Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More

[lunabee34]

thelastgoodname posted HERE about deal breakers in fic which led to a discussion of non-canonical smokers smoking in fanfiction which prompted me to say that I believe most people have smoked at least one cigarette in their lives. That prompted hermionesviolin to make a poll about people's smoking habits. Results viewable to none, so feel free to pop over and take the poll even if you don't want your smoking past or present known. :)

Her poll and TLGN's post got me to thinking about smoking in fanfic and how I feel about it. Before I begin, let me disclaim. I am an ex-smoker. When I smoked, I did so like London at the height of the Industrial Revolution. I was a chain smoker. I smoked because I was alive. And I enjoyed the hell out of it until it made me, as it is wont to do, horribly and violently ill. I now think smoking is gross and horrible and expensive and deadly and I still want to do it really badly sometimes even though I usually don't. I am deluding myself into believing that smoking twice a year on vacation (at New Years and the Fourth) will not hurt me. I still think smoking looks sexy as all get out, even though it's so bad for you and the smell really turns my stomach now. (Isn't it great how you can't smell people on the TV? LOL)

That being said, I know very few people who have never ever smoked. I know lots of people who tried it once or twice and were thoroughly repulsed or who smoked casually now and again and gave it up, but very few people who just never smoked at all. This is probably more a reflection of where and when I grew up and the people I've chosen as friends and acquaintances over the years than anything else, but smoking is one of those things I'm never surprised when people admit they've done before. It seems like a part of adolescence to me--high school or college--that hopefully you grow out of before your lungs are fried.

So I don't get thrown out of a story when non-canonical smokers light up in fanfic. Let's take Sam and Dean Winchester, for example. They are not canonical smokers. They never ever light up onscreen. In fact, Sam says point blank that Dean doesn't smoke in "Fulsom Prison Blues." However, in "Born Under a Bad Sign," Dean's dialogue about Meg!possessed Sam smoking indicates (as least to me! MMV) that Dean was a smoker in the past. Couple that with the fact that the Winchesters practically grew up in bars and other seedy shindigs, the hard life of a hunter, and Dean's predilection for every vice glorified in a Hank Williams song and I can totally believe that one or both of them has smoked in the past and might pick it up again under the right conditions. I can pretty much believe anything of any character under the right conditions. I am coming to realize that I have very, very few ironclad deal breakers in fic.

I want to you know what you all think about smoking in fic. So poll!

[Poll #1561178]

Comments

[decynthus.livejournal.com]

I smoked 4 or 5 times in my oh-so-wild youth, but it was never tobacco. Does that count?
In fanfic, it depends a lot on the character. It still works for me even if it's not canon if it seems to fit with the canon characterization (Draco) or with the way a particular author paints that character. In some fics, it seems perfectly natural for Harry, and in others - just, no.
I can't usually buy the "I'm going to die, so what the hell" thing, although I do remember at least one that was plausible. A 15 yr old Harry took it up as a way to act out after being informed he was going to die on his 16th birthday. It was more about giving DD the finger than the actual smoking. It mostly only seems to work if you view smoking as a pleasure you've been denying yourself and no longer have to, or as something you've wanted to try. I can't see a non-smoker turning so enthusiastically to something they had avoided, or at least were uninterested in, previously. If I were facing the end of the world, it wouldn't be a cigarette I'd be looking to suck on. >:)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

It totally counts. LOL

You know, I'm not sure I've run across any HP fics with smoking in them yet. Weird. You'd think that would be part and parcel of the fics set at Hogwarts. "Guess who I caught lighting up a Wizard Smoke in the prefects' bathroom? Ten points from Hufflepuff!" LOL

[decynthus.livejournal.com]

Most of the times I've run across it in HP, it was post-Hogwarts. It might be a rentboy!Draco fic or a scene where they're drinking. The one I'm reading right now includes a pipe-smoking Lucius as Harry's father-in-law. Harry takes it up too, and it just seems all wrong.
One little upside: carry a wand and you're never without a lighter.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Ha!

Man, magic would be so cool. Although, I'd probably be more along the order of Neville and consistently endangering myself than anything else. LOL