Scents & Sensibility

Discussion in 'General Chatter' started by chthonicfatigue, Jun 25, 2015.

  1. chthonicfatigue

    chthonicfatigue Bitten by a radioactive trickster god

    Talk about your favourite smells! Your least favourite smells! How you relate to smell in general. Can you even smell things.

    Like I have a really strong negative reaction to peppery and floral scents. Flying back from Australia, someone in front kept applying really strong floral scent (hand cream, it turned out) and I was physically sick from smelling it by the end of the flight. I love rich gourmand scents like tobacco-vanilla and honey, though, provided they're not too in your face.
     
  2. a tiny mushroom

    a tiny mushroom the tiniest

    I LOVE SCENTS. I have an aromatherapy lamp in my room just so I can have nice smells whenever I like. I like incense too, but I can't have it in my room because I have asthma and all that smoke in a small space = this mushroom not breathing.

    I love the smells of peppermint, jasmine, lavender, sandalwood, herbs like rosemary, baking potatoes, rice, tobacco as long as there's no lingering smoke (I sat next to an elderly man who smelt like rich tobacco on the bus and it made me feel really safe since it's such a warm, homely scent), freshly cut grass... Hmm, that is all I can think of right now. I also love the smell of my old high school library, mostly because that was a safe place for me away from the overwhelmingness of school.

    I also love the smell the air gets when spring is coming, and the smell of the heat in the air in summer. Aah I love scents!!!
     
  3. Re Allyssa

    Re Allyssa Sylph of Heart

    I can't really do super strong spells of any type, except maybe my favorite foods.

    For natural stuff, I love the smell of sofrito (the seasoning we cook everything with) cooking, and just about any other puerto rican food because it reminds me of good times at my grandma's house + my mom cooks when she's happy so there's probably some of that there too. I really like the way it smells after it rains, especially in place with lots of trees and grass (I associate it with camp, I think).
    I hate the smell of anything vaguely fishy, so I can't eat most seafood and I'm too picky to try the rest. I also hate gasoline and the smell of blood. Probably some other stuff too...

    For artificial smells, I love citrus stuff. I get bad headaches with mint, and cinnamon plz don't chew strong smelling gum around me. xD I don't really like floral scents, but they don't cause headaches so it's w/e.
     
  4. witchknights

    witchknights Bold Enchanter Defends The Fearful

    I love florals, woods and food scents, especially in perfume, and musky notes. I can honestly say sometimes it looks like i'm aiming at having at least one of every vanilla scented product ever made. I want one of everything in this list, my Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab wishlist is. honestly scary.

    i love scented candles more than incense, but that's cause i think i never find good incense here so it's mostly the smell of smoke and i truly don't like that. but it's not as bad as the smell of mint/camphor - im allergic to menthol and anything like it or remotely related to it clogs my airways.
     
  5. littlepinkbeast

    littlepinkbeast Imperator Fluttershy

    My favorite scents include things like coalsmoke and burnt steel and burnt gunpowder and WD-40, but then also more typical things like vanilla and frankicense. Frankincense is really lovely.
    There's a sort of chemically coconut smell I run into on people occasionally that makes my nose and sinuses really hurt, though.
     
  6. Elph

    Elph capuchin hacker fucker

    I cannot even smell things. *sad anosmic face*

    Well, that's an exaggeration. I struggle to smell most things, and there are some things I can't smell at all. There are some things I can smell just fine, and others I can't smell so well, but enjoy nevertheless.

    Like coffee. And books. And a certain type of artificial scent added to a lot of cleaning products; no idea what it is, or what it's supposed to be imitating (if anything), but synaesthetically, it smells clear and blue with bright sunlight coming from outside. Oh, and bergamot!

    When I was younger and briefly involved in equestrian vaulting, I actually really liked the smell of the horse, when she was all sweaty from our training and we had to wash her before we could go home. I always tried to avoid getting assigned to tack cleaning, so that I could wash the horse with her lovely textures and nice smells. (Horse manure, on the other hand, I don't like at all. I'm talking more like horse body odour here.)
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015
  7. Elph

    Elph capuchin hacker fucker

    Book smell = all the pleasant aspects of my childhood, and none of the bad :)
     
  8. chthonicfatigue

    chthonicfatigue Bitten by a radioactive trickster god

    Book smell reminds me of my childhood best friend whose dad ran the local library - we would spend school lunch hours chilling among the damaged book stacks and microfiche in the back room.

    Smell is really evocative for me, put me in a greenhouse with tomatoes or let me smell mixed mortar and the scent instantly transports me back to being a toddler and 'helping' my Dad in the garden.
     
  9. Re Allyssa

    Re Allyssa Sylph of Heart

    Ooo book smell is nice. I love new car smell too!
    And clean hotel smell is nice too... I spent a lot of time in hotels as a kid.

    Also charcoal and wood burning smells really good. But other kinds of burning smell bad. xP
     
  10. Lazarae

    Lazarae The tide pod of art

    Favorites: Book smell, new electronics smell, most incense (my dad makes incense and oils so it's strongly evocative of my childhood and him in particular), leather, wood smoke, #2 wood pencils, black chamomile, lilac, lavender, night jasmine, coffee, chai, actually a lot of strong herbal scents, petrichor and even non-wet freshly turned earth, wet leaves, sap, peeled willow bark has a scent unlike any other that makes me feel perfect and safe, a strange mix of dust and old curtains and carpet and that smell old houses accumulate that is beyond description, a lot of heavy food smells especially with lots of spice, probably other stuff I forget.

    NO BAD STOP: Alcohol, cleaning supplies, fabric softener, metal, tobacco smoke, rot, burning hair, a lot of strong perfumes/colognes have something I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to, whatever the fuck it is companies describe as "fresh," the base scent used in lotions and stuff of the sort that they try to cover up with whatever but always somehow manages to seep through, wet birds, and stuff I will come back to complain about once I remember.
     
  11. hoarmurath

    hoarmurath Thor's Hammer

    Tobacco smoke hater high-five.

    I uhh want to commit violence when I smell it basically. :(

    But I like book smells. And ironed wool because it smells like clean wet sheep. And those white blocks you use to light fires, mmm.
     
  12. winterykite

    winterykite Non-newtonian genderfluid

    yes good more smells: Book smell, rain, lavender and other smells that are more tangy and less sweet, dandelions, sandalwood and sandalwood incense, pure tobacco (the second theres something else in there it cuts off my breathing, though, some cigarette brands sronger than others. fruit-infused ones seem to be exceptions, too)

    i cannot sleep if i smell anything that is not rain or fresh air. people, food, flowers, it all prevents me from falling asleep.

    bad smells: sweat, other people in general with some exceptions, sweet smells, most deodorants (especially guy deodorants. yuck.), cigarette smoke (my breathing reflex stops, and i have to force myself to breathe), probably others.
     
  13. a tiny mushroom

    a tiny mushroom the tiniest

    Bad smell: CELERY.

    Some say celery has no smell. Those people are wrong. It smells like... *shudders*.

    Celery is only acceptable if it is in soup and has lost everything about it that makes it celery. I fucking hate everything about celery. Smell, texture (ESPECIALLY TEXTURE), taste. Guhhhhh.

    Also butchers. I hate the smell of butcher shops.
     
    • Like x 2
  14. Morven

    Morven In darkness be the sound and light

    I had an online friend for a long while who was born with absolutely no sense of smell at all. She owned a cat, and the cat started peeing on things in the house and she didn't notice, because she couldn't smell it. Until someone at work told her she was smelling of cat pee and had been for weeks. Turns out kitty had been marking the laundry.
     
  15. Elph

    Elph capuchin hacker fucker

    That was one of my biggest anosmia-related fears when I first started losing my sense of smell. I knew my cats were spray-happy, but I couldn't tell if they'd hit me, or my room. I hated the idea that somebody might come into my room and think that I didn't care that I lived in that kind of stink. It still worries me.
     
  16. KarrinBlue

    KarrinBlue Magical Girl Intern

    Oh, hm - I really love the smell you get during and after rain, and the scent of lilacs, and booksmell, various baking-related scents... As for bad smells, I really dislike the smell of alcohol, that smell that soda cans get, and most perfumes (I once had a teacher who wore very strong perfumes, it was awful.)
     
  17. pixels

    pixels hiatus / only back to vent

    ... i collect perfumes. hi.

    one of my favorites is called lionheart. it's a purpose oil that's based on leo and the strength card. it smells like adult baby powder. very comforting, very dry. another one i like is called gelt, which is powdered chocolate and amber, once again very dry but somehow gourmand. i like fruity and citrusy stuff. there was only one floral i could ever pull off but as it turned out i think i was nose-allergic to it because it always stuffed me up.

    current favorite is a combination of white sandalwood and bergamot and orange.

    other favorite smells: white tea and mint/eucalyptus and mint candles. they smell clean, sort of like hotels. they're nice neutral smells. the smell of sunday roast in the crockpot. rain, or just about to rain.

    least favorite: whatever fucking thing my roommate cooks. i think it's pork chops that really get to me. or maybe it's that i'm not allowed to eat it. the smell of my trash bags. they're not marked as scented but there's something on them because my hands smell like them.
     
  18. Lambda

    Lambda everything happens so much

    Sometimes I smell asparagus when I'm sick, so I think it's the sense I trust the least? It's probably worn out from secondhand smoke, since my sense of taste isn't very good either.

    Favorites: citrus, mint, book smell, coffee, strawberries. When I was younger, I used to love cigarette smoke, but I've grown out of it. Clean-cat-smell is nice but elusive.

    Dislikes: musty-car-smell, chlorine, gasoline, cut grass, post-rain-smell (which smells like piss to me for some reason :mystery:). Perfume samples make me cough as well.
     
  19. witchknights

    witchknights Bold Enchanter Defends The Fearful

    Oooh, where'd get these? Gelt sounds amazing, and I want Lionheart just for the name. (I have been eyeing a ritual oi called that for millenia now). is it bpal/tal? because if it is i am EXCITE
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2015
  20. pixels

    pixels hiatus / only back to vent

    blackphoenixalchemylab.com and twilightalchemylab.com, both owned by Elizabeth Barrial. been a fan since 2004. great independent business.

    lionheart is kind of like a non-medical antianxiety shot to my system. it's amazing and i don't know how it works but it really fucking does. and it smells really inoffensive to others too, just smells clean and like baby powder but like lion-mane-infused sunshine-infused baby powder.
     
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