Of Swords and Parasols

1.  I think I've decided not to officially participate in Yuletide and do what I did last year nd pinch hit, and beta like the last few years.  (If I do do pinch hits and decide I want my own fic, I'm sure they'll have the post midway through for pinchhitter requests like lsat year.)  Part of it is RL and part of it is that every fandom I looked at I went "I want to WRITE for it instead..."  (Except Pan Am.  People should write Kate the Spy fic and Kate and Bridget on a mission and Bridget deciding on Kate as a replacement and why Kate can't stand Maggie even though they appear to be pretty close...)  I still have a few hours to change my mind.
 

2.  Now that it's through airing in the UK, I've started season 2 of Downton Abbey.  I'm halfway through the second episode and half think the pilot episode was designed to make me hate/give up on most of the men.  (I say that having liked most of them in season 1.)  I like Lavinia and want her and Mary to be BFF.  Bates can stay gone.  (Brendan Coyle is one of those where I really like him as an actor, but don't like his characters.  Though I was very happy that Downton apparently kept him too busy for the last leg of Larkrise to Candleford.  I'm sad that one's over.)

3.  I'm catching up on the volumes I have of Otomen.  Otomen, for those who aren't familiar with it, is a fluffy genderbendy shoujo  in which a boy who is viewed as the masculime ideal by everyone secretly adores anything considered cute and/or girly, who is in love with a girl who is cute and teeny and super sweet and pretty and everyone thinks is the perfect girl but whose interests are all what's considered "masculine" and she sees herself as The Hero and likes the guy because she wants to protect him.  Meanwhile, the third lead is a shoujo mangaka whose popular manga is based on the two of them, only genderswapped, and so it's very much in his interests for their relationship to progress stat.  Anyway, when I read the first volume, I thought Asuka looked like a shoujo version of Ichigo from Bleach.  Based on the cover of volume 4, I suspect this is rather deliberate.

4.  Jumping back to #2, another UK series I wish there was more of is Rosemary and Thyme.  It ran for 3 seasons (the total episode count is about on par weith the average full US TV season) and is about a plant anthropologist and ex-cop who become landscapers and are apparently unable to get a single job without stumbling over a dead body.  Both heroines are middleaged and while both have a few single-episode love interests, the only thing resembling a regular guy is Laura's son, who's in maybe 5 episodes.  (Actually, I wish her kids had been around more often.)  You...can tell all the writers were men who were scared to ask a woman if they were Doing It Right (or to be one of the writers) but it's pretty fun and I wish there was more.  Also, I may be out of Rumpole of the Bailey to watch.  I'm not sure. (The last I watched was Rumpole's Last Case.)