GB: Don't Try to Change Me

[EGBFan]

Ghostbusters: Don't Try to Change Me

February/March 2002. The difficulty of living in LA seems to be telling on Peter, and he's moving the family back to New York. But Oscar is far from happy about it.

Rated for T for some slightly naughty bits (which I don't think Proboards should mind - I've read T-rated books with as much).

I've got some stuff to say about this one. I'll start by saying that the focus falls heavily on Oscar - there's as much of the old favourite characters as I could get into it (Venkman, about 80% of the time), but be prepared for the story to be about Oscar.

This has probably been brewing for a long time, and it's sort of important (at the risk of blowing my own trumpet). I'm spoiling nothing (well, nothing much) in saying that this is my attempt to integrate all of Fritz's old, now pretty much dead concepts of Oscar into what has now become our canon.

No one has ever accused me of pushing Fritz's concept of Oscar off a cliff and putting mine in his place, so I guess there's no need to explain that this isn't what I did at all. But I would like to state for the record that we were probably developing our concepts at more or less the same time. I don't remember whether Fritz's 'GBWC: Opening Night' or my 'Rebirth and Retribution' came out first, but they were that close that neither Fritz nor I could have known what the other was up to.

I love Fritz with all my heart and I think he's a wonderful writer with an excellent grip on characters. You sense a but coming? Well, if I'm honest, the chavvy blue-haired Oscar just never seemed right to me. You... ok, I see how Peter is with Oscar as a baby in GB2, and I think: How could he grow up not loving him?

I told my betas that I was interrupted a few times on this one, and now there are just a couple of things I don't like about it, but so far my responses have been goooood ;D - and I have to say, overall I kinda like it. At any rate I had a lot of fun writing it. 13/14 is such a crappy age to be, but such wonderful writing fodder.

...My goodness, am I still typing? Shut up, Rosey.

[Fritz]

I'm pretty sure "Rebirth and Retribution" was out first, and it was written before the GBOT fan fic status quo had gelled together; even after I started using some of your ideas I still went back and forth on a few things for awhile, such as Jessica's age (some early postings of "Charlie Takes The Fifth" had her only about five)

In my defense, I will say I saw Oscar's standoffishness in "Opening Night Part 1" all along as merely teenage surliness, and not a real statement on his and Venkman's relationship. I think the truth becomes clearer in Part 2, when the Ravisher is attacking, and all of Oscar's former disdain goes out the window and he acts like any kid who's father's in danger.

Still, I admit I'm flattered that you took the effort to at least acknowledge some of those discarded concepts. For those who didn't know this, I wrote to Rosey a month or two back asking her about the middle name I give Oscar in "Opening Night": I told her that since it hadn't been referenced since then, if she wanted me to I'd quietly remove it and never mention it again. Instead she takes hold of it and makes it a small subplot in "Don't Try To Change Me"

[SuperStantzio]

This was an excellent story. I enjoyed it very much! Nice work!

[Kingpin]

Ach... wish you'd given me more warning of an imminent upload... there's a few comments that depending on things, might cause some changes to the story...