#admittedly this takes a long detour through the Callie Spengler Is Oscar Wallance/Barrett And The Biological Child Of Egon And Dana diatribe

[moviegroovies]

*shows up to the ghostbusters fandom after approximately 4653242345436 years of radio silence with 1500 words of my messy toxic dana/peter/ray thesis*

timeline: peter and ray meet at columbia in the 70's. they form a long-standing, on again/off again situationship and are lowkey the unspoken loves of each others' lives. around the time that ghostbusters starts up, ray grows tired of the status quo (never content with taking the scraps of peter's affection while he gives no concessions to ray in his pervasive womanizing) and peter meets... well, the other love of his life. maybe.

dana barrett.

they see each other for a few months, until she breaks it off when he starts to take her for granted (treating her the way he treats ray? anyone?), and ray puts his foot down around the time of the inevitable rebound game that peter always tries to play. so peter's alone, for really the first time since college, both of the people he loves best having told him that the way he loves is unacceptable (and it was!). maybe he even does some self-reflection to this tune. dana marries andre wallance, and they're well suited... for a while. well, they have work in common. not much else, it turns out. it's at this time that dana starts to realize that she may never have been interested in men at all, which doesn't immediately become the problem she fears that it might; they only rarely have sex, and it gets easier and easier for her to make excuses. he has affairs--other musicians--and she doesn't even have to pretend not to care. the realization that it genuinely doesn't affect her makes dana more sad than the fact that her husband is stepping out on her on a weekly basis. she gets a little wistful. and at the same time... she does want a baby.

andre doesn't want the strain on his career. dana can drop out, if she wants, but (and he does respect her somewhat as an artist) it'd be a damn shame, wasting talent like hers on something as mundane as motherhood. furious and hurt, dana packs up and leaves--and doesn't really know where to go afterward. her first thought is peter--she even kind of surprises herself with that one. only, when she tries to get in touch with him, she meets egon instead... he himself being a little fed up with venkman at the moment (these being the early days of his relationship with ray, in which peter is an undeniable spectral presence, no matter how much ray knows egon deserves better than second-best). when she explains her situation, he proposes an obvious solution: leave him. there are other ways to conceive a child. artificial insemination, and so forth. lonely, a little sad, and starved for companionship, dana proposes over a bottle of wine that they just... do it the old-fashioned way. he's a little surprised, but takes her up on it--not being overly constrained by societal restrictions and not opposed to pleasure-seeking on occasion. when she wakes up, dana feels somewhat foolish, but egon is courteous with her. she goes back to andre, who didn't even know she left. she tries to make it work for several more months, but in her heart it was over from then on. when dana finds that she is pregnant, she knows two things: that the baby is egon's, and she's not disappointed by that.

andre is offered a job in england and tries to move her there. dana refuses, but they don't part badly; he doesn't want custody (not with his career shaping up the way it has), and she doesn't bother telling him that the baby isn't is.

then, you know, ghostbusters 2 happens. poor oscar gets involved with vigo, and in the aftermath, dana does tell egon that he's a father. he doesn't grow paternal, exactly, but he does insist on paying her child support (though dana insists it isn't necessary), and follows oscar's life in a distant, but affectionate way. peter and dana reunite, and though they don't pick up their romantic relationship, she does appreciate the change in him. years later, andre comes back from england, perhaps with a new society wife, perhaps with a plateau in his career, and gets it in his mind that he wants to be a father to oscar. dana rejects the notion pretty soundly; incensed, andre challenges her in court, citing the lack of a male role model in "his" son's life and even potentially uncovering information about dana's sparse lesbian affairs, though she's kept them incredibly low-key for fear of exactly this. she actually does think about bringing egon in and petitioning the court for a dna test, but fears his recent shacking up with ray stantz might hurt her case rather than help her--instead, who to call but her old flame, peter venkman.

they get married (a sexless, but affectionate, lavender marriage) over the course of the custody battle, partially to throw off suspicion, partially for security. venkman has mellowed out somewhat, loves oscar and is good with him--even as he's growing up into somewhat of a sullen, rebellious teenager--and, rather than leveraging their positions into a resurrection of their past physical relationship, respects dana's sexuality and autonomy and cheerfully encourages her to pursue the women she falls in with. after things calm down a bit, dana has a couple of flings with some younger women and colleagues; venkman very quietly never takes advantage of their open marriage. maybe it's the catholic in him--he still sees it as a sacred thing. they all start to get used to a new normal, an acceptable stasis... and then, egon leaves.

he leaves everyone, of course, no notice, no warning, but he especially leaves ray. his bed is empty. in one blow, he loses his colleague, his husband, his second-oldest friend. and like dana, he's left with no one to turn to but peter venkman.

(this is the part that makes me crazy. hi.)

ray shows up at their apartment drunk, jealous. on the worst day of your life, how do you react to the fact that your 20-year situationship/the great love of your life (husband be damned), who you gave up on because he would never marry you... settled down and got married? and is an upstanding and loyal husband to a woman you know is a lesbian? so maybe it was just you he couldn't love?? dana, to some extent, is always THAT BARRETT WOMAN to ray, no matter how much he likes her on a personal level, or how guilty that lingering seed of resentment makes him feel. when they first met, she was just another fling to pull venkman away from him, and it's hard for him to acknowledge that over two decades, she's become a lot more than that. there's hurt on peter's side, too: ray, remember, cut him off. he, too, saw (sees?) ray as the love of his life. and it's not ABOUT his pain right now, not when he's long acknowledged that spengs was good for him (right up until, well, this)... but it is sort of a power moment for him, the knife handed back. egon left. it wasn't ray's fault, but it wasn't supposed to be like this with egon--peter's the one who was always going to leave him, but here he is. he's not going anywhere. and ray wants him--needs him--to make it stop hurting, but peter... is married. a great joke that cuts ray open; peter venkman, the monogamist. anger, from venkman. ray could have had this, but he didn't want it. [want him.] ray was protecting himself. peter, pretty tired of that line--how'd that work out for you?

and it's dana who steps in, who recognizes something in ray's pain, who tells peter to have mercy. who suggests an overdue consummation of their marriage. ray's a little cruel about venkman's blushing virginity. he doesn't want dana, but understands pretty quickly that if he wants peter, he gets her too. and even once it's in motion, the ugliness doesn't go away; peter needs ray to admit that he always loved venkman best. wants him to apologize for marrying spengler. and ray... maybe he would, but he needs something back. he needs venkman to affirm that he loves him more than dana, who is IN. THE. ROOM. would he? could he? and dana... she's not jealous for venkman necessarily... not in the way that ray is. she does pity ray, commiserates with ray to a degree. and she's been where he is. but. she has had certain things taken from her, and threatened against her. peter and dana's understanding protects not only her, but her custody of oscar. ray didn't show up here to threaten that, but he's callous in his grief, selfish, even, and... he could. and venkman's trying to keep it together even as this situation threatens to tear him in two, because he loves ray, he's always loved ray, but he loves dana too, and he conceives of this marriage as a legitimate one. and dana... i don't think she would think it on a conscious level, but suddenly ray has made her think that she owes peter something to stay for...

i'm sorry if anyone came to this thinking there would be an end for it. just. danapeteray. food for thought.