Today, however, we are examining one of our blends NOT developed by Friday. This tea was created by our shop teen, Teacup, also a polysynesthete. We interviewed Teacup about the inspiration behind The Modern Pro-TEA-theus.
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| Portrait of a Young Blender |
Friday: Teacup, hello!
Teacup: Helloooo
Friday: Can you tell us why you chose Frankenstein as subject material?
Teacup: We were working on the Horror Collection, and so I felt like having a good Frankenstein tea would be really really beneficial to the collection, especially because it's like a "classic horror monster," and I thought it would be fun to do that. Also I had several ideas for it.
Friday: Tell me about the tea!
Teacup: The tea is a funky, yet sweet and floral taste, very much like Frankenstein's monster. At first sniff you smell the funkiness and it's very much undead. As you drink it, some of the pretty blossoms come out and the flavor really shows the character of Frankenstein's monster.
Friday: What is the moment that most jumped out at you in this story?
Teacup: For me it was when he finds life and is starting to enjoy it. He picks a couple flowers and smells them and enjoys them, and he sees fire. He sees butterflies and spiders (not all the life is glorious, I mean...spiders). And he sees a family and he sees that life is beautiful.
Friday: What do you want people to imagine as they are drinking this tea?
Teacup: I want them to imagine an opening flower that was an ugly bud, just hideous, flippin terrifying. When it opens it's glorious. Beautiful and dangerous and elegant. It changes so much.
Friday: Can you tell me why you picked the ingredients you did?
Teacup: The combination of Houjicha (roasted tea) and black tea reminds me of dead things, but in a beautiful way? Like when a sunflower is dying, that's when it's most pretty. Or when flowers are hanging upside down to dry, that's when they're most pretty. That's the beauty I think of when I'm thinking of this combination.The rose is mainly the floral for the romantic imagery of picking a flower for the first time ever and never having seen a flower before.
Friday: When you read the story, did it feel like a horror story to you?
Teacup: No, it didn't. So I read the graphic novel because the actual book book was too heavy for me at that age. When I read it, there were definitely parts that felt a little bit scary, but it didn't feel like a horror story. There were parts that were more sad-scary, if that makes sense? With a scary movie, it feels like it's designed to give you that "eeeuuugh" feeling. This book felt more like a sad, spooky story. It felt more sad than scary.
Friday: Are there any other thoughts you want to share?
Teacup: The reason we named it the Modern Pro-TEA-theus is for the pun. That's it. We could have named it literally anything else, but we named it this because of the flippin pun. If that doesn't tell you what this tea shop really is, then I don't know what will. We're a bunch of nerds who like making puns, that's it.
Thank you, Teacup!
The Modern Pro-TEA-theus can be found in-store and online, and is one of several Teacup-created teas in our shop.
