[ SECRET POST #2335 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2335 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 095 secrets from Secret Submission Post #334.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[dreemyweird]

Wait. But what if it's an antagonist?
Also I think that you're missing the point of fictional narratives entirely. The character smokes? I AM JUDGING YOU.

(although of course sometimes you may turn out to be right simply because there are fic writers who like to give some of their problems and/or personality traits to their characters)

Or, say, if the character in question is Victorian?.. Or from whatever century prior to the twentieth? Your belief makes zero sense in this case.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

That is true, and there are some time periods where smoking is just realistic. I don't think I tend to assume the writer smokes in those cases. I was thinking of modern-setting writing when I made the secret.

Of course, in those case lamenting the terrible inconveniences of smokers and smoking in smoke-free areas are unlikely to come up, so I will in any event be mildly annoyed and not rageful.

Re: OP

[dreemyweird]

Yeah, OK, even if we talk modern setting, this is not the way it works in fiction. Not when it comes to smoking, not when it comes to anything else. It is the case with some stories, but stating that all of them do this is a wild generalization.

I don't think you're an asshole or anything, but your opinion just... does not reflect the real state of affairs.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

But even today there are a lot of smokers? There are a lot of smokers IRL than there are smokers on TV, so it's not all that unrealistic to assume that some characters smoke even though we never see them smoking in canon. I write some characters as smokers because I think it fits with the rest of their personality. I don't smoke myself. I'm simply aware of the fact that characters I write about have different personalities and habits from me. That's why some of them smoke. Or drink more/less than I do. Or eat foods I don't enjoy. Or have hobbies I find stupid. Or political opinions I disagree with.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

IDK where you live (or how old you are) but there are significantly less smokers around then when I was growing up. Cigarette ads were still allowed in magazines and newspapers when I was growing up though, so there is that, too. But there are WAY less smokers in the world than there used to be, and most of the ones you talk to (even the wholly not-gonna-quit-nope-nope-nope ones) will tell you it's the worst addiction there is. IDK, I've never smoked, but I've seen first-hand how hard it is for people to quit.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Seconding this. It's a lot less prevalent than it used to be. And there are so many more restrictions on smoking than there used to be ten or fifteen years ago - where I live, no smoking in restaurants or bars or hospitals, and even within so many feet of the front door of restaurants or bars. Boggles my mind when my mom tells me that people used to be able to smoke in movie theatres.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

I agree that there are a lot more restrictions than there used to be (and I live in a country where smoking is banned in most public places) and I'm sure there are fewer smokers than 20 or 30 or 50 years ago. But I do think that the lack of cigarette ads, and the fact that fewer and fewer people smoke in movies/shows, can give a somewhat wrong impression that smoking is something incredibly rare these days. It's not. It may be more rare than it used to be, but it's still not exceptional. Literally HALF my colleagues at work take smoking breaks (and actually smoke, it's not just an excuse to go outside). Whenever I go out, I see people leaving bars and restaurants to smoke outside, people standing around in the street smoking before they go back in. It happens very often that people ask me (or others around me) for a cigarette or for a light. I completely agree that it's a bad addiction and a terrible habit, but there are still a LOT of smokers. So if it fits with the character, even in a modern-day setting, I really see nothing wrong with a fanfic author deciding to write that character as a smoker. Even today smoking is not something so incredibly rare and weird that you need a huge justification as to why a character would smoke.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

It also depends on where you live - I've noticed that in a lot of European countriies smoking is very prevalent as compared to Canada and Australia and probably the US.

And anyway, whether a character smokes or not is just a headcanon. You don't have to go through hundreds of statistics analyzing the percentage of smokers in a particular area combined with race and gender and income level to figure out the chances of a particular character smoking. Making headcanons about characters is supposed to be fun.

[(Anonymous)]

Even in the 20th century -- I still LOL at all the preggers mums in Call The Midwife LIGHTING UP INDOORS AS THEY ARE HEAVILY PREGNANT. But it was the 1930s, so.

Also, smoking was NBD even right up till the 1970s. Which is why the tobacco companies got hit with all those class-action lawsuits, because they knew from the 1950s onwards, that cigarettes will kill you deader than dead (and often in the most nasty way possible), not to mention all the people in the world who have died from heavy secondhand smoking exposure, which they also knew about.

Sorry. I've a family member w/emphysema who continues to smoke like a stove. It's one of my berserk buttons, yeah.