bluebronzemoon

[bluebronzemoon]

I have a simple, yet incredibly important and difficult question. How do I defeat depression?

Depression isn't Sauron. There's not a magic ring to throw into a volcano.

Strategies that work for me are: 1) work. Work helps and making things help. 2) having other people who make you feel better and brighter around helps, so do animals, 3) Exercise. I'm not a natural born exerciser, so I have a trainer who turns up once or twice a week and works me out until I'm exhausted then finishes with yoga. Walking and weights and biking and running, or whatever you can do, are all real ways to change your mood.

Stop doing things that increase your depression. Do more of the things that lift your spirits.

And work with a therapist, talk to your doctor, all that.

[bluebronzemoon]

I’m currently reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane and I just want to say that I love the way you wrote the little boy main character as having female heroes. All of the books he read having brave, smart, adventurous heroines and then Lettie down the lane seeming larger than life and being his protector. And then I thought of the women or girls in many of your other books. Pepper in Good Omens, Scarlett and Liza in The Graveyard Book, Coraline, etc. They are all brilliant and brave and even when they are not the main character, they never feel like just a placeholder or plot device. They are dynamic and complex. They are role models and badasses and they take charge and take control. I just wanted to say thank you for writing badass women into all your stories.

You are very welcome.

[bluebronzemoon]

How does it feel to know thousands of people hold love, gratitude and deep respect for you? This is a genuine question—I haven’t tried to write anything on a professional level purely because I am terrified that someone might rely on my books for comfort or stability and afterwards turn to me. I’m not qualified for that.

I'm not qualified either. I'm a human being which means I'm as messed up as anyone else on the planet ("probably more so" adds the voice in the back of my head). But I'm still going to tell stories. It's what I do.

[bluebronzemoon]

In the 1980s in France, musicologists and archaeologists Iégor Reznikoff and Michel Dauvois used their voices to explore caves with notable Paleolithic wall paintings. By singing simple notes and whistling, they mapped their perceptions of the caves’ acoustics. They found that paintings were often located in places that were particularly resonant. Animal paintings were common in resonant chambers and in places along the walls that produced strong reverberation. As they crawled through narrow tunnels, they discovered painted red dots exactly located in the most resonant places. The entrances to these tunnels were also marked with paintings. Resonant recesses in walls were especially heavily ornamented.

In a 2017 study, a dozen acousticians, archaeologists, and musicians measured the sonic qualities of cave interiors in northern Spain. The team, led by acoustic scientist Bruno Fazenda, used speakers, computers, and microphone arrays to measure the behavior of precisely calibrated tones within the cave. The caves they studied contain wall art spanning much of the Paleolithic, dating from about forty thousand years to fifteen thousand years ago. The art includes handprints, abstract points and lines, and a bestiary of Paleolithic animals including birds, fish, horses, bovids, reindeer, bear, ibex, cetaceans, and humanlike figures. From hundreds of standardized measurements, the team found that painted red dots and lines, the oldest wall markings, are associated with parts of the cave where low frequencies resonate and sonic clarity is high due to modest reverberation. These would have been excellent places for speech and more complex forms of music, not muddied by excessive reverberation. Animal paintings and handprints were also likely to be in places where clarity is high and overall reverberation is low but with a good low-frequency response. These are the qualities that we seek now in modern performance spaces.

Sounds Wild and Broken, David George Haskell

[bluebronzemoon]

My dad is making me read American Gods… So like, what’s it about? The copy of the book we have has no dust jacket, therefore, no summary.

It's about three American Dogs who have to travel home from California to Maine. It's a long journey, but they face down a bear and several other dangers, including dogcatchers.

[bluebronzemoon]

should I watch good omens I was considering it but I need like one final push

No. I wouldn't, not if I were you. Terrible things might happen.

[bluebronzemoon]

have you ever owned a cat

I don't believe anyone gets to own a cat. At best you get to feed them, make a fuss of them, clean the litter bin, clean up the vomit, pet them until they get bored, and, in the end, sometimes, bury them.

I've attended to many cats in the last 30 years, for years never having fewer than 7 cats, but when Princess died in 2013 (aged around 22) I felt that I was done with having my heart broken by how much longer we live than cats do, at least for a while.

But I got my first dog last year, ten years after swearing never to have another dog, so there may well be more cats in my future.

[bluebronzemoon]

Neil my dude, after showing my mother season one of Good Omens and my dad seeing a bit of it I mentioned you also wrote Coraline and either my mom or dad (don't remember which one said it) said you must have been a weird kid.

Could you please confirm or deny whether or not you were a Weird Kid™?

I was a weird kid.

[bluebronzemoon]

Mind blowing craftmanship by tatami artist Kenzie Yamada.

The soaring crane design comes in jigsaw puzzle like pieces, and mats are in fact monocolor. Dark/light areas appear thanks to how each tatami straw mat is woven, beautifully catching the light.

You can see below the different weave directions depending on the tatami parts:

and in this video how those pieces react to light with a mesmerizing shimmer:

[bluebronzemoon]

the point of art is not to be great but to make it transparently obvious that there is something wrong with you

[bluebronzemoon]

[bluebronzemoon]

Paying homage to The Sandman comics and Kirby Howell-Baptiste's beautiful acting as Death.

Art by my twin sister.

[bluebronzemoon]

Oh hai 🖤 Kirby Howell-Baptiste is on Instagram and she posted a nice high-res version of her #TheSandman DEATH in her iconic "PEACHY KEEN" pose

Photography: Rankin

Original #Sandman comic panel by Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, Robbie Busch, Todd Klein

The post:

Src: Kirby Howell-Baptiste on Instagram

The @netflix deadline for viewer metrics is this Friday, so please watch THE SANDMAN 11x episodes before then, in its entirety, then watch it again, in order to be counted by TPTB to justify a Season 2+ and beyond 😁

#RenewTheSandman

[bluebronzemoon]

❤❤❤ (tweet ❤)

[bluebronzemoon]

You know what to do! 🏴‍☠️❤️‍🔥🏳️‍🌈

[bluebronzemoon]

LGBT+ Neil Gaiman characters

All right.  Let’s begin.  This is a long list so I’m bound to accidentally leave a few out.  Feel free to correct me if you think of one or two I may have forgotten to list.

Keep reading

[bluebronzemoon]

Sandman was my first exposure to trans people, the way you wrote Wanda……I felt horrible for her when her nightmares were of having to undergo surgery to be a woman and I wanted to scream at her parents when they dressed her in a suit and put her deadname on her gravestone. I was 14 and reading it in the library in a very conservative area, and I never knew being trans was possible before that.

I consider it to be, if not *the* reason, one of the reasons I’m such a staunch supporter of the trans community. I was 14 years old and it opened my eyes to a whole community I knew nothing about. Thank you for your writing, it changed my life. I don’t care if you respond to this but I wanted you to know how big of a difference writing one person in a comic made to me.

I’m glad it helped.

And that really is why people are trying to ban books and gut libraries now. Because ideas are dangerous and they can invoke empathy.