the next two that are already finished or in post-production.

Stan Lee, may his memory be a blessing.

Fandom Friday – San Diego Comic Con

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​Comic Con is upon us.

For those of us who can’t attend for a variety of reasons, up to and including financial, especially financial, we rely on the Internet to get us through this weekend with only a modicum of spoilers. For the most part, there are no real surprises, and all spoilers are the ones TPTB want to get out their to foment interest in the coming season, which seems to start later and later.

Many of my favorite shows are an important commodity to SDCC as well as various specialty conventions throughout the year – Creation Cons, Walker Stalker, Heroes/Villains Fan Fest, Toronto Comic Con, Fan Expo, NY Comic Con, Emerald City, JIBCon, etc.

The fandom world makes it so that when you lose a character, they don’t disappear from your world like in the old days. We have entertainment magazines, podcasts, apps, teasers, fan sites, and much, much more to get us through the hiatus.

In at least two of my shows, “everyone” died at the end, and for one show, they either died or were trapped in another dimension. How will they resolve it? To be honest, we won’t know until the end of next season, and then they’ll give us another cliffhanger to speculate on for that next hiatus.

Today, the expectations to come out of Comic Con are the Season 8 trailer for The Walking Dead, Season 12 Gag Reel for Supernatural, panels for both as well as panels for Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War and Black Panther, DC’s Justice League, related Lego, videogames, and lots and lots of cosplayers showing off their talents.

Conan O’Brien is even hosting his show from San Diego with guests from the convention.

The best place to get information on the weekend’s events is the Comic Con Front Page

What are you most looking forward to hearing about and seeing?

Fandom Merchandise and Where to Find It

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​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.

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The Post Office, Part 1

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Starting at the top, clockwise: Lapel pin of America Responds stamp, Ornament commemorating 100 Years of Letters to Santa through the US Postal Service, America Responds stamp sheet, Harvey Milk stamp sheet, plastic mailbox to hold stamps or Valentine’s. (c)2016

Starting at the Top, clockwise: Baseball Sluggers, Sunday Funnies, Star Wars, Disney Magic, Super Heroes Chapter Two, Animals, Super Heroes Chapter One, Disney Romance, Star Trek. (c)2016