Marie Brennan's Blog, page 40

Books read, September-October 2021

Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe, Carlos Hernandez. Sequel to Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, and still very fun. My only complaint was that the resolution of the conflict with the antagonist felt a bit too abrupt; it hinged on something that hadn’t really been set up enough for my taste. Still, I’ll forgive a lot for a book that feels as good-hearted as this.

100 Plants That Almost Changed the World, Chris Beardshaw. Got this on vacation in Solvang, as part of my intermittent crusade to make myself more knowledgeable about the natural world. It’s of the same vague genre as things like Around the World in 100 Trees, only less well-researched than that one; I’m fairly sure it indiscriminately reports some folklore as if it were scientific fact. But it’s a breezy little read, and anything that helps me remember that different plants, y’know, exist, is a helpful book for me.

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China, Benjamin A. Elman. So I basically spent almost all of September reading this damn thing. It’s over 600 pages — over 800 if I included the end-notes, which I did not wade through — and frankly, most of those 600 pages were not really about things I needed to know. But parts of it are things I need to know, and I was never quite sure when one of those would pop up, so I waded on. I did give myself permission to skim any paragraph that had at least three numerical percentages in it, though, because “let’s do statistical analysis of civil examination results” appears to be a favorite pastime of the kinds of historians who write about the topic.

Scales and Sensibility, Stephanie Burgis. After making it through that, I needed something lighter. Like this, a Regency romance with dragons in it! I expected it to give me Lady Trent feels; I did not expect it to simultaneously give me Rook and Rose feels, but it did. The main character inadvertently winds up in a situation where she’s having to con everybody, and watching her frantically trying to keep those balls in the air was entertaining.

The Art of Description: World into Word, Mark Doty. I can’t remember where I saw this book mentioned, but I picked it up in the hopes that it would give me useful thoughts about, well, the art of description. Alas, it only intermittently did so, in part because it’s mostly concerned with description in poetry. And while there are some applicable lessons across the border into prose fiction, it’s not quite the same thing.

Sharing the Skies: Navajo Astronomy, Nancy C. Maryboy and David Begay. This was about 1/3rd the book I wanted it to be, and since it’s only 85 pages, it felt more like a taster of the topic than a full pour. The other 2/3rds are about the more familiar Greek constellation myths for comparison (with one howler of an error: Hera is not the Roman name for the Greek goddess Cassiopeia), and about modern scientific astronomy. I understand wanting the comparisons, but dangit, I’m here for Navajo astronomy! On the other hand, it’s entirely possible I know why there wasn’t more. Early on in this book it mentions that traditionally, star lore is passed down orally, with the tales only being told during the winter months, roughly October to February. (I started reading this in July, after I picked it up at the Grand Canyon; I hit that line, remembered that detail from my college or grad school days, and put the book down until October.) So basically, there’s a reason not to write more information up in a book that any random person could pick up whenever they like. Still, the taster was enough to make me wish I had more.

The Glass Magician, Caroline Stevermer. A quick-reading historical fantasy, based on the life of Dell O’Dell, a female stage magician in the early twentieth century. The setting was interesting, but I wound up feeling very distanced from the moments of strong emotion, so it never really hooked me.

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Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 16

. . . is this an intact chapter? One that had nothing pulled out of it, nothing stuffed into it, nothing so much as rearranged?

By god, I think it is.

And a chapter with a nice, coherent through-line, too. While each scene point at a different bit of plot — this isn’t one of those chapters which focuses on some big set-piece — they share an important thematic strand. Which leads to some really satisfying emotional stuff . . . though I’m not going to pretend all of the emotions in question are good.

In part because, while the vast majority of our large-scale plot is stuff we planned from very early on (in some cases, before we even started writing the first book), there’s one thing we literally cooked up about a week before we wrote this chapter. We’ll need to do some finessing on things earlier in this book to seed it properly, since it changes our perception of one character’s backstory, but the payoff should be great

(And by “great” I mean “kinda horrible.”)

Word count: ~117,000
Authorial sadism: The aforementioned addition. We took someone who’s fundamentally dishonest . . . and we gave them just a tiny sliver of painful truth.
Authorial amusement: “Oh, fuck [redacted].”
BLR quotient: Like a key change, we slide smoothly from love into a pit of blood.

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The Advent of Scent: Weeks 41-42

WEEK 41

* Gobo
Described as “tangerine, lemon peel, sugared pink grapefruit, and vanilla cream.” As orange creamsicle perfumes go, this is an unobjectionable one; it’s less sickly than others I’ve encountered, and it’s very stable, not changing much over time. However . . . orange creamsicle.

* Green Tea and Lemon Peel
This might make a nice lotion, especially once it mellows a bit, but as a perfume, it’s a little too astringent and tannic.

* Comfort
No description I could find for this one. This has some hints of lavender and mint early on, but after that it mostly hits as white chocolate, which, meh.

* The Sun Rising
Described as “three shades of tawny amber radiating with orange blossom, Italian yellow bergamot, saffron, and mandarin.” In the bottle, a floral saffron with a slight zest tinge, the latter stepping up more on application. It mellows to a floral amber, which is not really what I’m looking for.

* Voyance (Alkemia)
Described as “a wreath of meadowsweet, elderflower, cornflower, verbena, waterlily, and other summer solstice flowers gently floating on seven ethereal waves of clean water musk.” Greenly floral at the outset, but it heads pretty rapidly to soap.

* Vanilla and Orange (Haus of Gloi)
Basically as described. Not much to say about this except that it’s the best of the orange creamsicles.

* Hēdonē (Hexennacht)
Described as “spiced honey, date sugar, tonka bean, red musk.” This is another one that presents pretty steadily; unfortunately, what it presents is basically burnt sugar. Which I find off-putting.

* Strawberry Ice Cream (Haus of Gloi)
Yep, what it sounds like: a nice, smooth strawberry. It’s probably not for me, but what the hell, I’ll try it again.

WEEK 42

* Ocean Alchemy (Alkemia)
Described as “sea breeze, cotton, kelp, sand, freesia, juniper.” Pretty much anything from this general ballpark is almost guaranteed to go soapy. I’d gladly wash my hands with it, as I like the evergreen tinge, but it’s a no for a perfume.

* Hathor (Possets)
Described as “a simple confection of pink rose petals, simple syrup saturated with a sophisticated but delicate vanilla, and a wisp of [something I will never know because it’s no longer on their site this is all the Google preview for the page showed].” Since I really only got a slightly cloying vanilla from it, whatever the wisp was, it never came through.

* Blackberry Marshmallow (Haus of Gloi)
The blackberry actually manages to hang on here, which isn’t always the case with fruity perfumes. The marshmallow softens it without nerfing it, so hey, why not, I’ll try it again.

* Sweet Myrrh and Green Fig
In the bottle and late in the drydown, mostly myrrh. There’s a bit of green fruitness while it’s wet, but that doesn’t last. Inoffensive, but but uninteresting.

* Cotton Candy (Arcana Wildcraft)
Couldn’t find a description for this one, either. In the bottle, it smells like cherry-flavored things — which is not the same as smelling like cherries. On me, it was about halfway between Twizzlers and Red Vines before turning into a fruity sugar cookie. I don’t like the foodie perfumes enough to want that.

* Pink Saltwater Taffy (Arcana Wildcraft)
Described as “a candy pink blend of cherry, sugarberry, black and gold raspberry, vanilla fondant, white sugar, and a grounding touch of patchouli.” This one was almost really good: it’s quite tart, almost hitting more as cranberry than as raspberry. Unfortunately it picked up that chemical tinge that some of these perfumes get, and then the patchouli mingled with the fruit into something less engaging.

* Osculum Infame
Described as “crystalized sap, candied red fruits, raw wildflower honey, black amber, and sweet red labdanum.” Mostly hits as resin and honey, quite heavy at first, smoothing out later, but never becoming my kind of thing.

* Lady and a Baby Unicorn (Possets)
The description says “vetiver (that sultry, earthy, wild, and dominant part) becomes positively docile, sweet, and innocent…almost fruity in the presence of three vanillas (dry, fat, and sweet).” They’re not kidding about the fruitiness: it really did register as some kind of red fruit, basically a Twizzler on application. I have no idea how they managed to do that with vetiver, which elsewhere I shorthanded as “dental green.” Later the vetiver starts to become more recognizable, transforming this to more of an earthy vanilla, before it winds up basically at vanilla sandalwood (though I have no idea if there’s any actual sandalwood in here). Meh.

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New Worlds: Sex and Gender – What Is Gender?

Continuing on from last week’s look at biological sex and the ways in which even that is affected by culture, the New Worlds Patreon turns to one that’s cultural turtles all the way down: gender! Comment over there.

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Something like a year of sitting

The last time I posted about meditation was at the six-month mark, back in March when I commented that I no longer had an unbroken streak — I’d missed a few days here and there — but at least I was still doing it.

Yeah, that. And then some.

I’ve missed more than a few days; I think there was a stretch where I missed something like two weeks. But what I said before still applies: I feel like I missed two weeks, not like I stopped. I think I was teetering on the edge of this not feeling like a habit anymore, but I kept going.

If I had an unbroken streak, I would have made sure to commemorate the exact day it reached a full year. But in some ways, I think that for this particular habit, it’s better for me not to fixate on a milestone like that. I’m not in a competition with myself. I’m just doing a thing that I think helps a little bit, knitting back up my capacity for concentration against a world that’s determined to fray it into shreds.

A recent email from the meditation app I’ve been using had an analogy I really liked, which is dribbling a basketball. The writer of that particular piece said they talked to a meditation teacher who’s been at this for thirty years, and he estimates he can generally get about seven seconds of sustained focus before his attention tries to wander. But the wandering mind is like the basketball dropping to the ground: the goal is not to keep it perpetually in your hand (which is more or less impossible in meditation), but to train it to come back where it’s wanted with a minimum of effort and fuss. To have fewer of those moments where you ricochet from Idle Thought X to Problem Y to oh shit where did the last half hour go, I was in the middle of a work thing and then I got distracted. Idle Thought X will still happen — brains gonna brain — but if you’re mindful, if you notice that happening, you’re less likely to hop on the thought train and forget where you were.

So I’m still going. Something like a year, with an unknown number of days missed along the way. That’s fine. I’m still going.

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Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 15

Aaaaaand back we go to the non-linearity. This chapter was written weeks ago — mostly — except for the scene Alyc and I added to it last week. There’s a character who’s sort of fallen out of the narrative that we needed to drag back in.

This is one of those places where “how story works” and “how storytelling works” are at odds. This particular character’s absence is significant, a sign of things going on where the reader can’t see. But narratively speaking, that doesn’t work: a character who vanishes from the page is one the reader isn’t thinking about. We had to come up with a reason to drag them away from what they’re doing and into interaction with a viewpoint character, and figuring out the best approach to that required a great deal of thinking. Fortunately, when we finally arrived at the answer, we managed to solve several other (smaller) problems at the same time. I’d noticed when I was revising the scene at the end of this chapter that a particular person was doing very little there (and they person they’d brought along was doing so little, we’d failed to even mention that one’s presence); what we wrote for the insertion gave us good reason to remove both of the superfluous ones from that final scene. It also lets us bring up a particular problem right away, rather than coming up with reasons why the person who knows about it sits on the information straight through Chapter 17. The real reason for the latter was “there just wasn’t any chance to bring it up before then, and even Chapter 17 was a crappy place for that discussion,” so it’s nice to have this elegant of a fix.

Let’s just pretend it didn’t take us about two hours of discussion to come up with it . . .

Word count: ~109,000
Authorial sadism: Putting someone half-drugged and flat on their back in front of the absolute. last. person. they want to see.
Authorial amusement: Somebody getting set down not once but twice with the reality that other people have problems too, y’know.
BLR quotient: Mostly love, since this is mostly about people working together to fix problems. But rhetoric literally delivers a rousing speech at the end.

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New Worlds: Sex and Gender – What Is Sex?

For November the lovely supporters of the New Worlds Patreon have voted for a discussion of sex and gender. The starting point for that is sex (in the biological sense, not the activity) — comment over there!

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Rook and Rose Book 3, Chapter 14

At last we arrive at the chapter which occasioned the Great Rearrangement of Part Two. It’s an unusually short chapter, but it wouldn’t have been if the thirty-five hundred or so words that got relocated out of it into Chapter 13 were still here. And besides, the rearrangement was only partially about making verbal space for the events of this chapter; the rest was about making conceptual space for it. Here at the midpoint of the book, we’re back in the groove Alyc and I both like, where the chapters have strong organizational cores. This one isn’t all a single sequence of events, but the big set-piece here stands on a foundation of fallout from the previous chapter.

And it features one of my favorite stunts Alyc and I have yet pulled in this series. I can’t describe it in detail, but attempting to talk around it: there was a bit of plot that needed to happen, and in the normal way of things we would have come up with a swashbuckling caper to take care of it. But swashbuckling capers take a lot of words (which we probably couldn’t spare here), and besides . . . it would have felt a bit like old hat? “Oh look, the authors are doing that thing again.” But then we came up with a clever way to combine the requisite bit of plot with the big thing we wanted to do in this chapter, and to do it with an unconventional approach to boot.

. . . I promise, it’ll make sense when you read it. And it makes me grin, because sometimes the offhanded stuff is the most badass.

Word count: By an accident of math (which is almost certainly off by a few words thanks to tweaks that aren’t recorded in our spreadsheet, but whatever, I’ll take it), this chapter ends at 100,666 words.
Authorial sadism: The worst part of what we do to [redacted] in the first scene is, you don’t even get to hear half of it.
Authorial amusement: . . . yeah, basically that stunt I described above. It’s fun to end a chapter on a note of “wtf???”
BLR quotient: I’m actually gonna give it to rhetoric, because despite the costume it’s dressed up in, a lot of what’s going on here is the playing-out of some metaphysical ideas.

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The Advent of Scent: Mega-Post 2, Weeks 32-40

I can tell I’m running out of steam for this project because I’ve gotten so irregular about posting. But that’s fine; the end is in sight.

. . . by which I mean that I’ll stop after a year and a day. I’ve counted, and not including the original set of seven that got me started on this journey, I have enough perfumes remaining to get me to 366. It won’t quite be a year and a day calendrically because I took a few days off to wear scents I’d already found that I liked, but that just means I’ll finish up in good time to wear the ones I think of as being holiday-scented for the Christmas season!

(Yoon, starting in Week 39 there are perfumes I got from a different friend; many of them have the kinds of fruity notes I know often pique your interest. Let me know if you want any!)

WEEK 32

* Pure Applesauce
Described as “mashed apples with sugar and honey, slivered with tobacco tar and black tea.” As usual for BPAL’s apple scents, this starts off VERY apple. But it dries down to an unpleasant tobacco undertone (that being note I don’t like), so I passed this off to a friend.

* Zombie (Possets)
Described as “toasted marshmallow and oude, a bit of burnt stick, and the unmistakable fragrance of the crisp autumn air.” Apparently marshmallow + wood = sandalwood? It goes more marshmallow-y on application, but then shifts to a generic musk.

* My Lover’s Lips (Possets)
Described as “three apricots drizzled over five vanillas to make a seminal and delightful sugar crust on sweet tart fruit […] Hints of hawthorne, a bit of moss, and the ripe juice of apricot.” Fruity and woody for sure, but not in a way I really liked. I’m not sure if it’s the hawthorne or the moss that was bringing in the woody, earthy note or what, as neither of those are notes I know well.

* Hellfire
Described as “pipe tobacco, hot leather, ambergris, dark musk and lingering incense smoke.” Obviously ‘incense’ is a not terribly edifying word; initially it smelled like patchouli. The pipe tobacco was pleasant enough, but not my kind of thing, so again, it went to that friend.

* Old Demons of the First Class
Described as “Siberian musk, black clove, opoponax, tonka, black pepper, and neroli.” Not sure if I got opoponax or tonka first (again, not sure of those two); I think opoponax? Sweet and smoky, with pepper, and eventually musk. Same friend got this one.

* Cri de Coeur (Possets)
Described as “vanilla, nougat, coconut, sweet musk, tobacco flower, swirling cotton, a drop of nag champa, chypre, black musk and sugar cane. There is the essence of a very good dragon’s blood in it, a small amount of lime, and lime blossom.” Whole lotta tobacco in this run of scents! Buuuuut, I mostly got the coconut, before it turning generically warm with a faint edge of tobacco. Meh.

* Intrigue
Described as “black palm, with cocoa, fig and shadowy wooded notes.” In the early drydown it went way too fruity, but before and after it was sort of woody cocoa. I didn’t pay enough attention to how long the fruity phase lasted, so I kept this to try again.

* The Sweater We Buried You With Is Hanging in My Closet (Ajevie)
Described as “three different vanillas, resinous amber, Arabian sandalwood, a soft cashmere sweater.” To my surprise, the resin and wood dominated in the bottle, with only a hint of the vanilla. On me, it was much less sweet of a vanilla sandalwood than I expected, though in the end it was just vanilla amber. Nice, but I don’t need to keep it.

WEEK 33

* The Antikythera Mechanism
Described as “teakwood, oak, black vanilla, and tobacco.” This one was surprisingly pleasant, given that I don’t like tobacco; the oak mitigated it early on, and then it was sort of spicy wood, making me think flavored tobacco. But since the aforementioned friend REALLY likes tobacco notes, I didn’t need to keep it.

* You or Someone Like You (Etat Libre d’Orange)
All they said for this one was “fresh” — how very helpful. Citrusy and aquatic, vaguely making me think of laundry; maybe linden in here? Very late, I think I picked up ambergris. Not my type.

* Juke Joint
Described as “Kentucky bourbon, sugar, and a sprig of mint.” What it says on the tin: yeah, I basically smelled like a cocktail. Not unpleasant, but not me.

* Strawberry Fields Forever (Hexennacht)
Described as “strawberries, fresh cut grass, and dirt.” Ditto about what it says on the tin. Early on it’s mostly the grass and dirt; later on it’s earthy strawberry. Less cloying than many strawberry scents have been on me, but I don’t especially want to smell like that fruit to begin with.

* Remarkable People (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “grapefruit, champagne accord, cardamom, jasmine, curry JE, black pepper, labdanum, sandalwood, lorenox.” I was leery of this one given my past awful experiences with champagne, but here it stayed out of things. Sort of a citrus-y cologne at first, then something leathery and ambery that I think may have been the labdanum + lorenox. In the end, I suspect it was largely the lorenox. Pleasant enough, but when you’re more than two hundred perfumes in . . .

* Yes I Do (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “lily-of-the-valley, jasmine, orange blossom, aldehydes, amber, patchouli, cocoa, musk, marshmallow.” Heavily but not unpleasantly floral; something grounds it as it dries, though I can’t tell what’s doing that. Not bad; not me.

* Bluebonnet
A single-note perfume I was contractually obligated to purchase because I am a Texan. It’s very greenly floral, a bit less green as it dries. I probably wouldn’t go for it in the normal way of things, but dammit, Texan. It stays.

* Cthulhu
Described as “a creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark, unfathomable waters.” On me? ‘Ocean mist’ soap. BLECH.

WEEK 34

* Silver Roses (Possets)
Described as “floral, vanilla, charming, scent locket, feminine, home scent, long lasting.” (Possets’ descriptions get very unhelpful.) Oddly fruity in the bottle, with a touch of rose, changing balance on the skin. And then . . . it smells like an actual! fresh! rose! Slightly bubblegum-y in the end, but I’ll keep it for now to try against the other rose scents I’ve held onto.

* Nosferatu
Described as “desiccated herbs and gritty earth brought to life with a swell of robust and sanguineous red wines.” Basically this is sangria with a whiff of dirt — the people who told me that BPAL’s dirt note means business were right. Meh.

* High Tea (Possets)
Described as “lemon, sugar, milk, and that indescribable scent of the best starched linens.” Lemon cookie, more or less; the hint of linen doesn’t last past the bottle. Generically sugary in the end.

* Vernal Sun (Possets)
Described as “lemon and lightest vanilla like the rays of the welcome spring sunshine. A tiny amount of white musk to make it last for a while, a very very light whiff of the fruits to come in the summer, just to give it a solar tang. A pinch of borage, and drop of carrot but mostly blessed lemon and smooth sweetness.” This goes from vanilla lemon to vanilla musk to musk. Boring. (I get so tired of perfumes that race straight to boring musk.)

* Block Buster
No description for this one. In the bottle, cinnamon and maybe floral? It’s faintly sweet without being cloying, and spicy. Goes more herbal on application. I’ll keep it for now.

* Le Lèthè
Described as “red musk and sweat-damp golden skin musk with labdanum, golden amber, nutmeg, tobacco absolute, black orchid, and hemlock accord.” For something with no patchouli in it, this manages to smell a hell of a lot like patchouli in the bottle. Heavy and thick on the skin, with a hint of something floral lifting it; I guess the orchid? Plus some nutmeg.

* Vial of Holy Water
No description. Overall, it’s a sort of faintly green soapy laundry smell — not offensive for clothing, but not at all what I want to wear.

* Mouse’s Long and Sad Tale
Described as “vanilla, two ambers, sweet pea and white sandalwood.” Profoundly sweet and amber-y at first; maybe sweet pea shows up briefly at the start of the drydown? But just vanilla sandalwood after that.

WEEK 35

* Blood Kiss
Described as “lush, creamy vanilla and the honey of the sweetest kiss smeared with the vital throb of husky clove, swollen red cherries, but darkened with the vampiric sensuality of vetiver, soporific poppy and blood red wine, and a skin-light pulse of feral musk.” (Oh, BPAL.) This starts out kind of confusing, simultaneously fruity, spicy, and earthy. Wet, it’s cherry and wine, with a tannic edge from I think the clove; later it’s definitely clove wine. For a bit later on it took on an unpleasant chemical tinge before fading to spice musk. Meh.

* The Ghost
Described as “white iris, osmanthus, Calla lily, tomb-crawling ivy and a coffin spray of gladiolus, lisianthus and delphinium.” In the bottle, thick, heavy floral, with a faintly fruity tone, altogether registering almost as cucumber. Becomes a very green and fresh floral, smoothing out as it dries. I’m not sure I would keep it if I weren’t playing a character named Ghost, but since I am . . .

* Une Amourette (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “neroli, iris, vanilla absolute, and akigalawood.” Mostly this is an evergreen woody scent, with a short-lived bit of floral at the beginning. I’d call it a pleasant forest, and I’ll try it again.

* Spice Must Flow (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “Turkish rose, ginger, pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and saffron.” There isn’t a drop of labdanum in here, and yet that’s basically all I took away from it?

* Death Cap
No description. In the bottle, fresh dirt, a little dusty, with an aftertone of resin or patchouli. Wet, the same, a little more evenly balanced. Fortunately the dirt faded as it dried, but . . . meh.

* She Was an Anomaly (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “iris, sandalwood, cedarwood, vanilla, fresh white flowers accord, green tangerine, orpur (which is what exactly?), musk, and ambergris.” This didn’t change much; throughout it was mostly a vanilla sandalwood cedar, with an earthy bit I think is the iris. (I’m not much a fan of iris, if so.)

* Lipstick Fever (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “violet absolute, raspberry, iris absolute, patchouli essence, and vanilla absolute.” Violet and raspberry, with again what I think is the iris. Meh.

White Lady (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “tuberose, jasmine, sandalwood, and ambroxan.” HI TUBEROSE. Slightly tamed by the wood as it dries. The ambroxan comes through eventually, but more pleasantly than I usually expect from it. I’ll try this again.

WEEK 36

* Anteros
Described as “throbbing red musk and shimmering chypre with saffron, sweet patchouli, Italian bergamot, red currant, and vanilla bean.” Patchouli with a bit of saffron? And then just musk. Far less interesting than it could have been.

* Malediction
Described as “red patchouli and vetiver.” Well, I think I finally know what vetiver smells like! ‘Dental green’ is how I flagged it in my notes; the patchouli only came through at the end. I’ve got a friend who adores vetiver; I’m going to send this one to her.

* Iago
Described as “black musk, wet leather and vetiver.” Green leather, and then what my sister termed “the stock room of a shoe store.” The friend who likes tobacco notes also likes leather one, so this is going to them.

* Archives 69
Described as “pink berries, tangerine, pepper leaf, orchid & prune JE, benzoin, camphor, incense, patchouli, and musk.” A lot of camphor, I think; it was something sweet without being sugary. The pepper and tangerine notes showed up very briefly, and that was it.

* Bram Stoker
Described as “bourbon vetiver with opoponax, Italian bergamot, and hay absolute.” Starting to get a sense of what opoponax is like — kinda sweet/spicy. The vetiver made this cleaner and greener, though, and I’ll try it again.

* Linden Blossom Tea (Possets)
No good description for this one. It’s a nice laundry smell, sweetly green and fresh, and quite stable; the only real change is that it fades pretty fast. I’ll try it again, mostly for the variety it brings.

* Exit the King (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “soap foam, pink pepper, timur, jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, patchouli, moss, and sandalwood.” I was leery of this one because of the soap aspect, but what I got was rose at first, then a more jasmine/lily of the valley/pink pepper mix. Keeping to try again.

* Jasmin et Cigarette (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “jasmine absolute, tobacco notes, apricot, tonka bean, curcuma, cedarwood, amber, and musk.” The tobacco-liking friend happened to be over at my house when I tried this one, so I passed it off almost immediately: it was apricot/jasmine with an undertone of cigarette, which, ick.

WEEK 37

* Another Oud (Juliette Has a Gun)
Described as “bergamot, raspberry, oud wood, norlimbanol, musks, and ambroxan.” Citrusy wood becaue citrusy OUD, then faintly fruity, before going away entirely. Meh.

* Aureus
No description for this one. It was interesting! Fresh-cut wood, maybe cedar, every so faintly sweet, with a smoky trace that rose over time. Will definitely try again.

* Bayou
Described as “Spanish moss, evergreen and cypress with watery blue-green notes and an eddy of hothouse flowers and swamp blooms.” The bottle smelled like very pleasant soap, a floral aquatic; wet on me, I wonder if the “hothouse flowers and swamp blooms” were gardenia, because it had that heavy, thick quality. The floral got milder and then went very faint, so nah.

* Hermann a Mes Cotes Me Paraissait une Ombre (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “blackcurrant buds, black pepper, galbanum, calypsone, geosmin, frankincense, pepperwood, petalia, rose absolute, patchouli, and ambroxan.” Overpoweringly woody at the outset, and then overpoweringly ambroxan with a short-lived hint of fruit. This is the first time in a while I’ve rated something 1 on my 5-point scale — and that’s not the good end of the scale, y’all.

* Grog
No good description. Basically smells like butterscotch at first, with a bit of a rum edge and later clove (I think — it was certainly some kind of spice). And then, as usual, boring musk.

* Spellbind (Siren Song Elixirs)
Described as “blackberry, chocolate cake, buttercream icing, white chocolate, and cream.” Wow was this one foody. VERY BERRY for a bit, and then just cake. Not at all my cuppa, but in getting the description for this one I saw they have many others that sound interesting; I may be tempted into buying a few.

The Black Rider
Described as “black leather, oppoponax, tobacco, and black amber.” With that list of notes I expected ot loathe it, but I think the opoponax reined in the tobacco and leather. For this type of scent it was remarkably not off-putting — but since my friend was almost certainly guaranteed to like it more, I gave it away.

* Twilight
Described as “lavender and jasmine, with a touch of glowing honeysuckle.” Oddly lemony! And then the lavender and the jasmine; I didn’t get any honeysuckle that I noticed. Nice, but not me.

WEEK 38

Kill-Devil
Described as “sugar cane, molasses, oak wood, and honey.” Complexly sweet — much more so than most really sugary scents. And then a green note comes in; not sure if that’s the cane or the oak. It’s different enough to try again.

* Van Van
No description. It’s kind of a confusing and not very successful lime-patchouli blend until it turns into musk. Bah.

* The Obsidian Widow
Described as “pinot noir, dark myrrh, red sandalwood, black patchouli, night-blooming jasmine, and attar of rose” (and also a fabulous name). Strong wine and a hint of patchouli, with something resinous — I suspect the myrrh — coming in on application. As it dries, well hello there jasmine/rose, please don’t punch me. Those don’t last, though, because the sandalwood and patchouli take over. Not awful, but meh.

* The Caterpillar
Described as “heavy incense notes waft lazily through a mix of carnation, jasmine, bergamot, and neroli over a lush bed of dark mosses, iris blossom, deep patchouli and indolent vetiver.” But it comes across as patchoooooooooooouli with some bergamot/neroli, and then a veil of jasmine. Too much patchoooooooooooouli for me.

* Cherry Blossom Vulva (oh BPAL)
Described as “cherry blossoms, cream, honeysuckle, plum blossoms, and gardenia.” This is another floral interesting enough to try again: a green, slightly fruity flower, with the gardenia keeping it from taking on that grating note I get from more white florals.

* Depravity (Haus of Gloi)
Described as “clove, nutmeg lurk amongst the sweetest offerings of coconut, on a bed of rich golden amber, laden with dustings of sandalwood and spilled wine.” Wine and a bit of wood; my sister evoked craft store wreaths. Got clovier and became rather like mulled wine, though the spices outlasted the wine. Could work for Christmas! I’ll try it again in December.

* Vice
Described as “a deep chocolate scent, with black cherry and orange blossom.” Cloying chocolate with a hint of cherry, and then some orange. It’s not badly balanced, but it’s not what I want to smell like.

* Eat Me
Described as “three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants.” I’m always dubious of notes like ‘cake,’ and with good cause; this has that nauseatingly buttery touch at the outset, and then just becomes generically sweet. Nope.

WEEK 39

* Tom of Finland (Etat Libre d’Orange)
Described as “aldehydes, lemon, birch leaves, pine, safraleine, pepper, cypress, geranium, vanilla, tonka bean, iris, vetiver, suede, musk, and ambergris.” ‘Aldehydes’ is such a useless thing to say! I think iris dominates at the start, as it’s kind of earthy woody, but with a chemical tinge. More woody later on, but bleh, not great.

* Cashmere (Cristiano Fissore)
Described as “bergamot, jasmine, rose, lily-of-the-valley, myrrh, musk, amber, vanilla, and Virginia cedar.” Surprisingly clean and bright! And then almost nonexistent, turning into mild laundry. My skin more or less eats this one.

* Platino (Omnia Profume)
For this one I had to rely on a site where people list what they think they smell in it, which is whipped cream, coconut, caramel, almond milk, mimosa, jasmine, vanilla, and white musk. It basically smells like amaretto, and I love amaretto, so I’ll try it again.

* Yuzu (J-Scent)
Described as “lemon, orange, bergamot, yuzu, thyme, grapefruit, lime, rose, mandarin orange.” It’s very sharp and distinct, but it’s one of the citruses that angles too bitter for my preference — you get the zest rather than the juice.

* Hanamizake (J-Scent)
Described as “sake, cherry blossom, incense, and musk.” Very fruity boozy at first, then less boozy, a touch floral. But this is another one that goes mild extremly fast; it fades too fast to be worth it.

* Pink (Morgan le Fay)
Described as “bergamot, orange fig leaf; tuberose, gardenia, tiare flower, jasmine, carnation, ylang-ylang, lily-of-the-valley, osmanthus, geranium; iris, musk and vanilla.” The citrus unfortunately doesn’t last; you just get the heavy, thick tuberose/gardenia, then some more jasmine, going earthier later. An inoffensive floral.

* Escentric 01 (Escentric Molecules)
Described as “pink pepper, lime peel, and orris incense.” I literally had to slather this on FOUR TIMES to get anything out of it, and then it was mostly the orris (which as I understand it is iris root, and I suspect perfumes that say “iris” mean the same thing).

* Sumo Wrestler (J-Scent)
Described as “orange, eucalyptus, anise, cinnamon, heliotrope, violet, orange flower, labdanum, sandalwood, patchouli, and jasmine.” Kind of generically perfume-y in the bottle, and then it more or less goes straight to sandalwood and heliotrope. Meh.

WEEK 40

* Le Voyager Indiscret (L’Antichambre)
Described as “lavender, cinnamon, nutmeg, cedar, and sandalwood.” I cannot for the life of me place what medicine this reminds me of in the bottle; it isn’t an unpleasant one. Maybe Tiger Balm? Something more green/not quite minty. Wet, it’s more cinnamon and nutmeg with an undertone of cedar, and then an odd lavender sandalwood. Not successful.

* Roasted Green Tea (J-Scent)
Described as “coconut, peanut, laver, jasmine, mint, winter green, iris, cedarwood, vanilla, and clover.” I think the wintergreen must be the “cold” bit in the bottle, and an earthy bit I think is the iris. Then a sort of mild, tea-like vanilla, with a faint mint tone. Meh.

* Hydrangea (J-Scent)
Described as “violet, leaf green, hyacinth, jasmine, rose, iris, muguet, cedarwood, and musk.” In the bottle, something green and violently fresh, before the rose comes up. After that, inoffensively floral and then mild musk. Sigh.

* Yawahada (J-Scent)
Described as “pear, green note, milk, rice powder, rose, jasmine, musk, sandalwood, and amber.” I have to assume the rice powder is responsible for the kind of dry and roasted and bitter thing that dominates throughout; my sister termed it “piss wood.” Which about sums it up, yeah.

* Hanamachi (J-Scent)
Described as “lemon, bergamot, ylang ylang, rose, violet, iris, jasmine, heliotrope, agarwood, vanilla, musk, cherry blossom leaf, and peach.” The violet and the lemon are fighting in this one, with floral trying to referee. Sororal verdict was “fancy soap puked on your wrist.”

* Jour de Fête (L’Artisan)
The internet guesses almond, wheat, vanilla, and iris for this one. Chemically earthy at first (the iris, I presume), and then a faint, burnt vanilla. Blech.

* Poudre de Riz (Huitième Art)
Described as “damask rose, tiare absolute, coconut, vanilla, rice powder accord (caramelic, burnt toast and maple notes), sandalwood, iris, cedar, tonka bean, tolu balsam and benzoin resin.” For that list, it was oddly fresh and astringent in the bottle. But on application, much sweeter — coconut, vanilla, and then I don’t know tonka bean, tolu balsam, or benzoin well enough to tell what I was picking up. Generically warm and sweet in the end.

Honey and Lemon (J-Scent)
Described as “lemon, orange, peach, rose, jasmine, musk, sandalwood, and honey note.” In the bottle, lemon smoothed by probably the peach and the honey. Lemon-orange on me, followed by rose, but it faded very fast.

The post The Advent of Scent: Mega-Post 2, Weeks 32-40 appeared first on Swan Tower.

New Worlds Theory Post: Fantastical Language

Back in July, the New Worlds Patreon talked about language and how we represent its variations on the page. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg, so for this month’s theory post (brought to you by their being five Fridays in the month), we’re looking at foreign and invented languages in the text! Comment over there.

The post New Worlds Theory Post: Fantastical Language appeared first on Swan Tower.