Good points about the things that affect scent, and the plethora of scents we're exposed to/covered in. Including that of cosmetics. My editor, who has perfume allergies, is tremendously sensitive to even environmental contaminant scents. One of the members of my group came to a session after she'd used a bathroom at work. The maintenance department had installed some kind of automatic air-freshener. Our editor could smell the air-freshener on her, because her clothes had picked up the odor just from her being in the bathroom. Weird, huh? (And, no, my editor is not a vampire. Although she does tend to get up late, rather than early, and she's a huge Spike fan...)
Anyway, what it comes down to in writing fanfic is the point you are trying to make when the vampire in question is getting a whiff of whatever person/demon/place/thing. Sure, a vampire *might* be able to distinguish the individual scents of personal products, cosmetic products, food, drink and environmental contaminants (or, it might be that being predators, their sense of smell is tuned specifically to blood scents or human pheromones and everything else is fairly indistinct to them) but why is s/he smelling whatever s/he is smelling at that point in the story? You want the sensory description to be evocative, not just an inventory that ends up being distracting.
But to get back to the point you'd asked about, with being thrown out of a fic...one of my favorite science fiction writers, Harlan Ellison, has a saying: "Go please the world." If you use O'Connor so as not to throw people who are used to reading his last name as O'Connor, you will end up irritating people who think O'Connor is overused. There's no compromise that everyone in the fandom is going to be okay with. Again, if you are writing a good story, and drawing your reader in, they'll forgive you for whichever choice you make. Yes, it is true that certain things will pull a reader out of a story, but those things are not the same for all readers. Some are thrown by poor use of language or misspellings, others won't even notice. Some are sticklers for accuracy in historical fics, some won't be bothered even by the most glaring anachronism. And, as discussed, some people find it irritating for Buffy to smell of nothing but vanilla, while others would find it jarring for her to smell of anything else.
Based on what I've read of your fic thus far (I'm about to re-read the first six chapters of TBS in order to properly savor the new seventh chapter) I think you don't have to worry about jarring people so badly in any way that they'll stop reading, no matter what choices you make.
Re: Chiming in
Anyway, what it comes down to in writing fanfic is the point you are trying to make when the vampire in question is getting a whiff of whatever person/demon/place/thing. Sure, a vampire *might* be able to distinguish the individual scents of personal products, cosmetic products, food, drink and environmental contaminants (or, it might be that being predators, their sense of smell is tuned specifically to blood scents or human pheromones and everything else is fairly indistinct to them) but why is s/he smelling whatever s/he is smelling at that point in the story? You want the sensory description to be evocative, not just an inventory that ends up being distracting.
But to get back to the point you'd asked about, with being thrown out of a fic...one of my favorite science fiction writers, Harlan Ellison, has a saying: "Go please the world." If you use O'Connor so as not to throw people who are used to reading his last name as O'Connor, you will end up irritating people who think O'Connor is overused. There's no compromise that everyone in the fandom is going to be okay with. Again, if you are writing a good story, and drawing your reader in, they'll forgive you for whichever choice you make. Yes, it is true that certain things will pull a reader out of a story, but those things are not the same for all readers. Some are thrown by poor use of language or misspellings, others won't even notice. Some are sticklers for accuracy in historical fics, some won't be bothered even by the most glaring anachronism. And, as discussed, some people find it irritating for Buffy to smell of nothing but vanilla, while others would find it jarring for her to smell of anything else.
Based on what I've read of your fic thus far (I'm about to re-read the first six chapters of TBS in order to properly savor the new seventh chapter) I think you don't have to worry about jarring people so badly in any way that they'll stop reading, no matter what choices you make.
Just my opinion. *G*