Swinging from Mars

Trying something a bit new. Fandom detours always bring me back to HP. Previously gallifabray.

[miraclemaya]

living in one of those free use public sex kinda hentai but no one wants to have sex with me so i mostly just stay home and post. i look outside and sigh wistfully at the sight of a woman getting eaten out so hard she somehow cums twice in one moment and then close my blinds so i can focus on cookie clicker

[str8aura-no-not-that-one]

Charles guiteau

[communistrainbowdash]

The man who assassinated James Garfield??????

[str8aura-no-not-that-one]

[prime89]

I will always love how you can learn things that your history class failed to teach you from shitposts on this site. Never change.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

You don’t get knowledge delivered like this on other webbed sites and apps.

[maryreadings]

obsessed with this silly tiger

[curlsandstems]

They DID that!!!

[ariestess]

It took me about 15 seconds in to realize what was happening in this vid, but the second I did, I legit came. This is… I got chills and got so much validation for my theories about tap and pretty much any genre of music here…

[telegantmess]

Tap is probably one of the dance styles that gets the least amount of credit four how badass it is

[royalnugget42]

Holy hell-

[enigmatic-mystery-777]

Sorry I don’t get it?

[royalnugget42]

They’re tap dancing, a kind of dancing typically associated with being old-fashioned and kind of silly. Personally, even tap dancing to old music is awesome in my eyes, but this is on a totally new and exciting level

[amuseoffyre]

The thing about tap is that it’s so often seen as a fancy, old-fashioned dainty dance that only posh (and generally white) people do in tuxedos but it didn’t used to be the case.

Way back in the early days, it was where black performers in Vaudeville were legendary for it in Jazz and Jive routines. At about 1:37, this is where the Nicholas brothers go off.

It’s such an expressive and joyful kind of dance and matches so well with hip hop beats and rhythm, which is why the modern reworking of it is so awesome.

[bogleech]

Im sure a lot of people also watch the op video and they assume that “clap” sound is part of the music just because a LOT of modern music samples that sound and in some music it is just the sound of hands clapping, but no that is a sound being made by all their shoes at once.

[meinenaffenhosen]

one of my favorite syncopated ladies routines

[madgastronomer]

Has the world forgotten Gregory Hines?

[elljayvee]

I am gritting my teeth at the mere suggestion that tap is primarily associated with dainty white people.

Tap is a distinctive American art form that comes from a blending of African dance traditions with Irish dance traditions. It was developed by Black and white dancers and came up alongside and deeply entwined with jazz.

Certainly the tap that ends up in musical theater often seems old-fashioned and white but that’s a musical theater issue, not a tap issue. That is only one small part of tap, which continues to have a strong African-American tradition.

The Nicholas Brothers, above, are in a clip from the film Stormy Weather, which has an almost entirely African-American cast. Some of the other scenes in the film include Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, one of the greatest tap artists of all time. He was very well-known generally and was in quite a few Shirley Temple movies in his day. (Shirley Temple, herself, was a tap dancer – which I’ll be real is probably contributing to people thinking it’s old-fashioned and white, because it’s easy to forget the Black man dancing alongside her, I guess.)

Here’s Bill Robinson with Cab Calloway in Stormy Weather – he’s performing a variation of his famous “stair dance” in parts of this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY3fbvBRiaM

Here’s probably the most widely famous version of the “stair dance”, from The Little Colonel:

There’ve been a lot of white tap dancers through the years – see, for example, everyone’s favorite clip of two men torturing a speech therapist:

… but a lot of its most famous practitioners have been Black and it’s weird to me that people don’t know that.

Have a scene from Tap (1989).

[elljayvee]

Today I’d like to talk a little about Savion Glover, who is one of (if not THE MOST) famous living tap artists. This is from 2002:

and this from 2014-ish:

And if you are saying, well, I never heard of this guy, I guess today you are going to learn about this guy. But I bet you know THIS guy:

Mumble’s dance is choreographed by, and mo-capped from, Savion Glover.

This guy. This guy is SKILLED, ok? He’s in his 50s now; he’s been a professional tapper for over FORTY YEARS – he made his Broadway debut at age 11. He’s in that movie, Tap, that I linked a clip from above. Sometimes his tap seems a little old-fashioned – other times it is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. This is intentional – he’s paying tribute to his teachers and tappers of the past by learning and performing their signature moves, but also he’s got his own style.

It is absolutely worth going through whatever you can find on YouTube. Look for “Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk” – he was Tony nominated for the choreo & his performances in this musical. (The MDA telethon performance above is an excerpt – he did these for several years on the telethon.)

I like this one, because you can watch modern African-American tap alongside modern-traditional Irish dance and you can see that these are related, but distinct, art forms. They share a common ancestor, but they’re also so different. Right around 4 minutes, Colin Dunne (the man in the cover image below) and Savion Glover start dancing together, trading off, and it’s AMAZING.

Sidenote, if anyone ever hears of a revival of “Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk,” please tell me, I want to see it liiiiiiive.

Let’s finish off with Glover’s special guest performance at the Stockholm International Tap Dance Festival last year:

[thetursithan]

[iamhisgloriouspurpose]

How long did it take them to figure out that it could actually be done? That's staggering.

[kiragecko]

[Video is titled, "four cellists play Ravel's Bolero." It's on Classic fM. They all play on the same cello, with the drum part is played by plucking strings. Two of them do small comedy fights in the background between their parts, trying to take the other's place beside the cello. It's a pretty tight fit, and at some points there are four bows almost touching as they all saw the strings.

Text on the screen reads,

four cellists play Ravel's Bolero ... on just one cello. Bolero has long been a test of endurance for snare drummers, but here, every part is played by a cellist. With only one instrument in sight, Wiener Cello Ensemble 5 + 1 leap to the task, involving a fair amount of acrobatics! Watch it all unfold ...

End ID.]

[yayponies]

we have got to get regular porn back on this website

[desertnightdrive]

Today has been extremely difficult. I am a wreck.

[dhr-advent]

D/Hr Advent 2025

D/Hr Advent began in 2011 on Livejournal as a small celebration of the Draco/Hermione ship and over the years it has become a tradition beloved by thousands of fans across multiple platforms. I'm sure the original founders never expected it to become such a massive phenomenon, and watching it grow has been a special joy for me.

That means it's a little bittersweet to announce that this will be the fifteenth year of the Advent fest, and it will be the last. Fifteen years is a true milestone, and the right moment to close this chapter. I'm grateful to every fan who has been part of this. Writers, artists, reccers, and commenters - you've all made this fest a marvelous experience.

I've looked forward to this every year, and while I'll miss it in the future, it has filled me with such delight that I'll never forget it. Thank you for all the laughs and tears, for your participation and support, and for making every December feel so magical. It's been a treasure.

<3 Musyc

Nominations will open on Friday, Oct 10 and will close Friday, Oct 17 at 11:59PM Eastern (03:59 UTC Oct 18).

[desertnightdrive]

🥺

[lotrcolors]

Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

[maria-tries]

autumn kitties to greet the -ber months 🎃

[dankxsinatra]

Flooflers

[cricketcat9]

🥹🥹🥹

[greengableslover]

It was an evening of grey fog that had crept in from the gulf, swathed the harbor, filled the glens and valleys, and clung heavily to the autumnal meadows. Through it the sea sobbed and shuddered.

period drama + fog/mist

THE SECRET GARDEN (1993)

JANE EYRE (2011)

EMMA. (2020)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005)

ANNE WITH AN E (2017 - 2019)

THE HANDMAIDEN (2016)

THE WOMAN IN BLACK (2012)

BRIDGERTON (2020 - )

[egberts]

[gidguard]

[shutyourmoustache]

*whispers* holy shit people are amazing.

[kaijuno]

Tippy tap

[desertnightdrive]

More interested in his feet than actual food 🥺

[depsidase]

[fand0mfan]

I can't be the only person who immediately looked for the least common ones to try and use them more, right?

[thesarahshay]

Scumwit and dirt goblin are pretty great, tbh.

[hapalopus]

I'm more interested in the mid-range. People actually call others dipclown, buttgoblin, and poopboy??

[cryoverkiltmilk]

Find your favorite mid-range entries:

dickgoblin, twatnozzle, and wankbag

[elodieunderglass]

Tremendous amount of work being done here

[jesterbots]

genuinely one of the saddest parts of this new era of the internet is how hard it is to rick roll someone now. with people's attention spans shortening so much, they wouldn't even get through the first few bait seconds before clicking off the video. like i saw a comment that ended with "btw i made all of this up" and the replies kept treating it so seriously because none of them finished the entire 4 sentence comment. and We're no strangers to love You know the rules and so do I (do I) A full commitment's what I'm thinking of You wouldn't get this from any other guy I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

[animentality]

[stannisbaratheon]

[stannisbaratheon]

i posted this old as balls gifset ten years ago today

[soaringsearingphoenix]

Happy anniversary old as balls gifset

[maeglinthebold]

@meme-conservation

[meme-conservation]

We are pleased to note the continued survival of this meme to the point that it, too, is Old As Balls