Neil:

But what if the parent promised the kid that s/he could read the zines

once

parent had finished reading them, or even ordered a batch of zines specifically for the kid - only to snatch them away from eager young hands on the grounds that they were unsuitable? ....&c &c

I just consider this all so hopelessly unlikely as to be a spurious reason for the ghettoisation (is that a word?) of non-gen fanfic -- at least in B7 where the show isn't actively being shown much (on mainstream channels at least).

The question is, what do their parents think? Rightly or wrongly, they

are

the final arbiters in deciding what their children should and should not

be

allowed to read.

I guess we should stand aside and let the Lyst parents speak. Parenting is *not* in my skill set.

But I would say that genzines are sanitised precisely because they are differentiated from adult zines. There is a lot of *potential content* that might find its way into 'gen' fic but doesn't, because gen has come to mean U or PG rated (Horizon accepts zine

submissions

on the basis of their being precisely that). The separation of sex and non-sex has effectively straitjacketed gen into this sanitised corner.

Indeed. Actually I think that's why ttba got an awful lot of submissions. There's certainly a demand from writers for mixed zines, even if there isn't from readers (which remains to be seen -- my first print run has all now disappeared, but then I had an awful lot of tribs).

There are good reasons, I think, to keep adult and non-adult apart. Some people, though probably not many, only want to read adult. A larger

number

want to avoid adult. If you put the two in one zine, you are at the very least losing readers who want the non-adult but won't touch the zine

because

it has adult content. The publisher loses sales, while some readers lose out on stories that they might otherwise have really enjoyed.

I only want to read adult. I just interpret that as adult, not *adult*, if you see what I mean. There's a lot of people in the world just like me in this regard, but I'm not sure whether or not they are also B7 fans.

I think it remains viable to segregate adult from non-adult fiction on the basis of sexual content, but I think there is also a case for

distinguishing

between non-adult suitable for young readers and non-adult slanted

towards,

ahem, 'mature' readers. The latter is not very common, though.

I'd say most of ttba fell into the latter section, but not quite all, I guess.

It's a standard component of shop-floor argot, applied indiscriminately to anything and everything (or everyone), so commonplace that any kind of pejorative meaning can only be construed from context.

I think I've only heard the word spoken once. (And that was in a deliberate attempt to offend / embarrass me.) But then shop-floor to me means shortcut between one lab and another, or between one office and another.

Tavia