Hijab Wearing Cosplayer Proves She's Worthy of Cap's Shield

Cosplay: Hijabi Hooligan Cosplay Photo by: Transwarp Photography

By now, you've likely seen this photo of cosplayer Dania Khalil of Hijabi Hooligan Cosplay (I could not love that name more, by the way) as Captain America. I'd be surprised if you haven't since her photo has been shared far and wide from the She-Geeks Facebook page to Gizmodo to Fashionably Geek, she basically exploded overnight!

Now, Khalil is no newcomer to cosplay. She's got several great cosplays in her costume arsenal (my favorites are her Lady Loki and Assassins Creed), but her Captain America is what's getting all the attention. As of this morning, she's just proven just how appropriate all this attention is.

Right now, being a Muslim in America is difficult with hatred, ignorance, and outright bigotry running wild, but Khalil's patriotic cosplay has cut right through all of that to bring out the best in us as fans. Since her photo started making the geek rounds, she's received a ton of wonderful messages and comments from fans, and apparently plenty of offers to send her actual cash to help get her a more professional shield to compliment the quality of the rest of her outfit. She's received so many offers that she had to address them publicly, and how she is choosing to handle all of the attention she's getting proves that she absolutely deserves to carry that iconic shield:

"Hey everyone! Many of you have offered to donate to GoFundMe to get me a better Cap shield, but I think I have a better cause for your money to go towards. I set up this campaign to aid Syria, as they desperately need our help at the minute. I'm sure many of you are aware of the atrocities being committed in Syria and the hardships the people there are facing. Stories like that of the 12 year old girl who tried to take her own life to give her family one less mouth to feed have rocked the world and brought tears to my eyes many a time.
If you could all spare as little as £1/$1 and share the link with your friends and family, I would be forever grateful.
Thank you all for the love you've shown me- now let's show those in need that same love. <3"

In true Captain America fashion, she is diverting this attention away from herself and on to others in need. Seriously, this woman is just a shining example of the best in all of us. If you'd like to spread the good around, you can find her GoFundMe page here. I think it's safe to say that we could all use a a few more people like her in the world.

Keep making us proud, Dania!!

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is Casting, but You Have to be Hot

Wanna be an extra in Guardians of the Galaxy 2?? Well, if you've got lady parts, I hope you're a model:

According to the casting call that took the internet by storm today, the only opportunities for women to be cast as alien extras require them to be "Beautiful/Model Aliens ... very attractive, physically fit, slender, or thin..." and you'd better show up in form-fitting clothes. Oh, and make sure you don't bother bringing your fat friend with you because they don't want to clutter up the place with children and "others that are not one of the types above." 

Men-folk, on the other hand, only need to be basically human shaped for a shot at a role. They even have their very own category for "Character Aliens" specifically looking for non-model types. It's hard enough for women who aren't build like models to land a role as a human, now it's clear that we're not even worthy to grace the screen as imaginary alien races. Don't get me wrong, this is nothing new, but it's disheartening at best to continue to see these kinds of ridiculous double standards persisting, especially for films based in nerd culture (a traditional bastion for women and girls who never fit the cheerleader archetype).

Could we please move on and recognize that it's ok for people to be people shaped?!

**EDIT**

According to director James Gunn via Twitter this is just the first of many casting calls, and the scenes being shot are specific to model types. So, it looks like there is still hope for us yet:

Doctor Who 'Under the Lake' Review

*This review is cross-posted to the Krewe du Who blog*

As always, DO NOT READ unless you're caught up on Series 9 of Doctor Who! As River would say: *spoilers*

This week, The Doctor and his companion find themselves stuck in a contained environment with a small crew and some kind of creepy big bad hell bent on taking them out one by one. Whether it's on Mars, in a stuck submarine, on a planet about to be sucked into a black hole, or under a lake, this is a pretty popular theme for Doctor Who. The situation plays on our fears of being trapped, buried alive, drowning, etc. Essentially, being killed by our very environment. This time, they find themselves in an underwater, nuclear powered, mining facility on top of a submerged military base, with a strange alien ship and (what appear to be) actual ghosts. By the time they arrive, the captain has already been killed and his ghost has joined the ghost of a Tivolian man in a dashing top hat (particularly strange since the Tivolians are decidedly not aggressive by nature). The idea of ghosts has been toyed with on Doctor Who before, but they've always been proved to be something other than actual paranormal specters, so it will be interesting to see if they don't turn out to be some kind of electromagnetic/static projections, or something, instead of the spirits of the dead; especially given that we don't know who/what is in the suspended animation chamber, how the "spirits" are being brought back under its control, that they can only man-handle metal objects, and that the only way the gang has found to stop them is to enter "day" mode in which the electromagnetic locks are diagnosed constantly or by locking them into a Faraday cage (designed to stop the passage of electromagnetic/static influences). If they do turn out to be actual ghosts, it will be a first for Doctor Who.

Another first for the show is Cass (played by Sophie Leigh Stone). She's the first deaf (main) character on the show, and also happens to be a complete badass. She's smart, no-nonsense, and has probably already saved everyone by not allowing her interpreter, Lunn, onto the alien ship (he's now the only character who hasn't read the writing on the wall, making him the only one the ghosts have no use for). Since she took over command of the crew when the captain died, she's consistently kept their best interests in mind, has made the best possible decisions based on the situation at hand, and has succinctly put The Doctor in his place. I'd like more of her, please!

Unfortunately, the sonic shades are back. Chances are good we're going to continue seeing them for a bit whether we want to or not. I will say, that despite how utterly ridiculous they are the shades are at least being used interestingly. They're glasses, so using them as a way to transmit video or to scan seems pretty logical. They seems to be like a pair of Google Glass on steroids. (To be clear, I'm not against changing the sonic screwdriver on principal, I just hate the shades. I'm not a fan of things like Google Glass to begin with, so I doubt they'll ever win me over no matter how well they're written into the story.)
 

Continuing the two-parter trend for this series, the episode ends with Clara, Cass, and Lunn trapped in a flooding base with 3 ghosts locked up in the Faraday Cage while The Doctor, O'Donnell, and Bennet take the TARDIS back in time to before the base town flooded to try and figure out what happened. In true cliffhanger form, Clara and the gang are facing a ghost Doctor just outside the walls, indicating that The Doctor himself somehow died and became a ghost instead of regenerating when he went back in time. As it should, this leaves us with questions as to what the hell just happened, but the biggest (and probably most important) question of all is: