#I would never try to dispose of an imaginary body with imaginary lye

[my-soliloquy-chamber]

I know I’m not the only one who makes up elaborate self-insert fanfiction-esque fantasies in my head. I know that, don’t lie. 🤨 But do you guys also do accompanying research so your imagination can be more… comfortable?

Like, I know I would need to have soap if I found myself in game faux-Ancient Greece, so I had to look up how to make soap. So I know how to make that now. (In theory)

But that naturally led me to needing to know how to make lye. So I looked up how to make that too. (For soap making, but I guess I can dispose of bodies now too. 🤷‍♀️)

Past obsessions have lead to my knowing how to scrape and treat an animal hide which comes in useful here because I’ll need thick gloves and a big protective apron if I’m going to be messing with lye. (For soap!!)

I arbitrarily decided that a barrel would be better than pottery for the lye so I looked up how to make one of those too. (Instead of investigating if pottery would work just fine…)

I stopped there because I figured if I’m in faux-Ancient Greece I could just rope in some local help to make the planks and bands.

Instead, I contemplated clothes. The faux and real Ancient Greek clothing styles look great, but I need pants. I’m a my-thighs-get-sweaty-and-chafe kind of person, so I would require pants. Guess what’s not easy to make? But I know how to make simple wrap pants now.

But no one would just give me a bunch of fabric, right? So I had to look up weaving. Which quickly led me onward to making yearn thread from scratch. Which, honestly, so time consuming! So I looked up how a semi-modern spinning wheel works. (like in Rumplestiltskin, so not über modern) I figured I could contract the same carpenter who helped with the barrels to build that.

Now I’ve done a lot of thinking, so I might be getting hungry, and if there’s one thing they would have in Ancient Greece it’s recognizable ingredients. They might not always be putting it together the way I’d find palatable, but no matter, I can put it together myself. So I would be all set on food. But you know what they couldn’t do? Decent bread. The flour was just too coarse and the bread too hard and dense.

So I need to investigate yeast and milling. Turns out yeast is super simple in wine country. 🤷‍♀️ So, how to make a better mill? Not so complicated actually, just very heavy. There are lots of people around then who know how to turn very large stones into shapes, so two round ones with groves on one side and holes in the middle wouldn’t be complicated. And they know how to move very large heavy stone things around, so the mill will be done in a breeze. But how would it turn? Slaves or animals would probably be the answer if I asked the locals, but that’s just… ewww. So I had to look up how to make a waterwheel to turn it instead.

Which reminds me, the water isn’t potable. How would I fix that? Well, there’s boiling it a lot. But is that enough? Is there any other way? Well, yes, the wine of course. That’s what the locals do. But… um… I don’t like wine now. I doubt I’d like it more with the addition of oil, sea water, resin, or literal perfume. So, alternative? Well, turns out layers of cloth can filter out cholera at least. Neat. I already know how to make cloth!

But disease from food and water isn’t the only danger here. There’s no antibiotics. I paid enough attention in school to know that me managing to discover penicillin is waaaaay too unlikely, so disinfectant is the way to go. Bleach and chlorine seems to require too much chemistry and material science to be feasible, but distillation could be done. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s the power of soap and 70 proof alcohol. And social distancing. Hm… maybe I should learn how to use a spear next. 🤔

Anyway… How does all of this help in the elaborate self-insert fanfiction-esque fantasies? How does any of this get me into the not-actually-wearing-any-pants of, say, for example, how about, Brasidas?

It doesn’t, not at all.

Because that wouldn’t be accurate or realistic. 😔

But at least I learned some stuff.

In theory.