ravenfeathers

Thence the winds bore me, blowing fierce and fell, Across the fish-abounding ocean swell A nine-days’ space: and on the tenth we reached The land where the Lotus-eaters dwell, Who fed on flowery food: there landed we And drew us water, and by the sea By the swift ships taking our midday meal We drank and ate bread in sufficiency. Then of my crew I sent to bring me word, Exploring inland, what they saw or heard Of dwellers on the acres, choosing out Twain, and as a herald with them for the third. And straightway going forth, anigh they drew The Lotus-eaters; who against our crew Devised not hurt, but gave them of the fruit To taste upon the lotus-trees that grew. But whoso of them once began to eat The lotus-fruit, that is as honey sweet, Had no will longer in him to return Or bring back tidings, but desired to fleet His days among the lotus-eating men, Eating the lotus, nor return again. Howbeit I drove them weeping to the ships, And to the ships’ hold haled and bound them then Under the benches: but I bade anon My fellows to the swift ships get them gone In haste, that none might of the lotus-fruit Eat, and forget the way he went upon. Honey-sweet and soporific. in the bottle fruity and almost powdery like bazooka gum with a sharp note reminiscent of ozone wet on skin wet and fruity, almost tropical, like punch, hm. dry on skin ah, the drydown is nice! maybe it's just me today, i seem to be making everything go really sweet. there is a hardcore honey note here that's dancing over the top of the fruitiness and bringing the whole thing down a notch. pleasant and inoffensive and undeniably feminine. later: about the same but has the teeniest whiff of baby shampoo (?!)... which gets stronger as it dries down more. sweet and soporific, yup! LOL! definitely makes me think of bedtime when the spawn were wee. i kind of sort of want a bottle of this. wearlength is very short. test 2: something like honeysuckle going on this time? very sweet, soft, and girly, possibly too much for my general tastes.

the gladdener of all hearts Honeyed milk, baby powder, lavender, orris root, sage, carnation, angelica, frankincense, and rose otto. in the bottle a little flowery, a little spicy; carnation, lavender, and sage are all really strong players here. wet on skin very similar to the smell in the bottle with a soft twang of rose and a vegetable-y undercurrent of angelica which rounds out the softness of the other notes really well. carnation is really holding its own in a small, polite battle with lavender. dry on skin a soft, creamy, and frankincense-y floral. this is the floral for the gal who just can't stand florals. on extreme drydown, all of the notes fade together into one sweet scent. it's innocent and beautiful. i like this far more than i anticipated, especially in the extreme drydown.

SOOTHING SYSTEM Inspired by Gris Grimly's illustrations for the System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether. A lunatic’s vintage cabernet. in the bottle i wish to take a shot of this from the bottle! pure, red, dry cabernet! wet on skin y halo thar, grape. the dry booziness burns off really fast and leaves a sticky sweet grape behind, a dark grape reminiscent of fox grapes that have been frosted sugary sweet in late autumn, with an almost woody back note dry on skin no morphing here, except that the sweetness evens out and leaves a lovely red wine scent that sticks very close to the skin. still quite grape-y, but very, very wearable. after a second test, the scent i find this most similar to is, oddly, gluhwein. *head scratchy* i think it's the incredibly booziness of it. this is a grape version of the orange-y TP scent.

Every holiday season should be full of lewd suggestions and filthy double entendres, right? This is a new take on Lick It and Lick It Again -- a peppermint candy cane with a flash of vanilla and an extra jolt of sugar. in the bottle i like this reinterpretation much better than the original Lick It! the earlier version decant i got was pure peppermint with just a drop of sweet smooth vanilla. This is much softer, much smoother, and more like a candy-cane. wet on skin the wet phase is undeniably wet and smells like nothing less than the breath of someone who has been eating peppermint sticks. dry on skin the peppermint remains smooth and foody-minty without a hint of toothpasty mint. the vanilla smooths it out nicely, keeping it from being a heavy, unwieldy mint. it's incredibly, fantastically sweet. one bottle of this may not actually be enough! note to mods: i did an exhaustive search, but couldn't find the thread for the new formulation. please merge, with my apologies, if i missed it.

Pumpkin, black musk, tobacco, myrrh, and clove in the bottle bog standard BPAL pumpkin, a little reminiscent of pumpkin V from 2007 and pumpkin queen: swarthy, buttery pumpkin but not quite as buttery as, say, jack wet on skin i'm getting the richness of the tobacco and just a little resin from the myrrh. no clove to be found yet, which is good, as i love the concept of clove, but generally find it doesn't work in any way on my skin dry on skin a little clove, yeah? just enough to spice it up and make it swing a little toward foody. this reminds me very much of pumpkin V '07, only not as bright. it's a wearable foody pumpin that's just a little bit dark and resinous. a surprise winner from my haul and this will most likely keep me happily in pumpkin for a long while. highly recommended if you liked any of the above pumpkin blends.

in the vial very BPAL-y. resinous, sweet, dark. wet on skin delicious. it's got all the good bits of black lace and miller v. CA without the icky bits that make both of those blends go south on me. dry on skin lovely, if a tiny bit powdery from the musk. lovingggg the opium here and wish there were more blends with this note. i will hoard this imp, viciously.

in the vial yuck! sharp! wet on skin haha, neat! it's leathertobaccorustoil! seriously gross, but incredibly fun. dry on skin more rust, less tobacco. it smells like... chemical fertilizer! that's it! it's farrrrr too sharp to be pleasant. one of the most disgusting things i've ever skin-tested, but it was my pleasure to do so. i love, love, love these concept blends!

in the vial almond! wet on skin almond-y cherry, very thick, but also a little dusty. dry on skin still a fairly 2 dimensional cherry, very similar in feel to bloody mary but just a little darker and sharper. pleasant.

this is very similar in scent to the earlier incarnation of BPTP SO soap with the brown gunkiness of villainess' goop. i'm a huge fan of villainess soaps, that's all i've used in the shower for years and i usually have a bar going at the sink, too, so i'm pretty biased in a review of the actual soap. the scent, however, is, as you'd expect, snake oil under a thick scent layer of sweet soapiness. it leaves a reasonably strong scent in the air in the bathroom and, as per most villainess soaps, a lesser scent on the skin, which is great if you want to wear something other than SO as your perfume for the day. so far, it's layered seamlessly with mme. moriarty, snake charmer, black lace/black death, and, of course, womb furie and SO. like some of the other dark-coloured villainess soaps, this leaves great swathes of colour on the skin, which could terrify some, but a good rub brings up the white lather and this doesn't stain either the skin or the shower curtain. (the one problem with these soaps is that the fantastic emollient content gunks up the shower something fierce; these soaps aren't for those who fear cleaning the tub!) i will say that the price is prohibitive enough that the mini hoard i have will likely be the last i purchase, especially since villainess has so many kick-ass proprietary scents for a dear, though less exorbitant, price, but it's great fun and i'm super glad to have another shot at snake oil suds. i really enjoy that shot of BPAL in the morning and the silk road/BPTP soaps i hoarded lost their scent before i got around to using them up. great partnership between BPAL/BPTP and villainess. *thumbs up*

i don't use this in the bath. i mix it into villainess' ennui and use it as an all-over slather. there are two things that really surprised me with this oil: 1) how very light-coloured it was (i was half afraid i was going to get the fake tan effect from a dark oil) 2) how very lightly scented it was i have a pretty weird relationship with snake oil. i like it, but not nearly as much as the people around me like it when i wear it, so i only tend to wear it when i'm purposely trying to make an impression or smell awesome for the masses. the lightness of this oil means that i can layer it with things other than snake oil, but it does make a really nice base for SO and SO blends. it's particularly nice with womb furie.

in the bottle much gentler than i was expecting, there's a lot of cinnamon/cassia and a deep underlayer of resins that's very soft and dark and really softens the edges on the spiciness. something reading "medicinal" here, too. dare i say, not in a bad way? wet on skin wtf menthol? there's menthol here. it's cassia/cinnamon, frankincense, and vicks vaporub. i have no idea what's screaming "MINT" at me here, but something really is. dry on skin just a tiny hint of whatever was going all crazy menthol on me and the spices have backed off considerably. what's left is sweet resins and a breath of minty spice. this is very creamy and has a hint of myrrh in it, reminding me, just ever so slightly, of the drydown on priala. oh yes! wikipedia tells me that bdellium is myrrh-like. that explains it. still no idea what's reading as menthol. maybe it's a combination of notes including the sweet cane? *shrugs* this is a very nice, slightly masculine blend with a drydown worth waiting for. i admit that i got it more for the symbolism and name than the notes, but i will definitely be wearing this one, possibly more toward fall and winter.

in the bottlethis is the second scent i've tested today that i couldn't really smell in the bottle. O_o it's... dark... sweet-ish... masculine... with maybe a tiny touch of something anise-y? i don't know what that would be. hm. wet on skin omg! wonderful, lovely, spectacular! why does this not have a single note in common with hellhound on my trail and yet smell like its antisocial cousin? not as sweet, not as strong as HomT, but classically sweet and masculine and slighly herbal. dry on skin oh, yuck. wtf? this is Not Good At All anymore. bitter and almost slimy, but at least still blessedly soft? and later on: ooo, nice again! i have to say, i rather hate that middle phase, but the extreme dry-down is lovely: sweet and primarily the tonka and benzoin with a touch of sandalwood. i have to say, the nutmeg really doesn't ever make an appearance as a note unto itself, but this works well without it and i'm guessing that the nutmeg riches it up a bit. one thing i'll say about this last pretty phase is that it's not a very manly pretty. for the, uh, lord of battles and destroyer of men? he's a bit of a nancy. a sexy nancy, mind you, but. one last thing: this is probably the quickest-fading scent i've encountered in a long time. i believe "poofgone" is the word most often used in reviews.

this was a tough one. on the one hand, i love honey. on the other hand, BPAL honey notes don't really smell of honey to me, just sweetness. more of a nectar than a honey, but still fairly artificial. as for snake oil, it's a nice scent, inoffensive and enjoyable, but it's not one i'm superdupercrazy about. however, it's the one scent that gets the most compliments when i wear it. so, there's that. also, lots of reviewers have said "O", which is incredibly gross on me, so that made me nervous. in the bottle i can't... *whiff*... actually smell much here. *scratches head* it's sweet and that's about all i'm getting. wet on skin whoof! hello, honey note. i can smell this from two feet away. it's also got that almost-but-not-quite snake oil baby powdery note in the throw. dry on skin it only has a touch of that sharp-ish fresh snake oil mank, which is nice. it's not quite the mellow sweetness of the aged version, but close. meanwhile, the honey continues to read as just "sweet" to me, although there's something almost floral going on here, which is making me think "nectar" again. verdict? a softer, gentler snake oil, significantly more conventionally girly. the comparisons to O? well, sorta. the honey note is similar, but it has none of the burnt plastic of that blend on me.

once upon a time, i really, really liked citrus perfumes, especially orange-y ones. and then someone pointed out to me that citrus had been so heavily co-opted by the cleaning industry that when i wore citrus scents, i smelled like a clean kitchen. :-/ so, i've avoided them since. this one seemed to have enough other stuff to maybe be safe. in the bottle bright, golden, very cheerful and orange-y and... clean kitchen smelling. *sigh* wet on skin a ha! nice. that tart, bright top note is neutralized by the cognac, vanilla, and tobacco. there's just a hint of citrus and it's the sweeter, slightly more cloying mandarin that's represented here. dry on skin this mellows down even further on dry-down and the tobacco, which is a particularly nice tobacco note, is so smooooooth and lovely. this is very sweet, very feminine, and generally beautiful.

in the bottle sweet pea and cognac. boozy and floral in a totally-not-gross-at-all way (says the 'death to fleurs'! girl). it's a very proper and sweet scent, but not matronly in the least. wet on skin fruity and a little sour wet, the vanilla, honey, carnation, and sweet pea are a little bit pummeled by the plum and slightly bitter pomegranate. is it begins to dry, the sort of alarming sour note dissipates and all the feminine elegance of the scent in the bottle returns. dry on skin this loses a lot of its initial sparkle on drydown and becomes rather weary and sweet-ish. what saves this one from being a big loser with my skin chemistry is the magic of layering it with black death. the patchouli in BD comes out like crazy when these are layered and provides exactly the right amount of dirt to the mix to make BH wicked again.

in the bottle beautifully blended! with a strong whiffly sniff, i'm getting dirty patchouli, resinous amber, a generalized citrus, and just a touch of spicy clove. wow, fantastic. wet on skin it goes through a little bit of an icky patchouli phase wet, the same filthygross patchouli from goblin. it evens out really quickly, though and settles back into a glossy, gorgeous, and brightly resinous blend that's fairly seamless. guh, i love the tiny snootch of clove in this so much! it balances the citrus so beautifully! dry on skin not a morpher, the citruses burn off a touch and the tobacco and sandalwood peep out a little more. wow, now i'm really loving the tobacco. this is the definitive BPAL tobacco and it's freaking amazing. i love black death and i'm freaking out because this is seriously putting itself up as a contender in my top spot. O_o

in the bottle smashed carnation and sugarrrrrrrr. it's a beautiful and very true carnation, really lovely wet on skin gah, gorgeous! the spicy, clove-ish waft of dianthus, but much sweeter and less earthy, almost... candyish, in a weird way. dry on skin the sugary sweet bit amps and amps and amps until i feel a little queasy. extreme dry-down brings to mind trident bubble-gum flavoured gum, pre-chewed. O_o the wet phase made me really want to hoard bottles, but the dry phase chilled me out. it's nice, very unique, and i like it lots more than i had imagined i would (and i was imagining enjoyment!) but my all-sweetening skin makes a mockery of the sugar bit.

in the bottle i'm sorry, what? i was swooning, kthnx. heavy, furry musk and thick cocoa, hold the sugar, and an overall crunchy dryness. wet on skin hm. well, okay. the cocoa went poof. and there's something... softly lemon-y here? weird. dry on skin seriously hell-no inducing, all froofy powder and light lemon-y floral-y ickness. for a LOOOOOONG time. and then? well, then it turns really nice, softly tobacco-y with just a smidge of filthy cocoa powder. is it worth waiting two hours for? yes! i wonder how often i'll actually reach for this, but it's wearable and the extreme dry-down is nice, very vaguely reminiscent of miskatonic university and pinched w/ 4 aces.

this is going to be a hard review to do, mainly because i can totally taste this blend. does that happen to other people? some blends seem to leach through the skin like pretty DMSO and become a taste sensation as well as a nice smell. well, except that i've yet to have this happen and taste good. in the bottle hm. sweet, feminine, very inoffensive and "perfume-y". it's got a very alcohol-y smelling base, which makes it smell more like a conventional perfume than most. it's putting me in mind of phoenix steamworks. not that it smells like PS, just that it has that very classic perfume feel. wet on skin cotton, vanilla, cream, cotton, cream, cotton, vanilla, cream, cream... wash, rinse, repeat dry on skin fun morphing happening now. the incense keeps wafting by in a big hurry to get somewhere else. when it dashes through, it really tempers the soft, girly sweetness of the wet phase. just a hint of musk here keeping it slightly dirty. the cognac note is giving it just a hint of alcohol whiff, keeping it well within that classic perfume box. may i just say that as pretty as this is to sniff (although not, at present, exactly my thing; aging will tell the full tale here), it tastes awful!!! i passed on black lace when it came to DD the first time because i was sure it wouldn't work on me. i couldn't pass up a second chance on such a rare and loved bottle, but now i've got confirmation that it's Not Quite My Thing, at least fresh. into the bottle cellar it goes for a bit and i'll see where it goes.

for reasons which are probably fairly obvious, i didn't really give a crap what this one had in it, it was mine regardless and x2, as well. it arrived at my PO on saturday, but due to a comedy of errors, i wasn't able to get it until today. i've been, like, peeing my pants all weekend with anticipation. in the bottle sharp, chilly, with a deep heart of resin wet on skin musk, yes, and dark. very glossy feeling and it warms up in mood considerably. the myrrh is a bit powdery, like a skim of black powder over polished black wood. for some reason, despite the notes disparity, this is reminding me rather strongly of silas ruthyn with hints of schwarzer mond. it's quite masculine and almost cologne-y, but too dark to be truly cologne-y. dry on skin i'm getting a... sense of the spice of the chile and the smokiness is amping, making the comparison to silas ruthyn even more obvious to my nose. the vanilla remains elusive, just adding a tiny touch of sweetness. nutmeg is reading as a very, very faint clove in this phase. the patchouli is grounding it without being a singular note at all. musk and myrrh continue to dominate. overall, i really like this and agree that it's going to be the absolute bomb in a year or two after cellaring it. honestly, at the moment it's not evening breaking my top 10, but, as i said, i don't really care! raven moon alskfjoasjdfla!!

in the bottle amazing stuff, very heady, very sexy, very smoky vanilla! it's a more womanly hellhound wet on skin funny, i'm not getting chamomile here although there's something almost herbal, like a soft dried tea, but without the bright apple smell of anthemis nobilis, even in its dried form dry on skin the initial drydown is absolutely plagued by plasticplasticplastic and that lovely smoky vanilla turns into cheap, nasty candle on me. patience pays off a bit here, though it never reaches the potential of the smell in the bottle. i'm going to retest in a week or so. i wish i'd gotten violens for curiosity of layering now!

in the bottle a thick, candy vanilla with a sweet cream note wet on skin very sweet and mild, a young girl's perfume dry on skin straight to plasticville. i'll stick with my saffron-lite love's philosophy for my soft vanilla, i guess. what a shame!

in the bottle a lovely, ripe cherry, very rich and cheerful wet on skin amp ye cinnamon! spicy cherry with a dark heart of sticky sweet licorice. the cherry is reading quite tart in this phase dry on skin cinnamon ramps down and the sweet, anise-y note is blending more seamlessly with the cherry. a very warm, fruity, and strangely comforting scent. huge winner in my haul. i love this! this soaks into my skin and is gone in just a couple of hours time, completely. rats.

in the bottle gah! nyquil! i've read loads of reviews over the years comparing cherry blends to cough syrup and sometimes i could almost smell it, if i used my imagination, but this is straight up cherry nyquil and no mistake! wet on skin lovely on the skin, it becomes a tart, boozy cherry, very syrupy and sour dry on skin it goes maybe a bit <em>too</em> sour on the drydown, but it's still a very nice cherry, very different from other BPAL cherry blends. i'm also getting a little bit of plastic, but i'm doing some hormonal fluctuations right now and that's sometimes a plasticizer with my chemistry

holy crap. in the bottle the sweet filthiness of red musk, only amped up with spice and fruit and OM NOM NOM. nutmeggggggggg, my goodness. wet on skin red musk! nutmeg! red musk! nutmeg! vanilla! OM NOM NOM. dry on skin same as wet, only maybe more nutmeg. something a teensy, tinesy bit soapy here that i'm not adoring, but only very close to the skin. i want to smell like this every day of my life forevermore.