psychocygnet

This is, apparently, a miracle scent on me. See, I'm allergic to cedar. Not fall-over-and-stop-breathing allergic, but allergic enough that I got an exemption from the "you must use only the pencils we provide you" rule my school had during standardized tests (although honestly, being in the same room with all those cedar pencils still gave me my fair share of itches and sniffles), and allergic enough that I started sneezing the second after I (foolishly) opened my imp of Tombstone. But I didn't remember that The Cat had a cedar note, so when I was running feverishly around Lunacy skin-testing all sorts of things, I decided to give it a try. It smelled nice in the bottle, and I remember it smelled rather nice on my skin, but the important part of this story is that a big drop of it fell on my shirt, and I recently had to rescue that shirt off the top of the hamper to wear to a particular event. (Hey, it happens!) That shirt. Smelled. So good. SO GOOD, YOU GUYS. Warm, cozy, almost chocolate-tinged musk, a spicy edge of cedar that somehow did not make my nose run like a broken fountain, and a little bit of benzoin rounding it out. It's delicious and perfect, and I'm hoping that it ends up being just as delicious and perfect (and non-allergy-triggering) when I finally get a bottle.

I don't know which version of Gnome I have in the imp, but damn, did this ever go wrong on me. I could smell slightly spicy goodness before I put it on, and then it had a few seconds to start reacting with my skin, and then I got a scent that reminded me of rest area bathrooms. Cleaning fluid mixed with pink soap, with an oddly familiar pale green quality. It's not entirely Eau de California Rest Stop (there'd have to be an evil jasmine note in there to replicate that "this place has REALLY been extensively used as a bathroom" note), but still. Ewwww. Not what I was hoping for, Gnome.

So, apparently, I have issues with patchouli. It ruined Madame Moriarty for me, and every other scent I've tried with it seems to turn into a vaguely unwashed stink instead of the earthy but lovely note other people seem to get. I very carefully dabbed this on my lampshade, to get a sense of what this smells like before I let it play with my whimsical skin chemistry, and WHAM GAAACK PATCHOULI QUICK BEAT IT WITH A STICK BEFORE IT ATTACKS. Did my best to clean off the lampshade, and now I have this very nice cinnamony-ambery room smell, but apart from that cinnamon-amber end stage, I don't think Sin is going to work for me at all.

Here's my attempt at some recommendations: Blueberry Picking: Sun-warmed, slightly squishy blueberries plus overgrown grass, overgrown honeysuckle, overgrown lavender, overgrown lemon verbena, and a smattering of un-pulled weeds. Butter Rum Cookie: Rum-soaked brown butter cookies, crusted with sugar, soaked in almond and garnished with orange rind and pummeled pecans. The Haunted Beach: Pale, moonlit musk, sea salt, and ambergris. Mouse Circus: A toodle oodle of pink cotton candy noses, vanilla spun sugar fur, scattered kernels of popcorn, and a touch of polished golden wood. New Orleans: Reminiscent of hothouse blooms on a humid night, ripe, but touched with decay. Sweet honeysuckle and jasmine with a hint of lemon and spice. Plunder: The scent of a pirate's bumboat, overflowing with stolen wares: tea leaf, cassia, cinnamon bark, clove, allspice, sandalwood, tobacco, peppercorn, and nutmeg. Waiting: Lilith at the window, waiting for her father. Raindrops and asphalt, lavender, pale musk, and white oudh. (Because rain-wet pavement is the best I-love-and-miss-the-city smell I can think of.)

@ChernobylLegacy: I'll just throw all these recommendations out there. Maybe some will sound exactly like what you're looking for; hopefully they'll at least help you narrow the field a bit! -Little Sister is Watching You (because it sounds like a nice combination of innocence, sci-fi, and that observational temperament): A voice on the airwaves: electric, aldehydic cherry blossom. -Mary Shelley (because if ever there was an example of an observer unraveling the darkness of man!): The scent of absinthe, lightning, stormclouds, and laudanum crashing through a veil of soft Victorian oriental perfume. -Mother Ghost (because the character is unintentionally mysterious and intimidating; every time I watch Crimson Peak and I see Edith cringing away from her mother's ghost I'm internally shouting "STOP THAT SHE IS NICE AND SHE LOVES YOU AND SHE'S TRYING TO GIVE YOU ADVICE"): Love transcending time, space, and death: a cold, sheer white musk gleaming with black orchid, benzoin, labdanum, and blackened amber, and embraced by white rose, tea leaf, and vanilla flower. -Kabuki (mysterious, but the cherry part sounds a bit playful): Compelling, complex, and utterly enigmatic: a luxuriant, exotic blend of cherry, red musk, and star anise. -Mr. Qubit (because the description sounded something like what I'd imagine a classic sci-fi spaceship might smell like): Gleaming metal, electrical discharge, and a whiff of tinny cologne. -Stonehenge at Dusk (because of the foggy damp stone note): Wiltshire’s burnt-tip orchids, a scattering of dandelions, crushed grass, wild daffodil, and chips of fog-wet bluestone. -Nyx (for exploring the night): Named in honor of the primeval Greek Goddess of Night. A scent reflecting inky black skies and eternal desolation. Night-blooming jasmine, warmed by myrrh, lifted by the promise of rose. -51 (because if X-Files is on your list of faves, I can't leave without listing the Area 51 scent!): Luminescent, glowing, and otherworldly: green mandarin, neroli, honeydew, white amber, guava, freesia, white and green musks hovering over desert scrub, smashed wood, and the dry, biting scent of night air over the Groom Lake salt flats.

In the bottle, this is a beautiful fruity aquatic. On my wrists, it smells exactly like a Garnier shampoo that I used to use. And it doesn't seem to be morphing. Dammit, Alcie!

I'm late in replying (it's been a hell of a week and next week promises to be equally deranged), but thanks, y'all! @sqwook: Embalming Fluid went pure Lemon Pledge on me, but Lyonesse sounds delicious! I'd love to try Perversion, too, but the coconut note worries me a bit- when I tried Eden, it turned out to be coconut with a side of coconut, and I was scrubbing it off like crazy, because ugh. @Allumina: Jareth's definitely on my wish list. I'll have to keep Blacker Than the Raven Wings of Midnight in mind if I ever get a chance to try a few of the Ligeia scents- a lot of them sounded interesting to me. @VetchVesper: Both Wilde and Baneberry sound really good to me. Also, I need more excuses to say "ornery hedgehog musk" (and possibly "Enraged Bunny Musk") in my life. To me, Centzon is sort of a slinky spiced-wine scent (thanks for the clarification, I was wondering how skin chemistry could turn evil, spicy cocoa-wine into pears!), so I've been looking at other wine scents like Lady Macbeth. Haven't bought any, though- I keep worrying I'll end up smelling like that Titanic memorial service I went to where a lot of people were trashed on what I'm guessing was that $2 wine from Trader Joe's.

Agnes Nutter just moved up a few places on my wish list, then. Thanks!

I may actually finally have decided on five scents for the moment, so let's go! 1. Theodosius the Legerdemain 2. Firethorn Berry Tea 3. Centzon Totochtin 4. Belle Epoque 5. White Rabbit (...OK, I'm also very fond of Dorian when it acts nicely on my skin, but that's like four days out of every month; too much of the time it's sticky sweetness )

Question about the gunpowder note, since I haven't tried it yet: is it more like smoke, or dry gunpowder (no idea what that one would smell like), or that cordite smell you get after fireworks have gone off? I'd actually love to have something that smells like the latter, for sentimental reasons (the sweatshirt my dad wore when he did firework shows used to smell like it, but now I've had it so long that it just smells like me).

Arachne of Lydia (spider totem): Soft brown and Tyrian purple: dusty clove and blackcurrant. Blood and Judgment So Well Commedled (public perception as bookish, kindly, and somewhat masculine in presentation): A little kid’s interpretation of Hamlet’s BFF. A scent of kindness and devotion, friendship and loyalty: soft brown leather and brushed suede with bourbon vanilla, toasted almond, tonka bean, and amber. Danse Macabre (whimsical and macabre): An allegorical expression of the ineffable, indisputable triumph of death, generally expressed in medieval artwork as a violin or flute-wielding skeleton leading a procession of dancers to their graves. Black cypress with oakmoss, frankincense, oude, and a sliver of toasted hazelnut. Masquerade (collecting masks): A festive, dazzling blend, layered in mystery and intrigue. Patchouli, ambergris, carnation and orange blossom. Tiresias the Androgyne (embracing parts of both genders in self): Though the vision is disconcerting, the warmth and passion in the singer's voice swells inside your heart, and you are spellbound. Enraptured, you realize that though the gender is opposed on either side, one soul binds the whole. Dark, moody, and bittersweet: black currant, patchouli, tobacco, cinnamon leaf, caramel, muguet, and red sandalwood. Also, I have one absurdly particular recommendation for the Pacific Northwest: Egle. Yes, it's based on Lithuanian mythology, but I wore it while driving back from my cousin's wedding north of Seattle, and the way the forest and aquatic notes came together reminded me so much of the places I'd just left. Apart from the jasmine note going a bit dodgy on my skin, it smells a lot like the time I got lost near Whidbey Island (if that gives you any idea of the scent).

@fallfromgrace: I loved the recommendations I got here, so I hope there are one or two here that work for you! My reasons for picking these are in parentheses. -Hermia ("though she be but little, she is fierce!"): Pink pepper, golden amber, honeysuckle, and passion flower. Sadly, this seems to be discontinued, but Hermia the character is still the first thing I think of when I see the word petite. -Kumari Kandam (the archaeology of forgotten things): The hollow scent of a vast antediluvian civilization, now frozen and buried, smothered by a thick sheet of ice and trapped deep beneath the ocean. Thick incense, clay, stone, and hothouse blooms with a spike of frost, a hint of decay, and heavy, dolorous aquatic notes. -Le Serpent Qui Danse (a smart, twisting mind in Victorian skirts): A sinister, darkly seductive scent inspired by poetry of Charles Baudelaire. Violet entwined with vanilla and gardenia. -London (a veneer of innocence and propriety): Venerable Victorian Tea Rose… twisted, blackened and emboldened with wickedness. This description also reminds me of Black Rose, which smelled exactly like one of the mausoleums at Hollywood Forever in the imp, so this might have a similar graveyard effect. -The Reaper and the Flowers (always sounded like a lonely, half-forgotten grave to me): A funereal bouquet laid on cemetery grass: longiflorum lilies, white rose, chrysanthemum, and carnation.

I love this thread, but I'm totally drawing a blank when it comes to recommendations. I hope it's OK if I ask for some, though? I'm a Libra, but despite the things that every single teenybopper astrology book said when I was a kid, I'm not a social butterfly in a pastel cardigan. I have a temper that's a bit like a flash flood- it strikes quickly, runs deep, and sometimes leaves a lot of damage behind (mostly in the form of residual moodiness; I try not to inflict it on other people). The whole temper thing also means that I'm more of a berserker than a diplomat (though maybe that's just my Danish side wanting an excuse to run off and Viking some monasteries); if somebody's picking on someone I don't dislike, I instinctively want to jump in and start fighting the bully, although my shyness stops me from following through more often than I'd like. I like black and red, and I tend to end up with a lot of bright pink things bought on a whim- I like to say that where other people have dark urges, I'm a naturally dark person that gets pink urges. As to the rest of me: I don't remember when I didn't know how to read, I love pretty much every genre of genre fiction out there (fantasy, sci-fi, romances with snappy banter, etc.), and I've been writing my own stories and poetry on and off since I was a bored thirteen year old. (I haven't been paid much for creative work, but I'm starting to get more work as a freelance editor and copywriter, which is fun in its own way.) I've been a gamer since I was four (mostly RPGs now; New Vegas is my current favorite). I'm somewhere on the asexual spectrum, but I don't know where yet. I'm a Christian witch, I'm studying reiki, and I get nature-oriented visions sometimes when I do reiki on myself (volcanoes and paintbrush flowers more than anything else). Oh, and I hate coffee. I'm not a fan of hot beverages in general (I always feel like I'm drinking molten lava), but I haven't yet found a form of coffee that doesn't make me want to spit the stuff back out and go brush my teeth.

Smells like a garage, but in a weirdly pleasant way reminiscent of new car and spilled Coke and the cool paved ground. There's a sharp edge to it, so I can't see wearing it out where people will expect me to smell pretty, but I'm just so damn intrigued by it...

in the imp: a delightful spicy floral on me: musty and vaguely floral. Reminds me of my adoptive grandmother's apartment, which smelled like dust with an overlay of musk, Neutrogena and burnt popcorn. Ugh. After a while, something polleny starts to come out. It's nicer, at least; it smells like outdoors. The part of the outdoors that makes me sneeze. ...Gah, who am I kidding, this is flaying my nose. With the way that it smells in the imp, though, can I just say I'm totally jealous of all y'all with compliant skin chemistry?

Is there anything similar to Bakunawa? I was pleasantly surprised by how well the orchid note balanced out the musk and moss and smokiness, and I can see myself using up the imp I have rather quickly...

Smells like night-blooming flowers in the bottle, smells like old rubber and something vaguely smoky on my wrist. On drydown it calms down to something much more pleasant- there's the night-blooming flowers again, along with something cool and vaguely aquatic- but the jasmine/old rubber sticks around in the background, and it does a lot to spoil the effect.

Wet: Wood. Lots and lots of old wood. Reminds me a little of the antique dorm room I stayed in a couple years ago. Dry: Pink Softsoap. With the occasional hint of wildflowers, but, sadly, the hand-soap note remains dominant.

Wet: It's definitely rose, but with a sort of cool, dark veil thrown over it. It's not very strong, though. Drying: The scent is getting waterier and waterier. And when I sniff my left wrist, there's a strange hint of something non-floral. Pickles? Dry: Okay, now all I'm getting is the pickle smell. Bleh.

I'm guessing that the amber and/or musk is amping on me, because all I got straight out of the imp was dust. After a while, it morphed into dirt- not a nice damp-earth kind of dirt, but a "huh, I bet this hasn't been washed in a few months" dirt. The rose is hardly there- if I sniff like crazy I get a faint greenish flower-stem smell, but it's drowning in grit. Really, really not what I had hoped for.

In the bottle or freshly applied, it's beautiful- all sunlit metal with occasional glimpses of incense. It also goes really, really well with honey. Sadly, the more it dries, the more it shifts into something that reminds me of my dad's deodorant. If you have skin that can hang on to all the wonderful notes instead of going Old Spice, though, this is really good.

I got this as a freebie when I ordered hair gloss, so I had to try it out. "It's free. So what if it's got coconut in it? How bad could it be?" Well, at least when it goes on my skin, it's pure sickly-sweet coconut. After scrubbing at it with Purell, it's a nice toasted coconut (I say "nice" because I can see how it would appeal to somebody who doesn't despise coconut as much as I do). But in any case, sadly, it's not for me.

I have fine hair, but I have a lot of it (all very dry and damaged and generally stubborn), so most things I try either get a "ha ha, nice try" reaction from the frizzsplosion on my head, or they weigh down the strands and leave me with lifeless, dirty-looking hair. Five squirts of honey hair gloss later, and suddenly (well, not suddenly; I waited for it to air dry) I have soft, shiny, manageable hair that isn't contorting itself into a weird unstyleable position. This is, I might add, more than any other styling product has ever managed. THANK YOU, HAIR GLOSS. The honey scent is very light and slightly herbal. I stopped noticing it about ten minutes after I put it on.

Normally, I can't stand coffee anything. Normally, I'm not overly fond of chocolate scents either- if it's too much, I just wander around feeling slightly hungry all day. Neither of these things apply here. I am in love. It's a warm, complex chocolate smell; more "It's time for hot cocoa and a warm jacket" than "Why did I just rub myself with a Hershey bar?" It also layers surprisingly well with Embalming Fluid- I had one on one wrist, one on the other, and where the wrists have gotten together I'm noticing that Embalming Fluid seems to spice up the splash-of-rum edge of the Centzon Totochin.

In the imp all I smelled was lemon, but once it got on my skin all I smelled was tea. Herbal-ish green tea with touches of lemon and honey, to be precise- I didn't actually smell any honey, but it was so exactly like Arizona tea that I'd swear it was there. And it's been getting stronger every hour I have it on. The scent doesn't travel to the point where people are saying hello to me the minute I waft into the room, but it's got more throw than I expected- like a little tea-powered force field around my upper body. All in all, it's nice, but I think I'd rather drink green tea and smell black tea, so I won't be going for a whole bottle.