[Fritz]

Ghostbusters 2023: The Monster of Lungbarrow, Part Four
October 2023--Timeline Year Forty-One
We know who Doctor Vidius is now, but what we don't know is why? Why has he kidnapped his own uncle? His agenda becomes clearer...though it might not make any more sense.

This is it, the exciting conclusion, where a bunch of questions are answered, more are raised, and some things don't get quite as resolved as you might have hoped.

Special thanks to Kingpin, who approved a guest appearance by his GBUK character.

[Fritz]

A bigger version of the splash image, done up as a mock comic book cover (as I often do):

https://www.deviantart.com/ectozone/art ... 1026037738

A mock variant cover, giving you a better look at Glenn:

https://www.deviantart.com/ectozone/art ... 1026952770

[Fritz]

https://www.deviantart.com/ectozone/art ... 1033732489

Thanks to Kingpin for allowing the use of GBUK in the story (he was one of the three founders of that group)

GBUK uniform designed by Vincent Belmont in 2003.

[Kingpin]

Damn, it's good to see the old uniform again.

[Fritz]

Damn, it's good to see the old uniform again.

Speaking of which...

https://www.deviantart.com/ectozone/art ... 1035399049

[Fritz]

The Real Ghostbusters 2024: Every Future Has A Past
By Ghostdiva and Fritz Buagh
June 2024--Timeline Year Forty-Two
Eden Spengler and Edward Sanders. Johnathan Spengler and TJ Anderson. One couple only met a few months ago, the other has known each other for three years. Both are grappling with emotions and questions they're not accustomed to. But the future is calling, and it's time for some decisions to be made, and lives to be lived instead of just dreamt about.
-----
This is a collaboration--Ghostdiva, creator of Dr. Edward Sanders, sent me part of a story an embarassingly large number of years ago, and we agreed I'd finish it when the time was right. Well, since the story was intended to take place in 2024 all along, and it's now actually 2024 for real, I knew it was time.
-----
You might notice that the logo now says "The Real Ghostbusters"; it's something I've been thinking about doing for a few years now. It really started about the time Afterlife was getting ready to come out in theatres, when it was often referred to simply as "Ghostbusters 2021" (and "Ghostbusters 2020" before that, but Covid happened). I began to wonder if there was some way to make it a little clearer what I was still doing.

I mean, I made sure to put a disclaimer on my FFN profile stating "I came up with this continuity twenty years ago--Afterlife isn't part of it". And for the most part, I just don't want to write in that universe. And I'm sure I'm chasing away potential readers (and maybe even some of the few I still have) by saying that, but, well, so be it.

And I wondered if there was a way to make it clearer. Might it be time for a slight bit of rebranding to my stories?

Back when I started, two movies, The Real Ghostbusters, and Extreme Ghostbusters were all there were in official Columbia Pictures product. At the time my operating paradigm "It's all part of the same reality and it's all Ghostbusters. And I labeled most of my stories accordingly...

So maybe it's time I more obviously embraced what I knew years ago, but 2021 drove it home to me: I can't pretend to be anything but an alternate universe fanon anymore. I'm not in continuity with the current movies and honestly, with Deadbeat Dad Egon and that entire backstory I loathe, I don't really want to be.

But maybe the answer is rather simple. Quit labeling everything simply as "Ghostbusters". Because I still consider most of what I do a more or less valid future to the two animated series

So what am I doing? Most of the stories on the Ectozone previously labelled "Ghostbusters" have became "The Real Ghostbusters" with an appropriate logo change.
And the Ectozone's "Ghostbusters 2020X" hast been relabelled "The Real Ghostbusters 202X", using the modified logo you can see here

Short, simple, makes it clear that the product is based on an extension of animated continuity instead of using Afterlife and Frozen Empire as their canon.

A few important clarifications:

This won't affect anything in the stories themselves. I'm not going to go all Marvel UK and having the characters start being referred to as "The Real Ghostbusters" in the stories themselves, anymore than the character played on TV by Ncuti Gatwa and over a dozen people before him is actually named "Doctor Who". (You'd think since Marvel UK was publishing the DW magazine at the time, they'd know how this works )

Extreme Ghostbusters stories and franchise stories (ie Ghostbusters West Coast Division) will not be changed. Apocrypha stories will be left alone. "Chronicles of Gozer" is now marked as a Ghostbusters International stories.

Hope you'll give it all a look.

[Xajacity]

Hey Fritz, thanks for steering my reading to the appropriate starting blocks in your catalogue. Looking forward to reading more of your work, as you have some awesome ideas. Writing all my thoughts here would take pages, so if you're ever interested in chatting more about your fanfiction, I'd be happy to jump onto a Discord call, Google Meet or some other minimally intrusive platform. No offence taken if you have zero interest in this (or if you're reluctant to engage off-website); I just thought I'd offer, as writing (the process itself) is such a solitary pursuit, and it can be valuable to bounce ideas around with new people.

[Fritz]

Hey Fritz, thanks for steering my reading to the appropriate starting blocks in your catalogue. Looking forward to reading more of your work, as you have some awesome ideas. Writing all my thoughts here would take pages, so if you're ever interested in chatting more about your fanfiction, I'd be happy to jump onto a Discord call, Google Meet or some other minimally intrusive platform. No offence taken if you have zero interest in this (or if you're reluctant to engage off-website); I just thought I'd offer, as writing (the process itself) is such a solitary pursuit, and it can be valuable to bounce ideas around with new people.

I guess the thing to do is point you to my own message board:
http://www.ectozone.com/phpBB3/
That's probably the thing that works best for me all told. It's the same software as this board, so it should seem relatively familiar.

Thanks for taking a look.

[Fritz]

Eighteen years ago (holy grife, let me dwell on that a moment...eighteen years?!) I did a story called Gemini Rising. It occurred in the year 1999, and centered on the birth of Eden and John Spengler, and the weird events surrounding it. It was the culmination of the longrunning mystery of Josiah Nodus,a tour-de-force of how I regarded my work in relation to the Ghostbusters canons of the time, and featured appearances by the grown-up Twins from the far-future year of 2024.

There were also a number of mysteries left unresolved.

Well, now it's that far-flung future year of 2024. We've "caught up" to the Eden and John from that story, as seen at the end of Every Future Has A Past.

Time for some of those long-running unresolved mysteries to finally be addressed.

The Real Ghostbusters 2024: The Sign Of The Twins, Part One
June 13, 2024--Timeline Year Forty-Two
After three years of sexual tension, John Spengler and TJ Anderson have made love for the first time. Eden and Edward also seem to have reached a new level in their relationship. But on the very night all of that occurred, the Chronomancer Delphia and the mysterious Professor Ulforce took the Spengler twins away...or did they? Something odd is happening, and one powerful ally is looking for answers.

[Fritz]

Well, for some reason Ectozone.com urls are going to a "landing" page. I've got the domain paid through the next two years, so this is hopefully just a hickup.

If it isn't working tomorrow I'll contact the company I lease it from. Ectozone.net urls are still working just fine.

[Kingpin]

Hope the tech gurus get Ectozone.com URLs get fixed ASAP.

[Fritz]

Seems to be working now. Yesterday is technically the day a year's lease expired, and upon digging in tech support I think they wanted me to verify that my contact info was still current. Once I did, it seems to have worked.

[Fritz]

Halloween is the perfect time to release a Ghostbusters story, even if the story isn't Halloween based:

The Real Ghostbusters 2024: The Sign Of The Twins, Part Two
June 13, 2024--Timeline Year Forty-Two
So just what did happen to Eden and John both on the day they were born and in the early morning hours of their twenty-fifth birthday? And why is John so incredibly terrified by the implications of it?

I'll let you know in advance: this chapter is very heavy in reprising material from The Real Ghostbusters: Gemini Rising; I felt like as a story I did a whole eighteen years ago, I wanted some way to get readers either up to speed or refresh their memories without having to go back and read the entire saga (Though cool if you do, of course). There's some material reprinted, but other parts are filtered through the perceptions of the involved parties, so I hope that keeps it a little more interesting than a simple dry infodump. At least a little bit?

[Fritz]

As is often the case, I posted a larger version of the splash picture from "The Sign of the Twins, Part Two" on Deviantart. It's slightly different--the split-world Ghostbusters aren't in photonegative, as they are on the fan fic splash:

https://www.deviantart.com/ectozone/art ... 1116557093

As I explain on the Deviation:

I actually did this picture twenty years ago, while I was still plotting out the story. I actually envisioned it as being split into two "mock covers" of the kind I frequently post <there>. I'm not 100% sure why I ended up not using it, and not even coloring it until I found it in my files recently, but as a strong guess I thought the depictions of the "Earth-2"/movie Ghostbusters were awful. I mean, Egon looks more like Eugene Levy that Harold Ramis. (The "Earth-1"/EGB Ghostbusters are just modifications of the RGB designs, which I can just about draw in my sleep)

The splash picture of the fan fic has a slightly different version of the artwork, with the two split-dimension Ghostbusters being colored photonegative. I though that fit the nature of the chapter--basically, a summary of "Gemini Rising" to either get readers up to speed or refresh their memories without rereading the entire saga. (Though awesome if you do, of course)