#stede bonnet's lip balm

[triflesandparsnips]

A Brief HISTORICAL SCIENCE Update

I have for some time wondered what happens when my various apothecary nonsense things go bad. I sometimes have things that turn out strange, and some things that don't set right and turn out gross, but now, for the first time, I have something that TURNED BAD FROM OLD AGE.

Behold! Early-version lip balm from over a year ago that I decanted into a larger tin because I'd run out of tiny guys, which has been living under my work computer for, uh, some months now.

Figure 1. Pretty sure that's mold, friends!

So the lesson here is:

Keep an eye on your cosmetics

Don't create weird environments for tiny friends under your work computer's variable temperatures

Be prepared for SCIENCE to attack you in the FACE unexpectedly and with INTENT

[edandstede]

ed and stede reading together in bed, and ed gently taking off stede's adorable glasses and putting them down safe whenever stede falls asleep with his book.

ed tying a silk bonnet around his hair to sleep and it matching the silk eye mask stede wears. actually, they probably have lots of matching sets and they end up sharing them all.

stede rubbing lip balm onto his lips from a little pot and ed thinking it smells good, like honey and flowers, so stede gently rubs some onto ed's lips too. they end up kissing and having to reapply it but it's the opposite of a problem.

their inn smelling like a combination of them both because they use the same soaps to wash their clothes and bedding, share the same colognes, and stede keeps pouches of lavender with their laundry to keep them extra fresh.

stede handing ed tea in the mornings with a kiss to his temple and a "there you go, sweetheart" and ed wrapping both hands around his cup with a happy sigh, and their feet always tangling together under their table at breakfast while they feed each other triangles of toast and marmalade.

casual intimacy, lovingly intertwined, ed-and-stede.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

Stede Smells Like Cookies!

Stede Smells Like Cookies is something I wrote and fiddled with after reading this post (the tags in particular) by @triflesandparsnips 😅 and also one time my partner gave me a goodbye kiss before I went to work and the whole way to the bus stop I could smell her lip balm on my lips 🥰 Romance!

So I got real angsty with it, here's a snippet:

On his second day back, rifling through the cabinets of Stede’s washroom, Ed finds the tin: pomatum for the lips with orange flower water. He knows what it is the moment he reads the label, knows how much it will hurt. He opens it anyway. The room fills with the memory of a beach, a kiss, and Stede Bonnet. He snaps the cap back on and chucks the tin away. It clangs against the bathtub so loudly that Ed jumps again, tripping over his own feet as he stumbles backwards into the door. The tin rolls across the floor towards him, settling against his bare foot, and Ed slides down the door in defeat.  He’s never been this fucked up over someone before. It feels like he doesn’t know how to breathe anymore, like someone opened up his chest and started shoving rocks into all the places where the air is supposed to go. He picks up the tin, opens it, inhales the smell of Stede Bonnet’s lips again.

it got really sad and weird so I decided to wait until Ed and Stede got back together in canon before trying to write a follow-up scene to this one (to fix how sad it was).

WIP title ask game explanation

[libroseitm]

I've seen the "What would Stede Bonnet do" post and would love to add to that. Here are some simple ways you can look after yourself:

. Admit that this is rubbish, and accept that you're not being silly if it's affecting you badly. Ofmd is a special show, it's totally acceptable to be upset.

. Take care of your body in some way. Wash your face, put some lip balm on, brush your teeth, massage your feet ect.

. Do an achievable task around the house. Hoover the hallway, fold some laundry, unsubscribe from a mailing list, put away that thing that's lying around.

. Treat yourself, but eat healthy too and try your best to stay hydrated. Put water in different containers and dot them around the house.

. Talk to a friend physically, even about something totally unrelated to season 3.

. Make yourself a beverage that takes a little bit of time to do. A cup of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, smoothie etc.

. Try your best to keep to a sleep routine. Have a cut off time that you'd like to stick to for lying down, challenge yourself to stick to it within half an hour.

. Don't stress if you can't do any of these, set a goal of getting out of bed, and just go from there.

Look after yourselves lovelies!

[triflesandparsnips]

!! YAY I'M SO GLAD THEY MADE IT THROUGH.

tbh every day that international customs doesn't destroy my weird packages entirely is another great day

also:

The lip balm is honestly such a good entry point to Shenanigans, I absolutely recommend it.

One of these days I'm actually going to put together some zines or chapbooks of my processes (with... maybe fully accurate modern instructions) so others can follow in my alchemical footsteps, and it's going to be an amazing disaster.

And for anyone else out there who wants to experience questionable packaging and Stede Bonnet's soft, sweet, and often-cookie-scented vibe, you too can play Russian roulette with homemade goods through my shop here:

...where there is currently historical cold cream and lip balm labeled for normies who don't know about the Gentleman Pirate, and where I soon hope to have:

variant labels for OFMD fans (where, for instance, the cold cream is absolutely going to be relabeled as, ahem, The Seaman's Friend), and

MY MISTAKES (by which I mean the ugly soaps, the weird soaps, the unfortunate soaps, and whatever other mid-process things end up coming out of my workshop, at a steep discount for your horrified enjoyment)

WOO

aaaa my @triflesandparsnips lip balm and cold cream came in the post!!! with excellent timing, as i was just digging in the bowels of my last chapstick to finish it off

everything smells so SWEET oh my god??? 😍😍 I'M SO EXCITED TO TRY THEM OUT sdlgjaldhfkjgadfh

also fun fact, the australian border force clearly thought something was terribly suspicious about the package, because they opened it for inspection, lol. nothing was removed, but they left a note and everything. huh.

[triflesandparsnips]

Not an ask, but I made your orange blossom lip balm! While I was at it, I made the face pomatum too. The lip balm seems great, although I couldn't get it to colour at all and it smells more like coconut than anything else. Oh well. The pomatum is, uhm... trickier. It's way more waxy so harder to apply, I can't imagine using it on my face. But I did my elbows and it seemed fine for that. Anyway, thank you for the happy little piratey lunacy!

YESSSSS

So the lip balm:

With regard to color, the only experiment I really tried with that was adding colored mica, and I only did it the once. I've never tried alkanet (because Potential Liver Problems), and while I've considered trying tumeric or similar I've largely shrugged and backburnered that aspect for now. However, you can see a bit in this photo the color differences between the first batch (with the mica) and subsequent:

Figure 1. The first three versions of the lip balm. Bottom left (v.1.1) has the mica, and is slightly more orange-ish than the other two.

With regard to the coconut smell, I've found that I have to be very generous with the orange-blossom water at several stages of cooking in order to keep it present as a scent. While my initial recipe calls for only two "spoonfuls" (which I decided meant a soup spoon of some kind), as of version 3.0, I now specifically use 2+ tablespoons (2 in the original mix, enough extra for the arrowroot, and then... idk, a bit more to Vibe as needed, so it really comes out to more like 3 Tbs). I have notes for 3.1 to up the count to 4-5 Tbs, though we'll see what that does to the consistency.

I also pretty much always make two variants these days: one with coconut oil, and one with sweet almond oil (as described in the original French recipe!). So that might be a fun avenue to try in future.

ON TO THE FACE POMATUM:

I am deeply interested in what your consistency ended up being -- version 1.0 (which I have completed THIS VERY EVENING, and for which I must write up proper notes, because GOSH) is what I'd call a Ye Olde Cold Cream rather than a more modern facial lotion (which tend to be moisturizing without being heavy, as opposed to this, which is easy to use, deeeeefinitely moisturizing, but, uh, will definitely get that moisturizing goodness on anything it touches, goddamn).

Anyway, mine came out buttery af, and seems to still be so, but somewhere between removing it from the water and adding the borax, the fucker got itty bitty granules in it-- just enough to be annoying. Bah. Further research is required.

Figure 2. A smooth(ish) operator pomatum; aka, a sneak peek into later apothecary revelations.

ANYWAY. Thank you @ivoryfeathers for joining in the gay pirate mad scientist experimental fun!

[triflesandparsnips]

For those who may or may not remember my mostly historically accurate Stede Bonnet lip balm, get ready-- I'm going to start experimenting soon with mostly historically accurate lavender soap.

So... I guess be prepared for me to accidentally explode more shit, hooray.

[triflesandparsnips]

...So like. Let's travel back in time to a year ago. I start doing these fun little historical recreations, right? Stede Bonnet's lip balm and such.

The original recipe for that lip balm uses almond oil, but for my first batch (and several batches thereafter), I used coconut oil, because-- well, it's not historically accurate for the recipe, but fandom decided pretty early on that coconut oil was the Lube of Choice on the jolly ship Revenge.

So I, naturally, thought it'd be hilarious to use coconut oil in some stuff. Just a lil fandom-lube fun for shits n giggles. Because lol.

...Now please fast forward to right now. Me, idly planning the rest of the night. An unspooling line of thoughts: I want to make alt-labels for my historical hand cream, something to match the ye olde lube fic I wrote to go with the lip balm-- the fic describes the label as a hand holding a ship-- I'd been asking around for artist suggestions, looking for someone who could maybe draw Stede's hand for the label, maybe I could start messaging folks?-- and of course, after my utter breakdown over the "sex scenes and how to show them" morning-after gif set, that'd be a great reference to forw--

At which point, my brain shuddered to a fucking halt.

Because--

Yeah. Stede's hand. His fingers. Circling, pressing, working into--

🥥coconut🥥

THIS SHOW. is literally sitting us down and saying "Look at how Stede fingers-- stuff. And, uh, by the way-- look at what he's smearing his fingers all over with."

(SEX SCENES. AND HOW. TO SHOW THEM.)

tl;dr I am now extremely fucking okay with considering coconut oil pirate lube as canon-confirmed.

[akemi-roses]

This is super old, found this in my drafts

Thank you for the tag, @aesthetic-survivor-of-twd !

Top 3 ships:

As of right now:

1. Clouis/Louisentine (Clementine & Louis: TWDG)

2. Lumity (Luz Noceda & Amity Blight: The Owl House)

3. Blackbonnet (Edward Teach & Stede Bonnet: Our Flags Means Death)

Lipstick or Lipbalm: Lip balm (sometimes lipstick)

Last song I listened to: No Love by Summer Walker

Last movie: Sleepy Hollow

Reading:  Clouis fanfics (Book one sacred me… )

Watching: Ned Declassified School Survival Guide (it’s a classic y’all)

Tagging: anyone who wants to do this

Tagged!

I was tagged by @kevinlyfather (Omg I love your username and profile pic so much - I ADORE Book of Mormon and Andrew Rannells!)

Thank you for the tag! :)

Rules: tag 9 people you’d like to get to know better 

Top 3 ships: As of right now: 

1. Louisentine (Louis x Clem - TWDG) 2. Rimmer x Lister (Red Dwarf) 3. Legosi x Louis (Beastars) Lipstick or Lipbalm: I’m a lip balm person, myself. Last song I listened to: Rasputin by Boney M Last movie: Parasite Reading: Beastars Fanfiction Watching: Better Call Saul 

(The last thing I watched was Tiger King though lol)

TAGGED:

@bluebutterfly1  @king-of-clubs98 @twdteacakes @mcg777 @ciirceloncur @muttbutters @sonicole @emcdraws  @terra-mations @javiandclem @scullyy @genericedgelord @akemi-rose578 @the-stranger-it-gets  @castle-javier

[triflesandparsnips]

I've never done this before, so I don't know if it'll work, but...

yes I have a store, and yes here's the link where you can (hopefully?) buy Stede Bonnet's historically plausible lip balm and pearl face cream:

AND ALSO APOLOGIES IF I FUCKED IT UP

[triflesandparsnips]

hey hey guess what it's time for

Update 4: Return of the (Soap) King

For those who haven't been following along, I've been having a nice time doing experimental archaeology and recreating cosmetics/household goods that are historically plausible for local idiot pirate Stede Bonnet to have had around.

Figure 1. Me, addressing my kitchen appliances.

So far we've had successful lip balm, yet-to-be-completed Oil of Lavender, the terrible tragedies that have so far befallen the pearl face cream, and, finally, the unending journey of the one household item actually mentioned on the dang show: the lavender soap (with updates 1-3 and several mini-updates).

Did this all secretly derive from my researching period-appropriate medical horror? Yes. Am I still going to write about it? Of course come on now I can't just keep that enema information to myself--

But TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY.

Figure 2. One very excited ship's surgeon who will unfortunately have to bide his fuckin time.

Nope, today we're on the next iteration of the lavender soap, because we're still at the "fuck around and find out" portion of this experimental process-- and so, behold:

Version 3.0 7 oz. dried soap 4 oz. ground orrisroot 1 oz. ground whole cloves 1 oz. ground benjamin 10 drops lavender essential oil oil of lavender, q.s. rosewater, q.s.

You may notice that I have, tragically, only added enough of anything lavenderish to allow myself the honesty of still calling this "lavender" soap -- as previously discussed, lavender essential oils (as we know them today) were not really a Thing, and the Oil of Lavender (...which is not an essential oil, but rather an infusion of lavender flowers and olive oil) is not quite ready for primetime scent vibes, so I genuinely don't think these are comparable to actually just grinding up and shoving in the dried flowers.

But for the sake of Science, I needed to find out if removing the flowers would help with the browning issue of previous versions, so-- out went the lavender. For now.

Figure 3. Oh no, I-- oh man, don't cry, I'm sorry, I'll put it back omg.

Other changes in this version are:

store-bought ground orrisroot (...listen, Thomas is but a wee lad, and not yet hearty enough to wreck regular orrisroot as hard as it needs);

store-bought ground benzoin (because it was cheaper to buy in bulk that the solid resin from the woo-woo shop);

increased the amount of orrisroot from 1 ounce to 4 ounces, in keeping with some other recipes, to try and bulk up the myristic acid content (i.e., the thing wot makes olive-oil based Nabulsi soap actually produce a bubbly lather)

I should at this point say that typically the scientific process recommends making only one change at a time when conducting Experiments, so that one may know what exactly affected a change in a positive, negative, or neutral manner.

Consider, however, that I have no patience. So fuck it, we ball.

Show us the soap, trifles

To get to the soap, you must first suffer through mortifying ordeal of process photos.

Figure 4. The ground orrisroot on my tiny digital scale (that actually measures grains, which itself is a holdover from apothecary measurements!)

Wait wait wait actually look at my tiny bullshit scale, I love it, look at its little one-gram calibration weight:

Figure 5. A baby.

Figures 6 and 7. An ounce of whole cloves (left) and the results of young Thomas's efforts thrown on top of the orrisroot and benjamin in the mortar (right).

I should note that rather than grinding the cloves in my granite mortar and pestle first, I put them straight into Thomas's maw-- I don't know if that led to how intensely clove-oily these grounds are, or the fact that the lavender flowers were not present to soak it up. Previously I got a grey-green powder out of grinding the both together, so this rich, wet clove-color did not bode well for my "can I stop this from being brown?" soap plans...

Figure 8. ...Or maybe it'll be fine? I added the dried soap, and now look at them all mixed together!

As a note, I had to actually use a whisk at this point rather than just rely on my pestle to do the work -- my mortar is Too Small for these shenanigans, and the four ounces' worth of orrisroot did not help matters. I won't say how much of this mix ended up outside the mortar and on my clothes, but it was... it was a non-zero amount.

Whatever, thought I. This is Science. This is me experiencing the divine art of creation across space-time with my alchemical forebears, and also this is why I should not be allowed in other people's kitchens.

Notably, the upped powder content meant that I had to add a lot more splashes of rosewater to get to a dough-y state where the soap could be hand-rolled, and I had to work significantly longer with the pestle-- while version 2.0 was, per my notes, about 8-10 minutes' worth of work, I would call this a solid 20 minutes at least of beating the ever-loving shit outta this mix until everything was incorporated.

And once it was, well--

Figure 9. Hello, brown.

As you can see, the soap mix does form up very nicely, though it still requires a spatula to clear the sides of the mortar and pestle.

At this point, remembering that the last time I hand-rolled wash balls my palms came away Very Brown, I donned some latex gloves before I commenced my rolling. However, because (and again, I cannot stress this enough) I lack patience, I threw in another change: rather than leaving them as balls, I squished them slightly between my palms to flatten them into slightly more traditional soap shapes.

Figure 10. Cookie dough or falafel: you decide.

A note regarding the scent: Whether it's the relative lack of the lavender, or the big bump to the orrisroot (or some magic alchemical combination of the two), the soaps, while still smelling strongly like spice cookies, now have an oddly-unfamiliar-but-fascinating scent profile, similar to what I found happened when I made the lip pomatum. There's no good reason why this should make me believe that I've come closer to a "real" recipe, but the feeling is there nonetheless -- and it's definitely interesting.

Finally, and because the flat sides of these soaps looked too innocent, too pure, I decided to try that octopus stamp again. For future reference, stamping immediately after making these? Not a great idea. The soap stuck to the stamp like a motherfucker, and so a lot of detail was lost. But regardless--

Figure 11. Spice cookie kraken soap cakes, holy shit.

And now, I actually do have to wait a few days before I can try them out, or they'll fall the fuck to pieces. Keep watch for mini-updates, though, as I check out how they dry and probably do more unfortunate stamp experiments on them.

[triflesandparsnips]

First there was my mostly historically accurate Stede Bonnet lip balm--

then there was the continuing adventure of the mostly historically accurate scented soaps wash balls--

and apparently I didn't learn my lesson, because get ready for...

The Pearl Pomatum

(which is to say, the face cream)

(...I make myself laugh, and that's what's important here.)

[triflesandparsnips]

Ahahahaha WELL YOU SEE @ihavenoideahowtodream,

(1) In May of 2022 I watched this little gay pirate show set in the year 1718 called Our Flag Means Death, and for shits and giggles I decided to search through scanned archives of medical and household manuals from that time period to see if there was anything meta-worthy about 'oranges'. As I was reading,

(2) I ran across a recipe for what looked like a very simple orange-flower-scented lip balm that I could make in my own kitchen and with remarkably few ingredients-- so I thought, hey, experimental archaeology, why not; which then

(3) despite being a 300 year old recipe, somehow absolutely, unexpectedly, gloriously worked, leading to a false sense of security resulting in my wondering whether, well--

(4) if I looked around some more, maybe I could find a recipe for Stede Bonnet's lavender soap, you know, the only actual fancy household supply mentioned in canon, how hard could it be, what could possibly go wrong--

(5) which brings us to the present day where, I must sadly report, this strange and all-encompassing madness is one from which I have yet to recover

[triflesandparsnips]

Ahahahaha whaaaaat @gardenharuspex? Me? Researching and recreating household and medicinal recipes within the very narrow timeframe of the Western Scientific Revolution with a hard cutoff of 1718 purely because that's apparently my very niche way of engaging with my current gay pirate fandom?

...it's been a little under 1 and a half years since I made Stede Bonnet's lip balm, cmon now, I am the definition of reasonable.

[triflesandparsnips]

Speaking of that historically possible Stede Bonnet lip balm-- I'm up to version 3.0 and I want to start experimenting with 3.1 (aka MOAR ORANGE-FLOWER Edition).

From the 3.0 version, I've still got eleven sweet almond oil balms and one coconut oil balm sitting lonely in my fridge, and the makings for a shitload more of both.

Figure 1. The Boys (only one variant of which exists because I think I'm funny).

Figure 2. Look at this dolled up queen, I love him.

Figure 3. Behold Le Ingredients List.

[triflesandparsnips]

because of who I am as a person, I was going to see if I could make the orange-flower water lip balm I reference in my big ORANGES research post -- as you may recall, I offered the plot bunny that:

There’s a recipe from 1711 that’s just… it’s just an orange-flower water lip balm. That’s just what it is, folks. (And here’s what looks like a lip plumper from 1697, if you wanna get fancy.) Any time Ed got close? Yeah. How soft are Stede’s lips? Yeah.

Here’s a transcription of the recipe:

A Pomatum for the Lips.

Take Four Ounces of fresh Butter, and an Ounce of Virgin’s Wax, melt ‘em together, and when you have boil’d a Quarter of an Hour, strain and take your Pomatum from the Fire; then take Two Spoonfuls of Orange-flower-water, with which boil again and again; then thicken with a little Orcanet, which you have diluted with some Orange-flower-water, and beat up your Pomatum with a Spoon, taking it from the Fire and setting it to cool.

The ingredients here seem pretty straightforward, but I wasn’t sure what “Orcanet” was, so I did a little digging. So far as I can tell, that’s an older spelling of the herb alkanet (Alkanna tinctoria), which... if taken orally is apparently Not Great for liver function, but it’s primary use (regardless of the “thickening” it’s supposed to do in this recipe) is... as a colorant.

When mixed with more base chemicals (pH levels around 9 and 10), it appears purple-to-blue. When mixed with slightly acidic chemicals (pH 6) -- such as, for instance, a mix that has slightly acidic orange-flower water -- it apparently comes out ruby.

...so what I’m saying is, I’m going to try and make two batches here (replacing the alkanet with a bit of cosmetic-grade mica). One will be undyed daily use stuff, and the other will be for those times that maybe Stede wanted to be fancy.

5/9/22 ETA: HEY GUESS WHAT:

I made the pomatum!

I wrote fic about the pomatum! (And posted it to AO3!)

I have had a Bad Idea about selling the pomatum!