I Am Completely Serious

Pleasant cucumber/melon-y "aquatic"/"clean"/"cold" scent, with some light floral stuff underneath. Basically, smells like a men's clothing store at the mall, or one of those "cooling" facial toners.*

I'm not sure whether this is what the actual stuff smells like or not, but it's basically what I'd expect from an okay scent marketed to young guys.

(* Never, ever spend more than like like $2 on that, by the way. It feels nice if it's hot, but it has no real benefits skin-wise, is actually irritating to most people with acne, and costs like $0.10 to make. You could probably figure out how to manufacture it by the gallon if you look at the ingredients label and then spend a while browsing The Perfumer's Apprentice.)

Apparently I've had Obsession confused with something else forever, so I don't know if this smells like it. The actual stuff is supposed to be cinnamon-y, which isn't really the case with this. It's both pleasant and familiar, though: vanilla/floral/sandalwood-musk-based incense.

It makes me think of lawyers, unfortunately. One of the guys at at the firm wears loads of something very close to it.

definitely smells like Angel, but, I guess, with a piece missing? And a weird off-ish "cloudy" overtone.

...actually, what it smells like to me is perfume with "vanilla-y" notes that's been sitting in a cabinet for years. This $1 knock-off Angel might be old. How could the Dollar Tree betray me this way.

Since the cat was trying to eat it and he knows best, I just tried on the fake C5. It smells about right, to my fuzzy recollection? I don’t own any of the real stuff to compare it to, and I’ve only tried it on myself once, but the scent is properly initializing the expected traumatic scent-memories of being induced to hug and/or make conversation with strangers at family and political events.

(I don’t like C5. Or White Diamonds. They should back off and stop asking me how my horse princess book is. I am trying to read my horse princess book.)

So, an attempt was made! The Dollar Tree’s perfume supplier is not just dumping random stuff into these bottles. And they didn’t overdo the aldehydic elements to the point of harshness, like a dupe I tried a few years back.

It’s already wearing off, though. If I wanted a fake C5 with staying power (I don’t), I’d probably order some oil from one of those Etsy or eBay shops.