The Fabian Society

2018 MCU Hottness Index: Match 5-8

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 07:00:00 +0000

Some strange pairs today, but then again who wouldn't be happy to just spend hours hanging out on the beach, smoking cigarettes with Ben Urich?

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Second Annual MCU Hottness Index!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 06:56:00 +0000

Oh, that's right, we're doing this AGAIN. Our crack team of researchers has put together a list of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's best, brightest, and most beautiful, and it is your job to suss out which one of them is the Hottest of Them All. It's a noble calling, but I know you're up to it. Judge now!

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MCU Hottness Index: Title Match

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 02:37:00 +0000

Here we are. After 107 pairings, we have determined the two hottest characters in the entire cinematic universe: Steve Rogers and Claire Temple, the Night Nurse and Captain America. But the question remains, then: which is hotter? Which is, indeed, definitively, Hottest of Them All? Only you can say. It's a heavy responsibility, but I believe in you.

Also we've thrown Thor and Raina into a glass jar and are hitting it with a pencil to see if they'll make out or fight or build some kind of anti-gravity device or something, so decide that, too, if you'd be so kind.

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MCU Hottness Index: Men's Semifinals

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 04:00:00 +0000

And the men end as perhaps they were always going to: with two giant slabs of beefcake showing off their excellent torsos. Which torso is best torso?

MCU Hottness Index: Women's Semifinals

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 19:00:00 +0000

Here we are, at the apotheosis of hott female characters in the MCU. Squaring off in this, the penultimate round, are Agents of SHIELD's Raina and The Defenders' Claire Temple. Some fun facts:

Raina (Ruth Negga) has no last name, and she eventually turned into some kind of hedgehog person when exposed to the Terrigen mist. She wasn't a fan of the experience, since it was (a) constantly, unendurably painful, and (b) meant she couldn't wear flower dresses anymore. For a hot second, it looked like she was going to go up Blair Underwood's Andrew Garner, and I would have paired their monster versions against each other for that round.
Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) is to The Defenders what Phil Coulson was to the Avengers, which I admit has got me a little nervous about her life expectancy. She was a nurse, until Matt Murdock's ninja bullshit got her fired. I have no idea what her current job is, but she apparently has enough free time to go gallivanting off to Georgia with Luke Cage on a moment's notice, so that's fun.

MCU Hottness Index: Men's Quarterfinals

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 18:36:00 +0000

As yesterday belonged to the women, so today belongs (mostly) to the men. Which prince with a murdered father is hotter? Which disaffected ex-SHIELD agent is hotter?

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MCU Hottness Index: Women's Quarterfinals

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 18:59:00 +0000

It's all women in today's quarterfinals. Which Marvel woman is the hottest of them all? (The men come due for judging tomorrow) At this point, I feel like Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth: Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Hottness City. Only a few days left!

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MCU Hottness Index: Matches 98-101

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

This is the back half of the sweet sixteen. We'll move on to the Group of 8 tomorrow, which we'll polish off in two day, then we'll take another two days for the Final Four. And then the finals! This has been a ridiculous, stupid project, and I just want to thank everyone for indulging me with this nonsense. Y'all are great.

MCU Hottness Index: Sweet 16!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

These last few rounds move SO MUCH faster. We're only a week from the end of this tomfoolery! There's some nice symmetry in Match 94 and 96, though, so that's fun.

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MCU Hottness Index: Matches 90-93

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Well, Bucky Barnes went out in the last round, and the only way Steve and Peggy will face off is if they both somehow make it through the entire tournament, so today's Steve/Sam matchup might be the only Captain America ship in the Index. I trust you'll handle this with the gravity and sobriety the question deserves. Excellent gif timing on that pairing, by the way, if I do say so myself.

Winners

Steve Rogers (Captain America)

Daisy Johnson (Agents of SHIELD)

Natasha Romanoff (The Avengers)

Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 86-89

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

I feel like you've got a good handle on this today. You don't need me to explain anything. It's all pretty much understood. Who's hot, who's less hot?

Winners

Thor (Thor)

Jason Wilkes (Agent Carter)

T'Challa (Black Panther)

Bobbi Morse (Agents of SHIELD)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 82-85

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Some tough choices today. Mostly women, too, with Peggy Carter and Misty Knight up against each other, and then The Luke Cage Quandry between Claire Temple and Jessica Jones. Luke and Jessica are canon in the comics, but they certainly left things in a pretty bad place on Netflix, so it's hard to imagine how that relationship could settle out. Anyway, that's all to the side. Who's hotter?

Winners

Peggy Carter (Agent Carter)

Colleen Wing (Iron Fist)

Peter Quill (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Claire Temple (The Defenders)

MCU Hottness Index: Round of 32!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

We are officially two-thirds of the way through this gargantuan meat market. The posers and the wannabes have been cleared away, and all that remains are the 32 hottest Marvel characters. How far we've come, how far indeed! Pat yourselves on the back!

Okay, now that you've done that, get to voting. It's only going to get harder from here!

Winners

Anything is possible now. Anything.

Raina (Agents of SHIELD)

Darcy Lewis (Thor)

Karen Page (Daredevil)

Andrew Garner (Agents of SHIELD)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 74-77

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Today is the last day of Round 2! We've made it through all 64 hotties, and soon we'll start over again with the Round of 32. This list might be slightly unwieldy.

Anyway, the last two contenders enter the Index today. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow herself, goes up against SHIELD cutie-pie Leo Fitz. Meanwhile, Science Bro Bruce Banner squares off with quasi-Guardian of the Galaxy Kraglin Obfonteri. Today is also the queerest the Index is likely to ever get, with lesbian Jeri Hogarth and bisexual Leo Fitz both up for consideration.

Winners

Natasha Romanoff (The Avengers)

Matt Murdock (Daredevil)

Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk)

Jeryn Hogarth (The Defenders)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 70-73

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Steve Rogers' massive tits make their first appearance in the Index tonight, plus we've got two examples of the incredibly rare female Marvel toplessness as Agents of SHIELD's Daisy Johnson squares off with Guardians of the Galaxy's Gamora. Only two days left until we launch into the Round of 32 and things really start heating up!

Winners

Steve Rogers (Captain America)

Sam Wilson (The Winter Soldier)

Daisy Johnson (Agents of SHIELD)

Dottie Underwood (Agent Carter)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 66-69

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Another day, another 8 contenders for the Hottest Marvel Cinematic Universe title. Match to watch today is between Luke Cage and T'Challa, the first two black superheroes to headline a Marvel movie. Only one can advance, alas, but then that was always the problem with this sort of ranking, wasn't it?

Winners

Heimdall (Thor)

T'Challa (Black Panther)

Bobbi Morse (Agents of SHIELD)

Trish Walker (Jessica Jones)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 62-65

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Thor makes his first appearance on the Index today, and that's fine, but the real action is the faceoff between Agent Carter swains Daniel Sousa and Jason Wilkes. Carter ended up with Sousa at the end of her second season, but did she make the right choice choosing her fellow veteran and agent, or should she have gone with the theoretical physicist and inventor?

Winners

Thor (Thor)

Pepper Potts (Iron Man)

Jason Wilkes (Agent Carter)

Grant Ward (Agents of SHIELD)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 58-61

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Entering the Index today, stone babes Peter Quill and Claire Temple, from Guardians of the Galaxy and literally every Netflix MCU series, respectively.

I also feel like I should maybe contextualize the picture for Elektra since it features what could look like abuse. Elektra is being choked by Matt Murdock. Elektra and Matt's relationship is based a lot on sexualized violence (or possibly violence-inflected sex), so I just want to make clear that this is a completely welcome bit of throat-grabbing. Here's the full scene, for context. My thinking on the pictures I choose is that I want to feature not just the moments where the camera feels that the characters are sexy (Quill's a good example of that), but also the moments where the character feels that they're sexy (that's Elektra and May in today's lineup). The cinematic gaze exists outside of and despite consent, and these moments exist within consent, as much as anything in film can, and I think it's important to highlight moments other than the purely voyeuristic, when they exist.

Winners

Peter "Starlord" Quill (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Melinda May (Agents of SHIELD)

Claire Temple (The Defenders)

Jessica Jones (Jessica Jones)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 54-57

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 06:01:00 +0000

You know the drill. Who's hotter? Let your judgment be the line that divides!

Winners

Peggy Carter (Agent Carter)

Misty Knight (Luke Cage)

Colleen Wing (Iron Fist)

James Rhodes (Iron Man)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 50-53

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Two more bye characters enter the Index today: Steve Rogers plus-one James Buchanan Barnes and Melinda May's ex-husband, psychologist Andrew Garner. Plus the Kilgrave/Tony Stark face off that no one asked for but that we've ended up with anyway. Vote!

Winners

Karen Page (Daredevil)

Lance Hunter (Agents of SHIELD)

Andrew Garner (Agents of SHIELD)

Tony Stark (Iron Man)

MCU Round 1: Wrap Up and Analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 06:30:00 +0000

Okay, so since today concludes the first major round of the MCU Hottness Index, it seems like a good time to take stock. Of the 109 individuals on the Index,

72% are white
17% are black
9% are asian
2% are latino

72% are male
28% are female

2% are gay
1% are bi
97% are straight

33% are heroes
37% are villains
30% are just folks

(The bi person, by the way, is Leo Fitz, and I'm basing that entirely on a conversation about Mack he has with an imaginary Jemma. It's as close as we've come to bi representation, but Fitz has only ever expressed open interest in women on the show.)

Putting this list together, I tried to grab every major hero, villain, love interest and major supporting character from every MCU property. It's not a complete list, because we're already looking at close to a month to get through the entire voting process, but it's pretty close. Which means that the demographics for the index should be pretty close to a proxy for the MCU as a whole: it's a straight white male world.

Now, there's some variation in the individual properties: Luke Cage, for example, is 100% black on the index. Dr. Strange and Agents of SHIELD are the next most diverse properties, with a White Male Index (the ratio of white male characters to the total number of characters) of 40 and 48% respectively. Iron Man and Ant-man are the least diverse, with a WMI of 75% each.

It's the sexuality stuff that really stands out to me. The MCU is *crushingly* straight. This started as an exercise in evaluating male hottness, but the only gay man in the MCU isn't on the index, because he has such a minor role.

Agents of SHIELD's Joey Gutierrez

Lesbians do very slightly better, with Dottie Underwood and Jeri Hogarth at least making the list, but that's 2 out of 109. Woeful. Marvel seems to be taking steps to address this, now that Perlmutter's been consigned to the TV side, but it's still got a long way to go. It's also worth nothing how much the burden of diversifying the universe is placed on shows with non-white male leads—shows like Luke Cage and Jessica Jones do better at decentering white men, but films that are led by white men like Ant-man are still almost monolithically white, or only feature people of color and white women in small or secondary roles.

MCU Hottness Index: ROUND 2!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

A new day dawns, my friends, and thank you to everyone who has voted so far. Y'all are great. We've cleaned away the chaff and the heavy hitters (by which I mean the arbitrary MCU characters that I decided were probably the hottest) are entering the field. Today? Today we have the 900 pound gorilla, the face that launched a thousand fics, Loki Laufeyson! Also Darcy Lewis and Davos, because, eh, gotta give somebody a bye and they'll do as well as anybody.

Winners

Loki (Thor)

Raina (Agents of SHIELD)

Darcy Lewis (Thor)

Davos (Iron Fist)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 41-45

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Oh holy night, we are finally through the first round! This is it, the last group of scrubs before we get to the heavy hitters. (Loki is tomorrow!) But that's tomorrow. Today? Oh, today. Today's contenders are Phil Coulson (in pretty good shape for a man his age!) versus Matt Murdock, who is in better shape physically but is kind of a trainwreck morally. (I'm talking to you, Daredevil Season 2) We've also got fan favorites Kraglin Obfonteri, Jeryn Hogarth, and Alphonso Mackenzie, plus (if we must) woefully miscast Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange going up against the other co-star of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Guy Pierce's Aldrich Killian. Share and Enjoy!

Winners

Matt Murdock (Daredevil)

Stephen Strange (Dr. Strange)

Kraglin Obfonteri (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Jeryn Hogarth (Jessica Jones)

Alphonso Mackenzie (Agents of SHIELD)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 36-40

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Some of my personal favorites today, including poor shnook Leo Fitz from Agents of SHIELD and Sam "The Falcon" Wilson. Also there's a gif of Dottie Underwood kissing Peggy Carter, so, you know, there's that.

Winners

Mariah Dillard (Luke Cage)

Sam Wilson (Winter Soldier)

Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Dottie Underwood (Agent Carter)

Leopold Fitz (Agents of SHIELD)

MCU Hottness Index: Matches 31-35

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 04:00:00 +0000

Only a few days left in this, the vast and incomprehensible First Round of the Index, but today, today we have T'Challa, the Black Panther, King and Protector of Wakanda. I don't want to tell you how to vote, but he's up against Ward Meachum. Ward was the best thing about Iron Fist, but that is an incredibly low bar to clear. Also in this round in the actual Iron Fist. Again, I don't want to tell you how to vote, but he's up against Trish "Hellcat" Walker, and, uh, he's also a human trash fire.

Meanwhile, for those of you with a thing for villains, we've got four malevolent mancandies, including Red Skull, the Queen of the Desert himself, as well as Mads Mikkelsen's most eye-shadow forward role as Dr. Strange's Kaecilius.

Winners

T'Challa (The Black Panther)

Hive (Agents of SHIELD)

Clint Barton (Thor)

Trish Walker (Jessica Jones)

Darren Cross (Ant-man)