@malcolmschmitz.bsky.social
Author, artist, game dev. Querying middle grade trans thieves; writing adult short fic about lacemaking orcs, nebbish unicorns, trans sky captains, and more. Half of VaporwaveGothic Studios; worked with Black Chicken Studios and small indie teams.
The time is NOW. Valenziaga will fall.
Category is: Science-Fantasy EXTRAVAGANZA! Think Drag Race meets a gay Game of Thrones meets Chronicles of Amber.
High drama and high CAMP!
Spread the word! RT, tell your friends, shout it from the rooftops!
BACK THE BOOK TODAY!
#booksky
bit.ly/3OIVfNs
I'm currently frustrated about a story that could have been SO GOOD if it was good. I want to write my own version.
Alas, I have SO many other projects...
Silhouette of a woman with an enormous updo hairdo, long 18th century gown, and an absurd hat perched atop.
How can you be talking about HISTORY with everything that's going on. 18th century history? Women's history? Waves hands.
Friends, it is precisely because of everything that's going on that we need to talk about history much, much more.
....I hope wherever he is, he knows.
24.02.2026 17:21 β π 5 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
He was as right as he could possibly be. It took us 2000 years to figure it out because the brain is a weird meat tube full of lightning.
But we figured it out. Because of him.
He was RIGHT that it was a natural disease. That it was in the brain. That it wasn't a divine punishment.
He was RIGHT that it could be cured like anything else.
I just want to Dr.-Who-Van-Gogh this man to a pediatric epilepsy clinic.
And let him hear the doctors explaining to the kids (and their grownups) what epilepsy is. And that we can make it so you can have a normal life.
And I want to tell him that he was RIGHT. In EVERY respect he could be.
But he ends this treatise like so:
"A man with the knowledge of how to produce... dryness and moisture, cold and heat in the human body, could cure this disease too, provided he could distinguish the right moment for the application of the remedies. He would not need to resort to... magic spells."
He's wrong about what causes it- he's working off humoral theory, thinks it's phlegm.
He's having to fight his theoretical structure, fight the other doctors (who think it's a Divine Punishment), fight for his patients.
He can't figure this out. And he knows it.
I'm getting sentimental about my Ancient Medicine class.
We're reading "On The Sacred Disease", a treatise on epilepsy. Hippocrates argues that epilepsy is a natural disease, that it's in the brain, and that a skillful enough doctor could cure it.
He is SO CLOSE to being right...
Local zoning is the way! A lot of these are being stopped or stalled by neighborhood organizing.
These warehouses often need to be purchased, permitted, approved for occupancy and specs. Each one of those steps can be interrupted.
Ppl are pressuring corps not to sell, counties to deny permits, etc
Your Ancient Medicine Factoid Of The Day:
"That goats suffered from epilepsy was widely believed in Antiquity, perhaps because of the presence of βstaggersβ, whose symptoms resemble those of an epileptic fit." (Nutton 2013)
Anyway, I'm sorry for the Utter Radio Silence for the past [don't worry about it], I've been exhausted.
I'm taking a full time course load (ask me about my Ancient Medicine class!), an extra class from the local writers' org, transferring schools, and continuing to work on Bright Young Things...
Dying of wretched embarrassment today, as I accidentally told a non-native-speaker of English to "break a leg"
I'M SO SORRY, I AM A THEATER KID, IT SLIPPED OUT
The Hugo nomination period is officially open, which seems like a good time to remind folks about my links post gathering eligibility and recommendations from others. I'll continue to update through the nomination period so keep sending links my way!
acwise.net/what-have-yo...
(Invert is a period term for gay man.)
(This is a piece of vintage homophobia, but I'm honestly kind of delighted, can we reclaim this one the way we reclaimed "fruity"?)
Historian Peter Ackroyd, re: 1920s Bright Young Men:
"[Men] wear attractive wristwatches and constantly consult them with a flourish of the forearm. This is now considered to be a sign of effeminacy, and an invert may be called 'terribly wristwatch' or accused of having a 'wristwatch accent'."
I wanted to make movies, but realized I'd have to work with people.
I wanted to write books, but publication is anything but guaranteed.
I realized people would pay me to write for video games. I also realized I no longer hate people.
And, well, here I am.
"For all its mystical quality, fog has a materiality that embodies the metabolism of this rocky world."
22.11.2025 22:14 β π 6 π 2 π¬ 0 π 2
An image from Hydeaway, an indie game in an 8-bit pixel style. A black-haired man is standing in front of a desk; there are papers on the floor and desktop. At the bottom of the screen, there's a dialogue box labeled "Hyde"; the talksprite is the black-haired man, who has red eyes and is wearing a white shirt. He's frowning. HYDE: Hey. Hey, Jekyll. Why is a raven like a writing desk?
The same scene as the first image, but another character, Jekyll, is speaking. Jekyll is a blonde man with glasses and a green cravat. JEKYLL: Poe wrote on both.
I'm working on the dialogue system for Hydeaway today- thanks to some help from folks in the GameMaker discord, I was able to get conditionals working!
Hydeaway is a game of personal horror. A corpse is on your parlour floor. Find out how it got there.
#Hydeaway #JekyllAndHyde #indiegames
Chapter 2 of Bright Young Things is at my publisher and I'm really happy about it- but it does mean I have to catch up on all the stuff I was neglecting to get it out the door.
Including the student game I don't think I've talked about on here much?
docs.google.com/document/d/1... Today's useful reference: a glossary of Wodehouseisms.
13.11.2025 02:19 β π 2 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0
I do not like the it.
I know I will probably have to learn the it at some point, and some of how much I hate it is that I just don't know how to use it in ways that don't suck.
But I do not like the it, and I really wish the it was optional.
Like, most of it is propaganda, and you need to watch it with that in mind. There's a lot of censorship and Shaping The Narrative For The Glory of the Empire.
But if you want to see how a WWI uniform moved while running, how an ambulance jolted around, how trenches looked, etc? Great resource.
Picture of text from a silent film, reading: "Not until the history of this war is written shall we realise the wonderful work of the officers and men of our Medical Staff."
www.iwm.org.uk/collections/... Another resource I found today that is incredibly useful for anyone writing about the World Wars: the Imperial War Museum has a huge, publically-searchable archive of photographs, writing, and *film*.
If you want visceral detail, you will find at least some here.
I am reaching the very end of the chapter, and am pleased to inform you all the 'tea flavour selection' subroutine is ~400 words.
11.11.2025 01:28 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Anyway, I'm just about done with Chapter 2, and half of the wordcount on this thing is a) your childhood friend's pronoun options and b) your ability to choose your favourite beverage and whether you want milk/sugar/lemon in your tea.
Which is on brand, for me.
PSA for anyone who is having to research How To Alcohol- Wikipedia and WikiHow are your friends.
WikiHow is actually a weirdly good source for this. They have articles on how to drink most kinds of alcohol (as well as how to make Monster Energy cupcakes???)
Hey, DuckDuckGo, I swear I'm not trying to drink brandy/sherry/gin/wine all at the same time, I am a Writer, I am Writing, thank you for understanding
11.11.2025 00:53 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
One of the funniest things about writing a game set in High Society in the 1920s is that a) everyone drinks like a fish and b) I'm a teetotaler.
I'm frantically googling things like "WHAT TEMPERATURE DO YOU SERVE SHERRY AT" and "HOW TO DRINK BRANDY???"