Catching up on BPAL natterings...

First of all, further commentary on a few from the first batch...

Yggdrasil, on further testing, was sinus-drilling acrid for the first while but soon calmed into something...quieter. Still not quite what I expected, paler and sharper, but the Great Tree is under there somewhere, underpinning it. And still tingles my nose hairs if I take too deep a breath. But this is still pretty soon after application. After a while longer it faded to some shadowy and varied and endless forest. I keep thinking back to herongale's review and her comments on how it didn't smell human--and I resoundingly agree. And somehow, after a little longer, moss started growing in it. I love moss. And a while longer still, it's faded to something deep and woody and far less riotous...the longer I wear it, the more I like it.

Loup Garou I'd already tested briefly, so preliminary comments are the same...now we wait. After about ten minutes of nose-twistingly acrid, it suddenly turns on a dime--still tangy, but deeper, woodier, and with a definite simply animal undertone. Just how I would imagine a wolf running through the woods would smell if it hadn't jumped in a river as of late. Not commonly pleasant, but soothing and invigorating, at least for me. And as time progress it only becomes warmer and mellower, less acrid forest-magic tang and more fur, as if the werewolf had torn out of the dark woods and then curled up at your feet. And the hint of that musk lingered pleasantly for a long, long time.

Fallen I also tried a more thorough test of: the sandalwood comes through much more on first application today for some reason, which makes it simpler, more earthly. But it's still nosegasmic.

Now a few of the newer acquisitions...

Tempest smells like a dead cricket. It should be all airy and lovely, and maybe it would be if I hadn't been around a dead cricket, but I just can't shake the association, and it's a note that doesn't fade. And I wish I could say more than that; I can kinda smell, underneath, what it should be, but it just isn't working for me. I had particularly high expectations for that one too.

(I had a pet cricket once who died within a week, in case you're wondering why I'm going on about dead crickets.)

Black Rose might be a little skewed first try because I washed my hands recently, but I like what I smell so far--something sweet and rosy gone wild and moldering. It also gives the strange impression of motion, as if this scent was swinging wild through the air--rather hard to describe. Still, very much the Rose that Blooms at the End of the World. Hello Mikage. XD And ten minutes later I'm vaguely dizzy--I hope that's not the perfume. o.O A few hours later it's dried to something deeper and warmer and muskier, but still distinctly black-rosy. Very nice overall, unless the dizzy fit was a direct result of it, in which case that kinda subtracts points.

Black Rose is also lingering liekwhoa and I'm loathe to get rid of it, so commentary on the rest of the new lot--Lightning, O, Empyreal Mist, and a (as far as I can tell) non-BPAL freebie by the name of Arabian Rose shall have to wait. Though O and Empyreal Mist are both making my mouth water just from smelling the unopened vials, so there's a lot of promise. Also, for the record, I spent a whole day with Bewitched on me and liked it even more.

In other news, I'm a half a scene or so away from having a complete first chapter for the Novel'O'Doom™, and I've discovered that the first movement of Beethoven's Tempest sonata (op. 31 no. 2, if memory serves--weehee, I'm a geek) is startlingly easy to play, at least if one does it at any reasonable speed, so I was noodling about with that earlier today. Also, Law & Order tonight had Munch!angst, which made me happy. Munch!angst, I say!