Finally someone said it. Catwoman is the worse offender in this regard. Also highly recommend the Telltale Batman Games. Basically the best catwoman we’ve gotten.
Cassandra Cain is the coolest! If you want wholesome stories about her and the rest of the Bat Family, there's this web comic called Batman Wayne Family Adventures that is essentially just that. I learned about her character from it so one always makes me think of the other, so you mentioning her at the end was an extra uplifting reminder for me that amazing representations of these characters are out there.
I agree with every single word you said in this except for one: the fact that you would recommend Spider-Man 2018 over Arkham City simply because it has a better story. You should always recommend the game that's simply more fun to play. But I can tell this is just an incompatible difference in our philosophies.
does he appear on screen flexing his big ole muscles (and not by feats of power, as that entices men anyway, but by focusing the camera on them) or his bat bulge? Does he lack autonomy and is symbolically turned in an object for the audience's delight? Is there ever a single moment where he's at the mercy of a, say, "female gaze"? A character being sexually arousing isn't the same as a character being hypersexualized, much less objectified.
Yes... Which is also for the sake of his male audience. This is a common talking point that always falls flat. The way male heroes are portrayed in most games aren't there for the sake of women. Women don't enjoy disproportionately impossible abs and muscles when presented in a context of beating people up. That's a male power fantasy.
Most of the women in the Arkham series are unsexualized. Barbara, Dr. Young, Nyssa, and most of the female NPCs. Selina, Ivy, and even Talia to a degree are all seductress characters. Them being overtly sexy is indeed expected. Harley, however, deserves a video of her own. She's a manipulation/abuse victim, so her being so sexualized really rubs the wrong way. Joker likely demands her to do it or she does it to please him, but the fact that most Batman media *joins in* on the exploitation of a woman already being exploited does indeed feel horrible. But, violent criminals are likely to be objectifying and sexually aggressive. I'm not sure why you think they wouldn't be. Its selling that they're disgusting individuals.
As much as all these are valid points, all of this also seems incredibly tame compared to the tiktok world we've been living in since the pandemic, with the irony being that a lot of "content" there is straight up comparable to just taking all these shots from arkham city and slapping them in real life
I was just a kid when I played this game for the first time and even then I rolled my eyes when Catwoman, in her final mission, says to herself she hopes that the vault keys are "deep in the pockets of those Tyger guards." Wouldn't she want them to be easily accessible in the pockets of those Tyger guards? Or did they just want a reason to have Catwoman say something is deeeeeep in something
When i played Arkham City ten years ago, i really didn't pay attention to oversexualization, and was taking it for granted. It was just a part of comic/video game appeal of a story, that tried to seem more mature than it was, and being on the internet for a while i knew that this is pretty tame in comparison with some other stuff. Sex sells. It was trending. Curvy female figures were even in those old dcau cartoons, and what i saw in Arkham were just logical progression of same ideas. There are literally one reason why it all was implemented, and it only because it was allowed in public's eye Also it might be because sexy badass people are cool, and you don't really need to be a child or a teenager to agree with that. Game clearly doesn't try to reach for anything more, they all just "cool" and "stylish" in this universe. It's kind of like dmc, but less tasteful
Harley gets tied to a post and moans through a duck tape gag that you can peel on and off repeatedly even after you get the plot relevant information out of the interaction. Game is clearly reaching for something more lol
@@godzillazfriction a) give me an example of when any male character has been tied to a post and gagged while moaning through tape. b) the difference between the villain’s violence and them literally threatening to sexually assault catwoman and harley is that it’s handled with little to no weight, making it feel extremely unnecessary and uncomfortable, while violence is literally a central theme in most Batman media.
@@godzillazfriction honestly idk where you trying to go with that last part but i literally gave you a reason why it felt uncomfortable and unnecessary, because it doesn’t handle rape and sexual assault with the weight that’s needed. i’m not against with depictions of these things as long as it’s respectful to actual rape victims.
@@godzillazfriction dawg you’re so cringey, just say you think women aren’t human if you want to so bad💀 in regards to the jason todd stuff, it’s never made sexual at all, i don’t think he’s ever even gagged and it’s clearly shown to be cruel torture.
As a woman who loves these games, thank you so much. I love these characters and it sucks seeing them portrayed like this. It sucks even more watching the mostly male fanbase continue the objectification and defend it.
@@hairyballs089 It is definitely wrong in a serious game like this, because it ruins their characterization and they are there just to be fan service . Now for me personally it is acceptable if they are there for like 2 -3 mins , but if a playable character who has her own story in a game is objectified and is just fan service then it is 100% wrong.
@@ADFDDred see but that is subjective, there are other reason character designers would choose to make a character sexy besides just characterization. There is a alluring power artists can tap into utilizing naturally appealing character designs that we are not allowed to tap into if it was up to prudish people.
@@hairyballs089 I get what you mean but you can make a character attractive/ appealing without objectifying them. In Arkham City , all the female characters were there just to be attractive for the camera and be fan service with the camera constantly having their parts be focused at. A character can be definitely alluring , but they should also have character besides just being there for fan service . Now like I said a fan service character is fine for me if they are there for like 2-3 mins . But a character like Catwoman in City who has her own story is just fan service then that's definitely bad because then it is hard to take the story seriously and be uncomfortable sometimes to play the game .
@@hairyballs089 everything is wrong with it, but it's okay to objectify men (always remember the double standard, and refuse to believe them if they say they're actually against sexualising men, because they're lying through their teeth and to themselves if they say they don't and aren't fine with it). Case and point is Mortal Kombat which has gradually desexualised it's female characters, but the males ones still remain topless and stuff.
I have the Art of Batman Arkham book that was released showcasing the visual development of the trilogy, and a quote I still think about from David Hego the Art Director in that book's Arkham City section is "Ugly Men and Beautiful Girls was the brief for the Arkham Characters." Crazy they made that their artistic mission! Great video as always, your writing is one of my favorites on the platform!
I hate how they did my girl Harley Quinn. I loved her outfit in the sense that it looked badass, but they really do treat her like eye candy and nothing more, so what should be a cool punk-clown-psycho outfit turns into multi-colored leather lingerie.
I was already on board with this video but the Cassandra Cain love at the end really made me love it (she's my favorite Batfamily member aside from Bruce himself)
I always hated playing versions of this game where the Catwoman DLC is there because it's so clear that Catwoman's gameplay wasn't thought through past "sexy" and "minimally functional. An expert gymnast wouldn't fucking crawl on her hands and knees with her ass up in order to sneak up on people
I'm rewatching this again because it's a damn good video and. Yeah. I'm playing the games again and it made me remember how 9/10 if a woman is being talked about, it's either because the Henchmen, the guys that don't even know there's a rear entrance to their *own base*, want to SA them, or they're a 'dumb woman villain', like Harley. Oh and on the lore, know what Harley was in the lore? A Psychiatrist, a very, very hard-to-achieve profession, certainly not a dumb bimbo like the Arkham series treats her. Now I love Paul Dini, he's written, created and made some great Batman stories, but comparing the way women are treated in Knight to City or Asylum is telling. It's not perfect, but it's better than nearly every female character having running mascara and cleavage.
I can understand where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily agree with what you're saying in regards to Arkham specifically, if only because the problem your describing is kind of a comic-wide problem, and to that extent, it's not even a problem because it's not portrayed in a positive light if you're paying attention. The most recent Catwoman comic arc was about her getting MARRIED to Batman for Christ's sake, and the wedding didn't even happen because Selina bailed so Bruce could "keep being Batman". Batman being surrounded by hot, mentally-ill women who are hyper sexualized but also spend all their time dominating and often times killing other men for fun and profit is... kind of just what Gotham is like? I feel like that's part of the mythos of the world. It's not being portrayed as a good thing, in my opinion, because Gotham is not supposed to be a good place. So since it's a bad place, the women in it are put in the position of either submitting to a powerful male archetype or becoming that domineering, sexual crime oligarch themselves. Every woman that gets close to Batman dies, usually in spite of his attempts to protect them, because the city itself seems to put down and weaken women. These are not good things. Gotham is not good. That's kind of the point of Gotham, and by extension Batman, because Batman is a bad solution to a big problem and it just ends with everyone being worse off, especially the people who get close to him. I don't know if any of that makes any sense, but w/e just my two cents.
I believe towing this line of sexulization and exploitation is rather delicate. I grew up in a household run by women, and was raised by women for most of my childhood and teenage years; two of my sisters love the wild and almost dream-like ways pop artists dress, and express their love for female characters usually in unconventional outfits like Ada Wong and the entire Mortal Kombat kast of female ninjas, both new games and old. I've also heard their love for the Arkham characters' outfits. On a deeper level, however, looks are only a cog in storytelling, and it's how these characters act and are shown that matter. It would disgust me more if Catwoman wasn't a character who couldn't defend herself; or if Talia was just an object for Bruce. Her father deems her so, however Bruce harbors a deeper compassion which goes past her outward desire; and Talia has the same for him. In the Catwoman audiotapes we hear Selina's crack in her usual erotic allure and get a glimpse of her secret admiration for Batman. She's so confident and sure that she can't believe a man, any man, could resist her outworld ploy, which is hiding her inner disgust for them in truth. There's a doubt in her character there: she doesn't doubt herself, she doubts her opinion on Batman as just another man looking at her how she wants men to look at her; she sees his gaze into her character and it hurts, because men have only hurt her and knowing one can pierce her veneer is alien. It's doubting not of esteem, but of growth. I could go on and on however I've made my main point. I enjoyed the video even while disagreeing with most of it! Thank you!
On the subject of Poison Ivy, she's in her own element here - i think it would be more honest and less exploitative if she was just fully nude. "She exposed her skin because chlorophyll or whatever" alright then why is she wearing any clothes at all? Stop framing her ass in the camera so much and let her either discard those fragments of humanity represented by clothing or give her a full wool outfit because she's a plant woman and it's winter and maybe that'd mean she'd get cold easily huh? It's not like she's in a building with working heat
I remember trying to unpack a similar idea to a friend over a VC as the one you lay out around 16 minutes in (regarding catwoman). I don't remember how exactly the conversation went but I do remember saying "she never plays up her sexuality for other characters, just for the camera"
This video made me realize the major difference of how the Arkham Games and The Batman (2022) treat Catwoman. The Batman has a lot of sexual tension in most Selina's scenes but in all of them is something between her and Bruce that the audience is just watching, we can feel how they both are very attracted to each other. In the Arkham Games is like Catwoman is trying to seduce THE AUDIENCE, while Bruce barely shows any feelings towards her. I think thats what Spider-man did better with Black Cat too, it's very obvious how she messes with Peter's head, she's seducing him not us.
I still remember joker saying that he had thoughts doing things to talia in arkham knight. Ik he likes to fuck with batmans mind. But after this, it feels odd now.
No offence but a lot of these types of video essays/criticism on sexuality in gaming are almost identical to when Fox 'news' attacked Manhunt by saying the game will make you want to torture people irl, but now with leftist buzzwords.
@iseeundeadpeople9 I watched the video lol I even clicked like, and I mostly agree that the arkham games are hypersexusised (because the source material is also sexualised) But you are using the same logic as "if little timmy plays gta he'll want to start stealing cars and shooting people"
You make a great point. Games can somehow be insanely horny but still sexually void if that makes sense. Like, Ivy in Arkham City is sitting in a building, she doesn't need to be seducing anyone. She's also ...Wearing the exact same outfit from the last game? Like, I'm not a prude, I'm sure as shit not, I'm a bisexual genderfluid insane person that doesn't like the idea of having sex. But listen, if Poison Ivy can look attractive in a long trenchcoat in a fedora then she doesn't need to be dressing like The End's stripper phase. Also, sexuality or not Harley's outfits in the Arkham series just ain't it. Her Knight outfit is the most decent and that's just a bad Nier cosplay. Oh and on that Michael Bay comment, wasn't there literally a scene in Transformers where some human character goes on about the age of consent? Who let that through? Why was one of the only two female doctors in City a Halloween nurse outfit? They don't say 'the Joker did that', she just...Wears a nurse outfit. Yeah, Catwoman's camera angles seem to quite literally always either have her boobs or butt as the main focus. Talia's entire subplot seems like the writers went 'okay how can we fail the Bechdel test instantly?' TL:DR Yet another Micah W video. P.S Batman's always the best as a weird asexual person. Then again, I never cared about romance in ...Anything. So. Yknow.
this could probobly branch off into entertainment VS art analysis discussion in general. i mean, i guess i havent seen your pixar vids yet but i have a feeling you won't like all the explosions and aww cute and funny for the sake of funny parts either; because again, auteur theory. Edit: refering to how "they may not be aware of it or where it leads", the lack of authority in art being the single biggest threat to it's existence.
then again you do also bleed very harshly into the pure evil that is "objectivity" so maybe you would be the type to mistake multiple artists for one studio
You know as a 17 year old I didn't noticed some of the things you pointed out and now hearing and seeing the examples on how it can be done better and how much better it is when it's done correctly. Kinda blew my mind. Thanks.
I really appreciate this! It's hard to know what kind of age groups are watching my work, so this is really helpful for me to know. Thanks for coming by.
Thanks for asking! I'm really unplugged from gaming at the moment and haven't had time for it yet. I'd like to finish my Pixar and Arkham series' first if anything, then maybe we'll see.
If I had found this video, at least, like 2 years ago it would have made me MAD. I've been a comic book guy since I could read, I can rattle off something I love about EVERY character in both major comic universes and the idea that they weren't untouchably perfect fiction, the idea that they might be HARMFUL used to feel almost like a personal attack. But I'm a grown up now, and I now know that the best way I can stand by these female characters whose souls and spirits I love so much is to expect better out of the media that portrays them. Also. If you want Cassandra Cain. She has lots of good bits in the last season of Young Justice (which is a perfect DC cartoon you should be watching anyway) and her solo series Batgirl Vol 1 from 2000 is solid gold and you should check it out.
NieR had some moments that really spoke to me as a queer person and I don't think it's really the same weird casual misogyny as Arkham or MGSV. I found it really cute how the androids dressed in the game some of the outfits were more revealing than others but 2B's I thought quite modest & looked a lot like a cute goth outfit I might wear. Some scenes are definitely directed in a way that is male gaze-y and there is stuff like the looking under 2B's skirt easter egg which do show some attitudes I think could maybe be problematic but at the same time I thought it was hilarious & cool the way she reacted to u perving and when I triggered it I wasn't even perving I was positioning the camera to take a screenshot & it triggered the hidden animation of her shooing the camera 😂 Everyone says how the characters all look like they are out of a BDSM porno in that game & for some yeah its true for 9S definitely but I think 2B is actually just adorable & really love her outfit like i said it's actually like something I would wear personally if I was trying to really feel nice & pretty A2 and 9S while less modest than 2B just look cool & interesting to me their outfits have so much personality all the androids. I don't look at them and just think "yeah this is horny design" it is definitely not modest but maybe its because of my perspective as a less sexually interested & active person I tend to not view things that way. I was honesstly really closeted abt a lot of things until quite recently I relate a lot to ur story about having these queer feelings but just ignoring it for years... I relate to that too much honestly 😫 Great video btw & this isn't really a criticism or anything I agree so much with pretty much all the points you are making and ever since your Arkham Asylum video I've been waiting to see how you articulate these points about women in video games that a lot of people aren't wanting to talk abt and get really defensive if you bring them up 👍
Spider-man PS4's MJ sucks imo, she's just a Lois Lane ripoff. making the love interest a journalist so she can be involved in the dangerous crime stuff from the main plot is so lazy and boring. And they apparently deleted the rest of her personality from the source material to make room for that.
So you're saying you can't have a unique take on a character that may take inspiration from lois lane, but that doesn't mean its 'lazy and boring' it means you prefer, traditional stories like most notably sam ramis take on her or comic book stories which is fine but saying they got rid of the rest of her personality either means you've never listened to the dialogue properly or are just saying that to make your argument more reasonable. Not saying you're entirely wrong like yes slightly similar to lois, I assume you'd dislike if batman had an interest in vicki as well or maybe I'm going too far ahead, nonetheless a character can be a unique take on them with taking inspiration from someone else
Also you forget they had to adapt her for a video game narrative. If she was just the girlfriend she would’ve bogged down the narrative and feel extraneous to overall experience.
This is a kind of take that really resonates with the benefit of hindsight, not that a teenager wouldn't be smart or mature enough to understand it, but that someone who played the Arkham games when they were younger can benefit from criticizing something they used to be obsessed with.
The team behind Urban Chaos: Riot Response is conservative? Who would have guessed? Well jokes aside, I really love that you made this video and you addressed a very blatant double standard between how the camera and the character design treats men and women. Especially the walk that the women have in the game, what is that walk? It's so ridiculous and pandering and it actively ridicules them for being women. And of course the costume design and body feels un cohesive with the character. Talia especially is the worst offender of that. I will say there are some aspects of the video I disagree with. Especially with regards to Catwoman, and her costume. I do believe that as a proud and unabashed former sex worker, her wearing a BDSM coded dominatrix inspired outfit feels pretty on brand for her. I can understand the critique regarding the open cleavage and the camera angles. But outside of that, Catwoman is a character known for using her sexuality as a disarming and shocking tool to incapacitate her enemies. So, I don't have an issue with her moveset particularly, it always felt like the joke was on the thugs and not her. The thugs making rape jokes just feels on brand for them imo. There is a lot of shocking dialogue about matricide, fratricide, sororicide, among other nasty things in the thug's dialogues in City and Asylum. So it doesn't feel off brand to me. They're horrible people. I do agree with the point about the game not exploring that, as Harley's outfits are painfully sexist and I would have loved a subplot or atleast some dialogue about emotional abuse and Harley being forced to dress that way by Joker. Or Catwoman discussing her past and her fashion choices with Batman or any of her friends (oh wait, she doesn't seem to have any other than Batman 🙄). Rocksteady is a company with sordid sexist and conservative undertones and I hope more channels explore their viewpoints regarding women and policing especially.
Trust me, this guy is a puritan deep down. The further left wing or right wing you get the more puritan you obviously get. I'm in the same camp as you verbatim btw. I find women who like the stuff we like tend to like it for the same reasons.
Petite Maman! French film about grief and the generational love passed down through mothers and daughters. Contains one of my favourite final shots and lines from any film too.
Honestly, I didn't think Arkham Knight was as bad as Arkham City with the hypersexualization of the female characters. (Aside with that time you picked up Harley and her ass was in the camera). I could be wrong but I never felt gross and weird with how they were portrayed compared to Arkham City. The women are still attractive, but not hyper sexual. Catwoman is still somewhat sexualized, but I believe that's a part of her character. If I'm wrong you can totally have a discussion with me about it.
Yeaaa, I'm a massive fan of these games, but I'll admit that the portrayal of female characters is extremely.. off putting. It's aged like milk, basically.
Not fully on the same boat but valid arguments however as for 4:57, bruh A they're prisoners for a reason and characterized as such and B ever met a convict before? if they're one thing its sexually frustrated not having seen any women for years (such a line being in the game too), thats why SA on men in prisons is an issue too. I get your point but it genuinely makes sense they'd be like that, they're villains, it makes ya wanna knock em out faster.
When you play a Batman video game rated T for Teen, you want to play as Batman. Being forced to listen to the threat of sexual violence repeatedly is not something needed for this game.
I'm happy I watched all the way through and the rap in the end was a killer surprise! :D I get easily annoyed with stuff like feminist media criticism because it often feels like part of womanhood speaking as if it was the voice of all of them. And so many basic assumptions are usually not justified enough which grinds my gears as a wannabe philosopher. There is a lot of truth but I feel like the topic is even more complicated and things are often interpreted in the worst possible way. I kinda liked how you talked about the differences of sexy black cat and the Arkham characters and seeing how gaming has evolved a lot in this area was cool. I think that your line about sexual confidence and sexuality having nothing to do with the pleasure of others just isn't true. Plenty of women who dress very sexy enjoy being sexualized by others. And for example in League of Legends female players really gravitate towards sexy female characters. I'd assume that this trend is common in other games too. In general the idea that sexualizing someone is inherently bad and degrading is far too common in some ways of thinking without it never being properly justified. If someone is just focusing on one aspect of a person like their humor, art, inventions, innate athletic ability or whatever it's fine and no one would think that the other aspects of that person are automatically diminished and they are objectified for that positive property. But if that one thing is sexuality then there is this weird implication of it automatically meaning everything else is degraded. To me this is really weird thinking and seems like a post hoc rationalization of some women feeling bad about seeing sexualized characters. I feel like feminism hasn't escaped from the conservative idea that a woman being sexually pleasing to someone else than their partner is somehow tarnishing them. Both sides seem weird with how easy they are to ascribe degradation to women. In general it just seems to be a fact about our species that in sex a big portion of women like to be submissive and many men like to be dominating. I feel like this is often seen as inherently bad by some feminists and the power fantasy in being sexy isn't given a realistic analysis. I also feel like the scrutiny of sex with very little focus on violence(in general, not talking about this video) is pretty US centered and if we use the logic we apply to sex we could talk about how men as mobs are just dehumanized stressballs for you to beat to a bloody pulp. I do concede that in some way sex is different than violence when it comes to media and real life impact, but this comment is already too long to get into the weeds of that. In general killing and torture don't get much attention even if they are implying about worse things than some misogynistic comment by a bad person in game. And I feel like people too easily make the connection of a game having misogynistic characters to the game itself being misogynistic. It's not anti human to show killing or torture in visual media nor is it misogynistic to show rape or threats of it. Overall it's hard to talk about this stuff without people falling into 2 oversimplified camps that have a hard time getting the other point of view. As a tech optimist kinda far left person(at least I feel like post scarcity as a goal so people could be free to do whatever they want is quite far on the left as it's pretty much a socialistic utopia) I dread being pushed to the conservative camp in peoples' minds when arguing against some parts of modern left. This was a cool video even if occasionally frustrating when I obviously can't pause to ask you to justify some claim. And it was also interesting to notice how certain defensiveness in me lifted up and I was like "yea, I guess the Arkham stuff is a bit much..." Overall people are WAY too sure about this kind of stuff, one way or another. This isn't physics, we are more in the area of philosophy and I wish people would treat the more abstract social sciences like it. Modern discourse kinda feels like a world where deontologists, utilitarians and virtue ethicists fight because they think that people with different views about morality are bad persons. Feminist analysis is better than dumb sexist conservative thought but it is far from having solved these issues.
@@DanielBakerOfCalifornia so? Cope and Seethe, Theodosius I is based, took St. Constantine's bedrock and made the final move to kill the Roman Empire. I like unintentional empire killers, deal with it
One small criticism I do have of this video is not anything to do with the content but of it's presentation, specifically the thumbnail. I don't like it 😩 "Touch grass" is a term I dislike for reasons of ableism that a content creator I really like called Aranock outlined really well in this video of hers: ruclips.net/video/iGFSJ3gv1kY/видео.html I linked at a specific time because she addresses the frequent use of this term to insult not well adjusted ppl and how it's problematic to actually disabled people who can't go outside and "touch grass". As someone who is disabled & also just always been quite reclusive I don't like going outside or being arounds lots of people especially ones I don't know... I do find this to be an offensive & assumptive term that just rubs me the wrong way every time I hear or see it. you don't have to be a super outgoing & social butterfly to have empathy and human decency... it's a really harmful stereotype of shy & introverted people. Rocksteady developers were "touching grass" by taking part in capitalism that's what touch grass really means it's not go out & experience nature & it's beauty which is a fine enough advice even though it's not practical for everyone some people literally can't do that even if they want to... but no what people really mean when they say to go and touch grass is to go out & do something "productive" usually either spending or working to create something of relative value under capitalism and boy was these Arkham games making a lot of money and still are making people spend their money 🤑
Thanks for letting me know about this! It might take a bit to update, but I've just changed the word in the thumbnail. My apologies for any discomfort caused! I wasn't aware of the exclusionary nature of the phrase, but it makes a lot of sense as soon as you point it out.
The thug dialogue playing as Catwoman/Batgirl compared to the dialogue playing Batman or Nightwing is genuinely disgusting. I usually play Batgirl and Catwoman in the challenge maps because I like playing female characters, but when every thugs dialogue turns from regular insults and threats to literal sexual assault it makes it rather hard to enjoy playing as my favourite characters
I love all the Arkham games and replay them frequently. But your points are valid and deserve to be voiced. The way catwoman is constantly taunted has to be one of the things I hate the most about this game.
I don’t understand the complaint about Catwoman being taunted. The thugs are low-brow, hardened criminals have done far worse and actively try to fight or shoot Catwoman on sight. It’d be strange if they didn’t say vulgar things to Catwoman. Also, as Catwoman, you are more than capable of punishing the scum by beating them unconscious. Also also, Batman, Robin, and Nightwing all get taunted by thugs as well. Granted, it isn’t explicitly sexual (though the first thing said to Bruce when he enters Arkham City is “You’re going to be my bitch, Wayne!”), which is admittedly a fair counter.
@@amusingmoose9924 For me it’s mostly having to constantly hear the word bitch. It’s included in what seems like 70% of the catwoman specific dialog. I don’t want all the thugs to just be silent. I love the realistic tone, but at the end of the day, this is a fantasy, and when I want to escape from the real world I want to leave some aspects of the real world behind.
@@BenDiaz Fair enough. I do roll my eyes at how often “bitch” is used (specifically Two-Face saying “Two guns, bitch!”), but it makes sense enough in-universe.
Finally someone said it. Catwoman is the worse offender in this regard.
Also highly recommend the Telltale Batman Games. Basically the best catwoman we’ve gotten.
Its Catwoman.
catwoman sucks in the telltale series i said no to all her romance bs only the homie joker
Cassandra Cain is the coolest! If you want wholesome stories about her and the rest of the Bat Family, there's this web comic called Batman Wayne Family Adventures that is essentially just that. I learned about her character from it so one always makes me think of the other, so you mentioning her at the end was an extra uplifting reminder for me that amazing representations of these characters are out there.
My god thankyou!!! I will look into this immediately!
I swear some of you don’t understand the difference between men sexualising women and women being sexually empowered.
Exactly
DC female characters are the sexiest women I've ever seen coming from a woman myself💀
Peter and MJ? Arkham has Bruce and Joker.. MJ calling Peter just to talk? City did that with Joker 7 years earlier
Surprised by the F.D. Signifier and Khadija Mbowe recommendations. Great recommendations, but unexpected. You've spoiled us with a new video so soon.
Do you have a link to F.D. Signifier's recommendation of Micah? I'm curious what he said.
@@antoniomendes7961 Here's a link to the F.D. Signifier video I believe Micah referenced: ruclips.net/video/DEeCVdbQC6c/видео.html
@@piemanbegins Do you have a timestamp?
I agree with every single word you said in this except for one: the fact that you would recommend Spider-Man 2018 over Arkham City simply because it has a better story. You should always recommend the game that's simply more fun to play. But I can tell this is just an incompatible difference in our philosophies.
nothing wrong with having attractive women in games but the focus on them by the fandom and the games is wild
Isn't Batman hypersexualized with his bat bulge and big ole muscles?
does he appear on screen flexing his big ole muscles (and not by feats of power, as that entices men anyway, but by focusing the camera on them) or his bat bulge? Does he lack autonomy and is symbolically turned in an object for the audience's delight? Is there ever a single moment where he's at the mercy of a, say, "female gaze"? A character being sexually arousing isn't the same as a character being hypersexualized, much less objectified.
Yes... Which is also for the sake of his male audience. This is a common talking point that always falls flat. The way male heroes are portrayed in most games aren't there for the sake of women. Women don't enjoy disproportionately impossible abs and muscles when presented in a context of beating people up. That's a male power fantasy.
@@godzillazfriction I'm not sure I get your point.
Most of the women in the Arkham series are unsexualized. Barbara, Dr. Young, Nyssa, and most of the female NPCs.
Selina, Ivy, and even Talia to a degree are all seductress characters. Them being overtly sexy is indeed expected.
Harley, however, deserves a video of her own. She's a manipulation/abuse victim, so her being so sexualized really rubs the wrong way. Joker likely demands her to do it or she does it to please him, but the fact that most Batman media *joins in* on the exploitation of a woman already being exploited does indeed feel horrible.
But, violent criminals are likely to be objectifying and sexually aggressive. I'm not sure why you think they wouldn't be. Its selling that they're disgusting individuals.
As much as all these are valid points, all of this also seems incredibly tame compared to the tiktok world we've been living in since the pandemic, with the irony being that a lot of "content" there is straight up comparable to just taking all these shots from arkham city and slapping them in real life
we're talking about a 2011 game 13 year olds could buy without supervision, not social media in 2024
I was just a kid when I played this game for the first time and even then I rolled my eyes when Catwoman, in her final mission, says to herself she hopes that the vault keys are "deep in the pockets of those Tyger guards." Wouldn't she want them to be easily accessible in the pockets of those Tyger guards? Or did they just want a reason to have Catwoman say something is deeeeeep in something
She just wants to grab some dicks the whole game.
why you got a problem with sexy women bro?
When i played Arkham City ten years ago, i really didn't pay attention to oversexualization, and was taking it for granted. It was just a part of comic/video game appeal of a story, that tried to seem more mature than it was, and being on the internet for a while i knew that this is pretty tame in comparison with some other stuff. Sex sells. It was trending. Curvy female figures were even in those old dcau cartoons, and what i saw in Arkham were just logical progression of same ideas. There are literally one reason why it all was implemented, and it only because it was allowed in public's eye
Also it might be because sexy badass people are cool, and you don't really need to be a child or a teenager to agree with that. Game clearly doesn't try to reach for anything more, they all just "cool" and "stylish" in this universe. It's kind of like dmc, but less tasteful
Harley gets tied to a post and moans through a duck tape gag that you can peel on and off repeatedly even after you get the plot relevant information out of the interaction. Game is clearly reaching for something more lol
@@godzillazfriction a) give me an example of when any male character has been tied to a post and gagged while moaning through tape. b) the difference between the villain’s violence and them literally threatening to sexually assault catwoman and harley is that it’s handled with little to no weight, making it feel extremely unnecessary and uncomfortable, while violence is literally a central theme in most Batman media.
@@godzillazfriction honestly idk where you trying to go with that last part but i literally gave you a reason why it felt uncomfortable and unnecessary, because it doesn’t handle rape and sexual assault with the weight that’s needed. i’m not against with depictions of these things as long as it’s respectful to actual rape victims.
@@godzillazfriction dawg you’re so cringey, just say you think women aren’t human if you want to so bad💀 in regards to the jason todd stuff, it’s never made sexual at all, i don’t think he’s ever even gagged and it’s clearly shown to be cruel torture.
As a woman who loves these games, thank you so much. I love these characters and it sucks seeing them portrayed like this. It sucks even more watching the mostly male fanbase continue the objectification and defend it.
objectively what is wrong about objectifying women?
@@hairyballs089 It is definitely wrong in a serious game like this, because it ruins their characterization and they are there just to be fan service . Now for me personally it is acceptable if they are there for like 2 -3 mins , but if a playable character who has her own story in a game is objectified and is just fan service then it is 100% wrong.
@@ADFDDred see but that is subjective, there are other reason character designers would choose to make a character sexy besides just characterization. There is a alluring power artists can tap into utilizing naturally appealing character designs that we are not allowed to tap into if it was up to prudish people.
@@hairyballs089 I get what you mean but you can make a character attractive/ appealing without objectifying them. In Arkham City , all the female characters were there just to be attractive for the camera and be fan service with the camera constantly having their parts be focused at.
A character can be definitely alluring , but they should also have character besides just being there for fan service .
Now like I said a fan service character is fine for me if they are there for like 2-3 mins . But a character like Catwoman in City who has her own story is just fan service then that's definitely bad because then it is hard to take the story seriously and be uncomfortable sometimes to play the game .
@@hairyballs089 everything is wrong with it, but it's okay to objectify men (always remember the double standard, and refuse to believe them if they say they're actually against sexualising men, because they're lying through their teeth and to themselves if they say they don't and aren't fine with it). Case and point is Mortal Kombat which has gradually desexualised it's female characters, but the males ones still remain topless and stuff.
I have the Art of Batman Arkham book that was released showcasing the visual development of the trilogy, and a quote I still think about from David Hego the Art Director in that book's Arkham City section is "Ugly Men and Beautiful Girls was the brief for the Arkham Characters." Crazy they made that their artistic mission!
Great video as always, your writing is one of my favorites on the platform!
So basically Ugly Bastard - The Game?
Worst part is that no joker and Batman gay sex 😢😢😢😢
5:13 has me DYINNNNNGGG 🤣🤣🤣😂😂
Literally kills me
I hate how they did my girl Harley Quinn. I loved her outfit in the sense that it looked badass, but they really do treat her like eye candy and nothing more, so what should be a cool punk-clown-psycho outfit turns into multi-colored leather lingerie.
I was already on board with this video but the Cassandra Cain love at the end really made me love it (she's my favorite Batfamily member aside from Bruce himself)
Oh my god, the implementation of musical moments in these last two videos have been absolute gold
I always hated playing versions of this game where the Catwoman DLC is there because it's so clear that Catwoman's gameplay wasn't thought through past "sexy" and "minimally functional. An expert gymnast wouldn't fucking crawl on her hands and knees with her ass up in order to sneak up on people
I agree. We definitely need more Cassandra Cain in DC adaptations.
(In all seriousness great video.)
I'm rewatching this again because it's a damn good video and.
Yeah.
I'm playing the games again and it made me remember how 9/10 if a woman is being talked about, it's either because the Henchmen, the guys that don't even know there's a rear entrance to their *own base*, want to SA them, or they're a 'dumb woman villain', like Harley.
Oh and on the lore, know what Harley was in the lore? A Psychiatrist, a very, very hard-to-achieve profession, certainly not a dumb bimbo like the Arkham series treats her.
Now I love Paul Dini, he's written, created and made some great Batman stories, but comparing the way women are treated in Knight to City or Asylum is telling. It's not perfect, but it's better than nearly every female character having running mascara and cleavage.
Two videos in less than two weeks? Blessed
I can understand where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily agree with what you're saying in regards to Arkham specifically, if only because the problem your describing is kind of a comic-wide problem, and to that extent, it's not even a problem because it's not portrayed in a positive light if you're paying attention. The most recent Catwoman comic arc was about her getting MARRIED to Batman for Christ's sake, and the wedding didn't even happen because Selina bailed so Bruce could "keep being Batman". Batman being surrounded by hot, mentally-ill women who are hyper sexualized but also spend all their time dominating and often times killing other men for fun and profit is... kind of just what Gotham is like? I feel like that's part of the mythos of the world. It's not being portrayed as a good thing, in my opinion, because Gotham is not supposed to be a good place. So since it's a bad place, the women in it are put in the position of either submitting to a powerful male archetype or becoming that domineering, sexual crime oligarch themselves. Every woman that gets close to Batman dies, usually in spite of his attempts to protect them, because the city itself seems to put down and weaken women. These are not good things. Gotham is not good. That's kind of the point of Gotham, and by extension Batman, because Batman is a bad solution to a big problem and it just ends with everyone being worse off, especially the people who get close to him. I don't know if any of that makes any sense, but w/e just my two cents.
Nailed it you're honor (I'm not an english person, sorry for my bad gramar
I believe towing this line of sexulization and exploitation is rather delicate. I grew up in a household run by women, and was raised by women for most of my childhood and teenage years; two of my sisters love the wild and almost dream-like ways pop artists dress, and express their love for female characters usually in unconventional outfits like Ada Wong and the entire Mortal Kombat kast of female ninjas, both new games and old.
I've also heard their love for the Arkham characters' outfits. On a deeper level, however, looks are only a cog in storytelling, and it's how these characters act and are shown that matter. It would disgust me more if Catwoman wasn't a character who couldn't defend herself; or if Talia was just an object for Bruce. Her father deems her so, however Bruce harbors a deeper compassion which goes past her outward desire; and Talia has the same for him.
In the Catwoman audiotapes we hear Selina's crack in her usual erotic allure and get a glimpse of her secret admiration for Batman. She's so confident and sure that she can't believe a man, any man, could resist her outworld ploy, which is hiding her inner disgust for them in truth. There's a doubt in her character there: she doesn't doubt herself, she doubts her opinion on Batman as just another man looking at her how she wants men to look at her; she sees his gaze into her character and it hurts, because men have only hurt her and knowing one can pierce her veneer is alien. It's doubting not of esteem, but of growth.
I could go on and on however I've made my main point. I enjoyed the video even while disagreeing with most of it! Thank you!
On the subject of Poison Ivy, she's in her own element here - i think it would be more honest and less exploitative if she was just fully nude. "She exposed her skin because chlorophyll or whatever" alright then why is she wearing any clothes at all? Stop framing her ass in the camera so much and let her either discard those fragments of humanity represented by clothing or give her a full wool outfit because she's a plant woman and it's winter and maybe that'd mean she'd get cold easily huh? It's not like she's in a building with working heat
I remember trying to unpack a similar idea to a friend over a VC as the one you lay out around 16 minutes in (regarding catwoman). I don't remember how exactly the conversation went but I do remember saying "she never plays up her sexuality for other characters, just for the camera"
This video made me realize the major difference of how the Arkham Games and The Batman (2022) treat Catwoman. The Batman has a lot of sexual tension in most Selina's scenes but in all of them is something between her and Bruce that the audience is just watching, we can feel how they both are very attracted to each other. In the Arkham Games is like Catwoman is trying to seduce THE AUDIENCE, while Bruce barely shows any feelings towards her.
I think thats what Spider-man did better with Black Cat too, it's very obvious how she messes with Peter's head, she's seducing him not us.
I still remember joker saying that he had thoughts doing things to talia in arkham knight. Ik he likes to fuck with batmans mind. But after this, it feels odd now.
No offence but a lot of these types of video essays/criticism on sexuality in gaming are almost identical to when Fox 'news' attacked Manhunt by saying the game will make you want to torture people irl, but now with leftist buzzwords.
That's fucking stupid
You haven't listened to a single word of it. But still felt a need to comment.
@iseeundeadpeople9 I watched the video lol I even clicked like, and I mostly agree that the arkham games are hypersexusised (because the source material is also sexualised)
But you are using the same logic as "if little timmy plays gta he'll want to start stealing cars and shooting people"
@@qwert4407 Where did he use that logic?
You make a great point. Games can somehow be insanely horny but still sexually void if that makes sense.
Like, Ivy in Arkham City is sitting in a building, she doesn't need to be seducing anyone. She's also ...Wearing the exact same outfit from the last game?
Like, I'm not a prude, I'm sure as shit not, I'm a bisexual genderfluid insane person that doesn't like the idea of having sex. But listen, if Poison Ivy can look attractive in a long trenchcoat in a fedora then she doesn't need to be dressing like The End's stripper phase.
Also, sexuality or not Harley's outfits in the Arkham series just ain't it. Her Knight outfit is the most decent and that's just a bad Nier cosplay.
Oh and on that Michael Bay comment, wasn't there literally a scene in Transformers where some human character goes on about the age of consent? Who let that through?
Why was one of the only two female doctors in City a Halloween nurse outfit? They don't say 'the Joker did that', she just...Wears a nurse outfit.
Yeah, Catwoman's camera angles seem to quite literally always either have her boobs or butt as the main focus. Talia's entire subplot seems like the writers went 'okay how can we fail the Bechdel test instantly?'
TL:DR Yet another Micah W video.
P.S Batman's always the best as a weird asexual person. Then again, I never cared about romance in ...Anything. So. Yknow.
this could probobly branch off into entertainment VS art analysis discussion in general. i mean, i guess i havent seen your pixar vids yet but i have a feeling you won't like all the explosions and aww cute and funny for the sake of funny parts either; because again, auteur theory.
Edit: refering to how "they may not be aware of it or where it leads", the lack of authority in art being the single biggest threat to it's existence.
then again you do also bleed very harshly into the pure evil that is "objectivity" so maybe you would be the type to mistake multiple artists for one studio
Bro is not cooking with this one
so tired of these "the thing you like is problematic" dudes.
@@HalozillaEX It's exhausting
Trust he is
@@HalozillaEX Did you listen to any of it?
It is a prison 😂
You know as a 17 year old I didn't noticed some of the things you pointed out and now hearing and seeing the examples on how it can be done better and how much better it is when it's done correctly. Kinda blew my mind. Thanks.
I really appreciate this! It's hard to know what kind of age groups are watching my work, so this is really helpful for me to know. Thanks for coming by.
4:08 I cannot unsee that, now
bro is spitting so hard 20:55
I would kill for Cassandra Cain to be (obviously as Batgirl) in a Gotham Knights sequel or in whatever the next Batman game is.
Will you be doing a video on Suicide Squad? I'm guessing no, you probably see it as a dead horse.
Thanks for asking! I'm really unplugged from gaming at the moment and haven't had time for it yet. I'd like to finish my Pixar and Arkham series' first if anything, then maybe we'll see.
Idk man I’m about it
its mostly bout males like arkham knight joker scarcrow mr ghul man hugo strange bane and batmans sidekicks and him self bruh
Great videos, and I like your music a lot
Great video!
If I had found this video, at least, like 2 years ago it would have made me MAD. I've been a comic book guy since I could read, I can rattle off something I love about EVERY character in both major comic universes and the idea that they weren't untouchably perfect fiction, the idea that they might be HARMFUL used to feel almost like a personal attack. But I'm a grown up now, and I now know that the best way I can stand by these female characters whose souls and spirits I love so much is to expect better out of the media that portrays them.
Also. If you want Cassandra Cain. She has lots of good bits in the last season of Young Justice (which is a perfect DC cartoon you should be watching anyway) and her solo series Batgirl Vol 1 from 2000 is solid gold and you should check it out.
NieR had some moments that really spoke to me as a queer person and I don't think it's really the same weird casual misogyny as Arkham or MGSV. I found it really cute how the androids dressed in the game some of the outfits were more revealing than others but 2B's I thought quite modest & looked a lot like a cute goth outfit I might wear. Some scenes are definitely directed in a way that is male gaze-y and there is stuff like the looking under 2B's skirt easter egg which do show some attitudes I think could maybe be problematic but at the same time I thought it was hilarious & cool the way she reacted to u perving and when I triggered it I wasn't even perving I was positioning the camera to take a screenshot & it triggered the hidden animation of her shooing the camera 😂
Everyone says how the characters all look like they are out of a BDSM porno in that game & for some yeah its true for 9S definitely but I think 2B is actually just adorable & really love her outfit like i said it's actually like something I would wear personally if I was trying to really feel nice & pretty
A2 and 9S while less modest than 2B just look cool & interesting to me their outfits have so much personality all the androids. I don't look at them and just think "yeah this is horny design" it is definitely not modest but maybe its because of my perspective as a less sexually interested & active person I tend to not view things that way. I was honesstly really closeted abt a lot of things until quite recently I relate a lot to ur story about having these queer feelings but just ignoring it for years... I relate to that too much honestly 😫
Great video btw & this isn't really a criticism or anything I agree so much with pretty much all the points you are making and ever since your Arkham Asylum video I've been waiting to see how you articulate these points about women in video games that a lot of people aren't wanting to talk abt and get really defensive if you bring them up 👍
Spider-man PS4's MJ sucks imo, she's just a Lois Lane ripoff. making the love interest a journalist so she can be involved in the dangerous crime stuff from the main plot is so lazy and boring. And they apparently deleted the rest of her personality from the source material to make room for that.
So you're saying you can't have a unique take on a character that may take inspiration from lois lane, but that doesn't mean its 'lazy and boring' it means you prefer, traditional stories like most notably sam ramis take on her or comic book stories which is fine but saying they got rid of the rest of her personality either means you've never listened to the dialogue properly or are just saying that to make your argument more reasonable. Not saying you're entirely wrong like yes slightly similar to lois, I assume you'd dislike if batman had an interest in vicki as well or maybe I'm going too far ahead, nonetheless a character can be a unique take on them with taking inspiration from someone else
Also you forget they had to adapt her for a video game narrative. If she was just the girlfriend she would’ve bogged down the narrative and feel extraneous to overall experience.
This is a kind of take that really resonates with the benefit of hindsight, not that a teenager wouldn't be smart or mature enough to understand it, but that someone who played the Arkham games when they were younger can benefit from criticizing something they used to be obsessed with.
The team behind Urban Chaos: Riot Response is conservative? Who would have guessed? Well jokes aside, I really love that you made this video and you addressed a very blatant double standard between how the camera and the character design treats men and women. Especially the walk that the women have in the game, what is that walk? It's so ridiculous and pandering and it actively ridicules them for being women. And of course the costume design and body feels un cohesive with the character. Talia especially is the worst offender of that.
I will say there are some aspects of the video I disagree with. Especially with regards to Catwoman, and her costume. I do believe that as a proud and unabashed former sex worker, her wearing a BDSM coded dominatrix inspired outfit feels pretty on brand for her. I can understand the critique regarding the open cleavage and the camera angles. But outside of that, Catwoman is a character known for using her sexuality as a disarming and shocking tool to incapacitate her enemies. So, I don't have an issue with her moveset particularly, it always felt like the joke was on the thugs and not her.
The thugs making rape jokes just feels on brand for them imo. There is a lot of shocking dialogue about matricide, fratricide, sororicide, among other nasty things in the thug's dialogues in City and Asylum. So it doesn't feel off brand to me. They're horrible people.
I do agree with the point about the game not exploring that, as Harley's outfits are painfully sexist and I would have loved a subplot or atleast some dialogue about emotional abuse and Harley being forced to dress that way by Joker. Or Catwoman discussing her past and her fashion choices with Batman or any of her friends (oh wait, she doesn't seem to have any other than Batman 🙄).
Rocksteady is a company with sordid sexist and conservative undertones and I hope more channels explore their viewpoints regarding women and policing especially.
Ive known many who like the sexy Catwoman moments including other female gamers and I like a little fan service here and there
Trust me, this guy is a puritan deep down. The further left wing or right wing you get the more puritan you obviously get. I'm in the same camp as you verbatim btw. I find women who like the stuff we like tend to like it for the same reasons.
search the definition of anecdotical evidence on Google
I think this video should be called the problem of women in the arkham saga
Truly sad how far we've fallen since 2011.
Good vid. it's also refreshing to see more guys see that this shit is gross.
What was the third piece you said at 11:20 after Turning Red and Everything Everywhere?
Petite Maman! French film about grief and the generational love passed down through mothers and daughters. Contains one of my favourite final shots and lines from any film too.
Honestly, I didn't think Arkham Knight was as bad as Arkham City with the hypersexualization of the female characters. (Aside with that time you picked up Harley and her ass was in the camera). I could be wrong but I never felt gross and weird with how they were portrayed compared to Arkham City. The women are still attractive, but not hyper sexual. Catwoman is still somewhat sexualized, but I believe that's a part of her character. If I'm wrong you can totally have a discussion with me about it.
What?
Well, if you press play, you might find out! It’s the big red button in the middle.
Stunning and brave essence of soy this video is
You're a biological robot.
Great video.
Yeaaa, I'm a massive fan of these games, but I'll admit that the portrayal of female characters is extremely.. off putting. It's aged like milk, basically.
Same mate it's more saddening for me considering how fantastic AC otherwise really is .
I hope she sees this bro.
It's very rare and refreshing to see a man acknowledging these issues in video games
Not fully on the same boat but valid arguments however as for 4:57, bruh A they're prisoners for a reason and characterized as such and B ever met a convict before? if they're one thing its sexually frustrated not having seen any women for years (such a line being in the game too), thats why SA on men in prisons is an issue too. I get your point but it genuinely makes sense they'd be like that, they're villains, it makes ya wanna knock em out faster.
When you play a Batman video game rated T for Teen, you want to play as Batman. Being forced to listen to the threat of sexual violence repeatedly is not something needed for this game.
This is the best Arkham City video
He’s pan- we stan 🏳️🌈
Yeah, I love the Arkham games, but I've always seen them as ridiculously misogynistic
I'm happy I watched all the way through and the rap in the end was a killer surprise! :D
I get easily annoyed with stuff like feminist media criticism because it often feels like part of womanhood speaking as if it was the voice of all of them. And so many basic assumptions are usually not justified enough which grinds my gears as a wannabe philosopher. There is a lot of truth but I feel like the topic is even more complicated and things are often interpreted in the worst possible way.
I kinda liked how you talked about the differences of sexy black cat and the Arkham characters and seeing how gaming has evolved a lot in this area was cool.
I think that your line about sexual confidence and sexuality having nothing to do with the pleasure of others just isn't true. Plenty of women who dress very sexy enjoy being sexualized by others. And for example in League of Legends female players really gravitate towards sexy female characters. I'd assume that this trend is common in other games too.
In general the idea that sexualizing someone is inherently bad and degrading is far too common in some ways of thinking without it never being properly justified.
If someone is just focusing on one aspect of a person like their humor, art, inventions, innate athletic ability or whatever it's fine and no one would think that the other aspects of that person are automatically diminished and they are objectified for that positive property. But if that one thing is sexuality then there is this weird implication of it automatically meaning everything else is degraded.
To me this is really weird thinking and seems like a post hoc rationalization of some women feeling bad about seeing sexualized characters. I feel like feminism hasn't escaped from the conservative idea that a woman being sexually pleasing to someone else than their partner is somehow tarnishing them. Both sides seem weird with how easy they are to ascribe degradation to women.
In general it just seems to be a fact about our species that in sex a big portion of women like to be submissive and many men like to be dominating. I feel like this is often seen as inherently bad by some feminists and the power fantasy in being sexy isn't given a realistic analysis.
I also feel like the scrutiny of sex with very little focus on violence(in general, not talking about this video) is pretty US centered and if we use the logic we apply to sex we could talk about how men as mobs are just dehumanized stressballs for you to beat to a bloody pulp.
I do concede that in some way sex is different than violence when it comes to media and real life impact, but this comment is already too long to get into the weeds of that.
In general killing and torture don't get much attention even if they are implying about worse things than some misogynistic comment by a bad person in game.
And I feel like people too easily make the connection of a game having misogynistic characters to the game itself being misogynistic.
It's not anti human to show killing or torture in visual media nor is it misogynistic to show rape or threats of it.
Overall it's hard to talk about this stuff without people falling into 2 oversimplified camps that have a hard time getting the other point of view. As a tech optimist kinda far left person(at least I feel like post scarcity as a goal so people could be free to do whatever they want is quite far on the left as it's pretty much a socialistic utopia) I dread being pushed to the conservative camp in peoples' minds when arguing against some parts of modern left.
This was a cool video even if occasionally frustrating when I obviously can't pause to ask you to justify some claim. And it was also interesting to notice how certain defensiveness in me lifted up and I was like "yea, I guess the Arkham stuff is a bit much..."
Overall people are WAY too sure about this kind of stuff, one way or another. This isn't physics, we are more in the area of philosophy and I wish people would treat the more abstract social sciences like it.
Modern discourse kinda feels like a world where deontologists, utilitarians and virtue ethicists fight because they think that people with different views about morality are bad persons. Feminist analysis is better than dumb sexist conservative thought but it is far from having solved these issues.
Holy shit is the musical parts cringy
the whole video is cringe, those parts are just extra cringe
More woke nonsense ?
Ah… a potential Nazi.
@@SevenminutesisallthetimeIhave the classic anyone who disagrees with me is.... DING DING DING "What is a potential Nazi?"
@@Garry_Combine statue pfp
@@DanielBakerOfCalifornia so? Cope and Seethe, Theodosius I is based, took St. Constantine's bedrock and made the final move to kill the Roman Empire. I like unintentional empire killers, deal with it
@@DanielBakerOfCalifornia also you have a dog pfp and someone had a tree, many people have anime pfps. Only just occurred to me, but your point?
This video is awful
honestly represenation dosent matter rlly
I can’t believe I share a planet with you….
let me come back to this when l finish arkham city, got all these games free from epic
new video so quickly!
One small criticism I do have of this video is not anything to do with the content but of it's presentation, specifically the thumbnail. I don't like it 😩 "Touch grass" is a term I dislike for reasons of ableism that a content creator I really like called Aranock outlined really well in this video of hers: ruclips.net/video/iGFSJ3gv1kY/видео.html
I linked at a specific time because she addresses the frequent use of this term to insult not well adjusted ppl and how it's problematic to actually disabled people who can't go outside and "touch grass". As someone who is disabled & also just always been quite reclusive I don't like going outside or being arounds lots of people especially ones I don't know... I do find this to be an offensive & assumptive term that just rubs me the wrong way every time I hear or see it. you don't have to be a super outgoing & social butterfly to have empathy and human decency... it's a really harmful stereotype of shy & introverted people.
Rocksteady developers were "touching grass" by taking part in capitalism that's what touch grass really means it's not go out & experience nature & it's beauty which is a fine enough advice even though it's not practical for everyone some people literally can't do that even if they want to... but no what people really mean when they say to go and touch grass is to go out & do something "productive" usually either spending or working to create something of relative value under capitalism and boy was these Arkham games making a lot of money and still are making people spend their money 🤑
Thanks for letting me know about this! It might take a bit to update, but I've just changed the word in the thumbnail. My apologies for any discomfort caused! I wasn't aware of the exclusionary nature of the phrase, but it makes a lot of sense as soon as you point it out.
The thug dialogue playing as Catwoman/Batgirl compared to the dialogue playing Batman or Nightwing is genuinely disgusting. I usually play Batgirl and Catwoman in the challenge maps because I like playing female characters, but when every thugs dialogue turns from regular insults and threats to literal sexual assault it makes it rather hard to enjoy playing as my favourite characters
I love all the Arkham games and replay them frequently. But your points are valid and deserve to be voiced. The way catwoman is constantly taunted has to be one of the things I hate the most about this game.
I don’t understand the complaint about Catwoman being taunted. The thugs are low-brow, hardened criminals have done far worse and actively try to fight or shoot Catwoman on sight. It’d be strange if they didn’t say vulgar things to Catwoman.
Also, as Catwoman, you are more than capable of punishing the scum by beating them unconscious.
Also also, Batman, Robin, and Nightwing all get taunted by thugs as well. Granted, it isn’t explicitly sexual (though the first thing said to Bruce when he enters Arkham City is “You’re going to be my bitch, Wayne!”), which is admittedly a fair counter.
@@amusingmoose9924 For me it’s mostly having to constantly hear the word bitch. It’s included in what seems like 70% of the catwoman specific dialog. I don’t want all the thugs to just be silent. I love the realistic tone, but at the end of the day, this is a fantasy, and when I want to escape from the real world I want to leave some aspects of the real world behind.
@@BenDiaz Fair enough. I do roll my eyes at how often “bitch” is used (specifically Two-Face saying “Two guns, bitch!”), but it makes sense enough in-universe.
I can see the men are bothered. 😂