So, this is a fairly new tag (I think) that I’ve suddenly seen popping up on a number of the blogs I follow. I was actually starting to wonder if any of my friends on here were going to tag me, or if I was going to be overlooked and forgotten and alone and sad.

(dramatic sad face with dramatic, slow-moving tear)

But it seems my fears were for naught, for Shaddowcat, over on Exploring the World of Anime and Manga has tagged me! Yay! Thank you! 🙂

So, the Five Flaming Hotties tag! The rules are as follows:

1) Mention the name of the blog you were tagged by, as well as the creators of this game Realweegiemidget Reviews and Thoughts All Sorts to all blogs involved and including the picture above.

2) List five of your greatest hotties from TV and/or film, i.e. crushes/objects of your affection, including musicians or sports stars too.

3) Tell us how you were introduced to them and why you like them/what appeals.

4) Add some appealing pictures.

5) Tag seven bloggers for their Five Flaming Hotties.

6) Post the rules.

Challenge accepted! 🙂

Of course, I did have to stop myself just as I began. It was so tempting, almost a reflex, to just pick five amazing hotties from anime, but then I thought again. Sure, I could do that, but I do give anime quite a bit of attention here. Time to give the real world some spotlight, especially when talking about beautiful women. Anime may craft some supreme hotties, but there’s plenty of beauty in the real world too.

One, especially, I wanted to mention. 😉

So, I limited myself to just one anime girl. I’m glad I did that. This whole thing went in a much more interesting direction. 🙂

So, without further ado, five women who are so hot, in my book, that they might as well be Hell in high heels. 🙂

1) Nami, from One Piece

First, the proverbial elephant in the room, my singular anime crush.

As I’ve already waxed eloquent about how I first encountered her and what’s appealing about her, I will simply sum-up:

Nami is a cute girl who becomes a sexy woman. She’s smart, wily, and a conniving schemer. She’s generally selfish and greedy, as befits a thief-girl, but also fiercely loyal, compassionate, and self-sacrificing. She has a dream she is pursuing, she’s talented, skilled, and takes control when need be, unafraid of giving the boys a well-deserved whack on the head. 🙂

The cutest double-crosser ever!

Above all: she is strong. Not like “I destroy an entire town with one blow” strong, especially not at first. She’s strong in what she has endured in her life, the terrible suffering she has not only survived but thrived in. Her soul has been scarred for life, and yet she has found happiness. She has found friends willing to risk everything for her, and who she will risk everything for. All the trouble and trauma she’s lived through, and still she is able to smile. That is the greatest strength of all.

How is she not a flaming hottie? 😉

2) Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle

Hmmm. You know, between Nami, Selina, Christina, and Parker from Leverage, one might begin to think I had a thing for sexy thief girls, which Catwoman is probably the quintessential example of. Fancy that. 😛

If I recall rightly, my very first introduction to Catwoman actually in one of those read-aloud books, complete with buttons you could push for sound effects. I don’t know if they still have those anywhere, but there were a few of them when I was a little kid. One of them was a Batman adventure, obviously inspired by Batman: The Animated Series. I forget most of the plot, it had something to do with Penguin, but that, I think, was the first time I saw or heard of Catwoman.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I was going to hear her name so many more times in my life. Cartoons, comics, movies, games, TV shows, she’s everywhere. As well she should be: she’s easily the single greatest love of Batman’s life. Clark Kent might have Lois Lane, the fearless reporter who exists because Superman needed someone to save again and again, and who somehow always fails to recognize Clark without his glasses, but Bruce Wayne has Selina Kyle, a woman who is his equal.

She is far better for him, and with him, than any of the other women we see come and go in his life, certainly better than Talia al’Ghul, or that Vicky Vale woman who’s just another Lois Lane archetype or, and I shudder as I mention this, Barbara Gordon. Catwoman is a kindred soul to Batman, standing in the darkness with him, complementing him. She does need his help sometimes, sometimes he is the one needing her help, and she provides it. She is useful and clever, and anything but a damsel in distress. Most especially, I think the two of them help each other stay more human, instead of becoming monsters.

Where Batman embraces the darkness and breaks the rules, but is inflexible and uncompromising in his standards, Catwoman loves the dark and breaks the rules and is all kinds of flexible (…ahem, you know what I meant!), but has none of the malice that all of Batman’s enemies have. She straddles the gap between good and evil, light and darkness, just as much as he does. She’s not evil at all, she just loves getting up to mischief! And despite how many rules she breaks, she does so without hurting anyone. Indeed, she’s been known to go out of her way to help people in need, both friends and complete strangers. She’s a bad kitty who refuses to be tamed, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to care about others.

And, bonus! With her iconic status, there’s a number of women who have portrayed her across various media. So, while she represents a “cartoon” in this instance, her hotness can also be enjoyed everywhere else as well! From Batman: The Animated Series to The Batman to the DC Showcase short cartoon, where she was voiced by none other than Eliza Dusku (also a flaming hottie), to the Arkham and Injustice video game series, where she’s voiced by another famous name, Grey DeLisle, to Anne Hathaway’s rendition in The Dark Knight Rises, to most recently on Gotham, where she’s shaping up to be quite the heart-breaker when she’s all grown up (because Camren Bicondova, being eighteen right now, is already turning out as quite the cutie and is absolutely astounding as Selina), to anywhere else, there are countless examples across the board of Catwoman being a flaming hottie!

3) Caroline Forbes (Candice King)

No list of hotties of mine would be complete without at least one blonde. And what a blonde she is!

I would never have watched The Vampire Diaries and/or The Originals if not for her. Ah, YouTube clips! Always making a man think twice about watching the obvious Twilight imitation by putting the strong, gorgeous, golden-haired girl who kicks on on the computer screen! 😉

Portrayed by the breathtakingly beautiful Candice King (formerly Candice Accola), Caroline began the show as something of a Lucy equivalent (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the hot best friend who gets used and killed and turned by the vampire). She’s a very flawed girl, at first. Snobby, superficial, selfish, thinking she needs the satisfaction of a boy/man to be happy. That sort of thing. But she grows, a lot, partially because she’s not afraid to admit her mistakes and other flaws. She does not bend or break easily, not for anything, not even in the face of the worst parts of herself.

She even channels some of her flaws towards something productive. Her nature as a control freak, for instance, drives her to take the lead. She’s smart, coordinated, capable, and a skilled, experienced manager even back in high school, let alone years later as a news anchor. Where everyone else is moaning about how things are, she gets the job done. She is, quite simply, a boss.

And then there’s her unflagging compassion. When Tyler Lockwood is suffering his first werewolf transformation, Caroline is there, helping him through it, holding him, talking calmly in his ear, every step of the way. Some traveler witches are trying to use her friends as hostages so she’ll kill someone they need dead, she finds their target, but refuses to harm him, even protecting him. Even Klaus, one of the most despicable creatures ever to walk the Earth, she is able to see the glimmers of his soul, no matter how darkened it may be, and care even for him in a way few people ever have.

Mind you, that bit, with Klaus, has always been a bit disquieting for me, with all the harm Klaus does her, how he nearly sacrificed her and Tyler that one ritual, how he’s so much older and she’s eternally seventeen… yeah, it always felt like a stretch to pair them up. I know Caroline has a bit of a history with bad boys who have a bit of good in them (Tyler, Damon, Stefan…) but it was a little difficult for me to buy what drew her to him. But, still, it’s no small wonder the hybrid king of vampires looked her way.

And a whole lot more.

4) Sara Lance (Caity Lotz)

Say what you will (I certainly have!) about the Arrowverse, especially Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, Sara Lance is one heck of a hottie, courtesy of Caity Lotz’s stellar performance and riveting looks. And, oh, look, another blonde woman who kicks ass! 😛

Arrow was at its best when she was a regular in Season 2, it took a nosedive when they killed her off, things got ridiculous in bringing her back and writing her out again, and she is absolutely the single best part of Legends.

Obviously, my first introduction to Caity was through the show. When they brought her in to play Sara in Arrow, and made her the first Canary of the show, I was absolutely eating it all up. Ollie’s pairing with Laurel in the first season always felt a bit trite and forced to me. She was better with Tommy and Tommy was better for her. When they brought Sara back, a fellow warrior, a woman who could absolutely hold her own, and who understood Ollie because she went through similar experiences at the same time… well, they just felt right together, ya know? They were made for each other, as another character put it.

Sara was beautiful, of course, but in a completely different way from the other women on the show. They were all entirely slim and thin and unmarked, but Sara, as a fighter and a survivor, had muscle, and scars. If other girls were cats, then she was a tigress.

And she was so bold and unafraid, refusing to bow down to anyone else. Not to Ollie, not to the mad scientist who happened to fish her out of the ocean, not to Deathstroke, not even to an entire league of trained assassins, headed by a nigh-immortal killer. That has carried through the rest of her time on the CW, leading a highly unorthodox and nonconformist team that consistently refuses to play by anyone else’s stifling, tyrannical rules, even cutting what amounts to cosmic puppet strings, but that came a bit later.

So, Sara is a survivor, a fighter, a leader, brave, clever, strong, the absolute equal of any man, and from all the pain she has endured, she has only emerged the stronger for it. And she’s a drop-dead looker, to boot! Everything from her adorable face and gorgeous blue eyes and golden hair, to her lithe warrior’s body, to her independent attitude, to her sexy, sultry voice, she’s got the whole package.

I mean, how much more can a guy ask for?

Ollie, Ollie, Ollie… you should have bent Heaven and Earth to keep this girl in your life!

Flaming hottie, she absolutely is!

And now, to finish off this little tag…

5) Lindsey Stirling

This, by the way, is the one who inspired me to look at hotties beyond just the realm of anime. 😉

As with Nami, I have spoken about her at length before, so I shall keep this fairly brief.

I don’t remember exactly how I was first introduced to Lindsey and her work, but I pretty much fell in love at first sight and never looked back. 🙂

Everything about her, from her music, to her dancing, to her quirky sense of humor, to her lovable attitude and outlook on life, to how she runs her crew, to all the work she puts into making her vision come to life (which I personally need to emulate more), to the sheer passion and pure purpose which drive her, to the past ordeals she has overcome, to the inspiring example she sets, everything about this woman is simply beautiful.

Note: I put her lovely physical appearance last on the list of appealing qualities because where there are some girls which it is impossible not to like for their appearance, Lindsey is the type which it is impossible not to love when you manage to see past her outstanding appearance. It’s appealing… no, wait, she looks incredible… but that is still the least attractive thing about her. She is very easy on the eyes, but it’s her heart that makes her amazing.

Most especially, it is her confidence. In her own words, as she said in at least one of her concerts:

“I feel like the most attractive quality that anyone can have is confidence.”

Well done, Lindsey. You have that quality, and in spades. 😀

Small wonder she makes this list, and, it strikes me, inspired me in the making of it, not just in where I would look for them, but who I would pick. Because confidence is what I truly find most attractive in each of these five flaming hotties I have named. So, to close out with a few more pictures of Lindsey looking beautiful and sexy:

And my nominations:

The Spooky Red Head on… The Spooky Red Head 😉

Krystallina on Daiyamanga

Derek on Apprentice Mages Lounge

Kapodaco on The Visualist’s Veranda

Scott on Mechanical Anime Reviews

My Tiny Obsessions on My Tiny Obsessions

Kat Sade on GrimmGirl

Kelly Konda, Julianne Ramsey, and whoever else is on We Minored in Film

Karandi on 100 Word Anime

(yes, I know, that’s nine instead of seven, as the rules stipulate, but I don’t care!) 😉

And some serious questioning about my tastes, given that I chose mostly thieves and killers… LOL! 😀

I thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed it!

Now, for everyone I did *not* tag (heheheh!) who are your favorite hotties?