fuzzy eyelids

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I think I’m suffering mildly from seasonal allergies, which is like… well I’ve been in denial about allergies for several years now and now while everyone’s quarantining and on edge about the Virus it’s just sort of reminding me, no it can’t be a summer cold because I have been exposed to zero germs lately, so like. Anyway. 

That’s not the reason my eyelids won’t stay open though, it’s because I absolutely bullied myself into staying up until after 9pm last night despite being exhausted, because I know from bitter past experience that if I just conk out at 8 I will wake up at 2am and be up for the day. Which is Not Good. 

So I passed tf out at 9:15 or so.

I woke up some time when it wasn’t yet light but I thought, well probably it’s like 4:30, 5, no problem. I lay there a while, rolling around– my hip was really bothering me, and I was worried I’d be lame today, and it’s never good to have to limp on a busy day, so I was pondering that. Finally I rolled over and woke up my computer and checked the time. (There’s no clock in the guestroom.) 

2:45 am. It was two forty fucking five. What the fuck.

Well, but I was wide awake, so I read an assortment of fanfiction. About 4:45 I finally made myself try to sleep some more.

It didn’t… really work? But it was worth a shot. I rolled around some more– here’s the thing. The mattress in my sister’s guest room is what she considers a perfect mattress. It is slightly less firm than a sheet of plywood, but only slightly. What this does to me is that if I sleep on my side, which I prefer and instinctively seek out, my hypermobile shoulder and hip both slide out of their sockets, since they cannot press into the extremely firm mattress. This was fine for most of my life but now that I am forty, my joints have decided that they don’t actually like being subluxed for hours, and will punish me for it later.

So I have to wake up and remember to roll myself over. I can still sleep on my right side, but prefer my left, so as I get comfortable I’ll roll over left and sublux both joints again. So I have to either prop myself so I stay on my right side, or try to find a substitute position to be in… Anyway, it’s dumb to get old but beats the alternative, and also, I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed again. 

As it happens, despite my having been in terrible distress with it at three in the morning, my hip is actually fine today, and I can walk without a problem.

Which is good because I need to be good and actually functional today, because while chicken slaughter went great yesterday, we’re doing more of it today– we’re custom-processing a small run for another producer as a favor, and it’s only like two dozen lil chickens and the crew’s busy because Wednesday is vegetable harvest day, so like. 

I gotta get myself together and go set up for that, though.

You seem the right person to ask this. How do you think KM functioned at its peak? Assuming the boys

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Oh, that’s a good question! and gah, Tumblr keeps glitching and losing my progress on this, so it won’t be as comprehensive as I want.

So anyway. I don’t really know, and I’m only an amateur historian and avid reader, and all this is fictional so everyone should do what they want, but all that said, I’m going to ramble on about what I think is possible or likely or just plain fun to imagine. 

I don’t know if canon gives us much information on what the population was like, how many would be there at once, during the peak of operations of the… facility, for want of a better word. I have the impression that there’s a nearby-ish village that Vesemir has some kind of standing relationship with during his solo time there (but IDK if that impression is canon or fanon or what, I’m terrible at recollecting my sources); likely at its peak there was more of a population nearby, and possibly there could have been a fairly close relationship with that population– i.e., trading with the nearby civilians for supplies, and possibly having some crossover of population, maybe even people willing to do work at/for the keep. It wouldn’t have to be a self-sustaining compound, is my point there.

Which is good, because while having a kitchen garden kind of thing, to grow some of the more perishable stuff the population would want to eat– and the more specialty stuff, herbs and the like– would be feasible, but the thought of attempting to somehow have enough of a labor force to clear, maintain, and work large fields of land to directly support a mountainside castle seems prohibitive. The people who lived there were specialists, not laborers, so it makes a great deal more sense for them to buy in the large stores of grain and other supplies they would need to eat. 

So, yes, I’d imagine they’d have things like a flock of chickens for meat and eggs, and some small amounts of livestock, and a few patches of vegetables and herbs, maybe a bit of orchard around, but it wouldn’t be enough to subsist on, only to supplement– and it would probably be largely focused on the specialty stuff, for distilling and making potions, that they’d prefer to directly produce so that it meets their particular specialty standards. So they’d likely buy in provisions, for the most part– which also, incidentally, could be a good way of explaining the Witchers’ canonical insistence on being paid in coin. If they produce nothing concrete to trade, then coin is important. 

I think the logistics of having individual returning Witchers be collectively responsible for provisioning the keep is also difficult– if people don’t come back consistently every year, it’d be hard to work that out. Like… you could say if you come back bring enough provisions to keep yourself over the winter, but it almost makes more sense to just buy that in bulk, especially if there’s already a standing population. And there’d always be someone coming home injured or having been unable to provide well for themselves, and you’d just be at risk of not having good stocks of everything you needed and maybe having too much of some things and not enough of others. So probably, the Keep had a quartermaster, and probably, the Witchers who were on the Path would contribute financially, that just makes the most sense to me. (I mean, of course they’d also bring stuff they wanted, but that’s more like, the extras and luxuries and specialty stuff they prefer, rather than trying to haul home a barrel of flour or whatever.)

It just makes sense that when the Keep was populated, so was the surrounding area, and there’d’ve been regular supply runs managed by the full-time residents.

Of course, when there’s only the four of them left, you probably would figure on bringing provisions back with you individually to support yourself; it’s a lot less annoying, as the person in charge of cooking, to be dealing with four different sets of provisions than to be trying to scrape together food for 300 people out of 100 different people’s ideas of what to shop for. 

 IDK if that was what you were looking for, but that’s my thought! I bet there are some books out that would talk about the nuts and bolts of how a, say, medieval keep was provisioned, that would offer a lot more concrete inspiration– might be worth looking into institutions like abbeys as well. There’s a rich vein of inspiration there. 

lothlaer: sisspoo: idk if i have any witcher fans follow

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lothlaer:

sisspoo:

idk if i have any witcher fans following me, but here’s some cursed imagery compliments of lothlaer and i (wherein em provides me with various polly pocket / ken doll outfits and i draw jaskier in them bc that’s unfortunately the exact brand of energy he exudes)

bonus:

i have never been so simultaneously ecstatic and appalled in my life. thank you for my life