Neil:
But a minority does not become irrelevant simply for being tiny. There
are
children in fandom, and that must be taken into account. ... Since there are children in fandom, we ought to assume that some of them might well read fan fiction. If we assume that, we have to acknowledge
that
there are zines out there that maybe they shouldn't read.
I knew someone would say this. In the case of children intro'd to the show by parentfen (hard to think how else they'd come across it really these days), I assume the parentfen have enough fannish knowledge to separate their kids from material they consider unsuitable.
I suppose it might, but my (admittedly limited) experience of young
children
suggests that they're happy to lap up any amount of violence.
This might or might not be the case, and might depend on age, character, gender et al. (I recall being horrified/terrified by violence in Dr Who as a kid, and also grimly recall reading Solzhenitzyn's description of torture and interrogation in 'The Gulag Archipelago' aged about 10 -- a prime case of the 'don't censor' principle: the only reason I read it is that my parents forbade me to).
The question is, however, is it doing them any harm?
The real problem with 'gen' is that it has come to mean anything that isn't 'adult', but that leaves a lot of things that still qualify as gen but are not necessarily suitable
for
younger readers. Violence, possibly, or strong language.
I disagree. One problem with some genzines is that they often feel so sanitised (to me) that I can only read them in very small chunks. (Those produced by Neil Faulkner being honourable exceptions.)
This problem is not terribly applicable to fanfic because extreme violence and especially strong language are pretty rare. The only B7 story I know to feature the word 'cunt' is one of mine, though I
presume
there are others.
Perhaps I'm the only proponent of the 'Blake uses "fuck" every second word' school of dialogue, then. But then I can't even type the c word, so perhaps you're right.
Tavia