07/19/2026
Today, I want to share the process that goes into making scents for characters. It's something I deeply consider and it takes me a while to blend everything just right.
I made Odysseus today. Some of you know how much I love the Odyssey (I read some to my son every night, my sister has her masters in Greek classics and we've talked about them forever, and of course my deeeeeep love for Epic) and I finally am getting to make things surrounding it.
So this is what I came up with for the character of Odysseus:
Top: ocean water, salt spray, Amalfi lemon, ozone
Heart: olive oil, olive wood, wild rosemary, dark wine, driftwood
Base: leather, mahogany, myrrh & amber incense, ambergris musk, a curl of woodsmoke
So, why did I choose what I did? I built it as a gradient instead of one accord open water, to the rocky shore, to land, to the man because the Odyssey is episodic, so a scent that keeps shifting on each inhale is kind of cool? Ocean water / salt spray / ozone because ten years at sea and Poseidon personally holding a grudge, blowing him off course over and over. The sea is the thing he's defined against, so it has to be the top.
The olive wood/oil/leaf is super important because it's ATHENA'S tree, and his marriage bed is carved from the living tree itself. It's his heart.
Rosemary is the scrub on the rocky Ithaca hillside. It grows abundantly there. Also it carries a "remembrance" association, which is a nice accident for a poem about a man clawing his way back to be recognized again.
Driftwood + mahogany for the ship, the oars, the great hall. The wood of the voyage itself. I think leather is self explanatory for a warrior, yeah?
Dark wine, though, is my favorite. It's his actual weapon in a lot of things (you know, in addition to his cleverness). He gets Polyphemus blackout drunk, then blinds him with the sharpened stake (another tie to the woods). It's also Homer's own phrase, the "wine-dark sea." AND on some inhales it goes fruity enough to catch the lotus-eaters, the narcotic sweetness that makes his crew forget the way home.
Myrrh + incense represent the sacrificial fires all through the poem, and the sacred/underworld register when he literally sails to the land of the dead to ask how to get home and talks with Tiresias.
The ambergris musk is another nod to the sea. The Amalfi lemon is a nod to the coast of Greece. And then at the end a curl of smoke for Troy burning on the horizon, the hearth at Ithaca, and the charred olive stake he drives into the Cyclops' eye.
Anyway.
It took me 3 hours to blend this into something I'm proud of. It'll sit overnight while I let it blend in the bottle, and I'll check it in the morning, and if I like it then I'll turn it into a body wash/bubble bath and maybe a bath bomb.
This is the kind of work you get when you support me and my small business. Just the 'tism doing the 'tism and the nerd doin the nerd. Thank you for everyone who pours into my cup.