The Dallas Cowboys are reportedly working toward a contract extension with quarterback Dak Prescott that would “approach $30 million annually.”
Clarence E. Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the update Tuesday and noted the Cowboys have made “more progress” toward a new deal with Prescott than with wide receiver Amari Cooper, whose demands have been “shockingly high.”
Hill also noted the Cowboys “seem to be nonplussed” about making Prescott the highest-paid player in franchise history. Defensive end Demarcus Lawrence is the team’s top-paid player after signing a five-year, $105 million contract in April.
Both key offensive players are heading into the final year of their contracts.
Prescott is coming off a season when he completed 67.7 percent of his throws for 3,885 yards with 22 touchdowns and eight interceptions in 16 games. He added six rushing scores for the third consecutive year.
The 25-year-old Mississippi State product ranked 17th in ESPN’sTotal QBRand 20th at the position inPro Football Focus‘ grades.
Prescott had dramatic splits in the season’s two halves, though. He had a 88.9 passer rating in the first eight games last year and a 103.4 rating in the final eight, showcasing the impact of Cooper after he was acquired in a trade.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones appeared onTheRich Eisen Showwith former Dallas wideout Michael Irvin on Monday and said he’s “confident” a deal will get done with their franchise quarterback, per Hill.
“We are sold on Dak,” he said. “We do want to have him for the long term. We think he is worthy of investing in for the long term. He is going into his fourth year in the NFL. When you look at the snaps he has had, the situations he has been in and how he has got here and you see he has performed, we see real upside in Dak.”
Rich Eisen Show @RichEisenShow
“We’re sold on Dak and we do want to have him for the long-term.” -@DallasCowboys owner Jerry Jones told @michaelirvin88 about @Dak future with the team: https://t.co/9pkdQh8sIz
Meanwhile, Cooper’s role had faded with the Oakland Raiders, who selected him with the fourth overall pick in 2015, before Dallas traded its first-round pick this year for him.
After tallying just 22 catches and one touchdown in six games with the Raiders, he racked up 53 receptions and six scores in nine appearances for the Cowboys.
His base salary will jump from less than $1 million in the first four years of his rookie deal to $13.9 million as part of his fifth-year option, though. In turn, Hill reported the team is aware the “floor of his contract is $16 million annually” to sign him to a long-term extension.
All told, the Cowboys are seemingly more focused on making sure Prescott is re-signed, but his two levels of performance last year show the importance of making sure he has a true No. 1 wide receiver. It could bring the franchise tag into play with Cooper if a deal isn’t reached.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) is in her second term and plays a critical role as co-chief of the newly expanded Blue Dog Coalition. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO
Rep. Stephanie Murphy is leading a newly powerful faction of moderate House Democrats.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a veiled shot at Rep. Stephanie Murphy during a closed-door meeting after the centrist Florida Democrat bucked party leaders on a contentious immigration vote.
Pelosi said Republicans were eager to exploit fissures in the early weeks of the new majority, according to a person in the room, and Democrats newly enjoying exclusive committee assignments — like Murphy — can’t be breaking ranks.
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Murphy, who was sitting only a few feet away and wearing a “Wonder Woman” T-shirt beneath her blazer, didn’t respond. But months later, she remains unapologetic about the vote, arguing battleground Democrats shouldn’t be expected to fall in line simply to avoid embarrassing leadership on procedural votes.
“Decisions aren’t black or white sometimes, and at the end of the day, members have to vote their districts, especially the ones, I think, who are in more vulnerable seats,” Murphy said in an interview in her Capitol office.
In just her second term, Murphy is suddenly a critical figure in the House as co-chief of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition. Once on the verge of extinction, the Blue Dogs nearly tripled their membership after the 2018 elections and now have27 members.
And Murphy and the Blue Dogs are proving themselves to be a force — challenging leadership and the caucus’ progressive wing with real success.
Pelosi and her deputies yanked a budget bill from the floor last month in part because ofcomplaints from moderates that it was too expensive. This month, the Blue Dogs are holding up a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill — a key priority for the left — as they look to soften it for rural areas, though Murphy herself supports it. Murphy also helped secure changes sought by Blue Dogs to Democrats’ landmark campaign finance overhaul.
Murphy prefers to work quietly behind the scenes, but her colleagues probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn she earned the nickname “Velvet Hammer” as a Pentagon analyst before she came to Congress. (Her Pentagon team even turned it into a drink: part champagne, part bourbon.)
“She’s a low-key negotiator and power broker but don’t mistake that for not having a lot of power,” said Rep. Ben McAdams, a Blue Dog Democrat from Utah. “As long as we’re organized and willing to say no to legislation that doesn’t advance good policy, legislation doesn’t go forward without us being willing to support it.”
Murphy doesn’t clash with her party just for the sake of it, and she’s worked with Democratic leaders to fend off the “gotcha” votes that House Republicans use to squeeze vulnerable Democrats.
Whenever the GOP uses its procedural powers todeploy tough amendment votes, Blue Dog leaders gather near the back of the chamber in what Murphy calls a “safe zone” to dispatch last-minute advice to members. And if moderates do decide to break with the party, Murphy will personally make sure Pelosi’s whip team is aware, helping avoid any more embarrassing defeats on the floor.
Murphy is not the typical Blue Dog, which has long been seen as a boys’ club of older, white Democrats who were moderate on social issues and worried about the national debt.
The first Vietnamese American woman to serve in Congress, Murphy is a 40-year-old mom who strongly supports LGBTQ and abortion rights. She does back a Balanced Budget Amendment, however, and preaches the kind of fiscal tightening detested by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Murphy also resembles many of the freshmen who helped deliver Democrats the majority: ex-Pentagon with zero political experience, and a woman of color with kids back home. Before she filed her campaign paperwork, she hadn’t even been registered as a Democrat, according to an aide.
But her quick success — a 15-point margin of victory last fall after beating ex-Rep. John Mica by just 3 points in her first election — has turned her into a guidepost for the dozens of freshmen Democrats who unseated GOP incumbents last year and are looking to survive in Donald Trump’s Washington as middle-of-the-road Democrats.
McAdams, who won one of the closest contests last November, said he privately approached Murphy even before the Democratic whip team with his qualms about the caucus’s marquee campaign finance and anti-corruption bill, H.R. 1.
McAdams, like roughly a dozen other moderates, had issues with the idea of public financed campaigns, with taxpayer money going toward TV ads.
Within days, Murphy worked with the bill’s chief authors, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and John Sarbanes (D-Md.), to come up with a workaround so that all the money came from fees, not tax dollars. The tweak went almost unnoticed until a reporter noticed that a group of Blue Dogs had all become co-sponsors on the same day.
Back in the fall, Murphy withheld her vote for Pelosi as speaker until she and a band of moderates — including some Republicans — secured a promise from leadership to make it easier for bipartisan legislation to receive floor votes.
“She helped us get to a point where everybody was comfortable,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, who worked with Murphy to win over skeptical Democratic committee chairmen who had fearedthey’d lose their ability to control the agenda.
The maneuvering led several Republicans to take the highly unusual step of breaking with their party to support the Democratic rules package on the floor, including Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who credited Murphy’s “good faith manner.”
And unlike many of her Democratic colleagues, Murphy has been happy to accept invitations to the White House. It has paid off: On one visit, she pitched Vice President Mike Pence to support loosening restrictions for federal funding on gun research, and she says that moment — which came in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting in her home state — helped get the provision ultimately signed into law.
Murphy has largely avoided direct clashes with the progressive firebrands who have dominated discussion of the new Congress, but she recently made something of an exception by publishing an op-ed condemning socialism that some on Capitol Hill saw as a rebuke to members of her own party.
Murphy said she decided to speak out because of what she views as the ideology’s dark side. Her own family fled communist Vietnam by boat in 1979, when she was just 6 months old, and her family was rescued at sea by the U.S. Navy before moving to the United States.
“I feel like my family didn’t escape socialist Vietnam, taking great risk to have the opportunity to grow up in America and live the American dream, for me to be serving in Congress to see this conversation about socialism grow as it did,” she said.
Still, Murphy typically stays away from highlighting the internal fights that have characterized much of the new Congress — a style that’s won Murphy praise from top Democrats like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
“She gives you a heads up to let you know what they may be doing, or what she may be doing that might not be what the majority of the party will be doing,” Hoyer said in an interview. “The fact that she’s honest and straightforward about it really enhances her reputation and the trust people have in her.”
As we’ve learned throughout Game of Thrones, visions and prophecies in this world are a double-edged sword.
At best, they provide real foreshadowing, but hardly ever for the outcome we initially expected. At worst, knowing these visions only makes characters fulfill their own ill-fated destinies in attempts to avoid it.
All of that seems to be the case for the most vital vision on the show, from all the way back in Season 2. As one Redditor is proposing, we might’ve misinterpreted a key part of symbolism in the prophecy, which predicted exactly how the upcoming battle between Daenerys and Cersei will end in episode 5 of Season 8.
We feel you, Daenerys.
Image: hbo
While searching for her stolen dragons in the mysterious House of the Undying in the Season 2 finale, Daenerys walks through what people believe is a vision of the future. Primarily, she walks through King’s Landings’ iconic throne room, empty, burned, and destroyed beyond repair.
The key symbol we misinterpreted, though, was the white debris falling over the destroyed hall. The White Walker threat that loomed in the background at the time made us assume that it was snow coating the throne room, meaning that winter would come for King’s Landing.
But after winter came and went without getting anywhere near the capital, we’ve had to rethink what that all meant. And now that Daenerys’ is about to Dracarys King’s Landing to shreds, the debris we thought was snow is looking a lot like ash instead.
There’s other foreshadowing to support that the vision was actually showing Daenerys’ destiny as the Queen of the Ashes.
In Season 7, when she first struggled with whether or not to rain fire down on the capital, she told Tyrion she had no desire to become the Queen of Ashes. But after losing all her friends, the love of her life, and all but one of her dragons, Daenerys seems to have been cornered into truly becoming her father’s daughter, as the Mad Queen who will burn them all.
In the book version of the House of the Undying vision, there is no scene where the throne room appears destroyed. But at one point the warlocks call Daenerys “mother of dragons, daughter of death.” Some interpreted this to mean she was born out of death, after nearly every one of her family members died.
Increasingly, though, that moniker appears to be literal. Daenerys is not the savior who will use fire and blood to make a better world, but rather the harbinger of death by fire — just like the father she always feared becoming.
Considering how her vision in the House of the Undying ends in Season 2, it doesn’t bode well for her survival or chances at winning the crown either.
In the destroyed throne room, Daenerys doesn’t actually get to touch the throne she believed was her birthright. Though the debris falling from the sky is arguably ash, there is definitely still snow already occupying the throne. You know, like Jon Snow.
Daenerys reaches out to touch the throne anyway, but then hears the cries of her dragons, and turns away from the seat of power to save her children instead.
After passing through the gates of Castle Black, she then finds herself beyond the Wall, but standing before the tent where Drogo died. If you’ll remember, the witch who killed Drogo in Season 1 also gave Daenerys a prophecy. When asked when they’d be reunited, she said:
“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”
Many have debated that, metaphorically speaking, a lot of this has already happened. But that’s not a good thing, since being reunited with her Khal would mean Daenerys needs to die herself for the prophecy to be completed. At least that’s what the vision implies. When she finds Drogo and their unborn child Rhaego in the tent, she repeats the prophecy as reason the reason why she cannot stay with them in the Night Lands.
It is a cold comfort, but at least when Daenerys inevitably becomes the Queen of Ashes, it seems she might finally be able to rest with the love that was ripped away from her years ago.
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He’s still emotional over the infamous injury suffered in a challenge with Sergio Ramos in the UEFA Champions League final last season, has nothing to say to the haters who still doubt him and thinks his hair is better than Odell Beckham Jr’s.
Liverpool superstar Mo Salah is learning to embrace his newfound fame.
Human influencers like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner might want to secure their positions in the influencer realm before they get ousted by glorified Sims.
That’s right: There are now computer generated images that do exactly what human influencers do. There’s a human behind each one — coming up with captions and manually generating the content — though it can be unclear who exactly that person is. The financial threads are equally hazy, but you can be sure that someone is making money off of these “people.”
According to CBS, the digital influencer market is set to reach $2 billion in the next two years. The scariest thing is just how convincing these artificial influencers really are: 42 percent of people who were following a digital Instagrammer didn’t realize it wasn’t a real person, according to a recent study by the media company Fullscreen.
I set out to understand who exactly these new influencers are, and why they exist. That involved interacting with them — or at least trying to. The feeling of being left on read by people who don’t exist is a unique one. It also made me feel like they’re hiding something. But here’s what we know … so far.
Rest assured, they’ll either save us from the digital malaise we’ve all scrolled ourselves into, or destroy us further.
Lil Miquela, or Miquela Sousa, is a perpetually 19-year-old girl from Downey, California. She has all the necessary ingredients for Insta-success: good looks, flashy clothing, a nonexistent yet bottomless bank account, and a passion for activism. It’s easy to forget you’re looking at a bot when reading her captions, which are sprinkled with witty remarks and relatable musings. “No lie, I wish I’d been assembled in the ’90s …” she quips, echoing the very human desire to be from another time. It’s part of what makes her so popular — and so uncanny.
The algorithmic babe was named one of the 25 most influential people on the internet by Time last year, alongside Busy Philips and Logan Paul. (She was the only non-human to make the cut.) It’s safe to say the integration of bot personalities into the mainstream has begun.
In addition to being an influencer, she’s also a singer and merch seller. Miquela has around 52,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Not bad for someone who doesn’t exist in the physical realm.
And the merch? Socks from Club 404, Lil Miquela’s overpriced swag brand, will run you $30 for two pairs.
But wait a second, why CGI influencers?
Before we introduce more of these new age avatars, it’s important to understand how they came to be. Cue Brud. And Cain Intelligence.
Brud is the LA-based tech startup credited with Miquela’s existence. It’s described as a “transmedia studio that creates digital character driven story worlds,” whatever that means. Other than that, it’s pretty much a mystery. We do know that it was founded by two people: Sara DeCou and Trevor McFedries, neither of whom could be reached for comment.
Cain Intelligence is even more of a mystery. Founded by Daniel Cain, who may or may not be real, the company is another startup. It describes itself as “the industry leader in Conscious Language Intelligence (CLI), a type of Artificial Intelligence that allows for humans to engage with our specialized robots in free-format, natural language.” The website feels bleak and dark, something a villain in a spy movie would create. (It’s also pro-Trump.)
If you’re reading this and you’re confused, that’s sort of the point. Lil Miquela and Blawko, another CGI influencer, are characters created by Brud. Bermuda, also a CGI influencer, was made by Cain Intelligence. Allegedly. But wait: Bermuda now has Brud’s Instagram page tagged in her own bio, followed by the message “Look closer”; likewise, Brud’s bio identifies Bermuda as a client. Seems like Cain was a marketing hoax to launch Bermuda and her right-wing agenda? As a scheme to get attention for the entire CGI universe Brud has created, it seems to have worked.
The only person I was able to get in contact with about these three CGI influencers was Jemma Litchfield from Huxley, the creative agency that represents Miquela, Bermuda, and Blawko. In an email, she said she “looked after Miquela.” She said they weren’t doing interviews, but she’d fact check for me, if I’d like. She didn’t offer any clarification about Brud or Cain Intelligence, but instead shifted some sentences around and corrected my first-draft grammar.
Perhaps the enigmatic nature of Brud and Cain is the reason their influential prototypes have become so successful and so followed. Curiosity today usually leads to a Google search. But when there’s no information available beyond what you already know, it can prompt a fascination. Or frustration.
Anyway, meet Miquela’s digital squad: Bermuda and Blawko.
Bermuda is a controversial blonde known for stirring the digital pot. She’s pro-Trump and describes herself as a “robot supremacist.” She also once hacked Miquela’s page, which gained followers for both of them, pushing Miquela past the 1 million mark, a milestone that opens up a lot of doors in influencer world, including lucrative brand deals with prominent designers.
Now Bermuda and Miquela are friends who hang out, go to lunch, and put makeup on each other— digitally.
Miquela and Bermuda are joined by another Brud-born character, Blawko, whom they both seem smitten with. Just like Miquela and Bermuda, he offers an eerily authentic personality. He plays video games, goes on dates, and doesn’t clean his room. As for the bizarre love triangle between him, Miquela, and Bermuda … Are we supposed to imagine them in compromising positions? Is this a clear representation of CGI flirtation by default? We’re not really sure!
Aside from the Brud crowd, there are other CGI influencers out there in the digital space.
If you squint, Instagram user @lil_wavi might seem like just another Soundcloud rapper-looking hypebeast, dressed in the latest streetwear and spattered with tattoos. Upon further inspection, you’ll see he’s a digitally-rendered avatar in human clothing. His graphics give off an edgy early-2000s Sims vibe. Since he “lives in a computer,” he can get his hands on expensive pieces of designer clothing that he describes as “the drip” and cites as his main draw. “I’m all about innovation, encouraging creativity, pushing minds to think out of the shitty boundaries,” he — or, rather, the unidentified human speaking for him — told Mashable over email. “I want my fans to be influenced in that way. It’s important to me that I am sending positive vibes out to them all.”
Brand deals and fashion show appearances abound for this influencer. It’s unclear how a digital avatar can attend IRL events, but a quick scroll of her page will show her doing just that. Noonoouri takes her role as influencer very seriously. When Vogue Australia asked about her favorite beauty products, she answered, “I love KKW Beauty contour and highlight — they truly work!” Since she’s done ads — on YouTube and on Instagram — for KKW Beauty before, it’s no surprise that she would plug the products. What’s surprising is that a digital persona who looks straight out of a Pixar short is using makeup and getting paid for it.
Joerg Zuber, Noonoouri’s creator, spent several years making her before debuting the influencer on Instagram. A visit to her page suggests she was recently in Africa for a number of fashion-related appearances. And she’s from Paris, France, according to her Instagram bio. “I am who I am. If I can help or support others I am very happy. I believe in swarm intelligence. In times like these we need to share and not to hold back,” she told Mashable via email.
Self-identified as “The World’s First Digital Supermodel,” Shudu was created by beauty photographer Cameron James Wilson as an art project. She blew up when her image was featured on Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty Instagram page. In the photo, she’s modeling one of the buzzy beauty line’s lip products and smizing for the … computer? Though she’s more model than influencer, her likeness is used to sell, too. Shudu doesn’t have a personality, per se, but it’s because Wilson hasn’t come across a human that could do her justice — yet: “Only someone similar to Shudu would be appropriate to tell her story, and really shape who she is as ‘person,’” he mused to Mashable via email. He supports the movement to create more digital supermodels like Shudu: “It doesn’t matter who you are, if you study art and learn how to use 3D programs, you too can be a 6ft tall virtual runway model!”
Here’s a familiar face. The uber-popular icon that is Barbie has a digital counterpart, and she’s a vlogger. Her first video, in which she introduces herself, went up in 2015. In it, she talks about being from Wisconsin (who knew?) and having a sister. “I’ve always just been curious about things,” she shares earnestly, her huge animated eyes blinking like those of a human YouTuber. Since then, she’s uploaded over 75 vlogs, most of which include her sister Skipper and boyfriend Ken, to the YouTube channel owned and operated by Mattel. Barbie is the OG influencer — she’s known for doing a million different jobs and having fun while doing them. Why reinvent the wheel?
Balenciaga’s digi-models
While you can’t follow these influencers, they’re worth mentioning. To show off their Spring 2019 collection on Instagram, Spanish fashion house Balenciaga utilized shape-shifting digital models made by artist Yilmaz Sen. In a series of short video clips on Instagram, the digital models sparked questions about the future of technology in fashion. With cool haircuts and names like Elsa and Ruben, everything about them screams high fashion. However, unlike human models that walk down runways, these models stand in place and distort themselves like they’re made of rubber. Because all haute couture should be shown on computer-generated contortionist models!
What’s next, then?
Tapping around on these digi-fluencer’s pages provides an exciting, if not unsettling, look at the future of technology and the part it may play in pop culture. Some question the validity, appeal, and purpose of these bots. Perhaps it’s performance art. Or maybe it’s all just an elaborate stunt to leverage consumer action? YouTuber Shane Dawson has a popular video dedicated to uncovering the identity of Lil Miquela. He even calls her on the phone — only to be met with a clearly auto-tuned voice who’s careful not to give anything away, or falter at all.
Liz Bacelar, a tech expert, mused to Forbes that we could potentially find ourselves living in a world in which we all have a digital avatar. And with facial recognition being insidiously installed in mundane places (like gas stations) in order to advertise, secure, and identify us, this may be sooner than we think. Just imagine, we’ll be in self-driving cars, scrolling by digitized avatars trying to make us use their discount codes. Or perhaps we’ll allow our digitized selves to live for us, like we’ve seen in futuristic movies like Ready Player One and Wall-E.
Think of your new CGI friends as the pixelated pioneers of a new, formulated frontier. Who knows? Maybe our human selves could be rendered virtually useless. For now, though, we can just keep an eye on Instagram.
After 11 years, 22 films, and several strides toward more diversity on screen, the Marvel Cinematic Universe still feels decades behind on queer representation. But that hasn’t stopped Marvel’s actors, comic writers, and fans from doing the lord’s work of queering the MCU anyway.
To the surprise of no one, it turns out that queer stories and relationships make for some of the best superhero narratives.
Let Okoye find true love!
Image: hbo
“People tend to find common ground between queerness and superhero narratives because oftentimes when you’re marginalized you are hoping for a better world where you are accepted and where you are seen,” said Roxane Gay, seminal writer of Bad Feminist and the recent World of Wakanda comics centered around a romance between two Doja Milaje warrior women. “And superhero narratives are comprised of people who are trying to contribute to that better world in one form or another.”
Queering characters in the MCU works on a subtextual level too.
“Superheroes often make great metaphors for something else. Marvel in particular has created heroes that read like overt metaphors for gender and sexuality,” said Francesca Coppa, a Muhlenberg English professor and a scholar of fandom. “There’s all different ways these characters open up to queer identification.”
“Marvel in particular has created heroes that read like overt metaphors for gender and sexuality.”
Through a queer lens, for example, superhero tropes like leading a double life or having a secret identity take on whole new meaning, allowing us to explore different facets and perspectives on decades-old characters.
Coppa should know, as a co-founder of the popular fanfiction community Archive of Our Own. Marvel is one of the top two fandoms represented on the site, and the preferred ships are predominantly queer.
However, there have been more concrete promises that a queerer MCU is eminent. Earlier this year Avengers director Joe Russo told Huffington Post that, “I can assure you that you will hear about [the possibility of a queer superhero movie] very soon!”
But people aren’t waiting around for Hollywood to make their queer hero dreams come true. And the clamor to see it made official is starting to reach a fever pitch thanks to a variety of those different voices within the Marvel-verse.
As Coppa pointed out, fans have always taken matters into their own hands on this front, and should continue to do so. But a recent major and necessary step in making queerness in the MCU a reality came from the newfound support from those on the Marvel payroll.
Brie Larson has been a vocal advocate, not only in the media but on Twitter by retweeting the abundance of fan art shipping Captain Marvel and Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie. Tessa Thompson has done the same on her social media accounts, and confirmed that she has always seen Valkyrie as bisexual.
Their importance in validating queerness in the MCU cannot be overstated, especially for fan artists like Melody Kersetter, who saw her own gorgeous rendition of the Valkyrie x Captain Marvel ship pop up on the Oscar-winning actress’ timeline.
“Seeing the actors be so supportive of a queer ship is a really big step for a lot of us. As a bisexual woman, it means so much,” said Kersetter.
Often times when queer fandom ships have been brought up to actors in the past it’s at best brushed off as a joke and at worst treated with disdain or disgust — like when the cast couldn’t stop laughing on Jimmy Kimmel in 2015 over gay fan art of Bruce and Tony as the “science bros.”
“Even though it’s still not visible representation, having our personal identities acknowledged by an influential person in Hollywood is like them saying, ‘Anyone can do this. You don’t need straight to be a superhero,’” said Kersetter.
That’s also a huge element to why the MCU feels like such an inspiring space for queer writers and artists to work within, according to Kersetter.
“The idea of superhero and superpowers is about how being different doesn’t make you worse,” she said, echoing Gay’s reasoning. “That’s essentially one of the main parts of superhero narratives: coming to accept what it is about you that makes you different. And that leaves a lot of room for not only queer representation, but acceptance of people who are different.”
Ironically, part of what’s made the MCU feel so conducive to queering is the odd asexuality in most of the films. While there are heterosexual pairings in the movies, they tend to be handled poorly or sidelined in favor of action. Unintentionally, this lack has left room for ample speculative queerness.
That’s particularly true in Captain Marvel.
The queerness literally rippling off of ‘Captain Marvel’
Image: marvel
“Her not having a specified romantic interest was a great opportunity because usually all the women in the movies are paired automatically with men,” said Kersetter.
The movie not only intentionally avoided pigeonholing Carol into a heterosexual couple, but also explicitly made her relationship with Marie Rambeau her anchor. Sure, it’s officially characterized as platonic. But the movie also does nothing to dissuade a romantic reading.
Captain Marvel‘s strong overall queer vibes likely also stem from it being the first Marvel movie to actually make multiple female relationships front and center.
“The dynamic between Annette Benning’s character and Captain Marvel was so powerful and really the narrative drive,” said Gay. “And I think every time we see a narrative where women are trying to work together — even from a distance — without the existence of a heterosexual love story starts to feel queer.”
If you ask the internet, Captain Marvel’s queerness was also only exacerbated by her new haircut in Avengers: Endgame.
Certainly, the recent abundance in badass warrior women introduced into the Marvel movies — from Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok, to the lady pilot BFFs in Captain Marvel, to the Dora Milaje in Black Panther — has lended itself beautifully to more lesbian pairings.
“Captain Marvel and Valkyrie being two incredibly strong women, incredibly seasoned fighters was just so fun to play around with,” said Kersetter.
Gay, who was new to comic book writing but burst the door open for queer representation with her run World of Wakanda series, agreed: “You have these really sexy women who are the top of the game. They’re the best at what they do. And that’s really attractive.”
Gay also found that the fantastical settings in Marvel narratives allowed her to write about Ayo and Aneka’s love from a unique perspective. “The great thing about writing about Wakanda is that you’re writing about an uncolonized black population. So if they’re free from the ills of colonization, perhaps they’re also free from repression and homophobia and all other sort of forms of bigotry,” she said.
“Who are we if we don’t have to fight for our right to exist? That’s an interesting question that queer writers don’t get to explore explore often enough.”
Queerness is in Marvel’s DNA
Yet while the more recent diverse additions of Captain Marvel and Black Panther has added fodder for queering women and people of color in the MCU, the original white boys club that launched the cinematic universe also brings plenty of potential for queer readings and storylines.
“Who are we if we don’t have to fight for our right to exist? That’s an interesting question that queer writers don’t get to explore explore often.”
According to Coppa, Tony Stark’s Iron Man often makes for a natural exploration of performative masculinity. “Tony is a guy who needs to literally construct his masculinity, who builds himself an actual man suit. He’s like a man doing male drag, so to speak,” she said.
Certainly as one of the many male Avengers with hardcore daddy issues, that perspective on his character tracks seamlessly with his origin story.
Meanwhile Steve Rogers’ is viewed as “an obvious queer figure” in a multiplicity of ways, including even within his canonical heterosexual pairing with Peggy.
“They’re quite twinned as a couple. They’re both victims of patriarchy in a sense — Steve as a skinny, scrawny guy and Peggy as a woman,” she said. “It’s not a traditional het romance because it’s a het romance between a guy and a girl who share a common dislike of toxic masculinity.”
We’d be remiss if we didn’t also dive into the queer energy that fuels one of the most popular Marvel fandom ships ever, heterosexual or otherwise: Steve and Bucky, a.k.a. Stucky.
Coppa traces it back to Steve’s “queer Brooklyn background that has been thoroughly extrapolated by the fandom.” Currently, there’s even a Brooklyn museum exhibition that included a reimagining Steve as scrappy gay ’30s socialist. But the Stucky ship also fits into the homoeroticism of military male-on-male relationships too, which date back to Greek culture.
“Steve and Bucky is a heroic love story, and I don’t even necessarily mean in a romantic way. It’s in the epic sense, like Achilles and Patroclus,” said Coppa.
Captain America is the embodiment of America’s gay ass
Image: marvel
There are also strong thematic grounds for Steve as a trans avatar, and the transformation into Captain America as a hyper fantasy of transitioning as a trans man. “I mean, who says T isn’t a super serum?” Coppa asked. Both substances share the same masculinizing effect. “For a lot of trans men, testosterone is a super serum. So there are even a lot of stories about Stephanie Rogers becoming Captain America through testosterone.”
And those who argue these versions of Marvel superheroes are a “stretch” or counter to their origins have not paid attention to one of the core tenets of comic books.
“One of the wonderful thing about comics that is queer in its essence is that there’s a multiplicity of stories. They keep doing them and doing them and doing them, so if you don’t like this one, there will be another one. Multiverses are essentially queer versions of reality itself,” said Coppa.
“The comics invite many different readings of a single character. Nothing is too ‘crazy.’ I mean if Thor can spend time in the comics as a frog, how crazy is it really to imagine him in a gay relationship?”
Whatever it takes to get queer heroes into the MCU
In a way, though, the finality of a linear movie franchise is a factor in why it’s taking much longer to see queer representation on screen than in the comics.
The wonderful thing about comics that is queer in its essence is that there’s a multiplicity of stories
“The movies are always going to disappoint someone, because at the end of the day there can only be one ending, the story can only go one way,” said Coppa. “And that in itself is unqueer in the sense that it’s not as polyvalent as the comics.”
There’s also the huge, Disney-shaped problem at the heart of canonically queering the MCU.
“You only get Captain Marvel after Wonder Woman, and you only get Wonder Woman after four different Spider-Man movie franchises,” Coppa said on why it’s taking Hollywood so long.
Even Black Panther, which ushered in a new era of inclusivity in the MCU with its unequivocal success, was still apparently held back by corporate conservatism. A flirtatious scene between Okoye and a Dora Milaje soldier was reportedly cut out of the film, and the movie’s final cut shows Okoye in a heterosexual relationship with W’Kabi instead.
“It was disappointing. And it happened because Marvel is owned by Disney, and Disney is gonna Disney,” said Gay. “And it’s interesting that they think seeing a woman being murdered is fine. But two women in a loving relationship or two women flirting and being attracted to one another? Wow, that’s a bridge too far.”
While the comics have clearly been more willing to take progressive risks — probably due to the financial stakes being lower than with the multibillion-dollar movies — they aren’t a saving grace for more inclusivity in the Marvel universe either.
Us fighting forced heteronormativity in the MCU
Image: marvel
Gay’s World of Wakanda series was cancelled after only three issues, along with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run as head writer on the Black Panther comics. As Gay has explained, one of the main issues with bringing more diversity through the comics is their current method of production and the lack of outreach to communities outside core comic book fans.
That’s why she believes the best hope for mainstreaming queerness in Marvel will come down to the MCU.
“If it’s going to happen anywhere, it’s going to happen in the movies first. Because the fandom of the comics in general is very resistant to anything but white men,” she said. That’s also true for the most toxic subset of the MCU fans, but clearly they’re fighting a losing battle against the monetary success of Marvel’s most diverse films.
“What’s the fucking holdup, man?”
While the MCU’s official queer seal of approval can change a lot culturally, we shouldn’t forget who holds the power to demand Marvel be the best version of itself.
“In comics history, it was the fans that demanded the crossover,” said Coppa. Whether its Marvel Comics or Marvel Studios, “they’re following our lead, not the other way around.”
So, Coppa said, “if you want diverse storytelling in the Marvel-verse, it’s out there. Don’t wait for Hollywood. Don’t give them that much power. View the MCU as raw material. what can you make of it? What story can you tell that you want to see?”
Gay also believes in the power of fans to lead the charge in queer representation in the MCU.
“What fandom can do oftentimes is let creators know that the audience will absolutely embrace difference. When it works, fandom does a great job of pushing creators to trust that their fans will try new things,” she said. “And frankly, there’s no better vehicle for really trying to do something different than the Marvel films. Because they are just going to print a billion dollars no matter what. We know this. So what’s the fucking holdup, man?”
KISS!
Image: Marvel
It’s about damn time
Perhaps the true sign of progress though is that, at this point, the MCU’s hand-wringing over whether or not to include an LGBTQ superhero is starting to feel increasingly silly.
“It’s going to become more and more embarrassing for them to not do queer romances and representation, because the younger fans are almost expecting it,” said Coppa. “There will be queer representation in the MCU when the reality becomes so obvious and enormous that Marvel will start looking out of touch. And I suspect that’s already happening.”
Fan artists like Kersetter agreed, finding Marvel’s meek gesture at representation in Endgame laughable. “That is not representation,” she said. “You tried, but you failed!”
“The capacity for heroism and greatness is in everyone.”
Similarly, Gay won’t be satisfied until “we see [queer characters] as a significant part of the narrative rather than an afterthought. Captain Marvel would get a girlfriend and have a happy relationship. Or Okoye in Black Panther would have a girlfriend after her trash ass boyfriend betrayed her.”
The losses and risks of not queering the MCU are only increasing for Marvel with every passing movie when it comes to cultural relevance, audience, and storytelling. But the potential gains and possibilities embedded in queering our superheroes feels endless, both for fans and Marvel alike.
“It would just be validation that our lives are interesting and worthy of the big screen and that we are as normal as anyone else,” said Gay. “It’s why representation matters, because it allows people to see their lives reflected in some way and see the capacity for heroism and greatness is in everyone.”
Barcelona is looking to make its ninth Champions League final as it heads into the second leg of its semi-final against Liverpool with a commanding 3-0 lead.
Play gets under way at Anfield stadium on Tuesday at 8pm local time (19:00 GMT).
Lionel Messi scored his 599th and 600th goals for Barcelona to subdue a Liverpool lineup that had outplayed the hosts for long stretches at Camp Nou last week.
His double and Luis Suarez’s early goal against his former club gave Barcelona a commanding win.
Striker Suarez thanked former club Liverpool for raising the standard of his game during a three-and-a-half-year spell at Merseyside, but the Uruguayan is focused on knocking them out of the Champions League.
“The reason I’m playing at Barcelona, at the elite level, is because of Liverpool,” Suarez told reporters on Monday.
“Being at Liverpool helped me in so many ways, it made me more professional, it helped me mature. Having players here with great experience allowed me to be even better.”
It’s always nice to return to the place where you received so much love. A place which I’ll always be so thankful too! Ready to do my job and achieve my dreams !!!! #COMEBACK#ANFIELD#THEKOP#YNWApic.twitter.com/fxfc7Ji7yk
Suarez was crowned PFA player of the year in the 2013/14 campaign for leading Liverpool’s Premier League title challenge, before they were edged out by Manchester City.
The 32-year-old former Liverpool captain, who joined Barcelona in 2014, said that he had no intention of celebrating if he scored at Anfield.
“Celebrating the goal last week, people know the importance of scoring in a Champions League semi-final,” Suarez added. “I have all the respect for Liverpool fans, I’m thankful to them and if I score, I won’t celebrate it in the same way.
“If I score tomorrow it will mean I can feel relaxed and Liverpool have to score more to qualify.”
Meanwhile, home side Liverpool will have their hands full in the absence of strikers Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino after both were ruled out due to injuries.
“The situation with 3-0 against Barcelona is not exactly the situation you want to have before you play the second leg, but we try to win the game,” Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said at a press conference on Monday.
Teenage striker Rhian Brewster is ready to make his debut in the absence of the injured duo, Klopp said.
Brewster, an England youth international, shot to fame when he won the Golden Boot at the Under-17 World Cup in 2017 where he scored eight goals. He signed his first professional contract last year.
“He’s ready, there’s a big chance,” Klopp told reporters when asked if Brewster would be involved. “It’s nearly sure, it’s guaranteed.
The second leg of the other semi-final on Wednesday pits Dutch side Ajax against Tottenham Hotspur in Amsterdam. Ajax heads into that encounter with a 1-0 lead.
Major spoiler alert for Dead To Me. Do not read unless you’ve seen the full first season.
From the very first episode, Netflix’s Dead to Me is one bonkers twist after the other, a snowballing web of lies and deceit that has you on the edge of your seat, begging for more.
The show, which premiered Friday, ends on one such note: the shocking murder of Steve (James Marsden) at the hands of Jen (Christina Applegate) that inevitably brings Judy (Linda Cardellini) back into her life.
In the finale’s final act, Steve visits Jen’s house late at night, a bottle of wine in hand. He’s pissed off that Judy emptied his bank account, thus putting a hold on his illegal business and the house offer in which Jen was so invested.
By now, Jen knows that Judy was driving the car that hit and killed her husband, but doesn’t know Steve was in the car, too. He’s shocked to learn that Jen is in the know and immediately spins it to his advantage, acting sorry, pretending that he wanted to come clean and Judy didn’t when in reality it was the opposite.
Luckily, Jen has a pretty fine-tuned bullshit detector at this point, as well as a seething distrust for men after learning about her husband’s affair and witnessing how Steve treated Judy.
“Don’t turn this into some blame-the-man thing,” Steve says when she demands to know why he didn’t go back to help Todd. “That’s bullshit.”
Yeah, but it’s not nearly that simple, and here’s where Steve’s expert characterization comes to light. Throughout the series, Steve is not a textbook bad guy or nightmare boyfriend – but he’s still unequivocally abusive and manipulative. He surrounds Judy in a false sense of security so he can continue a comfortable life of crime (murder notwithstanding), coercing her to continue the cover up even as her conscience screams in protest.
R.I.P. to this malevolent snack
Image: Saeed Adyani / Netflix
Judy is also a deeply flawed character, but with some semblance of an emotional compass. It was fucked up for her to befriend Jen, and she knew that. It was also wrong to lie about the hit-and-run, and she knew that, too. Judy feels her emotions so deeply, so overwhelmingly, that while this conversation is happening she’s miles away, wracked with guilty sobs at the site of Todd’s death and stepping in front of a car because she thinks she deserves it.
At Jen’s house, Marsden plays Steve teetering magnificently between unhinged denial and seasoned manipulation. On one hand, he’s trying to bend Jen to his will the way he always did with Judy. On the other, he’s brainwashing himself, actively trying to convince everyone present that Judy is the bad person and the one to blame because she was in the driver’s seat.
What happens next is critical, and we don’t see it. The last words from Steve’s mouth on-screen are a demand to know where Judy is; the next time we see him, he’s facedown in Jen’s pool. The death alone is a shocking twist, but on top of that, it’s a bullet to the back. Steve wasn’t running at Jen when she shot him (indeed, the show runner points out that you don’t even know who shot him). Was he running away? Did someone else follow Steve to Jen’s house and pull a shoot-and-run?
Steve’s death is an apt unifier for the two women after Jen kicked Judy out of her life and told her, in no ambiguous terms, that the only way she can earn forgiveness is to “disappear off the fucking planet.” They’re connected in a way that lends itself to covering up yet another (possibly) accidental murder – a perverse tit-for-tat that could lead to these women leading normal lives if they succeed.
We won’t get any answers at the moment, but Dead to Me‘s sharp writing and constant escalation mean that if there is a Season 2, there are more complications in store. And even with another murder, we’ll still be laughing through our tears.
You can pore over the finale of Dead to Me (and the rest of it), on Netflix now.
First we had Chris Pratt’s video, and now we have some new stuff from Captain America himself. Chris Evans said he was going to start posting behind-the-scenes videos this week and, sure enough, he’s been good to his word.
Here’s one he appears to have taken on the same day Pratt recorded his:
Video ban lifted! I guess I’m not the only one who broke the rules on this day of filming. (My camera work is annoyingly shaky) pic.twitter.com/D0f0e2PnXo
Crunch time in the #UCL!
Predict the final in Madrid: ______ v ______
Jordi Alba
@FCBarcelona turning on the style 
!!!! 
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