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Malcolm Schmitz

@malcolmschmitz.bsky.social
2.3K followers 6.1K following 1.3K posts

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.

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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
In today's research dead-end, I've found a satirical "antique collector's guide" from 1923. The first section is about 'antiquing ahead', aka 'purchasing cheap tat and holding onto it until it becomes antiques'. This is hysterical 103 years later, when the cheap tat IS now all fancy antiques.
The front pages of "The Collector's Whatnot", a satirical guide to antique collecting from 1923. The page on the left is a black and white photo of a statue of a man in a top hat, perched awkwardly on a tree stump. The photo is labeled: "Rear view of the statue of Professor Kilgallen in Floral Park City, Florida. Note the manner in which the sculptress denotes motion and vibration by the addition of the stump, which expresses with one bold stroke the action of the subject in rising from meditation. Visitors to Floral Park City are advised to walk all around the statue in order to get these different expressions of mood." The right hand side is an Art Nouveau style book frontispiece with a red border and a small red image of a pitcher. It says "The Collector's Whatnot: A Compendium, Manual, and Syllabus of Information and Advice on all Subjects Appertaining to the Collection of Antiques, both Ancient and not so Ancient. Compiled by Cornelius Obenchain van Loot, Milton Kilgallen, and Murgatroyd Elphinstone." Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York.
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Reposted by Malcolm Schmitz
Dr. Sarah Parcak @indyfromspace.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The ancient Egyptians loved to go on picnics with their friends and family into the mountains/ gebels around Luxor 3500 years ago. We know this because they left inscriptions where they started "Spending the day..." Hiking and enjoying the outdoors is as old as we are.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The *only* thing that isn't Chillingly Prescient about the ~cyberpunk world of Anne McCaffery's Crystal Singer~ is that she assumes computers "won't change" very much in the future and so a modern surveillance state is, under the hood, running on COBOL. #annemccaffery #crystalsinger
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Right? The thing that's driving me the most feral with that is "No Mutants Need Apply." Like, within the context of the [SPOILERS], that is an absolutely reasonable thing to specify. The [SPOILERS] require a very specific kind of person. AND YET.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The capitalism-critique is also there. Without spoiling too many twists- the world runs on a 'social credit' system that is chillingly prescient, and a lot of the story is about young people in a system that is Not Built For Human Thriving.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Who knows what? Who *gets* to know what, and when? Who knows what *about you?* Who has your data, and when? The main character is desperate for privacy, to the point where that's one of her defining character traits (and gets used as a euphemism later in the book!)
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
But it is not like that AT ALL. This is a story about information.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The MC, Killashandra, is forced out of music school and becomes a 'crystal singer'- miners who use perfect pitch to find and harvest valuable crystals. Before I read this, I expected it to be like Love Live or School of Rock. The MC would SAVE THINGS from the MARGINS with the POWER OF MUSIC.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I've been reading Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffery. This is an incredibly cyberpunk book- and it came out two years *before* Neuromancer. #crystalsinger #annemccaffery #cyberpunk
The cover of Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffery. It features a white woman with long dark hair bending backwards while singing. She's wearing sci-fi leather armour in dark brown and knee-length boots. The woman is holding a large, purple-and-black crystal in her left hand, and has a science fiction tool covering her right- like an arm cannon but with a long needle coming out of the end. She's standing in front of a mountain range with jagged crystal peaks. End description.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
TLDR: if you like romantasy, you would probably enjoy 80s fantasy. If it's got a fully clothed woman with improbably great hair on the cover, if it's pink or sage green, or if there's unicorns, you will probably find an interesting love story that doesn't slot neatly into this decade's tropes.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
But they are at least *different* tropes. And some of them are doing really cool stuff within their genre, especially if you take them in the context of the time.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I'm not going to pretend that these books were perfect, or that they've necessarily aged well, or even that they don't have their own tropes. They have so many of their own tropes, and once you read a few of them you can start to pick out the formulas.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
They were *marketed* as fantasy, and thus readers expected them to have the stuff you'd want from fantasy. A unique setting, interesting worldbuilding, strong female characters, a talking animal companion...
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
There was a period where a good bit of fantasy (/science fantasy) was aimed at female readers. It was thus the *default assumption* that these books would have an important romance subplot. But - crucially- they were not *marketed* on the basis of this subplot.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
If you read a lot of #romantasy, and you enjoy the love stories but you wish that there was a skosh more variety in the characters/settings, I'd recommend picking up some 80s fantasy, especially if it's aimed at women.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
So in doing research for Bright Young Things, I stumbled across this fella - Japan's first superhero, Ōgon Bat! pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/%C5%8Cg... < He is "an ancient warrior who slept thousands of years into the future in suspended animation" and fights a phantom thief called Kuro Bat.
An image of 1930s superhero Ōgon Bat. He has a golden, skull-shaped head, wears a green and white costume with a high-collared red cape and carries a rapier.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Otherwise the club is not specially exclusive. Nobody is ineligible per se, except strong, silent men.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
You must not mention golf or fish, however, and, if the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot’s motion is carried at the next committee meeting... you will not be allowed to mention wireless either. As Lord Peter Wimsey said... those are things you can talk about anywhere.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
The Egotists’ Club is one of the most genial places in London. It is a place to which you may go when you want to tell that odd dream you had last night, or to announce what a good dentist you have discovered...
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I am straight-up cribbing the descriptions of Various Fictional Gentleperson's Clubs for Bright Young Things today and Sayers' description of the Egotists' Club still continues to be one of my favourite bits of prose. She's invented ADHD Yapper Paradise.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Lore is a good friend of mine- please help them out!
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Today I'm trying to figure out how someone might break into the Royal Gunpowder Mills circa 1920, without having enough research time to do so properly. In other news, fudge is on the menu: www.instagram.com/fudgehutleav...
instagram.com
Instagram
Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.
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Reposted by Malcolm Schmitz
jenny hanniver 🌈✌🌱 @jennyhanniver.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
(writing this down)
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
www.wordcraft.net/flashlight.h... I love Web 1.0 websites made by experts with a handful of Very Specific Interests which they are delighted to tell you about at length. They're one of the best parts of the internet and I hope they stay forever.
wordcraft.net
Flashlight Museum page one
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Things I learnt today: - The word 'drag', in reference to the art form, is older than you might expect. - The phrase 'drag queen' is more recent than you might expect.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
I'm cranky at how difficult some of this research has been. You hear about how America-centric the internet is, but then you start trying to research the history of a topic that is important in America and not particularly important anywhere else...
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
More work on Bright Young Things (my 1920s superhero Wodehouse-Meets-Watchmen story) today.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
I'm finally making progress on my personal writing again. The migraines and my schoolwork knocked me down. But like Sawbones, I always get up again.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
I'm growing a real appreciation for high fantasy characters who talk like bored 1920s aristocrats.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
archive.org/details/barr... I have to spend entirely too much time researching locks for my various sneaky thiefy projects. Found this valuable resource for my 1920s Wodehouse-Meets-Watchmen project- this is a catalogue of locks, complete with some explanation of mechanisms!
archive.org
Illustrated Catalogue of Locks and Builders' Hardware (1920) : Barrows Lock Works : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
1920 catalog of hardware manufactured by Barrows Lock Works of the Yale & Towne Mfg. Co.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
I just got a piece of incredibly good news and I'm feeling so much relief in this chilis' today. I'm going to have time over the summer to write, and then I'm going to get to keep studying at a school I've kind of fallen in love with.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
You are shooting for 'polite but firm, clearly aware that horse hockey is horse hockey but not going to directly call it out, treating the person you're dealing with as a Respectable Peer even if you cannot think highly of them, and impeccably well-mannered."
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
An autistic-neurotypical translation service. People could log into a chat app with (say) a copy of a business email and have a few people look it over for them, and go "okay, if there's a hidden meaning, this is what it's likely to be and how you should handle it."
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Other than that- the word choice is of course wrong, but you can actually get a fair bit of mileage out of imitating a Jane Austen character (Eleanor Dashwood would be my pick) or another Period Piece Aristocrat.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I'd honestly recommend @askamanager.org /Allison Green's work rather than anyone in fiction, because Allison has a huge archive of stuff you can try that's directly related to reality. She has direct social scripts for things like 'coming together as a group to deal with a shitty boss'.
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Reposted by Malcolm Schmitz
KK @kk-maker.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Image: illustration of birdlike dinosaur, dark green with gray head & chest and red flight feathers. They're leaning over a row of dark blue-green eggs half buried in dirt.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
...I can't imagine how difficult it must be to deal with this kind of culture shock if you have *nothing* to work off of to re-adjust your social scripts for the new situation.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I'm in that "disabled starving artist who has no money but can do the middle-class WASP social norms" bucket. I know Where The Forks Go. But I've had to deal with enough Poor People Bureaucracy that it's skewed my social scripts on how to deal with bureaucracy in general.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
If you are a person who has had to deal with Poor People Bureaucracy to survive, dealing with Rich People Bureaucracy is a minefield. All of your social scripts are wrong, and your survival instincts will drive you into counterproductive behaviour.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
If you park your butt in the office of, say, an elite college's admissions office, you are proving that you are the Wrong Sort and you need to be gatekept out. It is rude and unbecoming to aggressively demand that someone take care of your problems.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
When dealing with Poor People Bureaucracy, you need to be as aggressive and annoying as possible to get anything you need. If you have an issue with your welfare benefits, you need to park your butt in the welfare office until your issue is fixed. Or you will fall through the cracks.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
The function of Poor People Bureaucracy is to get everyone to buzz off by any means possible. The function of Rich People Bureaucracy is to gatekeep- getting the 'wrong' people to buzz off but aggressively helping the 'right' people.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
One of the nastier class barriers no one talks about is how your social scripts for dealing with Poor People Bureaucracy do not translate to dealing with Rich People Bureaucracy.
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Stephanie Campisi @stephcampisi.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Don't forget to back up your work, friends!
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
So about the exorcist game: - I'm making it for school - It's called EXORCISE YOUR BEST JUDGEMENT - It's about an ašipu/exorcist in the court of King Sennacherib trying to heal the King's sudden, mysterious disease - Read omens. Study Real Assyrian Medical Texts. Restrain your terrible dog.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
You guys... *really* liked Sulak the Mesopotamian Toilet Demon, huh? ...is this a bad time to tell you I'm working on a game about Mesopotamian doctor-exorcists?
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Tag them on the Mesopotamian toilet demons too!!
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
For the curious, this is what the ancient Mesopotamian toilet-demon (Šulak) and the lion-centaurs who fought him look like. Šulak looks rather like he should be getting lanced by St. George, or perhaps hanging out in the Garden of Earthly Delights. He's a potato of toilety evil and I love him.
An image of a lion-centaur fighting Sulak, the ancient Mesopotamian toilet demon. 
The lion-centaur is a man from the head to the human waist, which is connected to a lion's body sans neck. It has four legs and a tail. Sulak looks rather like a cross between a crocodile and a pig, with a spiny little mane and a pug-like face. He's potato-shaped. I love him.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
According to the paper, they looked like this. Half-man, half-lion. Sulak looks rather like he should be getting lanced by St. George, or perhaps hanging out in Bosch's Hell.
An image of a lion-centaur fighting Sulak, the ancient Mesopotamian toilet demon. 
The lion-centaur is a man from the head to the human waist, which is connected to a lion's body sans neck. It has four legs and a tail. Sulak looks rather like a cross between a crocodile and a pig, with a spiny little mane and a pug-like face. He's potato-shaped. I love him.
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Malcolm Schmitz @malcolmschmitz.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
(The running gag is that there are a couple of very small children near me playing the ancient game of Drop and Pick Up, and I am talking to them as though they are Distinguished Personages of Science. Baby: *Drops bottle, starts crying* Me: "Awww, did your grant funding get denied? Me too, buddy."
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