Why a new fan fic site?

Not long ago, three Ghostheads found themselves in the position of asking that question to themselves.

There are already great fan fic sites out there.  The Real Ghostbusters Fan Page, founded by Shiela Paulson, is the first and most prolific, still being the Gold Standard of Ghostbusters fan fiction.  There's also Ghostbusters.net, which features a variety of fan fics by a variety of writers.  And even The Nexus from Nightsquad's Jen Spengler.

“So what could we add?  What could make us stand out among the field–our niche, as it were?”

Howabout a whole Universe?

Brian Reilly, Ben King, and Fritz Baugh are pleased to announce the debut of The Ghostbusters Omnibus Fan Fic page.  It looks like a message board, but don't let that fool you.

It's a fan fic site.  With an attitude.  And that attitude is: “It all (or most of it) happened”

Fritz started it all with the Ghostbusters Omnibus Timeline.  The idea that Yes, the movies, the cartoons, it can all work together.  And he walked the walk with his fan fictions

What does this mean?

It means that people who want to place stories in the Omnibus Universe (Ie, a universe where the film, and cartoons are as one) can get the shot to do so.  A universe which Kingpin, EGB Fan, Doc Fritz and other writers have written in, and now you can too, if you feel up to the challenge.

That's right, your stories just have to follow a few simple guidelines and they can be placed chronologically into the timeline, giving you a say in the Ghostbusters Omnibus continuum!

Intimidated by all that history?  Don't be!  As a writer, you'll find it's very easy to get assistance for either slightly modifying your current works to fit (a few date changes here and there), or even creating whole new works.  This is a site designed by readers and writers for readers and writers.

We've spent the last month working out the bugs and devising a clever system for getting help and bouncing ideas off of other writers.  

And for the readers out there, you'll be able to walk in and pick a story from any year you want.  Want to see the first meeting of the busters?  Check out the Pre 1983 section!  Want to see what happened after RGB went off the air?  Check out the 1992-1996 section!  And if you're really daring, you could read every story in order of occurrence, forming a perfect historical timeline!  

Brian Reilly and I first started talking about a fan fic site, criminey, almost six months ago–back during the day of the late, lamented Ghostbusters Community Board…it somehow never happened, even after the large fan fic archive on GBN was completely closed down for a couple months. Maybe we just lacked the time and the inspiration…

About a month ago, it came up again, but this time we had an actual idea, something to make us different from all the other sites.

History

The Timeline. The Fact List. What if all our Conjectures are Canon? That's the idea behind the Omnibus Fan Fic center.

What if every story we contribute is Canon with each other, creating a distinct subsection of what is, after all, already a shared universe? That also is the idea behind the Omnibus Fan Fic center.

There are people who don't want to deal with all that backstory. Don't want to deal with a universe that says RGB and, even worse, EGB actually happened. That's your right.

But like Brian says, some find a deep, rich history strangely liberating…I'm a writer myself, of course, and I belong to that category–part of the reason I created the Timeline in the first place is to identify problem spots in the Ghostbusters history and try to come up with creative solutions to them.

I personally enjoy the challenge of taking a long-running history, assimilating it, and discovering what I can make out of it. It's not up to me to judge how successful I've been with that, but most of the feedback has been positive so far. :-)

We hope you'll give it a look

Because believe it, a history and continuity are your friend.

I suppose a lot of it boils back to the Sheila Paulson days, back then they wrote stories, and a lot of Sheila's work filled in the gaps left by the show…this is probably just the next inevitable step.

I'm not saying this is the official approach from Columbia, but it is official to those who treasure the amount of detail RGB went into, sure, there were bad parts, but that's what good writign is for, overcoming the short comings…with the possible exception of the Junior Ghostbusters. EGB, Professor Dweeb and even smaller things have and can be reworked until they fit snugly in. And now, it's your chance to create the history of the Ghostbusters.

I appluad your work, but this is a thread about a website, so ya know what that means…

hey if you guys ever need art, i could help out where ever i can :-)

Okay, I got a few quick questions:

• 1. Can we submit stuff to you guys directly to have it posted?
  2. Must we register?
  3. If our stuff contains flashbacks that's essentially an RGB or XGB episode that's completly written out will it be posted?
  4. What do you guys do if you have several stories that have the same basis? ‘Cuz me, Dr. Kyle Stevens and I’m sure several other people out there have written a Bogeyman story.

Here's some answers:

1. Can we submit stuff to you guys directly to have it posted?
2. Must we register?

1 and 2 kind of go together. You can submit stuff to us, but we won't post it. We'll put it on our server an you are required to make the announcement. So you pretty much have to register.

3. If our stuff contains flashbacks that's essentially an RGB or XGB episode that's completly written out will it be posted?

If your story flashes back to an episode, that's fine. If your story is an episode written out, well, we don't really want transcripts.

4. What do you guys do if you have several stories that have the same basis? ‘Cuz me, Dr. Kyle Stevens and I’m sure several other people out there have written a Bogeyman story.

You can use any characters you want, but we do have continuity rules. For example, if you say the Boogieman was killed in 1989, Kyle can't use him in 2003 unless he finds a plausible way to ressurect him. And I think we'll have to watch those kind of stories carefully. And here's our official rule on continuity:

Stories must be in continuity with the whole of canon defined by the movies, Real Ghostbusters, and Extreme Ghsotbusters animated series. For more about what that means, see the Welcome thread.

And for the record, Fritz, Ben, and I pretty much agree that whoever posted first has the right of way. If I post a story where Winston dies in 2025, you can't post one saying he dies in 2014. In that event, your story would be deleted.

In the event of minor details (conflicting dates, etc), we simply lock the newer story and ask the author to make a few changes to the dates. Nothing major must be changed. And the author is free to contact the other author(s) that his story interferes with in order to come up with a simple, efficient solution. We may also suggest changes if we a clear path.

To help combat this (without putting the burden of reading every story posted on the authors), Fritz has compiled a stickied cannon thread in each forum. As new stories are added, the events and important dates are added to the cannon thread. This creates a simple summary for authors to look at and say, “Hey, on August 16th, 1990, the GBs are in the Pokanos. I better change my story to the 17th.”

Just wanted to point out that we've got a few exclusive stories right now. These are stories that won't be posted at GBN or anywhere else, so you gotta head to GBOmnibus to read 'em!

Yep, so if you want to know how things may have occured from 1991 to 1997 then I suggest you log on and give the Exclusive stories a look.