... that aims to reveal the relentless scam that we call everyday life Julian • 30 • he/him apparently this blog is no longer property neither of Shadowhunters nor of Magnus Bane • I reblog stuff that I like and tag #myart and #mygifs for my own things • 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 – 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.
☆
Stories currently in the cooking pot:
Contra Cruciatam: Prague, 1412. Janosh Uher alias Janosh Gilet alias Janosh Węgierski 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 – divided into folk songs, instrumentals and 'modern' pieces)
You‘re already mine: A collection of mostly stand-alone Janosh / Adder drabbles. Because they deserve it, and so do we.
often-times inspired by @darkthare‘s stunning artworks
Link to AO3
☆
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 despair™ 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
☆
Sed Proditionem: Bohemia, 1410. The Devil's Pack – once the distorted reflection of a family of misfits, now broken into shambles of strangers – 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
☆
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
☆
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
☆
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.
The ossuary is an underground chapel of the All Saints cemetery church, built in the second half of the 14th century, which originally belonged to the Cistercian abbey in Sedletz. It bears an uncanny resemblance to the underground chapels of Jerusalem where pilgrims were buried.
During the Hussite wars, the monastery was burnt down and abandoned together with the ossuary. It was not rebuilt until the second half of the 15th century. In 1511, the bones from the cemetery were exhumed and moved to the ossuary’s underground , where a half-blind monk put them together into famous pyramids and bone structures. In our game, however, we decided to attribute their creation to Henry.
In its later history, the Sedletz ossuary underwent Baroque modifications and today it is one of the most popular tourist sites in the Czech Republic. The bone structures, made from the remains of more than 60,000 people, have undergone extensive renovation and, as a memento mori, are still a reminder that: dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return…
TRIVIA
— What makes the Sedlec Ossuary so special compared to similar burial grounds is its size. The bones are said to stem from 40,000 to 70,000 people, and there are several reasons for this high amount. Ongoing political conflicts, a bad harvest and the plague are said to have led to 30,000 deceased and buried here within the first century of the cemetery's existence, with mass graves found containing up to 1,200 bodies. The Hussite Wars of the 15th century supposedly fed the burial place with another 10,000 bodies. Many people even travelled here from as far as Bavaria, Poland or the Low Countries, asking for a chance to bury their dead ones in Sedlec.
The reason for that lies in the legend of the abbot Jindřich or Heidenreich, who was allegedly sent off to Jerusalem by King Ottokar II in 1278. Upon his return, the abbot brought a jar with Terra Sancta, Holy Soil with him – according to most sources from Golgotha, the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, and the abbot sprinkled the soil across the Sedlec cemetery, turning it into a Campus Sanctus. This holy field was said to be able to transform the fresh corpses of those deserving into white, dry bones within a day, while rejecting and casting out the bodies of sinners right away. This miracle gave the deceased a fast track ticket to Heaven and their bones relic-like qualities: Donations to the ossuary were said to cure ailments, just like touching an aching tooth with one from the ossuary could heal it. Ghosts would appear to bless the just or haunt the unjust – such as a young man visiting the ossuary in 1663, said to have questioned the moral virtue of the buried bodies. A skull immediately took revenge by jumping at him, making the man fall and causing him to die on the spot. All the tales quickly led to a proper burial tourism, and the cemetery had to be enlarged multiple times, reaching 3.5 hectares or 5 football fields at its peak.
There is a hint of truth to the legends. The bones do indeed show a great quality and preservation, although this might have been caused by pollutants stemming from the mining and smelting in the area and all the arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc in the ground and thus also in the bones. The whiteness of the bones exhibited in the ossuary today is also the work of the artist, Frantièek Rint, a woodcarver commissioned by the aristocratic family of Schwarzenberg in 1867 to arrange the bones in an artful manner, after they had bought the estate of the dissolved monastery. Rint disinfected and prepared the bones with chlorinated lime, then he arranged them in the form of chalices, altars, crucifixes or monstrances, of a 3 metre tall chandelier said to contain every bone of the human body, and even of the Schwarzenberg's coat of arms – including the raven in the bottom right corner, made of hip, rib and hand bones, hacking into the skull of an enemy.
not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally
The Sedletz Monastery used to be the oldest Cistercian abbey in the Czech Kingdom. Founded by the Bavarian Abbot Gerlach in 1142 , it was later abandoned and reoccupied many times in its history, either due to wars or poor financial situations.
In 1421, it was burnt down by the Hussites, only the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist survived. After the end of the war, only a few monks returned and it remained in this dismal state until the 17th century. In 1783, the monastery was completely abolished by an imperial decree.
The cemetery church of All Saints with the adjacent burial ground was originally part of the monastery, but later it began to serve as the municipal cemetery for Kuttenberg, because as records showed, burials were taking place there long before the arrival of the monks. The cemetery was at its busiest during wars and plague epidemics. In 1318 alone, 30,000 dead were buried there, and another 10,000 during the Hussite wars.
The site is shrouded in many legends. The most famous one states that the abbot of the Heidenreich Monastery brought a handful of dirt from Jerusalem on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which he then scattered around the cemetery and the ossuary. Thus, the cemetery ground became sacred and highly sought after, not only by the people of Kuttenberg, but also by pilgrims and those wishing to be buried there from all over Bohemia and neighbouring regions. Who wouldn’t want to rest in the ground where Jesus Christ himself once walked?
Today, a cigarette factory is located on the site of the former monastery.
TRIVIA
— According to a local legend, the nobleman Miroslav of Zimburg was travelling through the region when he stopped to rest in a forest clearing. While he slept with his saddle beneath his head, his companions witnessed a strange sight: a white bird with golden wings flew into his mouth and then out again. When Miroslav awoke, he told them that an angel had appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to found a monastery on that blessed spot. He obeyed, and the new settlement was said to have taken its name, Sedlec, from the saddle (sedlo) on which he rested.
In reality, Sedlec Abbey was founded in 1142 by Miroslav of Zimburg with the support of Prince Vladislav II and Bishop Jindřich Zdík. A year later, monks from the Cistercian monastery of Waldsassen arrived, establishing the first Cistercian abbey on Czech land. For more than a century Sedlec remained a relatively unremarkable institution and at one point was even considered for dissolution due to poverty.
Its economic status changed drastically with the discovery of rich silver deposits on monastery lands near Kutná Hora. The silver mining industry transformed Sedlec into one of the wealthiest monasteries in Bohemia, due to the monastery leasing the land to the miners. Under Abbot Heidenreich, a close adviser to King Wenceslas II, the abbey gained considerable political influence and became involved in the events surrounding the ascension of the Luxembourg dynasty to the Bohemian throne. At its socio-political peak the monastery controlled more than fifty villages, the towns of Malín and Malešov, including other estates across the kingdom.
However, despite the proximity to its neighbours, the relations with Kutná Hora were not always friendly. The growing mining town frequently clashed with the monastery over influence and parish rights, which were a source of considerable income. In July 1412, there was a clash between miners and the monastery's subjects, which ended with the burning of the Sedlec town of Malín and the murder of its inhabitants. Sources suggest this conflict was also a result of the rising contempt for the wealthy German monks residing in the monastery.
Although activity eventually returned to the monastery, Sedlec never fully recovered. The abbey experienced a final period of renewal after the Thirty Years' War, when Abbot Jindřich Snopek commissioned architect Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel to rebuild much of the complex. This revival ended in 1783, when Emperor Joseph II dissolved the monastery as part of his reforms.
