![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 8th, 2007 07:20 amThanks to the damn snow, I probably won't be going to the meeting *growls and goes to find a better FFXII walkthrough*
Dec. 8th, 2007
The genius that is Piers Anthony...
I received (yet another) request from a reader to tone down the panty references in Xanth, in case children should see them. Sigh. Xanth is and always was adult fiction. It's biggest market may be children, but it's not listed as children's literature, and children who read it are technically straying into adult territory. Apart from that, the notion that children don't know what panties are, and will be freaked out by such humorous references, is a stretch. I don't propose to get into self censorship here. Were I to eliminate everything anyone objects to, notably puns and naughty references, I would be left with a terminally bland adult series limited to the supposed tastes of children. That would be like the fabled newspaper that went out of business for lack of readership, because it published nothing anyone objected to. Actually I have written for children; Tortoise Reform, at Mundania Press, is an example. Why didn't it go to a regular big publisher? None wanted it. Pandora Park is another example; that was vetted by a teacher who read it to classes of children, who loved it, and it is sanitary. No puns, no panties. It remains unpublished: I couldn't even get an agent to handle it. Any further questions?
I received (yet another) request from a reader to tone down the panty references in Xanth, in case children should see them. Sigh. Xanth is and always was adult fiction. It's biggest market may be children, but it's not listed as children's literature, and children who read it are technically straying into adult territory. Apart from that, the notion that children don't know what panties are, and will be freaked out by such humorous references, is a stretch. I don't propose to get into self censorship here. Were I to eliminate everything anyone objects to, notably puns and naughty references, I would be left with a terminally bland adult series limited to the supposed tastes of children. That would be like the fabled newspaper that went out of business for lack of readership, because it published nothing anyone objected to. Actually I have written for children; Tortoise Reform, at Mundania Press, is an example. Why didn't it go to a regular big publisher? None wanted it. Pandora Park is another example; that was vetted by a teacher who read it to classes of children, who loved it, and it is sanitary. No puns, no panties. It remains unpublished: I couldn't even get an agent to handle it. Any further questions?
