Justin Martin

@jmartinwrites.bsky.social

439 Followers 939 Following

Trying it over here. Disabled and queer. Word tinkerer (in schools) and word tinkerer (not in schools). Never not thinking about Plastic Man.

"If you could make a change to anything you’ve written over the years, what would it be? In The Dispossessed, I would mention the communal pickle barrels at street corners in the big towns, restocked by whoever in the community has made or kept more pickles than they need. I knew about the free pickles all along, but never could fit them into the book.
stuffed grape leaves
the cover to 8/The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman, sold in a two in one by McSweeney's. The pond is big and blue; the girl is small and faceless and orange.
two door, locked in combat or staggering, one in a bow
MLK in front of an American flag
various nintendo icons on a multicolored background
stylized white ambulance on stylized fire
a naked girl in a blue moon rides a crane
a group of brightly-colored peasants dance in a line on a white background
a child in Mumbai, in front of sheet-metal lodges, looks towards the sky
a new Civil War comic in the year 2026
red-and-white sketch of a child on a barstool surrounded by fat affable older men; no faces.
craig mccracken, who created powerpuff girls, pitched 16 original shows to netflix but had to make more ppg instead
One person occupies a hill. Another sits in a skiff and rows where he just plowed. One sails above the cornfields or a sunken farmhouse’s roof. Another catches fish in canopies of elms. Sometimes by chance an anchor fixes to a verdant meadow or curving keels graze vineyards down below. Where slender she-goats lately grazed on grass, there ugly seals recline. Nereïds gape at underwater groves and towns and homes. Dolphins inhabit woods. They dash against 325 330 the lofty boughs and smack the shaken trees. Wolves swim with sheep. Waves drag off tawny lions. Waves drag off tigers. Boars cannot employ their lightning force, or floating deer swift legs. The roving bird seeks ground on which to stand, then falls into the sea on weary wings. The ocean’s lawlessness had covered hills, and strange new surf was pounding mountaintops. Most are dispatched by waves. Prolonged starvation from lack of food kills those the waves have spared.
two hands reach towards each other in a sparsely star-flecked sky
reed's eyeballs are little zucchini-shaped binoculars
a panel where reed richards, who does not believe in ghosts, clarifies that ghost rider is "an alive man who just LOOKS like a ghost" and then, in a separate balloon, "and even then, only occasionally"
128 THE FROG NEIGHBORS Two frogs lived close to each other. One lived in a pond that was deep and far from the road, while the other lived in a puddle on the road. The pond- dwelling frog advised his friend to move to his pond. “You’ll have a better life here,” he said, “and a safer one as well.” But the other frog didn’t listen to this advice. “It’s really hard to up and leave one’s familiar surroundings,” he said. And before long he was crushed to death beneath the wheel of a passing wagon. Likewise, there are people who throughout their lives pursue worthless occupations and are overtaken by death before they find better ways to spend their time.
exact meter out of thin air? in tmnt font
straight up 90s todd macfarlane in the TMNT font
an egg with eyes in a black and white goblet. sketchy.
ZH: A lot of animators grow up watching cartoons, and that inspires them to draw and that inspires them to animate. Which is great, but if the only thing you watch is other cartoons, you’re not gonna pull from an interesting [place]. “Family Guy” will reference weird ’50s stuff and ’80s stuff. “The Simpsons” pulls from dramas and actions and thrillers and real-life references. A lot of the stuff we find funny or interesting, and what goes into the show, is a lot of the real-world stuff. Like a weird Dick Cavett interview from the ’70s. All the real stuff in the world that we find interesting as adult men, that is completely unrelated to cartoons, is usually more fresh. If you’re just watching cartoons and making cartoons based on cartoons, it spirals into a big blob of nothing.
a gold record on a red background; cover of Telegraph Avenue
bugs bunny in drag
identify all images with stairs
the cover of Harlan Ellison's Greatest Hits, a greenish human face being pulled apart from within by black-nailed red fingers.
btw the fee for my services is you and noa have to watch two (2) episodes of the muppet show chosen by me
JUGGLER I’ve long accepted that I’d be a terrible juggler – I’m disabled, and can’t screw the screw-tops off of Snapple bottles or put my own shorts on. Juggling is one of those things that no one will be mad at you for being bad at, even forever–it’s not like I’m a terrible driver, or I’m a horrible husband. The way we react to the vast majority of these people, the non-jugglers–I think it proves we each have access to a deep well of ultra-chill generosity that we spend most of our time simply forgetting exists. But the thing is: I think it’s pretty likely, almost certain, that if every single person had to take a day off–let’s say December 16th–and we all went to Flattest Nebraska and formed some sort of beautiful seven-thousand-layer pyramid, where the people at the bottom were so freaking coordinated that they could juggle jugglers, and not just juggle jugglers but juggle jugglers juggling jugglers who were themselves juggling jugglers who also juggled juggler-juggling jugglers, you would need a couple people at the tiptop of this many-fingered mountainside who were doing their part by up-and-downing a single red ball, left hand, left hand, left hand, over and over as it glinted in the sun. I could be so good at being one of those people. And it would feel good: some of us trying harder than others, all of us trying, each of us caught.
the "My next read" feature of Columbus Metropolitan Library "tell us what you like to read and we'll create a book list - just for you - and email it to you within 2-3 days"
a bandstand, outdoors, where folks in Toad and Wario hats and full Donkey Kong jumpers play flutes, sax, keys, etc
the cover of Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is black with four-pointed orange and yellow starbusts of varying sizes, as well as rounded stars of the same size and color.
fanmade 'species' and 'ship' table for Lasers and Feelings. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MhxQQapqbXl4g9ch3JYMfuV7gtlfDEie6RoG9_pcwM4/edit?tab=t.0
mom, who stands next to me, next to my brother.
THE WILD IRIS At the end of my suffering there was a door. Hear me out: that which you call death I remember. Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs. You who do not remember passage from the other world I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice: from the center of my life came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on azure seawater.)
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Just jabbed a spear into the side of the guy we're crucifying lol. To torment and humiliate him. Oh damn I'm looking at the wound now and actually it's kind of crazy. Oh wow
myself and five others outside of a Breakout escape room.
but may i suggest instead of an exchange of rings an exchange of gilded beyblades 'you may now let 'er rip'
reply with a dc character and i'll give a hot take
a tweet and a quote tweet Fuck storytelling having to be "tighter". Gimme more weird random sideplots, gimme me more scenes of the characters just hanging out together The notion of "productivity" has ruined art. Now everything we watch has gotta contribute to the main plot otherwise its not "productive" quote tweet: People complaining about there never being anymore 50 ep Gundam shows are the same ones that complain about sluggish pacing, filler, janky animation, dumb plot points, etc when they get just that. We don't need those lengthy series anymore. It's a broadcast/streaming nightmare without a break as it is. Tighten down the story, stop having all those useless threads that never get tied up properly, give the animation team better windows to work for more consistent animation (no rushing for broadcast), etc.
You were supposed to have a secret wish to get you where you wanted to go. She had also had a secret wish, but it had been such a secret that she didn’t know what its words would be; she only knew what it felt like. The secret wish turned out to be leaf. Everything she had wanted came down to leaf, and she hadn’t even known it. As a leaf, she finally found her right dimensions, and soon enough she adapted to them, as she had never adapted to her dimensions in life. The problem in life had always been that she had wanted to be bigger, but didn’t know how. She could not adapt to her right size. She didn’t even know what her right size was. But there, under the golden sun, she finally found out: it was the size of a leaf. If she had been told this when she was a child, she could have adapted to it, and led a simple life of little striving, and been happy, rather than hoping and attending school. But the love of her father had made her think she was great, as giant as the universe, and that other people should know it. What had she accomplished with all her ambition to prove his beliefs about her right? Instead, she might have been content with choosing one person to love, and living with them simply, someone who was also the size of a leaf, rather than the size of the shore. Perhaps this was where she had first gone wrong: in thinking she could be the size of a shore, and letting her father hope that for her, rather than telling him, No. He had been so excited, encouraging her in his certainty that she was the size of the shore, or could be. He had expended much energy on her, and what had that gotten him in return? She had gone into the world without him, thinking she could achieve it, but she had achieved only a strange distance from this person she loved. If she had known that she was the size of a leaf, she would not have bothered with those aspirations. She would have done her best to remain small.
an excerpt from Edward Hoagland's "A Sense of Falling", available in "Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000".
loads of disabled folks -- me, a few in wheelchairs, some able bodied support people -- at the state capital
a comic panel in which Superman flies into a cabin as a 50s Lois calls him a "beast! a bigamist! a two-timing don juan!"
jug of Hi-C BLAST orange; it is important you know that blast is in a swooshy font and orange is normal font but in this ragged sketchy orange background diagonally off of Blast.
a page from Universe! in which four minimalist flowerlike aliens with white bodies and featureless orange paint-smear faces investigate an astronaut.
an open orange mouth on a pastel mint green background; its white teeth spell out WITH TEETH.