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reipanEvery now and again, these little ideas will take hold of my brain and start to fester.
For example, earlier this week I started listening to more stuff by The Police, and it occurred to me that a lot of their stuff is actually rather creepy. Lyrics-wise, that is. I mean, Don't Stand So Close To Me and Every Breath You Take are obviously written with intentionally creepy lyrics, but...listen again to Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Or the second verse of Roxanne. THAT IS NOT THE SIGN OF A HEALTHY MIND.
...of course, my thinking about this much probably isn't, either.
Anyway, without futher ado, I would like to dedicate the rest of this entry to a subject which has been on my mind for quite some time now, and which I'm sure is very relevant to many of us...
Just for the record, I have no idea why I wrote any of this.
For example, earlier this week I started listening to more stuff by The Police, and it occurred to me that a lot of their stuff is actually rather creepy. Lyrics-wise, that is. I mean, Don't Stand So Close To Me and Every Breath You Take are obviously written with intentionally creepy lyrics, but...listen again to Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Or the second verse of Roxanne. THAT IS NOT THE SIGN OF A HEALTHY MIND.
...of course, my thinking about this much probably isn't, either.
Anyway, without futher ado, I would like to dedicate the rest of this entry to a subject which has been on my mind for quite some time now, and which I'm sure is very relevant to many of us...
DISCLAIMER: Any psychobabble in this post is purely incidental; this is based on my observations only and has absolutely no backing whatsoever, scientific or otherwise.
Okay, first of all, let me make one thing clear: I'm not a smoker. That's not to imply I've never been near a cigarette in my life; there are approximately two people on the face of the planet in whose company I will, occasionally, smoke - if they offer me a cigarette and I'm in a certain frame of mind. I don't make a habit of it; I've never actually bought myself a packet of cigarettes, and I wouldn't go manic-depressive if someone said I could never smoke again, in my entire life, ever. I like the smoking ban. It means I can go out to bars and come home knowing that I can, if I so choose, wear the same jeans the next day. Smoking, in short, is something I can take or leave.
But I do find myself oddly interested in observing smoking. Not in the sense that I'll go stand on street corners and stare intently at anyone with a cigarette in their hand, but if there are several people in the room who are smoking, I like to look at how each of them do it. I also use it quite often as a literary device; I have characters who smoke, characters who hate smoking and everything connected to it, and a couple of characters who have learned to tolerate smoking, for reasons of their own.
The reason for this is simple. Cigarettes, I have found, make damned good props. You can use a cigarette to say a lot of things about a person, should you be so inclined. Especially if the context you're using the cigarette in is a book or a film, you can use smoking to make someone look incredibly sexy. (Yes, yes, alright, that's not all they're useful for. Bear with me, okay? I'm Rei.)
In a weird way, today's culture has increased this potential. Back when smoking first came into fashion, it was a sign of sophistication. Now we know better, there's publicity all over the place about how your lungs will melt into a black lumpy mess and burst out of your chest, turning your life into a mini-version of the film Alien, if you so much as look at a cigarette. But somehow, in terms of aesthetics, that hasn't decreased the sex appeal of a pretty person with a cigarette. Because now, if you smoke, you're doing something dirty. Something wrong. Something that's eventually going to ruin your health, steal all your cash, sleep with your wife and leave you naked in a bin with nothing but a toothpick to live on. But you keep doing it anyway, because you just can't stop. Ooh. Bad you.
Of course, that goes two ways as well. There are, generally speaking, two kinds of smoker in the media. They are: evil and sexy, and total sleaze. (Sometimes you can tag "sophisticated" onto "evil and sexy". It depends on the kind of cigarette.)
Take, for example, Gene from Life On Mars. He is, in many ways, a rather unpleasant character, in a sort of awesome way. He's fat, he shouts a lot, and he's a chain-smoker. Now, he'd still be a rather-unpleasant-yet-oddly-awesome character if you took out the chain-smoking, but the fact that he smokes one cigarette after another with no particular style other than that necessary to get the nicotine into his bloodstream quickly gives him a different element to his character.
(...I hate that sentence. Construction-wise, that is one of the worst sentences I have ever written.)
Anyway. For one thing, he's addicted and he doesn't care. For another, he's not smoking for any reason other than to get what he wants out of it. Never mind that he's pretty much damned himself to a lifetime of smelling bad and nasty coughs; he wants fags. And he will have fags. All the time. In every situation. Yeesh.
On to "evil/sexy/sophisticated". I'm...going to have to admit to not having a sample character from popular culture here ^^; Which doesn't mean that there isn't one (they're often found in vampire films, for example), just that I can't be bothered to trawl my head for one right now. I toyed with the idea of using one of my own, but...eh. Too much like self-plugging.
Somebody who makes smoking look sexy tends to be doing it at least semi-consciously. I suppose it's possible to be completely innocent of the effect your cigarettal attitude might be having, but it's quite unlikely. You've gotta be aware of how you look. (Me andclauded_horizon discussed this over dinner tonight, and came up with the Ultimate Sexy Smoking Manner. Perhaps someday I will share it with you.) I suppose it could turn into some sort of skill, if you had a lot of time on your hands. But the trick - quite apart from the 'ooh, lookit me, I'm smoking, so naughty of me' aspect - is to be aware of the effect the first drag on your cigarette is having on you.
I have never once met a smoker who is still smoking because they actually enjoy it. The novelty wears off pretty quickly. Your mouth tastes nasty for a while afterwards, you feel sort of good but also sick, and the smell's everywhere. Good luck washing it off your hands. And this is from just smoking once in a while - a full-time smoker has the evidence all around them. Every item of clothing they own has a faint but perceptible smell of smoke (faintness subject to variablitiy, depending on how good they are with the laundry). In general, people don't stick with smoking because they enjoy it. They stick with smoking because it's the only thing that takes away the discomfort of not smoking.
You can play that up quite dramatically. The way that after a long, hard day, someone can light up a cigarette, take a drag, and it's like the breath of life? Yeah. Like that.
And this is even without taking into account the dozen little mannerisms that a smoker can use (slightly easier to use as literary devices, these. although you can still do the smoking-as-extension-of-character thing). Blowing smoke into someone's face to show contempt - you're not even worth the crap that wasn't good enough to make it through my lungs, foo'! Blowing smoke rings - hehe, look what I can do... The several different ways that you can flick ash off a cigarette - languid tapping, little flicks where you can compete with your friends to see how far you can make the ash go...okay, maybe that's just me. And, of course, the sense of finality that comes when you put it out. Universally, the extinguishing of a cigarette signifies the end of a period of time, or the taking of a significant decision.
...unless you light up another one immediately afterwards. And then the whole cycle starts again.
Smoking = BEST PROP EVER.
Okay, first of all, let me make one thing clear: I'm not a smoker. That's not to imply I've never been near a cigarette in my life; there are approximately two people on the face of the planet in whose company I will, occasionally, smoke - if they offer me a cigarette and I'm in a certain frame of mind. I don't make a habit of it; I've never actually bought myself a packet of cigarettes, and I wouldn't go manic-depressive if someone said I could never smoke again, in my entire life, ever. I like the smoking ban. It means I can go out to bars and come home knowing that I can, if I so choose, wear the same jeans the next day. Smoking, in short, is something I can take or leave.
But I do find myself oddly interested in observing smoking. Not in the sense that I'll go stand on street corners and stare intently at anyone with a cigarette in their hand, but if there are several people in the room who are smoking, I like to look at how each of them do it. I also use it quite often as a literary device; I have characters who smoke, characters who hate smoking and everything connected to it, and a couple of characters who have learned to tolerate smoking, for reasons of their own.
The reason for this is simple. Cigarettes, I have found, make damned good props. You can use a cigarette to say a lot of things about a person, should you be so inclined. Especially if the context you're using the cigarette in is a book or a film, you can use smoking to make someone look incredibly sexy. (Yes, yes, alright, that's not all they're useful for. Bear with me, okay? I'm Rei.)
In a weird way, today's culture has increased this potential. Back when smoking first came into fashion, it was a sign of sophistication. Now we know better, there's publicity all over the place about how your lungs will melt into a black lumpy mess and burst out of your chest, turning your life into a mini-version of the film Alien, if you so much as look at a cigarette. But somehow, in terms of aesthetics, that hasn't decreased the sex appeal of a pretty person with a cigarette. Because now, if you smoke, you're doing something dirty. Something wrong. Something that's eventually going to ruin your health, steal all your cash, sleep with your wife and leave you naked in a bin with nothing but a toothpick to live on. But you keep doing it anyway, because you just can't stop. Ooh. Bad you.
Of course, that goes two ways as well. There are, generally speaking, two kinds of smoker in the media. They are: evil and sexy, and total sleaze. (Sometimes you can tag "sophisticated" onto "evil and sexy". It depends on the kind of cigarette.)
Take, for example, Gene from Life On Mars. He is, in many ways, a rather unpleasant character, in a sort of awesome way. He's fat, he shouts a lot, and he's a chain-smoker. Now, he'd still be a rather-unpleasant-yet-oddly-awesome character if you took out the chain-smoking, but the fact that he smokes one cigarette after another with no particular style other than that necessary to get the nicotine into his bloodstream quickly gives him a different element to his character.
(...I hate that sentence. Construction-wise, that is one of the worst sentences I have ever written.)
Anyway. For one thing, he's addicted and he doesn't care. For another, he's not smoking for any reason other than to get what he wants out of it. Never mind that he's pretty much damned himself to a lifetime of smelling bad and nasty coughs; he wants fags. And he will have fags. All the time. In every situation. Yeesh.
On to "evil/sexy/sophisticated". I'm...going to have to admit to not having a sample character from popular culture here ^^; Which doesn't mean that there isn't one (they're often found in vampire films, for example), just that I can't be bothered to trawl my head for one right now. I toyed with the idea of using one of my own, but...eh. Too much like self-plugging.
Somebody who makes smoking look sexy tends to be doing it at least semi-consciously. I suppose it's possible to be completely innocent of the effect your cigarettal attitude might be having, but it's quite unlikely. You've gotta be aware of how you look. (Me and
clauded_horizon discussed this over dinner tonight, and came up with the Ultimate Sexy Smoking Manner. Perhaps someday I will share it with you.) I suppose it could turn into some sort of skill, if you had a lot of time on your hands. But the trick - quite apart from the 'ooh, lookit me, I'm smoking, so naughty of me' aspect - is to be aware of the effect the first drag on your cigarette is having on you.I have never once met a smoker who is still smoking because they actually enjoy it. The novelty wears off pretty quickly. Your mouth tastes nasty for a while afterwards, you feel sort of good but also sick, and the smell's everywhere. Good luck washing it off your hands. And this is from just smoking once in a while - a full-time smoker has the evidence all around them. Every item of clothing they own has a faint but perceptible smell of smoke (faintness subject to variablitiy, depending on how good they are with the laundry). In general, people don't stick with smoking because they enjoy it. They stick with smoking because it's the only thing that takes away the discomfort of not smoking.
You can play that up quite dramatically. The way that after a long, hard day, someone can light up a cigarette, take a drag, and it's like the breath of life? Yeah. Like that.
And this is even without taking into account the dozen little mannerisms that a smoker can use (slightly easier to use as literary devices, these. although you can still do the smoking-as-extension-of-character thing). Blowing smoke into someone's face to show contempt - you're not even worth the crap that wasn't good enough to make it through my lungs, foo'! Blowing smoke rings - hehe, look what I can do... The several different ways that you can flick ash off a cigarette - languid tapping, little flicks where you can compete with your friends to see how far you can make the ash go...okay, maybe that's just me. And, of course, the sense of finality that comes when you put it out. Universally, the extinguishing of a cigarette signifies the end of a period of time, or the taking of a significant decision.
...unless you light up another one immediately afterwards. And then the whole cycle starts again.
Smoking = BEST PROP EVER.
Just for the record, I have no idea why I wrote any of this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 10:26 am (UTC)...and by "in time", I probably mean "this evening". I get bored at night.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 08:03 am (UTC)On an unrelated note... have you seen Sailor Moon Abridged? I can't remember whether you told me about it before, but hey, FUNNY STUFF.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 08:08 am (UTC)But it will possibly worry you that these lines:
Now we know better, there's publicity all over the place about how your lungs will melt into a black lumpy mess and burst out of your chest, turning your life into a mini-version of the film Alien, if you so much as look at a cigarette.
Because now, if you smoke, you're doing something dirty. Something wrong. Something that's eventually going to ruin your health, steal all your cash, sleep with your wife and leave you naked in a bin with nothing but a toothpick to live on.
...immediately made me think 'WHEN DID REI TURN INTO JEREMY CLARKSON?'
Oh, dear.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 10:25 am (UTC)...okay, what did I ever do to you?!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 12:23 pm (UTC)*bows down to your writing*
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 08:22 pm (UTC)I've read Lolita ^_^ It's a good book. But, yeah. Creepy songs.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 06:25 pm (UTC)