[ SECRET POST #5853 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5853 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 48 secrets from Secret Submission Post #838.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm put off by fics making characters smokers, so I think I understand where you're coming from, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. Is it canon? No? Then why?

[(Anonymous)]

Cigarette or weed smokers?

I can’t stand the profusion of weed smoking in fic, like everybody in college is stoned constantly.

Don’t mind it as some plot point. And the same with tattoos. If the tattoo is relevant to the story, okay, but if you just think it would be hot for Captain America to have tattoos, laaaaaaame.

[(Anonymous)]

It's so funny that you're using Captain America as your example here, because I'm pretty sure that Steve Rogers the aspiring artist getting a tattoo once he's been super-soldiered and doesn't have to worry about it accidentally killing him would be an easy sell for any halfway decent author.

On the other hand, while I can see him trying smoking once his asthma was fixed, I don't figure he'd stick with it. Of course, given that he grew up in the 20s and 30s, he probably wouldn't have any particular aversion to other people smoking as long as they weren't jerks about it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, maybe not the best example.

More like, "x character was covered in tattoos, with two full sleeves, gauges, and a nose piercing," when there's no canon indication that the character would be into that.

[(Anonymous)]

OP - Oh, yeah, I get that. If the character doesn't smoke in canon, then there are fairly limited circumstances where making them a smoker in a fic works for me. Generally it can work for me with grim, angsty stuff, where life has gotten really rough for them and they're suffering. In that case, making them a smoker sort of highlights the whole "they don't care if they die" element.

I'm also fine with most characters having a cigarette at an event while drinking. Usually it's scenes where the character is having angst over something and they escape to the balcony/veranda/back porch/garden and have one of their very occasional cigarettes to calm their nerves and justify their absence. Or else a non-smoking character finds their doesn't-usually-smoke love interest smoking on the balcony, and the LI offers them a drag, so of course the non-smoker character accepts, because you don't just reject the chance to stand in weirdly intimate companionship with your LI and put your mouth on the same poison stick they just put their mouth on and be alone together at a busy event.

But for me there's a difference between having a character smoke as a rare one-off, to convey something, and just full-on making them a smoker. The latter only works for me if the message being conveyed is that they have become indifferent to death, or perhaps even passively suicidal.

[(Anonymous)]

Any canon set before the late 1980s or so, smoking was pretty normal and common and not seen as inherently self-destructive. Watch any 1970s movie and it's all over the place, everywhere. For example Steve Rogers might not smoke himself (or he might) but for anyone of his generation it would be no big deal that doesn't mean anything in particular.