Same Actor Crossovers (response to Lucy Gillam)

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Title:	Same Actor Crossovers (response to Lucy Gillam)
Creator:	Shomeret
Date(s):	November 25, 1999
Medium:	online
Fandom:	N/A
Topic:	fiction writing, Highlander, RPS
External Links:	Same Actor Crossovers (response to Lucy Gillam)/WebCite
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Same Actor Crossovers (response to Lucy Gillam) is an essay by Shomeret. It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series, and a response to Joxer?!?! And Other Things I Don't Get.

The author asks, among other things: "Maybe Lucy feels that there ought to be "a fence around the law". This is a concept used by Orthodox Jews. They place a metaphorical "fence" around God's commandments by extending the commandments to actions that haven't actually been forbidden."

The Response Essays

• Same Actor Crossovers (response to Lucy Gillam)
• Ares/Joxer? Sure!
• Response to: Joxer?!?!? And Other Things I Don't Get
• Why Joxer and Ares?

Excerpt

I understand Lucy's point that same actor crossover borders on actor slash and/or incest depending on circumstances. I personally am willing to deal with same actor crossover so long as we maintain the fictional context of writing about characters who are definitely different from the actors. It's a balancing act. People who write same actor crossover are tightrope walkers, and there's absolutely no safety net when they fall. If slash writers start bringing in aspects of the actors' lives that don't belong to the characters or even bring the actors into our stories, then it stops being harmless fantasy and becomes something else that is very dangerous. It is dangerous psychologically because perspective is lost. Publishing a fantasy in which a real person participates represents delusional thinking. It is the literary equivalent of stalking the actor. It is also dangerous from a legal standpoint because the actor might rightfully consider such a story actionable. I think that it's also ethically wrong to bring an actor into a slash story as a character. It could cause emotional pain to the actor or to the actor's family. I am ranting a bit about this because someone did bring an actor into a slash story in K/S about a dozen years ago, and I was the only one who felt offended enough to denounce the story in print. I was truly horrified by the irresponsibility of the writer and I hope that I will never see such a thing again. Yet I feel that same actor crossovers are not in the same category. The actor hasn't literally been brought into the story. These writers haven't gone over the line yet.