my life, still boring

So, it turns out when left to my natural devices (a.k.a. weekends), I...go to bed at around eleven and wake up around eight. How terrifyingly normal. (Or, well, it would be easier if everyone in the apartment also went to bed around midnight; I woke up at two and was really concerned about where the voices were coming from before I worked out that it was Texas, Minnesota, and New York talking in the living room. Also then I had an extremely bizarre X-Men-ish/kids with superpowers sort of dream, in which I was the unpowered one! ...then turned out to have Scott Summers' mutation. Dude, just because he is my favorite X-man, not the mutation I want, especially not in his fucked up form. Although now I want to go reread X-men fic, although I think the author I'm thinking of (minisinoo) might have taken her fic down.

Also then I woke up and had a bizarre little cut right over my left hipbone, about the length of my thumbnail. No idea where that came from; it's not as if I can exactly PAPER CUT MY HIP. (Which is where the majority of my weird cuts come from. Well, when I'm back home, I also end up with a variety because my skin dries out and splits because we don't have humidity in central Washington and I forget to put on moisturizer. But I'm in Louisiana and that's not an option.)

Yesterday I had a massive baking failure: I don't want to talk about it.

on the Laxdaela Saga

Am reading the Laxdaela Saga for class. The intro is very, um, special. And by special I mean, "I think we were reading different books." Also, sexist, but hey, there are other parts that didn't jive with what I read. (I read the saga before I read the intro.)

I mean, for one thing, I wouldn't immediately pinhole Gudrun Osvif's-daughter as a tragi-romantic heroine; she has elements of it, sure, but she has much more agency than most Western European tragi-romantic heroines. (Although I have to admit that my idea of a tragi-romantic heroine is perhaps more closely rooted in Shakespeare and early-modern literature than medieval lit, so I could be biased.) And Bolli Thorleiksson totally had personality! Just because he isn't as flashy as Kjartan Olafsson doesn't mean he's utterly devoid of personality, bah. And Jorunn Bjorn's-daughter, totally not a complete shrew, considering her husband clearly favored his concubine more than his wife. (Dude, just because a woman has personality doesn't mean she's, I don't know, either a complete bitch or some kind of archetype of the forceful matriarch or tragi-romantic heroine type. Bah, mid-sixties male academics, FAIL.)

Oh, oh, and the closing paragraph of the introduction is very...special. Yes. Special is a good word.

But dominating them all is Gudrun Osvif's-daughter, lovely and imperious, as fierce in hatred as in love, proud, vain, jealous, and infinitely desirable. Like all great women she remained an enigma all her life; and long after her death we can still argue about her, and admire her, and care about her; and wonder still who it was she really loved the most.

This is the translation I read, in case anyone is wondering. Now, if one happens to want strong, fierce female characters in medieval lit, the Scandinavian sagas are totally the place to go; the women tend to play a major part in the action, and are, a lot of the time, the core of the story. Mostly because they end up with four husbands and murdered sons and murdered parents and murdered brothers and so on, but they are fierce, and proud, and don't roll over just because a man walks on stage. Most of the time they're the ones egging on the menfolk to go and kill something already, and why the hell are they hesitating, anyway? Are they letting their emotions overwhelm their pride and/or honor?

...huh. One could do a very interesting academic paper on gender relations on the Scandinavian sagas. (Well, I do have to write an honors thesis, but I was really hoping it would be more classical than medieval, although I'm still holding out for something in that period of Late Antiquity just to tie the two together.)

the walking dead premiere

My main thought on The Walking Dead tonight: this would be much more awesome if the main killer was a woman. (An Asian woman! I kept recasting the (male, white) main character as Grace Park for some reason. OMG, how awesome would that be? Lena Headey would also be quite awesome. OMG, can we have the Connor family fighting zombies?)

I saw Sarah Wayne Callis's name in the opening credits, and got really excited -- but, uh, she didn't show up much, and she didn't have a gun. There are at least three characters so far in this show that would be much more interesting if they were women: considering there weren't that many characters with speaking parts, that's, um, saying something.

Will probably keep watching, as the roommate really likes zombies and so far seems to really like the show. On the other hand, they did a preview of the entire season, and holy shit, could they have cast more white men in this show? I mean, it's set in Georgia, I'm fairly sure the state is more diverse.

( spoilers )

No, seriously, this would have been much improved if they'd cast Grace Park or Lena Headey as the main character. If I notice it, there's a problem. Although Texas has informed me that this is based off a comic book, and thus all roles are pretty much set, so... *sigh*