Ivy Blossom

It was a picture of a ship—a ship sailing nearly straight towards you. Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide open mouth. She had only one mast and one large, square sail which was a rich purple. The sides of the ship—what you could see of them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended—were green. She had just run up to the top of one glorious blue wave, and the nearer slope of that wave came down towards you, with streaks and bubbles on it. She was obviously running fast before a gay wind, listing over a little on her port side. (By the way, if you are going to read this story at all, and if you don't know already, you had better get it into your head that the left of a ship when you are looking ahead, is port, and the right is starboard.) All the sunlight fell on her from that side, and the water on that side was full of greens and purples. On the other, it was darker blue from the shadow of the ship.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 lbs boiled yellow potatoes

1 cup local milk

1/2 cup local 35% Cream

6 whole eggs

1 cup diced ham

1 cup sliced cherry tomatoes

2 cups cleaned spinach

1 scotch bonnet pepper or jalapeno sliced thinly (optional)

1 cup grated local mozzarella

3 tablespoons salt - 2 for the water to cook the potatoes and 1 for the egg and milk mixture

1 tablespoon black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped chives

2 tablespoons local salted butter

Method

Add your potatoes to a large stock pot and fill with cold water. Add salt and allow to boil until fork tender. Once ready strain water and allow to cool for a few minutes

Preheat oven to 350°F

Grease a large cake tin thoroughly with butter and add your now cooled boiled potatoes.

Using the back of a cup gently press down on the potatoes to form your crust.

Add spinach, diced ham, and tomatoes

In a large bowl whisk together milk, cream and eggs. Then carefully pour this into your shell.

Top this with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, hot pepper slices, and mozzarella.

Place this on top of a baking sheet and bake on the middle rack for 45-50 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before slicing.

Kindness does not require passivity or social grace. Kind characters can stick to their guns and stand up for what they believe in. They can yell and scream and curse. Kind characters can be angry and disappointed when others do not show them the same compassion they show others. Kind characters can be tactless, oblivious. They may be rough around the edges (but have a heart of gold).

Kind characters often value justice and strive to stay connected to their humanity, even when the things they must do threaten to strip it away from them. Kind characters sometimes have to make difficult choices. Sometimes, kind characters even behave in a way that is unkind.

Kindness is complex, and it’s only a single solitairy characteristic that contributes to a character’s personality. While it can absolutely present as soft-spoken, honest, and open-hearted (my personal FAVE), it certainly doesn’t have to be.

I am so sorry to have to tell you all about this. None of you, I suspect, will ever have any idea how sorry.

I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I'm not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you'll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a bad dream, but it shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I'll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear.

Meanwhile in the short term I'm very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what's happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, "P expenses". ETA: Please choose the Stripe payment option at Ko-Fi rather than PayPal, as PP seems to be having some kind of obscure difficulties at the moment. I have disconnected PayPal until this is resolved.

My love will wait for me, I know, however long it takes. He's never minded waiting. (the saddest smile) My job now is to make sure he's not forgotten while I go on.

Meanwhile, can I just say to all of of you: I thank you all ahead of time for all the support and fondness for Peter that I know so many of you will express. He'd blush over it, I know. (He always did.) Please forgive me for being unable to do much in the way of answering messages, just now, in the wake of having to get to grips with this sudden and awful change in my world.

But also let me say, so urgently: Hug your loved ones now, while you can. Eventually a day will come when, expected or not, your opportunities end.

Thanks, friends.

--DD

What genAI does is the only part of the fanfiction-writing experience you can claim as your own. If your fic was created via genAI, it's not your work.

A fic generated by AI as much yours as a fic generated by a prompt you came up with is yours: zero percent. We don't own ideas. We only own the manifestation of the ones we create, and if you aren't the one creating it, you're not the author. That's just what it is.

If you edit what genAI creates, congratulations, you're genAI's beta reader. You're still not the author. I don't get it. Why would you want to outsource the fun part?

And this is the point where I realize that people must be in it for different reasons than I am.

I'm excited if a story like the one I want to write doesn't exist, because I want to write it. I want to write all of it, every word of it, I want to make every decision. I don't just want it to exist. Are people generating fanfiction using genAI because they just want the story to have been written?

Are these people who don't want to write or be known as fan writers, they just want specific stories available, is that it? Is genAI standing in for a fanfiction writer who will produce instantly on command? So the "creators" of genAI fics on AO3 aren't writers and don't want to be writers, they're readers who want to read fics based on specific prompts?

If all you wanted was to read a specific thing, you got genAI to produce it, you have it now, you can read it. Why publish it? In case someone else has the same itch? But why publish it as yours? You didn't write it.

Are they showing off their great idea? Is there a sense that the work of constructing a story is just putting a puzzle together, and the idea is the main thing, so if it's your idea it's no big deal to outsource the construction of the story? Because that's a profound misunderstanding of how stories work.

Are these people who want fannish cred as a fanfiction writer (for whatever that's worth) without doing the work of writing any fanfics? I've known people who wrote fanfiction because they thought you had to create something in order to be a legit member a fandom community, and I'm sure they would have used genAI for it if they could, because they didn't actually care about the creation part. But if it's for cred and getting your name out there, why tag it as AI?

Maybe it circles back to people who don't write thinking that putting the words together is just the tedious grunt work once you have an idea. But that's not how it works. Every sentence contains imagination and decisions. Not just the prompt. If you aren't making the line-level decisions, those aren't yours.

Every time someone in fic makes tea straight in the mug, I cringe. I think, perhaps, fandom has conflated how the boys make tea on tour with how they would make it at home. When you’re on the road, especially in the United States, you can usually get a kettle, but you can’t always depend on a teapot. Therefore, you make a cup of tea in a mug, like an animal.

That isn’t how I make tea at home. I’m a Canadian with an English dad and gran, and, yes, everyone is different. But I offer my experience as a guide. My parents drink coffee in the morning and tea in the evening. My granny likes tea always. I drink it at least once a day.

EQUIPMENT

Tea requires a kettle, a teapot, a tea cosy, a mug, and maybe a spoon.

Your kettle can be electric; I like a stovetop whistling kettle. Pour any leftover water out every time you fill it. Boil as much water as the kettle holds. You’re going to want it.

Every British household has a bulk standard LARGE teapot, then maybe a few fun and fancy ones. You need a workhorse, but you also need something to show off for company. A big brown betty is nice, enough to hold more than a couple of cups of tea.

You must have a tea cosy or else your tea will go cold. A tea cosy is a quilted or knitted cover that goes over top of your pot. If you don’t have a grandmother who makes them, buy one at a craft fair from someone else’s grandmother.

Pour your tea into whatever mug you like. I only use cups with saucers at my granny’s house, and even then that’s only if she’s serving biscuits.

If you like your tea with sugar, you’re going to want a spoon to stir it. A saucer comes in handy here because then you have somewhere to put your dirty spoon.

When I’m making tea for me, I pour the milk directly from the carton in the fridge. But if I’m serving tea for company in the living room, then I’ll put the milk in a little jug. Always milk; never cream.

TEA

Just like Canadians always mean “ice hockey” when we say hockey, Brits always mean “black tea” when we say tea. We never mean green. We never mean peppermint.

Most often, we mean Tetley. Tetley has been my family’s brand of choice my entire life. We collected and sent away boxtops to collect tiny ceramic animal figures that I played with as a child. Tetley tea is sweet, but not sugary. It brews orangey brown

We all know that Louis’s favourite brand is Yorkshire. This is basically the same kind of tea. It’s a black tea, but a little darker, a bit more musty. Not, I must admit, my favourite. Feel free to write the boys teasing him for his sub-standard taste.

Tea comes in boxes of bags, no strings or tags attached. Keep your tea in an airtight and solid container. Glass is no good because the light gets through.

It’s basically impossible to get regular black tea in the United States. I have relatives who travel with tea bags. I usually drink Earl Grey or green when I’m in the States. But you have to know that it’s not the same thing. Most Brits see that as unnecessary fanciness when we just want a cup of tea.

Yes, I drink other kinds of tea. In my cupboard right now, I have some fruit teas I like to drink iced, I have a loose tea blend that’s a little caramel-y, I have some sencha, some jasmine, and a box of Earl Grey. Sometimes I make a cup with loose tea in a tea ball hanging in a mug. But when I want tea, just a cup of tea, I make a pot of Tetley.

[Photos from Wikipedia.]

HOW TO

Wikipedia has a really good step-by-step description. This is pretty much how I do it. My granny is a stickler for warming the pot before you drop in the tea bag, but I learned from my Canadian mom, who never bothered. I do like to rinse my pot, though, because there’s almost always tea in there from the night before, so you might as well use hot tap water.

(A quick note here: don’t wash your teapot. Just rinse it whenever you use it, and you’ll be fine. You want a teapot to be seasoned like a good cast iron pan. Granted, I do wipe down the outside occasionally.)

1. Boil the water. No need for a thermometer here. Just get it to a rolling boil.

2. (optional) Swirl a bit of water in the empty pot to warm it.

3. Toss in 1 or 2 tea bags, depending on the size of your pot. If you plan to drink more than one cup, go with two.

4. Fill the teapot with water. Put the lid on. Put the tea cosy on top.

5. Let it steep at least a minute. I like to pull the tea bags out before five minutes. Some people leave them in to the bitter end.

6. Pour a bit of milk in your mug. Then pour the tea. Some people prefer tea first, then milk, to better judge the amount of milk required. I recognise this as a valid preference. But I’m a milk first person.

7. (optional) Add sugar and stir to dissolve. I like milk first because you don’t have to stir if you don’t take sugar. Fewer dishes.

8. Then drink and enjoy.

9. Want another cup? Of course you do! That’s why I always make a pot of tea, even though I’m just one person.

No matter how big your mug is, you’ll inevitably find yourself wanting more tea. Too much milk? Balance it out with a bit more tea from the pot. Gone cold? Warm it up. That’s why you have a tea cosy.

(Please don’t microwave tea. Just make another pot. It’s cheap.)

Tea isn’t coffee. It’s not the kind of thing you make in the morning just to be conscious. You don’t throw it in a mug as you’re headed out the door. It’s tradition and comfort, meant to be held in your hands for warmth. It’s why we make tea whenever something bad happens, whenever we feel sad, and even when we don’t know how to feel. A cup of tea makes us feel better.

Additionally: black tea does not want a rolling boil. You are scorching your tea. (Though, if you’re drinking TETLEY, there’s no reasonable tea there to scorch, so maybe it makes no difference.) Officially, black tea should be brewed in water at 205F/96C, which is just before a full boil. This makes a big difference and I’m a bit ashamed to say so because I realize how hipster that sounds. But it’s true. I learned this by being very impatient and pouring water as it was approaching a boil instead of waiting for the roll. Not letting the kettle come to a full boil just makes a better cup of tea. I accepted this as a fact and then got a temperature controlled kettle which does mechanically what I did out of impatience, which is how I learned that I was not the first person to discover that tea is scorched by boiling water.

Which is also how I know that Yorkshire is a superior tea. Because I have a mouth and tastebuds.

As an Actual Brit living in Actual Britain amongst other Actual Brits, let me tell you this: we stick the tea bag (usually a supermarket red label brand, because Tetleys is the same thing but expensive and Yorkshire has a complex flavour beyond our “oh god I need a cuppa” requirements–but tastes do vary) in a mug, pour on water from our electric kettle, mash it against the side of a mug with a tea spoon because we’re sure as hell not going to wait for it to steep, are you mad? we want our tea NOW! add milk and sugar as required, then drink immediately whilst saying “oh god, I needed that”. It is ABSOLUTELY a wake-you-up drink and very few people can be bothered to faff about with a teapot.

Obviously, there are Actual British people who use teapots, and no-one’s criticising their use. But a sizeable majority make their tea as described above. Do remember that not all Actual Brits spend our days lounging in our country house clutching our teddy bear with a pot of tea on tap. We work in offices, on building sites, on service desks; most of us don’t have the time or inclination for a teapot. We’re not all Tom Hiddleston. Insisting that a teapot is The One True British Way is not only laughably inaccurate, but pretty classist.

Oh yeah, also, Liptons is not for hot tea. If you drink Liptons hot, you might as well just drink hot water.

You put FOUR (at least) Lipton’s teabag in a small saucepan and fill with water. Bring to a boil, then turn down slightly. Steep IN THE NEARLY BOILING WATER, for at least fifteen minutes. When this is done you should have basically ¾ of a pot of tea concentrate. Pour this in your pitcher, load with sugar while still hot. I do one cup, because I’m not a hummingbird, but my father will keep putting sugar in until it stops dissolving because he is one. My father would sip nectar and buzz around if he could.

Anyway. If, like me, you like strong iced tea, you can make another small pot of tea concentrate to fill your pitcher, or you can top it up with just water.

Um, nope.

I do prefer Yorkshire Tea, because it’s strong and wakes me up. All tea in this part of Canada is Orange Pekoe (yes, even Tetley and Yorkshire Tea), which isn’t a bad tea, exactly, but it’s not black tea and you can’t make it into proper super-strong-with-milk builder’s tea. So I buy my Yorkshire Tea at an import store.

I will drink orange pekoe when it’s served as fancy tea in a pot or when there aren’t any other options. Usually I opt for herbal teas at friends’ houses because I haven’t got my taste buds adapted to orange pekoe with milk. Every day tea is good strong black tea.

Teapots are used in little tea shops, or when you’re making tea for many people, or settling down for an afternoon with a book on a rainy Saturday.

Making tea in a mug is what most Brits do on a day to day basis. We don’t have time to fuss with pots and precise boiling! We need to make the tea and get on with our day. Tea in a mug, mash the bag against the side, make it as strong as possible because we’re dying for a cuppa and we need that wake up. That’s what 95% of Brits drink.

Originally posted by tus-memes

The Science of Tea.

This may blow your mind, especially coming from a Canadian, but orange pekoe is not a kind of tea. You can’t compare Yorkshire to orange pekoe. That would be like comparing water to millilitres. 

“Orange pekoe” is a means of expressing the grade of any black tea. Whole leaf and broken leaf teas (the highest and second highest categories) are graded on various orange pekoe levels. The bottom two levels are fannings (leftover bits) and dust. I’m fairly sure that crappy tea you usually get in teabags in North America is pekoe dust rather than any actual leaves. They can’t get away with that in the UK, as far as I can tell.

I’m not actually sure what’s in tea marked “orange pekoe” in North America. It doesn’t mean it’s in the top two tiers. You can get orange pekoe fannings, and that’s probably what it is. A top drawer rating for tea is Finest TGFOP: Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, which is definitely not what’s inside any box marked simply “orange pekoe”.

For the record, I also make my tea in a cup. Looseleaf, with a strainer. I failed to rant about the whole teapot situation the last time I commented on this because I was so outraged that a Taylors of Harrogate product was being dissed on the internet.

I still have a temperature-variable kettle, though my original one broke in one of my moves. I replaced it with an exact replica. It was more expensive that I'd like to admit.

I still drink Yorkshire tea and have converted my family to it, but I also enjoy looseleaf breakfast teas from Granville Island Tea now that I live on the west Coast.

chatGPT can't remember 300K words. It has a memory, but it's for individual details that it learns over time, not 300K words of a story.

I'm not endorsing this or saying it's fine, I'm just addressing misinformation. I'm professionally required to understand chatGPT, so I have kicked its tires and monitor its progress to see what it can and can't do. It might be trying to write new chapters of your fic, but it absolutely doesn't save a copy of your fic.

If someone wanted to do this, they'd have to keep a text file of your fic and re-upload almost constantly. But 300K is way too many words for it to handle, and it certainly wouldn't produce anything close to what you'd write, even with less text to parse.

If someone asked chatGPT to produce a new chapter, it would blithely hallucinate new characters and plot points. It would mistake the dog for the protagonist and tell you about it's "canonical" tragic backstory. It would swap your characters' names and accuse some of them of being aliens or water buffalos. Even if it could accurately keep 300K words of content in its memory, it would forget them within minutes.

It would try to write a good chapter. I'm sure people are asking it to, but dear god chatGPT is awful at writing fiction. Why would anyone want to read a terrible chapter of something they love? There's no accounting for taste, I guess.

I get why you're mad and creeped out, but you don't need to fear chatGPT keeping copies of your fics, at least. It doesn't have that kind of capacity. The reader has your fic stored locally.