I don't know what to call this thread :P

[TheEndIsNigh]

Excuses excuses. Interestingly enough this age banding topic is surfacing here in the UK.

The mind boggles.

Next we'll be back to Lord Chancelor and his big red pen just like the days before Lady Chatterly.

The think police will be riding trains and patrolling the streets confiscating all 'unsuitable' material. Here in the UK top of the list will be 1984. Wouldn't want people getting the inside track on what's actually happening.

I understand there are moves afoot to make all pregnant women enter places of confinement where only acceptable sounds are heard. That way the new 'born will not have been subjected to anything the state dosen't approve of. It'll also give them the chance to perform some pre-natal mind control. You know the kind of thing, tapes playing.

'Trust in the Leader'

'The government has your best interests at heart'

'Mein Kampf' in the authors own voice.

over and over again. That's what's needed to produce the model citizens a modern democracy needs.

 

[Julie Bertagna]

My excuses are always excellent.

Tiny bit more here on my blog about the age-banding furore.

Now (*carefully avoiding spikes, barbs, Lord Chancellors and thought police*) to work...

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

My excuses are always excellent.

Tiny bit more here on my blog about the age-banding furore.

Now (*carefully avoiding spikes, barbs, Lord Chancellors and thought police*) to work...

Julie: Liked the site. I will have a good look round one day.

If you've read any of my thread on book length you'll know I'm tied up with a couple of hundred monkeys researching the elixier of life at the moment and even though most of the work is now organised by the monkeys I still seem to have less time for completing my book. Oh and then there's the real world which keeps sticking it's oar into the creek of my life.

 

[Namorvia]

Age banding books? That seems rather stupid.
There's just so much to go wrong it doesn't even seem worthwhile listing what's wrong with it. I'll only say that it would sort of defy the point of The Opposite of Chocolate if they pushed it back to a late teen band.

Not much to worry about though, literature is like art and music in that it can never truly be controlled. The more you try to control it the more people will rebel, and considering the ones rebelling are the ones who make their living from being creative, they tend to be rather good at it.

Oddly I think literature might be the only form of media left in the world that doesn't need labelling to protect kids, there's radio edits to beep out every other word in most pop songs, the rating system for film, the watershed for tv, the child filter on the internet, the generally rushed attempts to stop kids from opening a copy of the Sun. Although a label might help sometimes, I knew a girl who once bought a book and took it with her to read at a big Christian festival/holiday/conference/thing only to realize its was an erotic novel, not really a problem you'd have if you were buying a book for a kid, she was just have a blonde moment (however unPC that may be), but it shows it can be done.

 

[Julie Bertagna]

Sorry for going off at another tangent (religion, age-banding, monkeys, what's next?)

This actually. I just spotted this story about the Kiribati islanders who were my original inspiration for Exodus.

See what you think of it all.

Good luck with those monkeys TheEndIsNigh. The real world is inspiration (see above) - but it's also a pest.

 

[lilypad]

The latter but its not quite as simple as that (well I don't think so). Very few people refuse to read the Harry Potter books due to their magic content and I personally am fine with them, like you say, it's just a work of fiction. Yet when Phillip Pullman describes God as an old and dying angel who lied about his divinity its frankly a kick in the teeth.
I take the view that if anyone doesn't believe and isn't willing to humour us, then they should mind their own business. If they want to write about a corrupt, lying religion then they should invent their own first (e.g. Final Fantasy X's Yevon), otherwise its a bit like writing a fiction on how Arnold Schwarzenegger is a adulterating, drug abusing murderer, sure it's fiction but that doesn't mean its not insulting. Only that doesn't even begin to cover it because I doubt that anyone out there feels for Arny what Christians feel for the God who saved their lives.
That's just my view though.

Its like G.P. Taylor in shadowmancer