Two months of Melrose Place (old and new) on the Netflix instant queue streaming through my xbox and here I am....Kinda sad I finished, and kinda wishing they never did the reboot at all.

One of the few shows FOX has ever kept on the air that I actually enjoyed, even though I technically wasn't supposed to be watching it when my mom and stepdad were. Melrose Place lasted 7 seasons, ending in 1999 I believe. I was in elementary school when it first aired but I still watched. I didn't know what was going on half the time but many things stayed in the back of my mind that I remembered as I rewatched for the first time since the original airing of the show: Michael and Jane as the apartment managers, Allison's roommate bailing and her getting Billy to pay half the rent before starting a romance that never quite gets to flourish, Sydney stirring everything up through blackmail and many other things, Jo and Jake, Jake owning Shooters, Amanda Woodward arriving as the queen bitch who is out to make everyone's life a living hell, Kimberly's crazy antics and more.

My favorite characters then remain my favorite now. Sydney Andrews is a character most hated or loved to hate, but I adored her. She messed up everything, did everything wrong, fell into every bad situation possible from hooking to stripping to being murdered. She came onto the show in season 1 as a recurring character, Jane's sister, and later became a regular until the end of season five when she was killed on the night of her wedding while taking wedding photos before the reception. While the show was still worth watching in the final 2 seasons, without Sydney it was a little less fun...even if they brought in Lexi Sterling to later being the slutty redhead in her place.

Also departing in season 5 was Jake Hanson, played by the very handsome Grant Show. He dated just about every female lead on the show in his five seasons and was one of the few who actually received an HEA ending to his run when his ex and his son he only found out about a few seasons prior come back into his life.

It is hard to say if it is the crazy situations such as the antics of Kimberly, Michael, Sydney, Lexi or Taylor that kept the show so addicting, or maybe it was the relationships such as Amanda and Peter--whose chemistry was off the charts when they first met and were on and off again throughout the series since season 3. So much so that they fake their own deaths in the season finale to escape both of their bad situations and start over fresh in a tropical paradise. *sigh* So romantic. Or maybe it was the characters themselves, more so than their antics. I know any scene that put Peter, Michael, and Sydney in the same place at the same time had me laughing uncontrollably. Peter's sarcasm, Michael's idiotic schemes, and Sydney's presence alone made for fun dialogue and enjoyable TV.

The way the show ended was pretty much a fitting ending full of hope for the characters we had come to love. Peter and Amanda escaped the law and were together finally without anything to get in their way, Kyle and Jane were together and very much in love despite the fact that Jane was carrying Michael's baby and Kyle knew it. Michael got all of Peter's money and was once again chief of staff at Whilshire Memorial, Megan and Ryan were married and reunited with Ryan's daughter. And Lexi was, well...she was probably wishing she could steal Amanda's ability to go out with a bang.

Then the reboot comes along eleven years later and ruins several storylines either by continuity errors and dismissal. The only characters to come back to the show in the reboot were Amanda, Sydney, Michael, Jane and Jo. There were odes to past characters, Michael kept a computer file on past tenants such as Allison and the others. However, the building underwent quite the renovation from the ground up. Plausible, I guess...but it didn't even get that remodeled after Kimberly blew half of it up. No word on HOW Sydney came to owning the building or how soon Lexi sold it after everyone but her got their HEA (or so we thought) in the original finale.

Sydney Andrews died in season 5 of the original series. Samantha was fighting for control of the car from her convict father when they ran her over. It may have been bought that Michael really did fake her death for her, and she had supposedly spent time in jail because of it, but there are soooo many issues that make it not plausible.
-Sydney tells Michael in the flashback where he fakes her death that it was done by someone in her past that will kill her husband if she stays "alive." First of all, it was a freak accident and what connection did she have with someone that escaped from jail for Sam not Syd? AND She finally found love with a man who loved her for her as she was. It is ridiculous that Sydney would allow that to die over such a phony pile of garbage they cooked up to get her back. And then her husband, Craig, couldn't handle life in LA without Sydney with him and killed himself holding the watch she engraved to him as a wedding gift. It makes his whole story arc after the accident meaningless. Not to mention they bring her back to life to make her an alcoholic (which she claims started after her first marriage --to Michael, and she was not much of a drinker on the show after that marriage that I could recall having just watched it prior to the reboot, and a drug addict...which seemed weird for her as she didn't even touch the drugs Kimberly prescribed to her except to drug her sister with them.) and then they kill her in the first episode. I was SO disappointed to see my favorite character brought back to be murdered once again.
-Jane's return has no mention of what happened with Kyle or her baby. Um? hello?

Sorry about the lack of activity on the cyber end of things. Last weekend I moved (again!) and now that I am settling into the change I have time for the fun stuff again. Moved out of my late grandparents' house and into a one bedroom apartment with Bagheera in tow. Added some new covers to the cover art page, and finishing up a 2 month spree of Melrose Place viewing through my netflix account. Will have probably a lenghty post about that later this week. It's been a while since seeing the original, and as I watched it through my elementary and middle school years, some things stuck in my mind while others did not. I am doing a quick rewatch of the reboot that aired on CW 2009-2010 for 18 episodes before being canceled before I post. I think I have 16 episodes left.... :)

As you can see, Bagheera has dubbed the couch as her throne in the new place. Her former throne, the scratching post, is in front of the bedroom window. She feels her royal subjects (mostly me) need to SEE HER at all times though...

7 random facts:

-I have never been able to tolerate the taste/textrure of fruit (other than in juices and some pastries) since seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as a child. Maybe it is psychological, who knows.

-I am allergic to wasps.

- All it takes to make me happy is a good book, a cup of hot cocoa and a cozy place to enjoy both.

-I can edit for everyone except for myself. I never see my own typos and mishaps until they are made public.

-I had a gold fish that lived for five years named Sawyer. He (though I suspect he was really a she. I don't know) was named after the character from LOST.

-My obsession with everything Norse began with LJ Smith's The Forbidden Game, which I read in high school.

-My friends and I learned the Elder Futhark and which modern letters they represent and used to pass notes in 11th and 12th grade using them as a way to keep others from knowing what we talked.

Passing the award on to:

Eve Langlais
Ricki Jill Treleaven
Hailey Edwards
Sandra Sookoo
Mia Suarez
Jordy Albert

I don't quite follow that many blogs at the moment so I don't have a full ten.

I am almost done in my massive marathon re-watching of Buffy and Angel. I finished season 7 of Buffy two days ago and am midway through the final season of Angel. I also read volumes 1-7 of the Buffy season 8 comics (the final volume isn't out in the one volume format until the summer, so I don't have the end of that story just yet) but as I sit here watching how Angel completely sold out in his final season, and how volume 7 of the Buffy comics (which is the official continuation of the story, for those who do not know) is a giant WTF on the grounds of 1. not making sense, 2. being really silly and 3. not making sense...I mourn all the things that made me fall in love with these characters in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE Buffyverse fan. Just seeing it all over again for the first time in at least 5-6 years brings up all the good and all the bad at the same time. And since I don't have many friends who know the shows as well as I do, I feel this is the best outlet to let it out a bit.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The show was a reimaging of the story brought to us in the movie of the same name. Only the show did it better. It used fighting monsters as a theme of getting through life in high school, and it was entertaining as hell. While Angel's spinoff was a more mature setting in the same universe of storytelling, it never quite had the same appeal as Buffy. Perhaps it is because Angel isn't allowed to be perfectly happy, where as Buffy tries to find happiness in a life of feeling alone even when she is surrounded by people. I am not sure exactly, but if I could choose to watch reruns of Buffy or Angel, Buffy will win out nearly every time.

Pros of BtVS
1. The characters. I liked nearly every character. Nearly. We'll talk about the one I didn't care for later. While the feel of the show changes a bit once they blow up the high school, most of my favorite characters are more predominate in the later years of the show: Spike, Anya, Andrew.
2. The emotion. Nearly anytime Willow cries it rips your heart out. Oz leaving was perhaps one of the hardest episodes for me to get though, though Joyce and Tara's deaths follow almost immediately in my mind as the saddest moments. Anya's being left at the alter. Spike's sacrifice. Xander trying to find Anya as they leave the school building in the final scenes of the show and passing by her not knowing. Xander's telling Dawn she's extraordinary because she gets through it all without superpowers to help her. The list goes on and on.
3. Recurring Characters. Everyone loves when characters return to shows. Back when Spike wasn't a series regular, any episode with him in it was so much more fun to watch than the others, IMO. Drusilla always made it interesting as well. Once Harmony became a vampire she became SO much more interesting and entertaining. Obnoxious, very...but the Harmony/Xander chick fight is good stuff. Super nerds as the villains was amusing, and I enjoyed the episodes with them (minus Warren whom I hated from the beginning of his existence on the show). The ending of "Lessons" in season 7 in which the First appears as a major villain from each season still leaves me with a bit of fangirlish awe.

The Cons
1. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. It may be my editorness into play but seriously. The town of Sunnydale is constantly referred to as small, nothing there, etc. The only fun place to go is apparently The Bronze....however, Sunnydale has its own airport, mall, museum, zoo, college, medieval Dracula castle and I am sure I am leaving something out. Not only that, but in some episodes Buffy can super jump...in others not so much. Angel can break through heavy doors and other things, but can;t break a tiny padlock on a chain link door. Spike is rendered into a wheelchair when an organ falls on him, yet is beaten by a goddess, thrown off a very high tower among other horrible things and is perfectly fine in a day or few after. Um... yeah. I can't help but notice these things.
2. Riley Finn and the Initiative. At first neither were so bad. In fact, I found Riley utterly adorable...at first until after the episode, "Hush." Then that whole storyline became highly irritating with the Frankenstein monster Adam and evil professor and Riley's insecurities in having a girlfriend stronger than he was. I was SO happy when he finally left the show. Angel and Riley's departures only made me like the show more.
3. Downer Buffy. We have Angel to be all sad and moody all the time, while I do enjoy season 6 of Buffy, her attitude in that one (which is understandable) drives me insane. It takes her an entire season to snap out of it. But truth be told, she had been in that funk since her mother died. She finally got more normal Buffy like and then the potentials started arriving in season 7 and we were back to moody Buffy again. Made me really miss seasons 1-3.
4. "Hell's Bells." There are a good handful of singled out episodes I hate for being really dumb (Beer Bad, for example) but I think one of the worst decisions made in this series was to have Xander and Anya break up on their wedding day. It is so upsetting and was it really all that necessary to make Anya a demon again? I don't see it being all too relevant. They found a few things to do with it, but alas....

Angel

The spinnoff follows Angel after he leaves Sunnydale because he can't be with Buffy because it risks him being evil again and it is holding her back. He reunites with Cordelia, the shallow popular girl from Sunnydale High, and later Wesley, formerly the replacement watcher for both Buffy and Faith. Eventually their little gang gets more members and after 2 seasons of several random storylines and few actual arcs, they get a very strong third season followed by a terrible fourth season, which, in my opinion, ruined the whole show, and concluded with a fifth season that was cancelled after it opened up several storylines without enough time to tie them up.


The Pros
1. Angel himself was usually more enjoyable than when he was on Buffy. There are the die hard Buffy/Angel fans...but they bored me to tears together.
2. Cordelia became such a strong character. Those who hated her on Buffy came to love her on Angel. She found a purpose and, like with every character on the show, sought redemption in her own way. I think Cordelia was one of the few who actually found it. Before they ruined the character...I'll get back to that shortly.
3. Illyria. Was such an interesting character. It brought more of the mythology of that world to light with the demons that walked the earth prior to the evolution of man. It also was incredibly sad to see Fred die, but at the same time the possibilities that character introduced were endless. This is one of the few reasons I was sad to see the show go...that and the fact that there were no other shows to carry on the legacy of the Buffyverse in Angel's absence.

Cons
1. The ruination of Cordelia Chase. season 1-3 built the character up, made her a wonderful woman and a beloved character. Then season 4 arrived. What. The. F***. I get that Charisma Carpenter got pregnant and they needed to work the babeh belly into the script but I can't figure out what the hell happened! It's not so much the fact that she went evil because she wasn't actually herself the entire season. (The exception being "Spin the Bottle" which was very nostalgic to see former Cordelia and Wesley characters again) but her whole presence on the show changed. Almost any scene she was in felt like it was a really bad soap opera. She was either standing or sitting in the foreground or background spouting drama drama drama. One minute "oh, Connor, I want you even though I am practically your mother." The next, "I can't be with you, Connor. It's wrong." blah blah. It was horribly painfully boring, overly dramatic, and exhausting bad. We get her back for one episode in season 5 and then she dies.
2. The ruination of Connor. Even before Angel came out I had a bit of a teenaged crush on Vincent Karthesier. Imagine my happiness of him being on a show I watched. It was really hard to like the character when Cordelia but-not-really-Cordelia the soap opera fake was constantly changing his mind about how to act. The character could have been great. However, he was never given the chance to become a likable character. Which is a real shame. Season 5's few appearances was starting to finally make it to where we could like him, but it was too late because the show was at its end.
3. Selling out. Wolfram and Hart was the villain. Angel's nemesis. So....they all go and work for them? Yeah, I get the inside the belly of the beast scenario and all...but it never felt like the same show once they transferred over. Adding Spike and Harmony helped make the show more fun where as Season 4 was the fun killing monster season of death, but even that couldn't quite same. Partly because the lead female, Cordelia, was gone. They kill off the supporting female, Fred and we are left with a superficial vampire chick, a demon who is a complete mystery, and a backstabbing liaison biotch who was never likable in the first place to fill the female character roles. And I am just going to pretend Angel didn't attempt a relationship with Nina the werewolf because that was just trying too hard to give him normalcy despite the fact that the show had jumped ship at the end of season 3 and hanging on into season five was merely a desperate attempt to keep the Buffyverse alive and well.

Buffy Season 8 Comics.

At least 2 years after Buffy ends as things with characters that were on Angel clash with the season 5 storyline otherwise. For one, Harmony is now a reality tv star which makes the world hate slayers. And, major spoilers ahead for the other reasons I will get to if you continue reading. Please remember, I have not read volume 8 yet so I don't know what happens after volume 7: Twilight

Pros:
1. The storyline continues and they are given the ability to do a little more than a TV budget would allow (Willow, and at one point Buffy, can fly).
2. We find out that Buffy never was in Rome dating the Immortal. That was a decoy disguised as Buffy (another one went underground as Buffy) in a ruse thought up by Andrew, who was stationed there. Because they knew attempts would be made on her life. I like this because I hated the idea that she had moved on from Spike that quickly to another vampire. (notice how I don't care if she moved on from Angel)
3. Warren and Amy are back, together, as villains. Firstly, eww. Second Amy had followed Dark Willow into the woods and saved Warren from dying from shock and was able to use her power as a kinda skin to keep him from dying and being in pain. However, she is dating him and he has no skin. eew. eew. eww. Also, it explained when Amy cursed Willow to become Warren in season 7, Willow was really becoming Warren. A mystical version of the Buffy/Faith body switch except Willow was never going into another body. It was a nice detailed touch.
4. Seeing old characters like Oz, Ethan Rayne, and in the one shot dream sequence...Joyce and Cordelia (in a way to see the Buffy Animated Series artwork and story since the cartoon never was picked up by a network)
5. Xander and Dracula guy-bonding. LOL! Also Xander's wishing to be called Nick Fury amused me.

Cons
1. The errors. Warren makes a reference to something that was The First pretending to be Warren, not Warren himself....however, they later corrected that with Amy pointing it out and Warren saying something like he was just messing with Andrew when he said it. Among other small things. Like WTF happened to Riley's wife. He's in it but she is never mentioned (and he is no longer scarred)
2. Dark Willow will apparently come back, stay alive for 2 centuries without aging, but be out of magic when buffy visits the future and has to kill her. It seemed to me like a silly story conjured up in a reason to bring the Fray storyline back into play. The cover of that volume had dark willow on the cover, so the surprise villain was given away (as it was on the Twilight volume) and they way willow was using magic and flying around was WAY worse than how she was using it prior to becoming evil the first time yet it was all la la la until Buffy went to the future and saw that.
3. Buffy's girl on girl experimentation. Okay, yeah. I get it. In comic form you can do whatever you want with the characters. It just seemed out of character for Buffy, and it was just awkward. However, the dream sequence with Angel and Spike making out was freaking hilarious...esp. with Caleb marrying Buffy to skinless Warren.
4. The Twilight storyline in general. So....this masked guy named Twilight has Amy, Warren and the US military working for him. He has people carving his symbol in their skin and attacking slayers. But....it is Angel. Not Angelus, but Angel. Because the universe wants to reward Buffy for sharing her power and it allows them to have sex (which shoots them into their own dimension to create however they want and be together without consequence). Um..... Look at that shark pit they just jumped over there...
5. Dawn. WTF. They are doing all these erotic covers with Dawn and now her and Xander are in love, but wait for it...when Buffy figures it out she tries to confess her love for Xander which he doesn't buy at all.

Now I hear there is a line of Angel comics that follow the majorly cliffhangery ending of Angel but I am not sure I want to read them or not.... Haven't heard anything about them opinionwise. However, I did find a clip of the Buffy animated series which, humorously, follows the storyline in the comic dream sequence in which Buffy wakes up in the cartoon (the highschool years of Buffy with Dawn included).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNHqkadJ_5Y&feature=player_embedded

Thank you for letting me rant a bit. I feel like my inner geek has been released. LOL

Posted two new BP covers today. The Simply Smut cover came out sooooooooo nice! And I may have to invest in the Emerald Fire book when it comes out. I has Norse elements, and we all know how I feel about that. ;)

Still have a few more covers to do this month, and I just sent off finalized edits to LSB sooooo I am going to go be exceptionally lazy for the rest of the day. Dentist appointment in the morning. Due to money I haven't been in about five years. I am not looking forward to the possible cavity count. :(

First off...I got my Greek Goddess shirt from Torrid today. Boobsaplenty may be my middle name, but goodness I love this shirt. It is a normal cotton shirt, with a high waist, low V neck and toga like sleeves. It has silver and gold sequins around the collar to give it an oldworldly vibe. LOVE IT. Just had to share that.

Secondly, I am completing a freelance project with Eve Langlais right now. She's self pubbing a book and needed edits and cover art, and surprise! I am a cover artist and an editor. So, with the economy being craptastic, me being broke and having to move soon with no money to move, I have added a page to the blog with pricing for free lance covers and edits. It is cheap compared to the ones I googled to see how others price this kind of thing. But as I am just starting out with this kind of thing, there is no way I could even imagine anyone paying me 25 dollars a page!! Good lord!

So, as long as time allows I am willing to work on freelance side projects for those who need the work done and are willing to work with my eccentric self. :P

The cover for Eve's book came out really REALLY good if I do say so myself. It may be one of my best so far.

In other news, absolutely nothing interesting has happened in the past few weeks. No new men in my life. No new job. No new friends. Boooooooring. And this is me ending that brief pity party. hahaha

Bagheera had her first birthday on April 3. She's not a baby kitten anymore, which is sad, but she started her birthday off with a bang: attacking my foot under the covers at 3 in the morning in order to ensure I have to limp to the bathroom to get a bandaid. It looks like a vampire bit my foot. There are 2 red puncture marks that are still bright red. LOL!!!