Mark Wallace, so-called

@markwallace

Writer, game designer, anguish flâneur. Words: NYTimes, Salon, LARB, Rumpus, GQ, etc. Blog: yrpgm.bearblog.dev/blog/ Games: markwallace.itch.io News: inlooking.substack.com Once wrote a book:

529 Following720 Followers1,255 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and markwallace.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· 11d

Book I still haven't finished after a couple of months, book I started and finished in a couple of days, book I purchased.

Three books: The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth, which I like but which has gotten quite slow in the middle; The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi, which is really good like potato chips are really good so you can't stop eating them, y'know? and The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., which I'm really looking forward to.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· 29d

After Tintin, the fictional character who most inspired me to become a journalist was probably Karl Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Happily getting reacquainted after a number of decades. So good.

Darren McGavin in white shirt and dark tie at a typewriter, from the first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, 1974. What a badass ❤️

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jun 14

Reading an old copy of @grantamag.bsky.social and I can't imagine what it must have been like for Paul Theroux to publish his first novel, a stupendous moment in any writer's life, and then receive a letter from his mother calling it "trash."

Cover of Granta #98, featuring a large blue swimming pool against the backdrop of a gray sea with hills in the distance under an overcast sky. Scotland or Wales, I believe. Always evocative, Granta.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· May 3

My head goes to what is the Doskvol and Deadlands for a city of criminal mice? Maybe a quaint little house surrounded by skyscrapers under construction, something like this?

A quaint little pink house surrounded by big city buildings that have been filtered into B&W to heighten the effect of its isolation. Ideal setting for a Mausritter x Blades in the Dark game, right?

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· May 1

It is possible that a more "me" jacket than this does not exist.

picture of an orange chore coat with its inner and outer pockets stuffed with books and pens. What's that you say? I'm drooling?

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Mar 29

Share a magazine cover you love

Cover of OMNI magazine #1, featuring a car in the distance, red tail lights, driving along a road at dusk, with a fence looming into huge forced perspective on the right. Hard to convey in words how hard this cover goes. It was the future, threatening to leave you behind.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Mar 28

one of the all-time greatest movies ever fight me

Jackie Earle Haley, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Christopher (on bicycle), and Daniel Stern all looking so fucking 1979 in Breaking Away, one of the all-time greatest movies ever fight me

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jan 28

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jan 21

Killer loot drop at the PO today

The rulebook for the Death in Space TTRPG, featuring a stylized foil sun on black ground with a red spaceman, and a copy of The Week Junior with the KPop Demon Hunters on the cover. Which is cooler? You decide.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Nov 16

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

Same photo of Elliott Gould looking sad at the bar that I usually post. I mean, it's a great photo, so... And my moral philosophy!

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Nov 15

Just spent a week with my aging dad. Had a nice time and was happy to be able to help him out. Fringe benefit: came back with these 15mm Napoleonic figures he's had for 50 years and which we used to wargame with when I was ca. 8yo. Some of these little Prussian guys I painted when I was a kid!

Some 15mm Napoleonic lead figures. On cardboard bases. It was a long time ago.

15mm Napoleonic lead figures in a pile. Been in the box for too long, time to get some wargame on.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Nov 12

Age yourself with gaming

Opening screen of the 1977 computer game ADVENTURE. Which I played the shit out of that year. "You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully."

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Oct 21

stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness

John Cho and Kal Penn in the movie poster for Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Oct 13

Today's harvest. (About 4x this many went in the compost — too many worms.)

50 apples and a quince drying on a towel, artfully shot in portrait mode against the backdrop of a dun California hillside

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Oct 12

What was your first tabletop wargame?

Cover of the 1975 rulebook for Empire, Napoleonic wargaming, with a drawing of Napoleon on horseback addressing his troops. First played when I was 8 or 9.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Oct 1

well played

A California license plate in yellow on black reading 0SLP2BK. Beastie Boys, yo.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Sep 10

it's fun when William Gibson reads like the lore in a TTRPG module, especially when he's just talking about the here and now

A page from the William Gibson novel Agency in which the POV character talks about the fall of democracy and the insulating power of the kleptocracy. Apologies for not typing the whole thing out on my phone.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Aug 26

No new pictures, where are you mentally

A large grey sloth, clinging vertically to a tree, peering deep into your soul, seeing your secrets, knowing your guilt. Or perhaps just asleep.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Aug 17

I feel like they worked on this sign

The shop sign for Hobson's Choice Cleaners in San Francisco. Because there's only one choice, really.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Aug 7

If you see this, post a sword ⚔️

A shirtless Paul Richter holding a big sword out in front of him in the 1924 Fritz Lang movie Die Nibelungen. I haven't seen it, but I enjoyed the first hour of the 2024 film Hagen, which is a retelling of some of the same tales. Might even watch the rest of it someday.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Aug 4

I am staying next door, so I guess I'd better start writing some kind of weird-ass novel.

A plaque that says, in French, "The Irish writer James Joyce stayed in this hotel in October 1922. He started writing his novel Finnegan's Wake." That's a big fucking bed to lie in, I tell you.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jul 31

The Centrale Montemartini is a museum of Roman antiquities set in a nearly 100yo former steam power plant. One of the most striking juxtapositions of imagery I've seen in a while. Very cool.

Ancient Roman busts arrayed alongside a huge black iron steam boiler with contraptions along the top that echo the rank of disembodied heads.

A headless statue from ancient Rome standing in front of the ductwork of a 75yo steam boiler.

Busts and a headless statue from ancient Rome beside a huge black iron boiler, as well as it's control panel.

An ancient Roman sarcophagus with a wavy vertical motif in front of huge vertical black iron boiler pipes.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jul 17

If you see this, post a vampire 🌺

A six foot tall and stinky corpse flower, kind of like a giant lily but smelling really bad. At least, that's what my wife said. I didn't see it, I had to work.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jun 26

little porch visitor today

A cute little green-and-yellow parakeet or budgie perched on a wicker chair on our porch. No, we do not need another pet right now.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jun 24

What's a poster you had in your room growing up?

Queen's Fat Bottom Girls / Bicycle Race poster, from the album Jazz, featuring a lot of naked women on bicycles. Remarkably lenient, my parents, to let me hang this in my room.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jun 12

You've been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you. No, you don't want to see my belly.

Scene from Severance in which Mark and Hilly wait for the goat people to approach.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Jun 2

I've made a terrible mistake: have not listened to Low in quite some time. Rectifying now. #bowie #davidbowie #brianeno #tonyvisconti

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Apr 17

A movie that takes place where you're from.

John Cazale and Al Pacino looking sweaty and nervous in Dog Day Afternoon. What a film! Don't tell me you've never seen it. Actually, do tell me, and I'll be the biggest cheerleader for the treat you're in for.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Mar 25

Those are awesome. Also...

Wooly Willy, the toy with the magnet that let you arrange iron filings on dude's face. Yes, it really was a toy. No, I never opened mine up to check out all the iron dust inside.

Mark Wallace, so-called@markwallace· Mar 25

Post a warning