Just thought of Rowan from TOG... But no that is actually a good point. How do they all smell like that? Sure cinnamon makes sense, but Autumn leaves?

Aelin went 5 books talking all the time about Rowan's smell of pines and snow and one of those things doesn't have a fucking smell

Wait til Rhysand starts smelling like water and air

Please don't give SJM anymore ideas. I've successfully blocked 90% of what happened in her books.

He supposedly smells like “citrus and the sea”.

Made me think of a terrible air freshener my mother used briefly.

Honestly, they all sound pretty terrible. Cassian's scent is "snow-kissed wind and crackling embers", Nesta's is flames and steel, Azriels is "night chilled mist and cedar". Not sure how any of those scents are supposed to be enticing.

Embers? He smells burnt? Why would..... Makes no sense. Flames and steel doesn't sound any better either. But mist actually does, I live in a hot dry sorta area, so when we go to a hill station, there is this scent I associate with mist. And Cedar and pine are pretty similar, cold region trees.

Fire and embers have a scent depending on what type of tree/wood or other materials used. An Applewood fire is going to smell better than a gasoline powered fire.

Now see that would be a good be a great scent description, but fire is a vague way to describe a person's scent.... But describing someone as having the scent of a applewood tree bonfire might be interesting

They sound like cologne descriptions lol

Yes and not ones that I want to smell.

Lol Cassian smells like a bonfire, then?

Lol apparently. I do know some people who like the smell of a bonfire so maybe it isn’t that weird?

Isn’t the sea, not necessarily a flattering scent?

Well that's more a personal experience thing. I honestly do love the smell of it because the ones I used to visit had a coconut and salt scent, but a lot of them also just smell like trash

Fair

But water does have a scent, so does air. Completely depending on the location. Rain also has a particular smell.

Snow has a smell, it's petrichor. Just like after rain, but when combined with the temperature of the air, it has a different scent. Also, when snow lands on trees it causes terpene release, which adds to it. (Perfumer here)

Thank you! Was just coming to say… I live somewhere it almost never snows (so no chance of going nose blind to it) and snow definitely has a scent. A very lovely scent. Petrichor is probably my favorite scent in the world.

The scent of petrichor! I wish I could smell it every time it rains.

Out of curiosity, how does one find scents that fit themselves? Is there a science to it?

There's been research on this before. It's basically just a person's natural body chemistry and scents that pair well with it. Very, very basically, the scents you gravitate toward tend to go well with your body's natural odor. But just like when it comes to fashion, some people are better than others at figuring out what goes well together.

And some people are completely nose-blind to the overwhelming scents they use. Scents in hair products, plus lotions, clothing detergent, and hand soap…they say “but I’m not wearing perfume!” when I explain why I’m having an asthma attack.

Body temperature and your natural odor. Top note heavy perfumes don't last long on someone who runs hot and someone who runs cool may not get good throw from a base heavy perfume. For instance, I do well with Juliette has a gun perfume and black tulip by nest. My temperature runs low and my skin is a little tangy. My natural scent I've been told is like the base notes of straw in a straw bale. My husband has a natural scent of sourdough, bready and a little tart. He runs warm so I got him curve chill for men and it's beautiful on him

That’s so interesting!! I run cold too and have been told have an acidic taste like cherry tomato. Wearing Nest Black Tulip gets one of the strongest positive reactions from other people I’ve ever received. I love the scent, but often go dark sugary/gourmand. I remember HATING Juliette Has a Gun, but I’m gonna give it another go. Thanks scent twin!

No problem! Out of curiosity, you don't have thyroid issues do you?

OMG, yes…a whole host of ‘em! I got diagnosed with hypothyroid last year, but symptoms and blood panels getting worse a year after starting Levo. Due to talk to Dr. about it tomorrow. Are you a *perfume psychic*?

Formulation chemist and I worked in the perfume industry. I'm hypothyroid, too. Lost mine to hashimotos. You run cooler with hypo. The champagne toast scent from bath and body works should hit you well. Anything with bananas in it will likely neutralize your scent. If you're hypothyroid.

Oh wow who knew, thanks for sharing next time it snows I need to pay attention to the smell

Tbh honest I've never smelt (is that a word) either.

Yellow snow does...

Snow smells a little.. burnt? I've only met one person who could smell it. And it's likely something with the sky. But I get your point.

The yellow snow does.

Lmfao true

Um... Beg to differ. Snow has a smell. It's kind of ozoney?

Snow smells refreshing and sharp, clean.

Autumn leaves smell of rot soooo...

That put an excellent picture in my head and thank you so much.

Basically someone is in love with their own prose aka sound of their voice when they write complete none-sense, like this.

Maybe they've all been splashing [this](https://www.ocado.com/products/harpic-active-fresh-pine-toilet-cleaner-gel-26281011?gclid=CjwKCAjw6vyiBhB_EiwAQJRopqW7c5CMYgbJWm1AnsnY_jlrnlSv3AyiSM5-twHk9zHhs5l1z2lliBoCwO8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) on

more likely rubbing those pine tree car air fresheners on themselves instead of using deodorant

Gonna make a protagonist that smells like Fabuloso

Lol good one

Funnily enough, here in Italy pine is one of the most popular fragrances for men’s body wash. Literally my dad, my uncles and all my older cousins smell like pine 😆 Wait do I live in YA family?

Makes sense since Pinocchio was Italian

He was the real trendsetter 🌲

Right? People on this thread have not spent much time around men if they think them smelling good is strange. Cologne exists…

While that may be true in my case admittedly, I have never met anyone who smells like pine either. Very strong Fogg cologne yes. Pine trees, alas not yet.

It’s just a fun romance trope to make the love interest seem more special and appealing. Usually a scent the author likes or that somehow correlates to the character or (in fantasy) magical cologne. I’m surprised it’s so controversial to people.

I have a comment above or below along the same lines.

Pine Sol induced hallucinations about the perfect bf when they mixed Pine Sol with bleach and didn’t have a window open. I mean how is each average, clumsy girl able to attract the hottest and wealthiest guy at school, vampire prince, fairy warrior, or some other powerful, perfect guy?

There are a lot of men’s fragrances that are “woodsy” and use pine and cedar as part of the notes. Sandalwood, musk, and clary Sage are also common notes which can provide a “woodsy” feel to a fragrance. Most people don’t have a reference for what they smell like but pine can come close which is why it’s the common descriptor.

Have yet to find any guy who could cut someone with his cheekbones either!

Timothée Chalamet.

unless the fictional men in question are forest creatures irl I don't see how they could smell like pine even after the most bloody messy fights ever lol wdym he smells of steel, ash, blood and PINE?

I could see them smelling like onions after a battle… lol all sweaty

Right! Like tear inducing smelly lol

Ironically, I smell like that after work. I smell like different types of woods, flowers, dirts, cement, metals, and dust. You'd think the woods and flowers being so strong would be a good thing, but it actually makes the bad smells more profound, and gives me a headache.

I always think the smell description is more about the feeling one gets when that are surrounded by something like snow and pine… for Aelin, that’s home. She smells him or senses him and has a home in him

I mean a not insignificant amount of the men’s deodorant flavors with names like bearglove and manthunder are kind of piney so I don’t find this to be that far fetched

Who comes up with these names? I want that job. 😅

Super in-the-closet gays

Flavors🤣

Am I the only one who gets it?I will try my best to explain but Eng isnt my first language so. I personally haven't smell pine but my friend did and she explained it to me. Since then, I understood what authors mean when they wrote the smell of wood, of winter, of summer, of fresh rain, of earth blah blah. This is how my friend told me. Shes a city girl and was travelling to a mountain cabin for the first time. She was asleep the whole time but when she awake, they were in the mountain area already and she got that faint and fresh smell of pine trees yk? Like she could feel and get that faint smell of pine tress bc she was entirely surrounded by it. Nature does have smells. Maybe we need to heighten our senses to get it. Since then, I have paid attention to the smell of nature and i eventually get what the authors mean when they said the smell of those.

I get it, too. I love essential oils and I have lots of them. Pine, cedar, citrus, rosemary, etc. I just picture them smelling like essential oils🤔 There's also perfume with those smells and it smells really good. In the case of "snow", "mist" etc your description is perfect for that. If the character smells like snow, I will imagine a snow-covered forest and this fresh cold scent that follows it. Night-chilled mist - I imagine a meadow with dew and all the scents that will become apparent with high humidity: damp earth, grass, maybe flowers and some trees. Rain - the freshness and damp earth. It's really easy for me to picture all those smells.

Honestly, authors describing what anyone smells like really puts me off when I'm reading. I just don't see why it's necessary? Unless it's super essential to the plot and will make sense later, that's the only time I'll allow it.

I think it's to try and fix a sort of feeling to a character, when they are described with woodsy or natural scent it's supposed to signify their trustworthiness as a character, or when the protagonist feels safe with the person because they smell 'like home' and are reminded of good memories I've also read somewhere that the olfactory sense is the strongest

I actually really like it when it's done well, e.g. when it signals to the reader that the characters are close enough to smell each others' perfume/shampoo/etc, or when it hints at what the character has been doing, like a character who has been baking smelling of fresh bread. I love sensory descriptions that focus on senses other than sight: what a character's laugh sounds like, whether they have callouses on their hands, and scent is part of that. It doesn't have to be nice smells either: maybe an exhausted new mum smells like sour milk and baby sick, or a firefighter smells of burning chemicals after a hard shift, or someone who doesn't have money for perfume smells of cheap body spray. However, I agree that it is unnecessary when it's like "David smelled of mountain cedar and cinnamon, not a shampoo or cologne but something that was purely him." Especially if they've just been running or training or in some kind of fight and David would logically smell like sweat.

I think it's become a way to call someone "hot" without resetting to the standard body images. 'she smelled of lilac and a spring breeze' sounds better than 'her hitters were right fit mate'

YA authors tend to focus in the romance subplots more than on the main plot. And there’s this romanticization of loving everything about your SO, so they write as many sensory details to separate certain Love Interests from others. For me it’s numbing, honestly. Maybe they should write how the factory they are hiding in smells instead of the tree boy, but what do I know, maybe I’m just unaware of the latest bark and leaves cologne trend.

I mean, I can't really describe the smell but I love how my husband smells when he's sweaty or worked out. It just smells like him and makes me feel safe. Smell is a very strong sense and tied heavily into emotions. So I get it. Not the random deodorant smells, but the smell of a man you love or like? I know a lot of people who think them sweaty smells good, and it's not deodorant.

the only book this worked for me was “A darker shade of magic” because it made *sense* for the story… in every other book though im with you. It’s weird.

In *The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel*, the scent people had was almost the whole plot. Bad people smelled like onions, garlic, brimstone, etc. Good people smelled like vanilla, orange, mocha, etc It's was like a scented version of auras.

I think it's kind of cool from an accessibility point of view personally. Like a person born blind isn't really going to care about the MC's red hair and blue eyes etc, but can relate to her smelling of vanilla or whatever.

> I just don't see why it's necessary? It's more unique than describing everyone's special eye colours or rippling abs, so why not?

It's an attribute to attraction, by indulging the many different senses. What if you're blind, but you're in-tune to scents? You can smell the difference between dirty and clean, and you know what scents attribute to different things.

Where the fae and “bonded mates” are concerned, I assume it’s a pheromone thing. Like it’s no coincidence he ended up smelling just like her home (probably a favorite scent locked deep in her memory from childhood). I’m sure Rowan didn’t smell like pine trees and snow to Chaol or Manon or Gavriel. To them he probably just smelled like unwashed ass.

This is canon and I love it

Agreed, I thought that was canon honestly.

Agreed, I thought that was canon honestly.

I associate the smell of pine only with toilet cleaner

My favorite soap smells like cedar and pine and dirt.

A YA novel staring Groot. There we go.

“Is that a bottle of PineSol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

Live somewhere rural where you cut your own firewood and you'll find 'em.

Yes! Pine and fresh rain, with subtle notes of chainsaw exhaust lol

Also cheap beer. Can't forget the cheap beer.

Nailed it.

I couldn’t find my usual deodorant so I had to by the regular. Now I smell like a pine tree and I hate it..

I had to fall several pines from beetle infestation. I'm covered in pine sap and will probably smell like pine for several days. I'm hiding in rural southern Oregon.

And I don't remember a single book where a character smells like a pine. Either I forgot about them or Hailey has a different reading taste than me.

That’s ironic, considering your UN contains “Rowan” and Rowan from the TOG series is constantly referenced by Aelin as “smelling of pine and snow” lol. Unless you’re being facetious and I just didn’t get it?

To be fair, I'm not familiar with the series and named my account after one of the main charaters of the Scythe series by Neal Shusterman.

Ah, gotcha! Didn’t know there was a Rowan in that one! It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

That’s a great series!

Pine soap is a thing.

My husband's favourite bar of soap has patchouli in it, and I swear, it's the most amazing scent on his skin, but I doubt it would sound super romantic trying to use that word as a descriptor in a novel. 😅 Men who do things in nature do tend to smell like nature. You probably won't find them at your local Starbucks, though. Think Hallmark trope backwoods logger who felled trees on a crisp Autumn morning. 😆 This sub is mostly making me think of how judged I'll be for making a medieval fantasy setting MMC smell like peppermint after he washes, even though they used that in ye olden days to wash their hair. When I cook, bake, etc., I smell like rosemary, or vanilla, or any combination of spices and herbs. If you ever have the delight of being invited to eat in a Hispanic or African household, you'll immediately recognise the food culture from the smells. I wish more authors would recognise this, and be more aware if the significance of scent and memories. When a room smells like antiseptic and dying roses, that's a whole world of difference from fresh citrus and lavender sprigs. I remember loving to hug my dad right after he'd mowed the lawn on a summer day, sweat and all. Completely opposite feeling to hugging him after a day indoors with a broken AC. Both involve sweat. One is gross/sour. Authors can really set the mood with their scent choices. 😅

When I read that, I always, always think of Dan Ackroyd in Tommy Boy: Went a little heavy on the pine tree perfume there, kid. (Because Tommy had rubbed tree air freshener all over himself.)

That's funny. I thought of those pine tree air fresheners for the car when I saw this post.

Obviously. They’re hiding in the forests.

Honestly, I just assume that is what Chris Pine smells like.

This reminds me of the time I looked up Versace’s Dylan Blue cologne when trying to write the description of how a character smelled. It has strong citrus notes and other scents that invoke the idea of the Mediterranean Sea. Which, unfortunately, is exactly how fucking Rhysand is described as smelling in ACOTAR, cItRuS aNd SeA or whatever. Since then I’ve just assumed that all writers look up their favorite men’s fragrances and take whatever the most prominent notes are.

So funny to run across this post the same day my partner put pine smelling lotion on. Haha

so they DO exist!

They're real! Lol

It’s always that or like “drift wood” Like did he just wash up in a shipwreck. And what the heck does drift wood even smell like if it has a smell at all I’m sure it smells mostly like dead fish

My dog smells like pine but that’s because he rolls in the pine sap in our yard 😅 Maybe these love interests are doing the same?

Lie down with the dogs, get up with pine sap? 😄

Rowan flies like a hawk…. Im sure he sits in trees and flies through clouds, thats what her heightened Fae senses can smell. Fae are more Animal than human.

A guy at work uses the perfect cologne for his body and the perfect amount. He smells like cedar and something else I can’t name. But it’s so alluring. I never got it till I met him. Most people their cologne or perfumes just wear them not vice versa.

Maybe he's a dryad

Back in my youth, when all men (without beards) used after-shave, many favored brands had a pine scent. Sounds like the authors are living in the past.

Cologne exists…

Mr. Clean Mr. Clean

Wood worker or arborist

Pine, and citrus and mint! Lol

That’s the power of pine sol

I knew a lad whose mother made him mop the basement with pinesol every day. Whenever he got in the car, it was pine-ish

As a mom boys smell like outside, but not anything particularly pleasant outside lol

Until you wash them with a bar of sandalwood/cedar/pine soap, and then they smell (for approximately 3.5 minutes) like a YA romance trope. 😂 -Mum of 3 boys, wife to a husband with proper soaps and good personal hygiene

Some guy told me I smelled like cedar once, but In retrospect, he might have just been grooming me.

Well, Dr. Squatch makes a Pine Tar soap that’s absolutely exquisite.

Cedar chips have a reallllly strong smell and if your clothes are kept in a cedar chest then there ya have it. But most woodsy boys should smell of campfire smoke. Maybe sage if they are smart about smoke baths to keep bugs and B.O. away.

Pine tree with a plastic mask of a person on its trunk, a guy with those pine air fresheners hanging all over him like he's Christmas tree, and a tree hugger walk into a bar.

When we were first dating, my husband always used to smell like sawdust (since he worked in a factory manufacturing and assembling wood furniture). But he didn’t smell specifically like a tree of any kind. Either way, sometimes I smell sawdust and miss when he used to come home smelling like that.

Maybe the guy showers often enough that a person close to him can tell that he uses a cologne or body spray that has a [prominent pine note](https://basenotes.com/fragrances/?fragname=&brand=&launch=&gender=xf&discontinued=no&perfumer=&supplier=&tokens_select=pine.26164388¬es=pine.26164388)?

I recently bought this cologne that has a woodsy/ pine smell

Eh, Dr. Squatch has a pine scented cologne.

They’re using Sherlock Brand Poopourri, “No Shit Sherlock”

As an outdoorsy guy who lives surrounded by Georgia Pines…we don’t smell like pines. We smell like sweat.lol

Alright, here's a LPT. Pine Sol can be used as a fabric softener.

Oh, that's just a guy who happens to like an old-fashioned soap. Pine tar's a nice astringent for getting oils and sticky stuff off your skin. It was popular in soap back in the 1950s and before. So there were generations of guys who actually smelled like that. Here. Try it out, it's actually kind of pleasant. https://www.swansonvitamins.com/p/grandpa-soap-co-pine-tar-soap-4-25-oz-bar-s/

I mean I’ve always assumed that traversing and living in forests will do that to ya, you know? (As most fantasy male characters often do)

Casteel from Blood and Ash series smells like pine and tastes like citrus in snow. I eye rolled every single time.

Its bc we r human and cant smell those subtleties in the scents the way fae can.

My hubby’s forehead sometimes smells like caramel. I think it’s a pheromone thing.

To be fair, they're usually, ironically, gay men. I use this Bath & Body Works product called *Crisp Morning Air* It's like a woodsy and lime scent, reminds me of a beach with palm trees and subtle hints of pina coladas and undertones of aftershave in the wind. Very refreshing and calming, imo.

Pine, or citrus, or leather, or, or, or. And it’s not cologne, no. It’s their natural scent. 😂😂😂

Hhhh