Macha

Yup.

Naw, don't feel bad. I completely, absolutely agree. I'm very much the same way (although I like bottles best, because I'm a fumple fingers and always splatter all over myself with imps, and I just hate it when they break on me.) I think people who dismiss BPAL as "just perfume oil" really just don't get it. Nevermind that for some of us it's not just perfume oil, but our livelihoods and passions and what we DO every day -- it is also culture and art and mnenonic triggers of passion. It is a way to connect with each other on a level that is rather primal and definitely beautiful and seems to lead to a general awakening of the senses that has everything and nothing to do with "just perfume." Errr a long way of saying: BPAL = good!

Ah, but I DO like you Carly. Sure, there was a time when that wasn't so true. Not that you'd done or even said anything horrible to me or anything, but you know the whys and wherefores. It would have been relatively easy for me to just throw some names at you and say "meh, she's a fucking bitch." But you know what? I LIKE strong-willed and opinionated women, and I don't have to agree with you all the time as long as we can respect each other and treat each other as human beings (with the occassional bit of allowance for sarcastic bitchiness that is, I think, to be expected.) To simply dismiss you because we have on occassion not seen eye to eye (or other moderators and you have not seen eye to eye) would be, completely and utterly, my loss.

I'm so sorry about your wedding dress! That's horrible! Can you send it back? I'm sure your swapee will appreciate any creative gesture. It really is the thought that counts.

Hmm...it's not such a big deal. I've found that newer members with discretionary income tend to spend a lot on e-bay or LJ buying the rare exotics. After a little while you've just flat out tried most of them -- no new introductions are allowed to slip through your fingers, and you become savvier about where you spend your money. Viola! Problem solved. Sometimes that person becomes the woman who buys a bottle of everything every update and who people can always count on for the first impressions and reviews, or they become more selective but buys 5 bottles of the things they think they'll like. Several thousand dollars in a few months IS impressive, but you're not alone. I know a number of forum members (including, I must admit, myself) who own at least that much (it is generally agreed, for example, that Shelldoo is the woman who owns ALL the BPAL.) Look at a couple of the chatter threads, and you can figure out who's who. I would be a hypocrite for condemming your excitement about past releases of BPAL, because I was once infected with it myself. Any scandal for spending $50 dollars on an imp of Storeyville (to use your example) is, for me anyway, firmly entrenched in the idea that you COULD have been spending that money on several bottles from the Lab, and had that money go to them. (Although I have no market study data to back it up, it's my opinion that the resale market of BPAL IS hurting their business, as the assumption that people selling BPAL will use that money on new order from BPAL has become highly unreliable in the last year as more and more speculative profiteering has occurred.) Then again, I have a bottle of Storeyville, and how's this for scandal? I think it's overhyped. It's very nice, don't get me wrong -- but I don't think it's irreplacable. Go mix The Lion with Antique Lace and I bet you could get within spitting distance of the same scent. (Of course, I also think Blue Moon is overhyped too.) People obsess to much over what they can't have. Human nature, I suppose. I don't think you should feel guilty or bad because you have enough money to make that dream happen -- but hey, you can always go hunting after the e-bay sales that Puddin puts up. The profits from those go directly to charity (usually animal rescue) and you're buying from the Lab to boot. I dare anyone to say boo about that.

I'd like to think that too.

So sooner or later, in the process of writing a fantasy novel, I find that I have to figure out where the hell my hero IS. And I will admit, I can be a bit pedantic about the whole thing. I like my maps. I like to know exactly how long it takes my hero to go from point A to point B to point C. If I don't have maps, I tend to make fairly simple but devestating errors in the geography. It's just easier for me when I have it all laid out. Over the course of my writing, I have gradually come to the realization that I like it when my maps make sense. They don't have to of course. In a world where magic and gods exist (as they do in mine) "because I want it that way" IS a possible answer to "why is that piece of terrain filled with jungle when it logically receives no rainfall?" But it's not really very satisfying and it feels exactly like the cheat it is. I would much rather have that piece of land be filled with jungle because its near the equator and it DOES receive rainfall, and lots of it, due to the large ocean current offshore that pulls in all the really fun storms. So last night I sat down with a friend of mine, who is a marine biologist (okay, he has a degree in marine biology...quite naturally he works in IT administration,) and we looked over my maps. *sigh* Quite, quite unworkable. Areas that I want to be warm would in fact be very cold, areas that I want to be stormy would be anything but. Some of it I can live with, but some changes — like the idea that the Capital City would not experience a monsoon season — are simply unacceptable. It's a major plot point! So there's nothing to be done but redo the maps. Fortunately, other than the relationships between certain countries (the Manol, the Scar, and Khorvesh must all border each other) and geographical features (the Argoná plains should be...well..plains) a lot of it is very flexible. I'm just thankful I figured this out now, before I'd spent too much time figuring out the identities of the ancient God-Kings, something that is very much tied into geography.

You know, I've always been a bit confused about the "sucking up" phenomenon. What? When did a law pass that says you can no longer say nice things about someone without it being kissing ass? That a compliment can't simply be a genuine expression of your sincere feelings? It would be different if you were telling her that you love her stuff so she'd slip you a little something extra with your next order. But that's not the case, is it? Sorry, none of this is directed at YOU, Valentina, just the concept, which feels just about as 6th grade as the whole wank drama. It has a peculiar sort of sour-grapes quality to it too. I don't think you need to apologize, or even imply apology, for liking someone's work and saying so.

I suppose I'm officially getting old then. I read through this crap and think "I wouldn't have written this at eighteen — my mother raised me better than that!" No, no...I don't buy it being an age issue. Some of the most obnoxiously insulting people I've come across online have been over the age of 40. I think you can be the same loud-mouthed wank-loving asshole at 45 that you were at 16 — a matter of emotional maturity rather than physical. And it's really not the venom spewed at the mods that raised my ire. Okay, it raised my ire a little. But to a certain extent, we're used to it. Sure, if you prick us, we still bleed...but we also sneer and say something sarcastic and witty and dry enough to pass for one of Heartbeast's martinis. But most of those people who were picked out for slandering don't have our well-honed defense mechanisms, and no one deserves to have their character impugned by anonymous strangers that way, no matter who they are. Filigree_Shadow, Valentina: I'm just awful about dealing with complements. I become very flustered and never know how to respond without sounding like some kind of egomaniac. So I'll just say — thank you.

I seem to recall she spent years and years doing nothing but developing EarthSea. Same with Tolkien. He never did stop expanding Middle-Earth. It's odd, with world-building, isn't it? You spend all this time developing cultures and histories and very often languages and for the most part, the only person who is really going to care about it is you (which is why I'm talking about technique and principles on this blog, and not specific examples of what I've done.) I've never had much interest in the ethnologies of people's imagined worlds myself. Tolkien's dissertations on evolution of language amongst the peoples of Middle Earth? *snore* But have something happen, have snake-gods and pirates and ambushes and betrayal and true wuv all set against this exotic unique backdrop, and we're SO there, aren't we? And conversely, don't do that homework and we readers know immediately as the hack you are (Robert Jordan I am SO looking at you.) The map-making session last night went pretty well. We hauled out a copy of Fractal Terrain Editor (a program by Profantasy, the same folks who make Campaign Cartographer) and after some thought and consideration, ditched my old map entirely. That was a bit of a heart-breaker, but it was necessary. I was, in effect, trying to force hurricanes in Southern California, and it just wasn't going to happen. Now I'm shoving hurricanes onto Florida, which is much more realistic. It even works out so the areas that I want to be desert will, in fact, be desert. Yay!!

Heh. Very true! C.J.Cherryh is another person I often think of — indeed in her writing the plot, pacing and just general story often takes a back seat to the sociology and anthropology of the cultures. And then of course you have Tolkien. I mean, the Simarillion really IS just a big ol' history book. I uh...want more of a middle ground, you know? I really don't think I have the fortitude to take world building to the levels that some authors have (hats off to them though.) Enough for it to feel real, that's all I want.

Sorry, I don't have any insider information to share — just wanted to talk about my recent movie purchases. In a fit of wishful thinking and "isn't Neil Gaiman swell?" euphoria, I went down to my local video store and bought DVDs of the English TV series Neverwhere and last year's movie Mirrormask. I really liked Neverwhere (the book.) It was witty and engaging and a bit weird and very, very...well...very Neil Gaiman. A good strong stock Neil Gaiman-esque protagonist (humble, slightly befuddled, generally unaware of cute he is, thoroughly well-intentioned, and just so damn nice) and enough interesting and different characters and places to really fire the imagination. The TV series though? Oh dear. I kept watching and thinking to myself: "the poor lambs...if only they'd had a real budget this could have been really good." Enough money for sets and props and actors who could act (they weren't all bad, but those who were walked right past "bad" and didn't stop until they'd reached "awful.") It wasn't a terrible show (although I probably gave it considerable lee-way because I was so enchanted with the book) but Lord, it wasn't good either. After 3 shows, I stopped watching and put in Mirrormask instead. Just the thing to cleanse the palate, as it turns out. I think Neil Gaiman is most on top of his game when he throws mythology into the mix. More specifically, I really do think he is the master of the modern fairy tale. "Modern fairy tale." Hmmph. Sounds like something that came out of a marketing brainstorming session on how to sell the latest remake of "Three Little Pigs." What I mean by "modern fairy tale" is that some of Gaiman's work (Mirrormask and the coming-soon-to-a-theatre-near-you Stardust) has the quality of fairy tales that might have been written down by the Brothers Grimm three centuries ago, but weren't. There is that sense of wonder and excitement and internal rules that are not expected to be exactly the same as our rules, although they are damned familiar. Magical lands, and magical figures, and I am not quite doing these stories justice when I say that in Gaiman's hands "magical" is fresh and new, and not a word that's been used to describe so many things, from Pagan to Hogworts, that it has ceased to have much meaning. Anyway, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know: Gaiman has a loyal and devoted presence here on the forum, and a lot of people here had the chance to oooh! and aaah! over Mirrormask when it was still in the theatre. But if you haven't had the chance, I highly recommend you pick up the DVD. It's truly a beautiful movie.

Yes! That's it exactly! Once you've figured out that these two nations have a border between them that is the only source for important metals, then you know that they'll aways be fighting over it, don't you? I did a little more work on it last night, and hopefully will have the major changes gone over tonight. Very excited. Have you finished your novel?

I haven't done it myself, but I know plenty of people who have. It seems to be a bad choice when 1) the person left school to do it and 2) they didn't like where they ended up when they broke up with the person. LA has some problems (it can be expensive) but I do love this town. There are areas here which are simply divine.

Oh believe me, it exists. Some of it, you may yet see — one day. There is a t-shirt design that's been hanging out in the wings for about five months now while we sort out color and t-shirt styles and the fact that the company that we usually use for the shirts doesn't make the kind of shirt we really want. Hopefully it will get sorted out fairly soon — I want this shirt to see daylight. Then there are the label designs that were, for one reason or another, rejected — or simply haven't been used yet because the Lab is in too much chaos. Sometimes I know far in advance what will be in an update, and sometimes I don't know until it's up on the web site. There is plenty of artwork that just wasn't quite right, and so wasn't used. So on to the BPAL art that you hopefully WILL see: Right now I'm starting to work on the Carnival Diabolique art, because although I don't yet know what the individual scents will be, I can start work on the look and feel (and this time I'm going to do a better job of making sure the posters are made, and that the artwork will make an easy transition to t-shirts and maybe *crossing fingers* some cool hoodies.) Beth has mentioned another artist she knows for making some different poster designs, and I'm very excited about that possibility. (I know my limitations, and although I CAN do twisted freakshow art, this other person is without doubt so much better at it I can only applaud them.) I started some portraits of lab staff before Convergance, and am planning on finishing them in time for the summer. (They are very easy to paint, being an exceptionally pretty group of people.) Of course, what I am REALLY looking forward to is the Lacuna series. I don't know exactly what Beth has planned, but I wants to do the labels...oh yes... It should be a very lovely summer.

Thank you for sharing this, Confection. I hope you never go through it; I hope no one else you know ever goes through it. My heart and hopes go with you.

She was a Missouri girl who grew up on tornados and married far too young to a man who knew only how to be cruel. It took her years to tear herself away from him, running -- always running. I did not understand, as a child, why we were always moving. But once she found the Ocean she could never leave its side again. She loved roses and irises and the great wide Pacific, and she was wise enough to know when to teach me and when to leave me to discover the truth on my own. She was always there for me, though, when I really needed her. She was, always, so beautiful, with enough love in her to fill all the oceans of the world. We scattered her ashes out at sea, just off the Catalina islands into the Ocean that she loved so much, and sometimes, on days like Mother's Day or the anniversery of her death, I will go down to the waves and toss her a bouquet of roses, although the waves always toss them back, laughing, as it to say "you silly girl, flowers are for the living." I miss her.

I know... Thank you. I have tried to say comforting words to you, you know, especially after your mother died, but...the words always trap themselves in my throat. There are no words. There is no comfort. Grief will have its day. Should have its day. But my mother (a woman who seemed to have a proverb for every occassion) had a saying for times like this, and though it's not always been a comfort it has always proven true: this too shall pass. But...it is tough on Mother's Day.

Apologies for the pun. I just couldn't help myself. So I have found that the hardest part of writing (for me, anyway) is world building. It wasn't something that I gave any appreciable thought to when I first started these novels. I just wrote in generic "fantasyland" (if you've read any fantasy or played an RPG, you know the place.) Everyone speaks a common language in fantasyland, and there are orcs and elves and a lot of heaving bodices and knights in shiny armor with big swords and wizards wear robes because...well...because. It's all the bastard step-child of Tolkien and Gygax and whatever else was sort of smushed together to make these stories. Elves are very pretty and very arrogant. Orcs are very savage and very tough. Magic exists, although it seems to have virtually no effect on the structures of societies, except maybe in as much as the villain usually is one, and maybe the hero too (or at least his mentor.) And it is SO extraordinarily difficult to stop playing in fantasyland. There are so many tropes that are simply taken for granted, especially for a dyed-in-the-wool DnD geek like myself. For a long time, I didn't even realize what I was trying to rebel against. I simply felt this vague sense of dissatisfaction with the writing. I was, at least at first, working with intellectual property started by my ex-husband, a brilliant man, but not necessarily a man who cared to think through the ramifications of his decisions on a meta level. You see, we had decided to write our first novel in his RPG game universe, because we thought that would make our job easier — the world building already done. Quickly though, details began to nag at me. Why did the seemingly vestigal royal houses of the Empire still persist when they did nothing and ruled no one? Because he liked it that way. Why was there a mysterious Emperor who roamed around incognito and messed around with the heroes? Because...and this one was a hard one for me to deal with once I realized it...he really liked the Emperor in the Saberhagen books, and so he introduced his equivalent in ours. Why the monotheistic God vs. Satan overtones to the books? Because my ex-husband was, at heart, still a Catholic, and he could not picture a universe that was not dualistic. Why were all the names FRENCH? It did not bother him at all that he referenced anachronistic terms and ideas that did not just shatter suspension of disbelief but often crushed it into a fine paste and used it as spackling compound. I know it sounds like I'm being very hard on my ex-husband. Perhaps I am. He was damn good with tricky plot complications, and a genius at pacing, but when it came to world building, he just didn't care. Not a bit. If it was good enough for Eddings or Salvatore, it was good enough for him. I quickly found it was not good enough for me. I began...changing things. Let's come up with an explanation for the Royal families, first of all, and why is the military structure set up like that anyway? He would complain and we would have these little catfights over details, and finally he relented and I starting making modifications in greater earnest. And then came the divorce and I insisted on the copyrights, and then well, then I could really start disassembling the whole universe and putting it back together again, a process that has been ongoing. In the meantime, I'd come across a few authors who had a rather profound impact on me: Steven Brust and Glen Cook. Steven Brust had taken the common clichés and turned them on their ears — he made little secret that the Draegarans were "elves" (the "humans" to the East even called them that) but he plays delightfully with language (the word the Draegarans use for themselves translates as "human" which the humans think is rediculous because THEY are clearly the "humans" which the Draegarans think is rediculous because THEY...) and because he never calls any race by some stale generic noun, it all feels very fresh (perhaps it would not have, however, had I been more familiar with the nuances of Hungarian culture.) Brust also showed me the inverse of Clark's Law — that in any society, sufficient magical ability would be indistinguishable from technology. Sure, people would use magic to blast their enemies, but they would also use it for the most prosaic means if it was possible to do so — fireballs are nice, but instant communication and good lighting is better. Cook showed me that with any advance in technology, magical or not, any sufficiently organized ruling power of the land will be quick to move to control that power, and if they don't, they will quickly be replaced by someone who did. Only if that authority feels it is safe to do so will the advance be allowed for non-military uses. Plus, Cook's lands just didn't FEEL like anything in this world (at least not until later books with that somewhat transparent overlay of India.) Language barriers were often a problem, the monsters felt unique...tasty stuff. But constructing a complex society from scratch is HARD. Excruciatingly hard -- it is a daily example of how imaginative one ISN'T. I can understand, I really can, why both Brust and Cook fell back on the easy out by using reflections of Earth cultures (Brust using Hungary and Cook using India later in his Black Company series.) I wasn't, I admit, very happy with that solution. It does have the advantage of feeling very complex and real (because it is modeled on things that are complex and real) and it is, on a base level if nothing else, easy to identify with. You rarely need to be told, for example, that an Indian-like society with a death goddess is going to have assassins. It's understood before the first cultist ever shows his strangling cord. I started up a free wiki (because it is an excellent way of seeing what you have figured out and what you haven't) and began to write down information, encyclopedia-style, about my world. I wondered if I was putting far too much time and effort into something that might get a passing sentence. Maybe. Then my boyfriend bought me a book by some fellow named Steven Erickson. Now if you want to see what really taking the time to do your worldbuilding before you ever set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard can do for you...this man is the one to check. out. An anthropologist who evidentally started doing the fantasy novel thing as a bit of a lark, his skill at crafting societies, cultures and the broad sweep of history is really what makes these books shine with extraordinary brilliance. I won't say his work is "original" (at least three of his races very neatly fall into the categories of "dark elves," "shadow elves," and "light elves" and Mother of Darkness/Dragons is named Tiam) but these are really minor quibbles, and the unwillingness to do without elves is a faux pas I've unapologetically committed myself. Erickson's inspiration came from his example of how thorough world-building could support a story and provide it with power, scope, richness, and meaning. It's been so hard to work on the worldbuilding when I could be getting into the writing, mucking about with words and sentences, getting my hands dirty, but Erickson's books have given me an excellent lesson in the rewards of patience. Anyway, I highly recommend you pick him up. He's a hell of a good read.

When I first smelled Drink Me in the bottle, I thought "Holy moly, it's Beaver Moon." Okay, not quite Beaver Moon, but certainly a cousin to Beaver Moon and the Monster Baits: foody, sweet, sugary, dessert-worthy and quite delicious. And hey? General catalog! On my skin, Drink me is wonderfully sweet, with an absolute cupcake vibe, as well as strong fruity notes that could only be pineapple and cherry. Playful, tasty and gorgeous! And then it all goes so horribly wrong. Not knowing the notes in this, I can't honestly say what happened, but within an hour Drink Me had morphed into something that not only would I not want to drink, but I wouldn't particularly want on my skin either. It didn't go plastic, as vanilla scents can sometimes do on me. Rather, my skin chemistry amped something in the background that I can't identify (something nutty, perhaps?) and can only say that I don't particularly care for. I laughingly wondered if maybe what I was smelling was the turkey but no — it doesn't seem to be that either. Alas, it seems Drink Me is not my cup of tea. For those looking for a more accessible alternative to the recent spate of LE foody scents, however, I would strongly recommend giving Drink Me a try. Your skin chemistry may not do to it what mine did (or you may like those dry down notes.) Had it stayed the way it was in the early stages, this easily would have been one of my favorites.

I've been sitting here with this bottle for several days now, wearing it and thinking about, because it's doing a very unsettling, very subliminal bit of poke and prod. Damn, but I KNOW this fragrance. Unfortunately, I can't seem to place it. Is it reminding me of a general catalog? Maybe. It keeps haunting me with the sensation that I know it, that I've worn it before, that we are old friends. A bit unsettling. To me, this is a warm, rich, vanilla-dipped, musky sweet fragrance that does a fine job of being not quite as gingery as Gingerbread Poppet, nor as vanilla as Antique Lace, nor as musky as Smut, but has connotations of all of the above. I absolutely agree with the Praline comments, for there is a slightly, lovely and fleeting feeling of desserts and decadence enjoyed in the humid, warm evening air. Sultry, sensual and a tiny bit foody without being cloying. A pleasure, and a real honor to have ended up with a bottle. I will certainly savor it.

The Seven Sins have regular catalog labels. I'm sure you've gotten an answer on this, but they are the normal Sepheroth, but reversed (white on black.)

I'll let you in on a secret... I didn't like the 2005 Beltane. I really didn't like it. I gave away or sold my bottles. It was floral, sure, but a headache-inducing sort of floral that agreed with me not at all. After a few months, it had calmed down enough to wear, but was not a favorite and certainly wouldn't be the first thing I reached for. So something to keep in mind when I say that Beltane 2006 makes me absolutely swoon. There is a grassy/aquatic edge to this, which I appreciate since it often keeps florals from running away from my particular skin chemistry, forming their own union and and immediately demanding better pay and benefits while shouting their little heads off. This yea'rs florals include something like gardenia or tube rose, perhaps star-gazer lilly — sweet florals, rather than powerfully strong. The combination creates a fragrance that seems to me to be the absolute distillation of Spring; the light, sweet, fresh smell of flowers, enjoyed on a beautiful sunny day with the clouds of Spring rains fading in the distance. This is a joyful, beautiful Spring blend, and I expect to be wearing it a lot.

Seems likely.

No,no,no...Beth rocks, and Brian, and I suspect Anthony and Fritz might have had a hand in this too... They're the ones who went and bought in a neat snazzy new printer! Beth designed all the convergence labels, btw.