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Date Posted: 19:37:52 07/31/24 Wed
Author: Curious
Author Host/IP: 49.196.40.146
Subject: (SFFR) The Smoking Sisterhood (Kaitlin Bringhurst)

Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers

The Smoking Sisterhood (Kaitlyn Bringhurst) - A Review

Part One - The Author

The author is one who was active on Amazon between November of 2012 and September of 2016 and published fiction dealing with a number of fetishes, the majority of which seem to be smoking fetish stories. To quote their Amazon biography:

"I'm hopelessly addicted to writing. My works vary and are generally considered speculative fiction. I enjoy mixing genres, thus you will often see elements of romance, time-travel, historical themes, erotica, thriller, horror, supernatural and paranormal, drama, humor, and more in my writing--really anything I think I can pull off!..."

This same bio also notes that the author has an obsession "...with the Victorian era, along with the early decades of the twentieth century, you'll often see a nod to Victorian times or "the Jazz Age" in my works because it is so much a part of my life."

Part Two - The Smoking Sisterhood

Alicia, Julia & Misha, are friends, all non-smokers. Alicia is an anti-smoker with an obnoxious way of responding to smokers. Annoyance with Alicia's anti-smoking antics inspires a plan by her friends to play a trick on her, but how to pull it off convincingly...

Part Three - Comments

The basic plot idea that drives this 2013 story is a modification of one that was used by three authors in the past. An201326(1), An4(2) and SStoryman(3) all wrote stories built around the idea of someone becoming a smoker because they are asked to portray one on stage. In this story two of the characters decide to pretend they've started smoking to trick the third character.

The story opens with one of the pair, Misha, the character the story focuses on. She's just come to the realization that the practice she's undertaken to portray a convincing smoker to Alicia has had an unexpected side effect and she's not taking it well.

Following a flashback scene that explains the backstory to the reader, the rest of the story is concerned with what Misha learns once she has accepted that she's become a smoker.

A parallel to this trajectory, the transition from 'person who smokes' to 'smoker' can be seen in the seventh chapter of 'How Could She Say No?'(4), prior to her conversation with Megan, her step-daughter, despite the great strides she's made, the character Patti is still a 'person who smokes'. It's only after she's spoken with Megan and accepted her right to smoke that she completes the attitudinal shift from 'person who smokes' to 'smoker'. This kind of trajectory is a feature of several of SStoryman's works, but I'll only mention one other, 'Just Practicing'(3) one of the authors lesser stories. Again it's the trajectory the protagonist follows over the course of the story, with the final transition coming in the fifth and final chapter. This is also essentially the trajectory the character Victoria in BlackLungLover's 'North and South' follows, though at stories start she's using vape sticks, the transition to 'smoker' coming in part six.(5)

Another interesting feature of the story is the use of differential rates of picking up the habit between Misha and Julia, the character who initiates the plan to trick Alicia. It's clear by stories end that Julia has not yet reached the same point that Misha has at stories start. A good example of this idea can be found in DonV's 'Minnesota Twins' the second part of the currently incomplete 'Anderson Family Trilogy'.(6) In the stories Eighteenth and Nineteenth chapters the reader is introduced to the Dominguez family, Roberto, Teresa and their two daughters Mariana and Isabel. While the girls are two years apart in age, both experimented with the habit around the same age, but it's clear that the development pathways for the two girls have been quite different, Mariana's habit has 'found it's level', Isabel's is still growing and as her mother comments looks to surpass that of her older sister.

The difference is in how the authors use it, DonV uses this to show not only how Grace's attitudes towards her youngest daughter possibly embracing the habit change under the influence of Teresa, but the lingering unease that underlies those changes. Bringhurst uses it to show how the embrace of the habit by Misha and Alicia's revelation about her past has changed the dynamic between the three friends, during the flashback Julia is the one who initiates things, at stories end she's responding to events.

Overall I'd classify this one as interesting and worth reading. If nothing else, it shows the value of looking at old story ideas from a different perspective can yield good results.

Part Four - Notes

1. 'The Story of Jill', which can be read in Vol. 1 of the Noble Leaf Library, the review can be found in Vol. 16 of the consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Reviews.
2. 'The Play's the Thing', which can be read in Vol. 7 of the Noble Leaf Library and 'A Thousand Words' which can be found in Vol. 11 of the Noble Leaf Library. The reviews can be found in volumes 15 and 1 of the consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Reviews.
3. 'Just Practicing', which can be read in Vol. 19 of the Noble Leaf Library, the review can be found in Vol. 7 of the consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Reviews.
4. This story can be read in Vol. 5 of the Noble Leaf Library, the review can be found in Vol. 22 of the consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Reviews
5. This story can be read in Vol. 75 of the Noble Leaf Library, the review can be found in Vol. 11 of the consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Reviews
6. This story can be read in Vol. 48 of the Noble Leaf Library, the review can be found in Vol. 15 of the consolidated Smoking Fetish Fiction Reviews. An essay discussing what is known/speculated about the as yet unreleased third volume of the story can be found in 'The Essays of Curious'.

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