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nonislandI am sadly not getting paid or in any other way compensated by Cantrip Candles for this post, nor are they in any other way affiliated with or responsible for me, but I've said a few times before this I should make a list of the fics I've written to specific Cantrip scents, and seeing as they're both raising their prices (due to rising supply costs) and having a really excellent Black Friday–Cyber Monday sale this seemed like a good time to do it--alphabetically by scent, since I'm indecisive.
This doesn't include original writing projects, though I have a few of those with Cantrip scent pairings too; this is just a fanfic list, mostly so I can actually link the words I'm talking about instead of just going "no, really, they're out there!" (It also doesn't include all my favorites; Healing Potion is my personal year-round go-to and one day I will write something that deserves Yule.)
(images in this post, which all link to the respective fragrance page, are taken from their website)
I'm really picky about leather scents in candles, let alone anything that describes itself as "musky", but honestly I wouldn't have called it musky at all. It's warm, and it's old-fashioned; I love it for ambiance as an antidote to being surrounded by plastics and city traffic. This is one of the ones that gets a lot of original-project use, but for fanfic have:
House of the Witch was introduced last Halloween as Baba Yaga, as part of a Dispel Dice collaboration, and I hoarded my 16oz carefully until I learned it was going to be recurring. It's a heavy scent, dark, with the faint minty elements from the patchouli lending it just a hint of a chilly edge. It's not particularly earthy or natural, to my mind; the witchiness it has is shadows, decadence, and danger.
I don't burn this one for fun, unlike most of my Cantrip scents, but the patchouli and blood orange combination makes for a really unmatched atmosphere when that's the atmosphere you want.
(Listed under T, for The, instead of L, for Library, on their website, which as a former office minion I understand but do not replicate.)
Library Scriptorium is strangely sweet, but in a mellow way that I think works well with the rest of the scent profile and with the mood. It does suggest sunlight through floating dust, as well as leather and old paper; it's peaceful, gentle, pleasant.
So of course when I decided to write a fic in the form of an in-universe academic paper, I knew just what to reach for.
Realm of Shadows is a recent release--they've been doing a lot more non-nature scents lately, and as much as I love their nature scents their non-nature ones are often impeccable. As I said in the review of this I wrote on their site, the anise is pretty strong, but since I like licorice that's not a problem for me. The pomegranate and slate are a gorgeous blend of brightness and mystery; it's sweet but not cloying. Fantastic underworld-y candle; you can expect to see more fics added to this section of this post.
The classic. The beloved. I love Stonemoss Chapel so much. It's exactly what the descriptions and images imply: cool and green, shade and water and peace. It isn't inherently melancholy, and I certainly don't always use it for that, but something about the cool and the shade could suggest it.
This one has two scent-pairing fics, written exactly three years apart with some uhh really striking similarities regardless (Halloween is apparently for ghost boyfriend fic), and they both lean on that peaceful melancholy that I've never found any other candle to do so well:
This doesn't include original writing projects, though I have a few of those with Cantrip scent pairings too; this is just a fanfic list, mostly so I can actually link the words I'm talking about instead of just going "no, really, they're out there!" (It also doesn't include all my favorites; Healing Potion is my personal year-round go-to and one day I will write something that deserves Yule.)
(images in this post, which all link to the respective fragrance page, are taken from their website)
I'm really picky about leather scents in candles, let alone anything that describes itself as "musky", but honestly I wouldn't have called it musky at all. It's warm, and it's old-fashioned; I love it for ambiance as an antidote to being surrounded by plastics and city traffic. This is one of the ones that gets a lot of original-project use, but for fanfic have:
1789: Les Amants de la Bastille [Takarazuka adaptation]
anything that does not harm others: Camille/Ronan; mature audiences; ~6K words. Aftermath of canonical torture, historically inaccurate antisepsis, accidental sexual situations.
In which Ronan has nowhere to go after escaping the Bastille but back to the Palais-Royal, Camille Desmoulins attempts an act of kindness, neither of them have previously considered the overlap of pain and pleasure, and it all goes wrong anyway.
It stings, a little, every so often, in spite of how careful Desmoulins is being. Not enough to tense up for but enough that it makes everything a little less real—the warm, quiet room; the scent of beeswax and lavender; Desmoulins’s fingers testing the edges of Ronan’s wounds.
House of the Witch was introduced last Halloween as Baba Yaga, as part of a Dispel Dice collaboration, and I hoarded my 16oz carefully until I learned it was going to be recurring. It's a heavy scent, dark, with the faint minty elements from the patchouli lending it just a hint of a chilly edge. It's not particularly earthy or natural, to my mind; the witchiness it has is shadows, decadence, and danger.
I don't burn this one for fun, unlike most of my Cantrip scents, but the patchouli and blood orange combination makes for a really unmatched atmosphere when that's the atmosphere you want.
1789: Les Amants de la Bastille [Takarazuka adaptation]
From the Bitter Delights of the Dark: Lazare/Ronan; explicit; ~4K words. Prostitution, hatesex, under-negotiated kink.
Ronan finds another source of income.
The point is, Ronan attracts the lawless and the godless, standing just off the rue Saint-Honoré with his throat bare and his lips bruised.
The point is, Ronan likes that.
(Listed under T, for The, instead of L, for Library, on their website, which as a former office minion I understand but do not replicate.)
Library Scriptorium is strangely sweet, but in a mellow way that I think works well with the rest of the scent profile and with the mood. It does suggest sunlight through floating dust, as well as leather and old paper; it's peaceful, gentle, pleasant.
So of course when I decided to write a fic in the form of an in-universe academic paper, I knew just what to reach for.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
"'Pride' and the Identity of Lorenz Hellman Gloucester's 'Bright Lady'": unrequited Lorenz/Leonie; general audiences; ~4500 words.
While most of Gloucester’s oeuvre, apart from the juvenilia, falls into one of a few traditional categories (lyric poems about historical and mythic events; loco-descriptive and pastoral poems; and, later in his life, a sequence of elegies), thirty-seven of the poems, mostly sonnets, appear to be love poems written about an unidentified individual.
Realm of Shadows is a recent release--they've been doing a lot more non-nature scents lately, and as much as I love their nature scents their non-nature ones are often impeccable. As I said in the review of this I wrote on their site, the anise is pretty strong, but since I like licorice that's not a problem for me. The pomegranate and slate are a gorgeous blend of brightness and mystery; it's sweet but not cloying. Fantastic underworld-y candle; you can expect to see more fics added to this section of this post.
1789: Les Amants de la Bastille [Takarazuka adaptation]
But Yet You Draw Not Iron: Lazare/Ronan; somewhere between teen and mature audiences; ~1100 words. References to torture in the interests of a repressive government, abuse of state power, etc.; accidental sexual situations; see AO3 notes for more detailed warnings.
Introspection on a night gone awry.
Lazare is willing to admit to himself that the brand was an excess. Speaking to anyone else he would simply call it a miscalculation; it was both.
The classic. The beloved. I love Stonemoss Chapel so much. It's exactly what the descriptions and images imply: cool and green, shade and water and peace. It isn't inherently melancholy, and I certainly don't always use it for that, but something about the cool and the shade could suggest it.
This one has two scent-pairing fics, written exactly three years apart with some uhh really striking similarities regardless (Halloween is apparently for ghost boyfriend fic), and they both lean on that peaceful melancholy that I've never found any other candle to do so well:
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
What Will Survive of Us Is Love: f!Byleth/Dimitri; explicit; ~7K words. Major character death, grief/mourning, survivor's guilt, explicit sexual content.
Dimitri’s ghost comes back after the first time Byleth meets him, and then back again.
She kisses his mouth this time, and he gasps. His hands rise to her arms, holding her like an anchor. She’d seen him break training swords at the Academy, bend the tines of a fork, but she’s had worse than this in tavern brawls. His fingers are rigid—they tighten this far, and no farther. But he kisses her back, his lips parting beneath hers as if he could breathe her in. As if he still needs air. His mouth tastes of frost and darkness, a little of the bitter scent of moss. Not earth, at least.
1789: Les Amants de la Bastille [Takarazuka adaptation]
Spirits of the Revolution: Olympe/Ronan; general audiences; ~1100 words. Major character death, grief/mourning.
Olympe, after the storming of the Bastille.
It looks just like him, except that the marks of fatigue and strain that had never quite left his face in life, even with her, are gone. His eyes are bright and unshadowed, his mouth free of bitterness. He looks as if he’s slept without fear and lived without regret. She hopes he did live without regret.
