... that aims to reveal the relentless scam that we call everyday life Julian ā¢ 30 ā¢ he/him apparently this blog is no longer property neither of Shadowhunters nor of Magnus Bane ā¢ I reblog stuff that I like and tag #myart and #mygifs for my own things ā¢ occasionally also #mystuff for anything else
Hi, I'm Julian, and if you're interested in the stuff I do but frequently ask yourself: What the hell is this guy on about?, this post might help you out.
Used to post fanart, fan vids and gifs here (still do occasionally ā tagged as #myart, #myvideos and #mygifs respectively), but then my life got taken over by writing for this medieval gay-on-gay-violence family-drama soap opera called Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
List of all my writings (also to be found under the #mywriting tag), with links to their AO3 counterparts and short summaries in the following.
ā
Stories currently in the cooking pot:
Contra Cruciatam: Prague, 1412. Janosh Uher alias Janosh Gilet alias Janosh WÄgierski tells his life story. One of injustice and rebellion, of joy and suffering, of rooftops and harvest dances. Of sky blue eyes and golden hair and a hand in his. Of family. Of loss and love. His story is interrupted rather frequently, however, by theological disputes, reformist protests and street riots against the Prague city guard. The things you get when your audience is the Devil's Pack.
Part of the "Dum Vita Est, Spes Est" cycle (see below)
Link to AO3
Link to my Janosh-Spotify-Playlist (for all those who care for some musical inspiration while reading ā divided into folk songs, instrumentals and 'modern' pieces)
Youāre already mine: A collection of mostly stand-alone Janosh / Adder drabbles. Because they deserve it, and so do we.
often-times inspired by @darkthareās stunning artworks
Link to AO3
ā
Overview of the other stories belonging to the "Dum Vita Est, Spes Est" cycle, in chronological order:
Dissolutely Leisurely: Suchdol, 1403. Hans is hungry and frustrated. Samuel is as well. Being the nerd that he is, Hans copes with his feelings by brooding, day-dreaming and poetry. Being the nuisance that he is, Samuel copes by taking Hans's fucking things and reading his poetry collection! Including Hans's own writings.
OR: When hunger and despairā¢ make you and your future brother in-law share poetry and trauma, and help you sort things out with your long-simmering feelings for your best friend.
Link to AO3
ā
Sed Proditionem: Bohemia, 1410. The Devil's Pack ā once the distorted reflecĀtion of a family of misfits, now broken into shambles of stranĀgers ā comes back together for one more coup. In the midst of church reforms, three Popes claiming authority at once, and a holy war brewing up in the north, they plan to bring back order into a country governed by chaos. But not only politics have changed in the seven years since the pack last came together, and as their plans fail miserably, sending both old and new enemies out for their necks, they soon find themselves entangled in questions about purpose, revenge, freedom, betrayal, and a more intimate cry for change than that of a societal revolution.
OR: The Devil's Pack / Battle of Grunwald crossover we all deserve. Armed with historical fun facts ("MARGINALIA") in the chapter notes for all the fellow freaks.
Link to AO3
ā
Overview of stand-alone fics (no chronological order, read however you want (always do things however you want, never take commands, choose anarchy)):
Somnus Donum Deorum: "Hans walked up to the table and made sure to put the plate and bowl down as loudly as he could. Sam's head snapped up, and for a brief moment he looked around himself like a chased deer, unsure where the arrow shot came from. Then his eyes found Hans. They seemed especially bright today, coated with a glazed shimmer, looked especially narrow and the rings below them were especially huge and dark. 'I'm awake,' he mumbled. He wanted to appear strong and alert. He was anything but. 'I'm awake.'"
OR: After the most recent events in Kuttenberg, Samuel has even more trouble sleeping than he usually had. The pack offers to help him out.
Link to AO3
ā
Of Hogs and Horses: "For a while, Henry stood in silence and admired her. He felt that he truly could not have been luckier. Just to be in her presence alone, to have been granted the chance to lay eyes on her. To touch and smell, and feel her even. Cautiously, of course, with his fingers covered decently by gloves, he would not want to get ahead of himself. To marvel at her unique beauty, her liveliness and elegance, the form of her long, slender body, her arms so carelessly stretched out in what seemed to be a sheer act of rebellion, her face so full and white..."
OR: Henry of Skalitz has fallen in love. His inamorata is a plant.
Link to AO3
ā
These Times to Come: Ever since the execution of Jan Hus, chaos is brooding in Bohemia. A kind of chaos that has long exceeded mere church reforms, and has grown into a war over the nature of God-given estates and feudalistic structures, established alliances and what is just. In the middle of this war are Lord Hans Capon of Leipa and Pirkstein and the bastard son Henry of Skalitz. Divided by fate, their ideals and the worlds both of them were born into.
OR: An alternative to Sed Proditionem. If the lovers-fighting-together-for-a-joined-cause theme is not for you and you prefer suffering and pain, read this.
it's done. it's done!
first of all, i'd like to thank the best ever co-writer i could've asked for on this project. @charlie-rulerofhell's been nothing but incredibly diligent, punctual and meticulous in the pursuit of our niche knowledge, all while juggling real life obligations, surgery and exams. his dedication to a project i proposed on a whim has been incredible, even if i felt undeserving of it at times. this project would not have been what it was without him.
secondly, i thank the kind contributors who helped us assemble the whole, entire codex and its full 372 pages in entirety! there were times when the codex went through changes as KCD2 got updated and the DLCs got added but we've managed to wrangle every single one of them. thank you all for contributing to this project!
and finally ā hey, it's done. this started as a project i wanted to dedicate to this fandom who often remarked how the history behind the game felt inaccessible, daunting, and anglocentric. and to that i said; here is an entire blog dedicated to every single entry in this game, featuring several sources for each one, filtered to cater to all your curiosities pertaining to KCD and more. i am not a historian, i have no formal education in history, i am only a game & history enthusiast and also very stubborn. i'm talking 283 days kind of stubborn. so this was my gift to you! if you ever feel like the history behind the curtain felt too daunting and you don't know where to begin ā i hope the @codex-archive finds you, and that the extra reading encourages you to endeavour into these topics with more confidence than before.
as for myself ā i think it is no surprise to anyone when i say that i've learned a lot. especially about bohemian mining. god, so much fucking mining. besides the general history of both bohemia and surrounding regions in early and late middle ages, i've also learned how to use search tools better to get what i want to see, learned how to avoid ai better, learned of useful archives and many a fun fact. and also gained an innumerable amount of PDFs.
until next project,
your most valiant
itās been a week to digest the end of this massive, life-changing project, so let me now say something about this too.
it was on the 11th of september when we first talked about this idea of yours. i offered to send you the screenshots of the entries that i had and dropped some -ahem- hints that i wouldnāt mind helping out with the research too, if you needed me. you said: "at least this is now a mutually involved project" and i replied: "oh i am fucking involved."
i donāt think i fully understood what i got myself into when you finally gave in to my nagging three days later lol. neither of us did probably. two entries per day was the idea at first, one by you, one by me. we managed to do that for.. i donāt even remember, a week maybe? because we quickly grew above the limits we had set ourselves ā going from one fun fact to entries that could span entire wars and reigns, from one paragraph to half-essays, from one little website, to 4, 5, 6 scientific papers, because there was always more to learn. we were improving daily ā the quality of this project, the standards we held for ourselves, our own abilities. we grew as the codex grew. later on i sometimes felt the urge to go back to some of the earliest entries and rewrite them, with everything i had learned along the way. but that would have taken away from what the codex had become to me. not just an anthology of history, but an anthology of our history, of how we worked and approached these topics, of the knowledge we had gathered.
an anthology of memories too. birthday parties i couldnāt wait to leave to finally get home and start working on the codex. day-long train rides filled with reading through dozens of websites, pre-loaded of course (because fuck the DB). headphones in, music maxed up, to not hear my annoying roommate in the hospital to codex away the boredom. spending hours at work, with friends, at family gatherings to share all the exciting information we had found.
we would gather so much more than we could ever put into the entries, even if he had decided to make each of them 50 paragraphs long. hundreds of pdfs for you, for me (i checked again!) 528 DIN A4 pages of notes. sometimes the stuff we discovered was so fascinating we would talk about it for hours, sometimes a whole night long. you said up there that you occasionally felt like you didnāt deserve my dedication to the project, and it makes me happy to hear that you valued my participation so much, but i still gotta call you out for that. because it has never really been my dedication, or at least not mine alone. it was always a reflection of yours. your dedication, your passion, your ever-improving standards inspired me to do the same. which is why i did not only learn a lot through the actual codex work but also through you.
so after all this rambling (if this was a codex entry youād probably tell me: hmā¦ maybe we could shorten it a bit?), the only thing left to say is: thank you. thank you for taking me along. thank you for inspiring me. thank you for being a friend i happily embarked on this insane journey with. it might have become a little bit of an obsession at times. a bit more than what would have been considered healthy hehe. but i had a lot of fun. and iām so fucking proud of us.
(i still wouldnāt mind if you waited another year or so before proposing the next crazy idea to me, okay?)
In the Middle Ages, pilgrimages were journeys with a spiritual purpose, associated with inner transformation and often the forgiveness of sins. Pilgrimages were undertaken by individuals and groups, on foot or on horseback. A special type of pilgrimage was the Crusades to Jerusalem, a place associated with the foundations of Christian faith and culture. Participants in the Crusades received fame and recognition, and the Pope himself could grant them indulgences for participating in the campaigns or making the pilgrimage. Participants in the campaigns to Jerusalem often brought treasures and precious relics back to their homelands, such as bones from the remains of saints, splinters from Christ's cross, or thorns from his crown. Although their authenticity was often disputed, these objects had considerable spiritual value, and their presence in a church or monastery attracted the attention of pilgrims and donors.
TRIVIA
ā The oldest surviving account of a Christian pilgrimage to the city of Jerusalem is the Itinerarium Burdigalense ("Bordeaux Itinerary"), written by an anonymous traveler who visited the Holy Land in 333ā334. The pilgrimage tradition was established by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, whose journey to Jerusalem helped establish many of the holy sites later venerated by pilgrims.
After the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land in the 7th century, pilgrimage became more difficult. Travel often depended on the political climate of the time, but periods of relative peace allowed Christian pilgrims to continue visiting Jerusalem even under Muslim rule.
Pilgrimage also carried political influence. Rulers often made an effort to establish new pilgrimage routes and build grandiose churches where holy relics were held, hoping to attract visitors and reinforce religious fervor. It was also largely because pilgrimage routes brought fame, wealth and influence to the regions that hosted them, significantly boosting the local economy.
By the 11th and 12th centuries, pilgrimage to Jerusalem had reached the height of its popularity, drawing thousands of travelers from across Europe. Undertaking the pilgrimage to the Holy Land was not only a religious obligation but also a status symbol for those who could afford it. The journey was expensive, and only the wealthy and influential members of society could afford to undertake it. However, for the less privileged, there were various ecclesiastical organizations, such as the Hospitallers and the Templars, who provided accommodations, protection, and medical aid to the pilgrims.
The pilgrimage to the Holy Land declined in the 13th and 14th centuries due to the rise of Islam and the increasing hostility between the East and the West. The fall of Acre in 1291, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land, marked the end of the pilgrimage era.
Lay brothers, sometimes referred to as "bearded brothers," were monks who had not yet begun their novitiate. Their life in the monastery was not governed by such strict rules as those of regular monks ā for example, they were allowed not to shave and attended services only once a day. They spent the rest of their time doing manual labour and maintaining the monastery's farm. Lay brothers were often illiterate, and their physical strength and dexterity were valued more than traditional education. In Cistercian monasteries, their lives were governed by the Usus conversorum, written at the beginning of the 12th century.
TRIVIA
ā Rather than having ānot yet begun their novitiateā, most lay brothers (conversi) or lay sisters (conversae) were not even allowed to do so. In fact, the position of a lay brother was very distinct from that of a monk. Which of these one would join as, depended on various factors, one of them being social rank. For the lowest members of society ā from peasants to former prostitutes ā joining the order as a lay brother or sister would often be the easiest way to do so. In fact, by 1188 the Cistercians ruled that noblemen could only join the monastery as monks, not as lay brothers. Their different standing would also show in their diet (being often forbidden wine or non-vegetarian food), or their appearance. The clothes of lay brothers were usually ordered to be made of coarse wool or linen, and instead of the cowl and scapular they would wear cloaks and hoods, meant to cover their heads even during meals. They were not allowed a tonsure and often hadto keep their beard, earning them the nickname barbati.
Lay brothers were also separated physically, sleeping either on the monastery's agricultural estates or in a specific part of the monastery, often close to the guest house. Even within the churches they would be separated ā the Cistercian abbey of Maulbronn in southern Germany divided the monks from the lay brothers with a stone screen. Yet, their distinct position also granted them unique roles in the monastic life: Whatever the monks did not want or were not allowedto do ā because their oath bound them to the monastery or to a life of silence ā was done by the lay brothers. They served as smiths, cobblers, butter makers or beekeepers, were responsible for the greeting and hosting of guests and for riding out and serving as messengers. The monastery's wares would be sold on the markets by lay brothers, just as they would buy new supplies, and in court it was them who often represented the order.
Many ecclesiastical texts those attribute to them a great humility and piety. However, monks such as the 13th century Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach would also sharply criticise those diverging from these virtues, and accuse them of their weakness making them the victims of possession. Such was the fate of a lay brother who had fallen asleep during mass. As Caesarius writes, the Devil had punished him promptly, striking him with gluttony and dreams of succulent meat, until the lay brother started gnawing on the very wood he was prostrating on. Only the cellarer praying nearby and hearing the noise could prevent worse.
I'm in a little local cafe and the women behind the counter started griping to each other, "Oh Christ, Stephen's back again," "It's him, is it? I thought he'd stopped coming," "It's definitely him, look, it's bloody Stephen on a Thursday morning," "Do you want me to get rid of him or are you going to do it?" and so I was peering outside, trying to spot this nightmare customer, this pestilence of a person, this pox upon the cafe trade, and then one of the women from behind the counter ran outside, clapping two trays together loudly and yelling "GET OUT OF IT, STEPHEN!" and it turns out that Stephen is an absolutely gigantic fuck-off seagull who hangs around outside, menacing people for crumbs
