Can you suggest a nervous, compulsive tic? Tea doesn’t strike me as a compulsion.
Besides beverage consumption, nail-biting, hair-tugging/pull/curling, knuckle-cracking, foot jiggling, pen manipulation, or coin flipping, all come to mind.
I started by rewriting all instances of smoking to pen chewing, but then found that I was disgusted with Hanna’s new habit.
After thinking about it, I’ve tried changing Hanna’s smoking to a sort of confidence factor. New text below is italicized:
Lars angrily followed Hanna out the door. Hanna confidently moved down the hallway, and lit up the second
she was through the door to her private office. She breathed in, held it, and slowly exhaled.
“Dammit Hanna! Would it kill you to not light up for half-a-fucking-hour? A lot of Americans kind of have a thing against smoking.”
Still standing, she took another pull. “Nicotine is a performance enhancing stimulant. It boosts reaction time, IQ scores and general memory performance.” She gave a small cough. “Too bad about the increased incidence of lung cancer, though. Besides, what do you care? It sounds like you’re strongly against making a My Little Pony video game.”
“I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this,” Lars stated.
and
And I was told point blank that my research would be used for military applications...and then told who exactly
had been funding my research. Lying to me wasn’t in their best interest, so it’s likely the truth.”
“But they still could have lied to you, and you could be wrong about how dangerous AI is.”
“I started taking...” she stopped and contemplated the burning cigarette in her hand. “...performance enhancing drugs with long term health consequences because I think it’s more likely that I’ll be around in twenty years if I do take them. Shouldn’t that be certainty enough for you?”
She knocked ash off her cigarette into the ash tray. “We don’t have perfect information. We can’t wait for perfect information.
Given that only you and Alicorn reacted this way (or were the only people to write that you reacted this way) while most people seem to not have minded, I’m wondering if removing the smoking is something I should do. I’ve gotten a few PM asking me to not remove it. I think the above changes move it from a prop to a piece of character development.
Sorry, I can’t help: I’m contaminated by the earlier version. I do like the justification, but that might just be because of my own nicotine gum use. Maybe you could embed a poll at the end? Looking in google, apparently Google Docs supports embedded polls.
Besides beverage consumption, nail-biting, hair-tugging/pull/curling, knuckle-cracking, foot jiggling, pen manipulation, or coin flipping, all come to mind.
I started by rewriting all instances of smoking to pen chewing, but then found that I was disgusted with Hanna’s new habit.
After thinking about it, I’ve tried changing Hanna’s smoking to a sort of confidence factor. New text below is italicized:
and
Given that only you and Alicorn reacted this way (or were the only people to write that you reacted this way) while most people seem to not have minded, I’m wondering if removing the smoking is something I should do. I’ve gotten a few PM asking me to not remove it. I think the above changes move it from a prop to a piece of character development.
Sorry, I can’t help: I’m contaminated by the earlier version. I do like the justification, but that might just be because of my own nicotine gum use. Maybe you could embed a poll at the end? Looking in google, apparently Google Docs supports embedded polls.
It’s probably okay like this.