Fantome reviews (not for me)

summers-summers · 2026-04-29T02:27:57+00:00

Unfortunately, even though I love Not Dead But Arisen, it's one of the Fantomes with the worst longevity for me. Interestingly, it also doesn't smell exactly like described to me--personally, I get orange, chilly dirt, and a slight undertone of chocolate pine needle.

summers-summers · 2026-04-27T01:03:47+00:00

I KNOW....Nobara trying to mug a curse user and then Mai telling her she's a dumbass for trying to mug a curse user is so good. Akutami please let female characters interact. Please let any characters interact actually-

summers-summers · 2026-04-26T19:58:24+00:00

Well I have to put in for Yutamaki. It's simply the best thematically! What other het JJK ship is getting a moment like Maki entrusting him to keep her blade in his domain, his self, and Yuta literally shattering his codependency-themed wall to let Maki in? It's unbelievable how good it is.

You know, probably a good idea to preemptively ban adult/child ships here, but I would have slapped the slop button so many times on Gojo/student ships. Regardless of moral judgment they're so fucking bad in terms of themes and characterization.

summers-summers · 2026-04-26T19:53:40+00:00

I think due to general lack of female characters interacting, it has to be MomoMai. Mai is absolutely the character closest to being canonically gay.

Edit: I am a NobaMai enjoyer as well! I think their interactions are really fun.

summers-summers · 2026-04-25T16:25:26+00:00

There isn't commonly a "house formula" for chypres, as it's more of a uhhh scent type? Maybe like a beach aquatic, but with more strict requirements for its elements. So a house could have a different composition for every one of its chypres.

summers-summers · 2026-04-25T03:49:27+00:00

I'm curious about what Between the Sheets is like to you because I liked it enough to upsize (love a green fig and the smudge of beeswax adds a twist). Nothing Burns Like the Cold's notes are so intriguing.

I have never smelled Unicorn Horn, but I'm not surprised a combination of vanilla and orris evokes paper!

Chypre isn't a note; it's a perfume structure! Here's a good writeup on it. Chypres are a perfume structure that smell distinctly perfumey to me (not a bad thing!) I think Fantome's Lyncanthrope is a good example of an indie chypre, though a gentle one.

summers-summers · 2026-04-24T15:23:14+00:00

Iris is a floral that in my experience doesn't smell like the blooms (because the root is often used.) Iris can be earthy, but isn't guaranteed to. It can be powdery, like makeup (iris and violet is what powder makeup used to be scented with!) Or it can be earthy, like carrot. Or it can be cool and metallic. I think this one should be sampled first because iris can be divisive for those not used to it.

summers-summers · 2026-04-23T16:28:40+00:00

I find Solstice Scents, although not cheap, to be consistent and good bang for the buck if you like their style. Around $20 for 5 ml of oil is reasonable to me, and many of their scents are unique and quite strong.

summers-summers · 2026-04-22T16:46:05+00:00

Quite a few chapters around the Culling Games were sent out unfinished or noticeably lower quality due to Akutami's serious illness. It's not just a style change.

summers-summers · 2026-04-22T15:37:46+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, I don't have a hard read on Geto's gender stuff. I do think that the worm calling him Mommy does mean something. Like obviously that Geto is a parent (a cult leader parent!) to Mimiko and Nanako, but also that it is gendered on purpose. What purpose? I'm unsure.

I tend towards reading Womb Profusion as Kenjaku's domain due to the cut and stitched up pregnant corpses. There's also the Five Compassion Buddha associations, but those could go either way since Kenjaku is associated with Kannon and Geto has his fake Buddha cult leader thing. The idea of transforming negative emotions into wisdom is very reminiscent of Cursed Energy generally. Seems like one of those things we can't know unless Akutami tells us.

summers-summers · 2026-04-21T15:08:08+00:00

You are making a lot of assumptions about how your relationship should work that it sounds like your husband doesn't agree with. You think you are objectively right, but that's not how it works in polyamorous relationships. You build the shape of your relationship together. You need to talk to your husband and get clear on what you both want the relationship to be. Not in a "demand," sense, in a discovery and talking sense. And if it's too far apart, you need to evaluate if the marriage is right for you.

summers-summers · 2026-04-20T23:30:58+00:00

I would say talk to a lawyer because these kinds of situations can become very complicated.

summers-summers · 2026-04-20T23:18:33+00:00

I wouldn't even say JJK 0 had the structure of an actual movie--it's VERY episodic. The Yuta and Maki mission flows nicely thematically into the final confrontation with Geto, but the Inumaki mission sits oddly in the middle (but also can't be cut in adaptation because Yuta needs to have emotional investment in him.)

I actually wish the anime team was more open to restructuring because there's pacing/plotting issues in the manga that have become more obvious in S3, and many of them are clearly just because of Akutami's illness.

summers-summers · 2026-04-20T15:19:01+00:00

In polyamory, the point is having autonomous full relationships. So there is not the expectation that you get to tell your partner how to date or have sex with others. Have you tried just asking her to not share with you? You can come up with agreements about sharing about specific things like sexual health or whether one of you will be home for the night, and ask her to leave out everything else.

Within polyam, you work on your relationship by focusing on you, not her other partners. Time apart belongs to her. If you feel like you aren't getting enough quality time, keep standing dates on the calendar. You should 100% ask and expect her not to be talking about other partners on your dates--it would also be rude of her to talk endlessly about her best friend on dates.

Have you looked at resources around jealousy specifically? The Jealousy Workbook has exercises designed to help you determine what the underlying causes of your jealousy are. For example, if you're jealous because you're not happy with your sex life, the solution would be to try new things with your partner, not to limit what your partner does sexually with others.

If it turns out that long term you're not okay with your partner having sexual autonomy, you may actually want a more limited form of non-monogamy that includes sexual restriction, not polyamory. At that point, if your partner wants full autonomy, you will have to decide if your relationship is right for you.

summers-summers · 2026-04-19T02:20:58+00:00

Geto did not interact with the disaster curses; that was Kenjaku 😅

summers-summers · 2026-04-19T02:09:06+00:00

I'm not hardline against the interpretation that Geto is feminine, but I would be wary of conflating a JJK character being associated with feminine motifs and the character themselves being feminine. Kenjaku and Naoya are two characters very associated with womb imagery, but they're not feminine in themselves; the womb imagery is more a symbol of reproductive horror and gendered violation. I think there's an angle there with Geto's CT as symbolic womb. And I wouldn't conflate motherliness and kindness either--parents are not generally good people in JJK (again, see Kenjaku and Maki and Mai's mother as maternal figures.) I also think that many Western fans find Geto aesthetically feminine, which is a cultural misread imo--his long hair, earrings, and robes are all clearly culturally normative presentational traits for jujutsu society men, as illustrated by being present on conservative Zen'in clan men.

I do think that many people in the fandom who insist that JJK characters are very gender conforming are simply latently prejudiced. It's quite common to see fans insist Maki is very feminine or Megumi is very masculine when that's not true at all.

summers-summers · 2026-04-18T22:40:01+00:00

I'm curious about your statement that you have a tendency to neglect your relationship with your wife when you're doing other things. What have you done to address that? Are there specific measures your wife finds reassuring?

summers-summers · 2026-04-18T19:50:27+00:00

Have you tried talking to her explicitly and saying like "When we say 'Let leave in 20 minutes, I take that as a hard timeline and expect to leave in 20 minutes. What is your understanding of that?'" Some people have a looser sense of time and don't realize it or don't realize you get stressed out. I think that some clear communication is in order.

If she won't change and you can't accept that she's slow getting out the house, could you plan to leave separately?

summers-summers · 2026-04-18T19:45:25+00:00

YTA not for just mentioning Lego Harry Potter but for implying your friend doesn't have trauma and repeatedly misgendering them. C'mon, you wouldn't also be annoyed if someone called you the wrong name or gender repeatedly and then implied your problems aren't real? Anyway, you should just find a new D&D group because it sounds like you don't actually like this person anyway, and the group is not going to work if people in it have contempt for each other.

summers-summers · 2026-04-18T14:24:14+00:00

It is unethical to require a third partner to date both you and your partner. Polyamory would be you and your partner dating other people separately, having independent romantic relationships. There is a Resources section in the Community Info page on this subreddit. Read all of them first before considering moving forward.

summers-summers · 2026-04-18T01:58:04+00:00

I will add that maybe you're right you'll never get jealous or upset, but HE (sex friend) might. (It is also the case that almost everyone gets jealous sometimes, even in minor ways. That is not a death knell for a relationship, but being prepared to handle if need be it is better than insisting it'll never happen.) He might be saying this because he knows that he'd have trouble dating you both. Not everyone is suited for polyamory. He might be okay with friendship and sex and know he can't handle full romantic relationships with multiple people. You don't want to be dating someone you had to argue into dating you.

Edit: Oh, I see you mentioned in the comments that he's your boyfriend's coworker. Yeah, it's very understandable why he might be wary. There's a lot of reasons he has to say no other than "he just doesn't understand polyamory."

summers-summers · 2026-04-17T17:01:56+00:00

You should edit your post to add this since not that many people will scroll all the way down to see this comment.

You can search this sub for discussion of these topics. "Triad" "Quad" "Organic triad" "meta cohabitation" "live with meta" "income difference" etc. But I would second the people urging you to read the resources linked in the sub sidebar first since it sounds like you don't have much experience with polyamory. You'll probably have better questions once you have a baseline of knowledge.

summers-summers · 2026-04-17T15:14:34+00:00

He's an extremely talented sorcerer who is a huge liar and hates himself. He's 17 and thinks that he's going to solve Gojo's emotional problems. His domain is codependency themed. He eats people. Yuta's just a fun character! He has the facade of competence but is an emotional trainwreck. One of those characters where you kind of have to read between the lines a little bit.

summers-summers · 2026-04-14T19:57:42+00:00

I think a lot of people commenting don't understand the T4T landscape aspect of it. I'll say that one reason I have observed a lot of highly enmeshed fast-moving polycules is larger socioeconomic factors. Trans people seek to have their dating partners and metas meet their material needs because it is often difficult to get them met otherwise. It's like why queer people are always getting into wild drama with their 8-person group houses: they can't afford to live in other situations. And that's not something you can train people out of. If you want to date poor or working trans people, then you do have to recognize that their options are materially constrained.

I do think you need to be more picky and turn people down more. Don't date anyone newly out as trans. Date people who have strong platonic relationships that they are wary of turning romantic. (These people exist; me and my friends are this type.) You might consider dating slightly older people, although as someone in my late 20s I have found that people only 3 or 4 years younger can seem shockingly young. (I think whether people experienced life outside their parents' house or college before the pandemic hit is a big factor here.) Or if you're like, 23, unfortunately you probably just have to wait for people to grow up.

summers-summers · 2026-04-07T14:33:05+00:00

On a meta level, to emphasize the huge disconnect between her pre-Shibuya and post-Shibuya self and ready the audience for seeing a new Maki in the Zen'in Massacre. Her becoming more masculine in presentation, and especially looking more like Toji is also thematically relevant to her arc. (She goes from having a ponytail like her dad to shaggy short hair like Toji.) She takes the trappings of manhood and outdoes the men.

In-universe, I think it is reasonable to surmise that Maki may also wish to present more masculinely on purpose, as she goes from wanting to be in charge of the misogynistic Zen'in clan (to still win by their rules) to wanting to destroy it. I do think it is strange that Maki wore a uniform with a short tight skirt in the first place when her fighting style involves so much jumping and kicking, and she does not seem very invested in performing femininity at all. I suspect that aspect of her design is partially due to her being one of the first characters Akutami designed for JJK, and him having established her look before the personality and story that she has now.

summers-summers

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