What I'm about to say is going to make me sound like an edgelord, so brace yourselves:

What I'm about to say is going to make me sound like an edgelord, so brace yourselves:

Does anybody else really identify with, and by extension, sympathise with Rorschach?

He's a man who's moral compass is so strong, and his sense of right and wrong so black and white, he's driven insane by it. His turning point in life is when he turned from master detective superhero into a vigilante after finding that the missing child he was looking for was raped, murdered, butchered and fed to dogs, he literally lost all faith in humanity. In the comic he talks about the kitty Genovese case, and how most people don't care about what happens to others, so long as it doesn't happen to themselves.

He feels lost in a world where we're led to believe people are good by nature, but in reality, that is not the case.

He is a person who believes that ends do not justify means, which is something I personally agree with. In the end when Adrian's plan has been executed, he is so distraught at the idea of living this lie, he is torn up than so many people had to die, that this new society will be built on the deaths of millions of innocents, that his best friend is willing to comply with such an evil world, he never would have been able to live in veidts utopia, he is a dead breed of person who values human life, the idea of living this lie and existing in this sick world is so painful for him, he practically begs to be killed and taken off this godforsaken planet.

Rorschach is introduced to us in the story as a maniac, a twisted deranged person.

But in the end he turned out to be the most good-hearted and human of all of them.

>image.gif
I don't associate with children, OP. Goodbye

WHY DOES HE WEAR THE MASK

Yeah I sympathize with him a great deal. I also understand Veidt unfortunately. I'd probably want to die too if I was Rawshark. I already do for his same reasons.

It was exactly Alan Moore's point that Snyder somehow messed up: The Comedian was a borderline edgelord fascist who became insane because he witnessed The Good Guy's plan and find it the embodiment of evil.
Rorschach is a violent asshole who genuinely cared about his mission.
Meanwhile there were Owl and Spectre, we could identify with them, they are "normal" and caring people, yet in the end they accept the plan to kill an entire city to maintain the peace. Are they murderers for killing so many civilians or are they saviours to keep the other billions alive by sacrificing NY?
I would probably choose the same as they did, and it scared me.

nothing edgy about it.

Rorschach was one of the few truly good men in a world filled with evil and/or indifferent people.

>He's a man who's moral compass is so strong, and his sense of right and wrong so black and white, he's driven insane by it

Stopped reading there. Very poor analysis of the character

Literally all of that came through in the film if you pay attention.

Snyder obviously understood the graphic novel better than plebs understand the film.

>It was exactly Alan Moore's point that Snyder somehow messed up

How's that?

Yeah I can sympathize with him, especially after how you just put it, but I don't really identify with him.

Like the good doc said, without condoning or condemning I understand

I've always identified with him, he's got a good heart and is really the only one out of the group that's actually concerned with who is murdering fellow "Capes" everyone else is too busy living humdrum lives.

His origin story was pretty good hearted too with him making a dress for Kitty Genovese only to find out that she was murdered while everyone watched. The dress he cut into a mask in tribute to her.

very poor and boring post. try again.

I read that in Trump's voice.

A lot of people like Rorschach, OP.

Moore has even commented on it, because he thinks those people have "missed the point" and it annoys him.

I wouldn't say I "identify" with Rorschach. But I think he's an interesting character and I sympathethize with him.

But Rorschach was insane, even if putting the pedophile into his own Saw trap was somewhat just (killing his dogs wasn't though)

>Moore has even commented on it, because he thinks those people have "missed the point" and it annoys him.

I read this a lot, but it is never elaborated on. What was the "point" then that Moore was getting at?

>Literally all of that came through in the film if you pay attention.
No it didn't.

Explain Veidt to me

>(killing his dogs wasn't though)

Dogs that ate human flesh should be destroyed.

yeah it did, try paying attention next time.

you do realize those dogs would be euthanized right? they were literally trained to harm humans

That Rorschach is obviously crazy. His comments about sexuality should be enough to tell you he's not right in the head, or that entire chapter he spent talking to the psychiatrist.

Yeah but he's an asshole because he wasted all the lives of everyone who died when he gave that newspaper his diary.

The plan did work, and then he fucked it up.

Never read the comic, and I got all of that from the movie just fine. Maybe you're just retarded?

>He is a person who believes that ends do not justify means
At the end of the day, yes. However, we can see how conflicted he was about this considering his views on Hiroshima. He wrote that he thought they were right to drop the bomb to save american lives and end the war early, and that's justifying the means. Perhaps it was because it wasn't americans that had to die, unlike with the squid?

Anyway, I can also identify with him for sure. He has integrity and very real feelings about justice. Niteowl was such a dipshit compared to him. Veidt was a sociopath. Comedian was a fraud, and Manhattan just plain not human anymore. He's one of the few character who genuinely seem to care. That makes him a lot more sympathetic in my opinion.

Also, nice touch at the end of the comic where you see his notes in a pile of books at the end, hinting at the possibility that the truth might get out at some point.

No, it didn't. You haven't even read the comic if think any of their reactions are accurate.

The Comedian's in the movie doesn't even make any sense. How could he even tell those things where nukes from the distance he was from the island? Why would he go crazy from that? A giant Lovecraft monster makes more sense.

hes an autistic ginger manlet

I mean geez they have a whole 12 pages dedicated to his backstory alone. He saw that the world might end in nuclear annihilation and set a plan in motion to unite the world instead, because he KNEW he could. His foray into the desert gave him the strength and realization that he could do absolutely anything if he set his mind to it. What he did was morally reprehensible, but he did it because he knew he could and nobody was able to stop him.

OP makes a very fair argument that Rawshark is indeed not crazy. Just completely conflicted. In fact I've never thought of him as crazy. It seems Moore doesn't even understand his own character.

He says that he meant for Rorschach to be a "bad example" that people would think is crazy and violent. But instead they thought he was a hero.

insane to an extent, but still good.

the watchmen comic is a moral tangle, where every ''side'' has some good points, and it forces you to morally identify with one of them on a purely emotional, gut level.

Not even alan Moore does, probably

I honestly wouldn't believe anything Moore says post 2000, he's become super self depreciating, and ever since movies have been made from his most famous books, he's grown to loath everything he's ever made, he's a guy who believes comics should be comics, movies movies, books books etc. He hates adaptation, which is highly hypocritical seeing as how he made the league of extraordinary gentlemen.

Recently he's said he regrets making watchmen because it usher in a new age of dark comics and that he dislikes the killing joke and that it's a heap of shit and anybody trying to read into it is on a wild goose chase.

He basically shuts down any praise his works get.

So when people admire Rorschach, he says rorscahch was constructed to be the epitome of everything wrong with the world, and anybody who likes him is deluded. Which is wrong considering he was written as being super sympathetic and as the opposition to ozy, who's written as an evil narcissist. He's just trolling at this point. Rorschach even gets the last laugh.

It's funny because watch men's artist, Dave gibbons who had lots of input on the characters has the opposite opinions to Moore. He liked the movie and supported the prequel comics.

Brian Holland, the killing jokes artist said TKJ was the best comic he ever worked on.

Moore is just jaded.

He ever said that anybody who ever bought any of the watchmen prequels is a parasite and not a true fan of the original. So, yeah.

Rorschach condones the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "in order to end the war early and save human lives". At the same time, he's not okay with Veidt killing a bunch of civvies in order to stop the cold war.

No your missing the point. Rorschach couldn't handle what happened because it was a waste. He knew human nature and that either the truth would get out or eventually it would all fall apart. The sacrifice was a waste, the worlds smartest man was an idiot. He bought temporary peace at the cost of millions. Rorschach saw it for what it was, both a lie and a waste.

>Never read the comic
Post discarded. How the hell can you even make comparisons between the movie and something you haven't read.

i read the comic you fucking retard, he was haunted by how despicable Veidt's plan was. Veidt killed him because he found out.

again try paying attention.

But that's silly. Rawshark isn't like Batman. Batman had the time and money to BE Batman. Rawshark is a self-made man on the opposite end of the spectrum of Veidt. It's fucking perfect, and a bit inspiring that man can hold fast to his beliefs like Rawshark can.

Exactly this.

Rawshark condones the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because nobody was lied to. Veidt's plan of using an alien/Dr. Manhattan only works because people don't know the truth.

Veidt thinks he's the greatest man in the history of the world. (And he's possibly right.) He has convinced himself that this makes it his duty to save the world, no matter the cost, which is apparently killing a bunch of innocents in order to stop an even great catastrophe from happening.

I can sympathize because at the end of the day, he MIGHT have saved everyone. His plan is fairly rational, just not very nice. It's "making the hard decision", that others are too crippled by human scruples to do, so it falls to him.

So this is pasta now huh?

Being completely uncompromising isn't a value sane people have, user.

Break any fingers lately?

I can't understand Moore's deal. Reading the story, it seems obvious that Rorschach was intended to be sympathetic.

The guy was crying when he found out what happened to New York

if you had any moral compass at all you wouldn't be posting here.

Rorschach was a sociopath and a self made authoritarian. He had no ability to empathize with people and lacked the ability to really care. His revenge against the pedophile was just his hatred of people coming through. He's like the punisher, he isn't out to ale the world better, he dosent like the world, he just wants to hurt people that his moral compass deems as evil. His actions are almost entirely self-serving even if the results are that he does a public service by removing criminals.

>he was haunted by how despicable Veidt's plan was
Because it was going to unite everybody. Comedian loved Vietnam and pointless war in general if you couldn't tell. Nukes, especially from the AMERICAN Dr. Manhattan wouldn't change anything for the better.

But you haven't the read book, or history books period, so...

This, plus the fact that Ozymandias couldn't possibly know for sure if a nuclear war was going to happen.

Converging hatred into a purpose isn't bad, especially when it's useful to everyone.

We pasta now?

They changed it in the movie, in the movie the weight of everything he's done throughout his life backs up on him and he has a sort of existential crisis, giving specific people cancer intentionally was the straw that broke the camels back for him, evidenced from the scene when he breaks into molochs house and cries at the foot of his bed, ozy realised how unstable he was becoming and he saw him as a liability, he might spill the beans out of guilt. So ozy killed him.

I think "the point" was that complex situations are complex, and you can't just go point out who's the "good guy" in every situation. Rorschach was definitely human. Flawed, but human. Veidt on the other hand is also not really a bad guy. He may be a narcissist, but he still has good intentions for the world. Though Rorschach is a lot more relateable, I have to agree.

I think what Moore means is that if someone just automatically thinks Rorschach is the "good guy", then they've completely missed the point.

you obviously haven't read the book and you're clearly too retarded to understand the film. stick to Disney it's ok.

>lacked the ability to really care
Why did he do anything then? Why bother? He clearly hated MOST people, but not all. I think he was just a very disappointed guy really. Disappointed in the fact that the world is shit compared to how it could have been.

>mfw Watchmen still generates discussion 30 years later

Yeah, that was the biggest weakness of Veidt's position easily. The problem of an uncertain future. You can't justify all this violence based on the premise that something MIGHT happen.

I think in the comic it's explained away with something like "this guy's a genius and has studied the problem and he's 100% sure that it is a guaranteed outcome". And considering that it takes place in an alternate universe where Nixon sits for like 4 consecutive terms, he might be right.

And you're done. Nice shitty debating user.

Maybe you can read the comic in the mean time to see how shitty the movie is.

There's a high chance. I mean shit like the Norad computer glitch almost caused us to sent out nukes.

The funny thing is (and ironic), in the comic at the end it turns out that Americans and Russians were about to make an agreement about peace and firbiding the nukes. So sacryficing all people in the city, death of Rorschach was all in vain. Adrian's plan was all a HUGE mistake.

>literally too retarded to understand a capefilm.

It appears we subscribe to different dictionaries and we possibly have different agendas. A tree bears its own fruit. This applies to men, as well as the toys of men. Debates on social media bear poison, it is a poisonous tree. I’d be honored to discuss my position with you in-person and I’d consider changing my position.

>In the comic he talks about the kitty Genovese case, and how most people don't care about what happens to others, so long as it doesn't happen to themselves.

I don't know if Alan Moore was aware of it when he wrote Watchmen, but the Kitty Genovese case was inflated by the media to be worse than it actually was.

>While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.

Rorschach's worldview is based on incomplete information and confirmation bias.

This is the weirdest thing I keep seeing in regards to it, though I guess that's part of what keeps the discussion so fresh every time. Anyway, I don't get the "Veidt couldn't know for sure if a nuclear war was going to happen" argument, because it doesn't matter. We can say that as viewers on the outside, and with hindsight. But Veidt saw a future that might happen based on the political climate, nuclear war, and did what he felt was right. It worked, he steered the world away from nuclear war. What would your alternatives be? To simply wait it out? That's not Veidt, a man who earned his strength.

That's interesting. But I can't help but say that the little tabloid newspaper joint where Rorschach left his journal would probably just be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Who could possibly believe that Veidt manufactured an alien being and killed 3 million people in Manhattan? Why would the peace be temporary? There would be legislation passed from both the Soviet Union and the U.S. to unite each others' strength and put money into defense against otherworldly abominations.

I empathize with him - I get where he's coming from.

You have yourself highlighted many of the things wrong with him. Morality is NOT black and white.

Also, how can you lose faith in humanity based on one event? If there is one child rapist murderer in the world, there are thousands who aren't.

I think Rorschach suffers from the inability for handling complex ideas. He has the need to hammer everything into neat shapes and fit them into his simplistic world view.

>Adrian's plan

I have thought about Adrian's plan countless times but I still haven't been able to figure out what was wrong about it. My GUT tells me there is something horrific about it but my mind asks me: why is it more moral to let billions die rather than millions?

It's easy to be the "good" guy (like Rorschach) when you don't have to face complex moral dilemmas like this. It's hard to do the right things when everyone will hate you for it.

This I think makes Adrian a better superhero than Rorschach.

YES. Adrian killed millions but he saved BILLIONS from nuclear holocaust. He saved the whole planet - not just humans. But everyone hates him.

>But in the end he turned out to be the most good-hearted and human of all of them.

Is this necessarily a good thing? Being good-hearted if you don't have the ability (or intent) to make tough moral choices?

I'd rather be led by a person who makes tough calls like Adrian - even if he's a "bad" guy at heart - but who can make tough decisions rather than a coward like Rorschach.

Yes, Rorschach is a coward - not in the sense that he's afraid of physical threats to his life - but in the sense that he's afraid to face the real world in all it's complexities.

see

I don't remember that in the comic. Can you post the scan?

It turns out USA and Russia were about to make peace agreement just before he send out nukes. So Adrian's plan was really bad. Rorschach was right in the end.

Moore should have you suck the dick of manhattan & ozy and forget about the childish notion of finding a 3rd way

moore is very oblique or white

Can you post the scan? I really do not remember this.

Rorschach's problem was that he didn't really care about people as much as he cared about dogma (i.e., his code of right and wrong). So he'd ignore the greater good if doing otherwise would mean compromising his dogma. Sort of like Bolsheviks who were originally drawn to communism from a sense of wanting to help "the little guy", only to end up as monstrous butchers who'd rather slaughter people by the thousands than compromise their beliefs.

Veidt was driven less by dogma than practicality. He viewed lives in a mathematical sense--if saving billions meant killing millions, then it was simply good math and he did it without missing a beat. Whether he really cared about people any more than Rorschach isn't clear, despite saying he "made himself feel" all their deaths. It was just a logical, reasonable move in his eyes.

The Owl comes off better than any of them, since he seems the most down to earth and shows genuine sadness when people he cares about dies.

>gif less than a second long
go back to tumblr

>show ends on an utilitarianism note
fuck I hate shows like this.

Rorschach should appeal to you on some level because that's what we'd all like to believe: the world's problems can be tackled with enough people who are willing to do the right thing.

It's an ancient dilemma: is it better to kill one quantity of people for sure, or possibly condemn a larger quantity of people? Veidt chose the former, Rorschach chose the latter.

i thought it ended with a hint that the faggot guy's plan wasn't necessary after all? or was that the comic?

>It's an ancient dilemma:
Theres no ancient dilemma on utilitarianism because its simply not made for humans but for machines who can think of nothing but cold logic. It also limits the thought processes of not finding a 3rd way to a problem that supposedly has a this or that solution, it really cheapens the story. I'm not saying all things have a 3rd way to get out of but the way how this was setup was just awful.

You're like a tumblrina who won't continue the argument because they know they've hit a dead end.

I'll give you another chance: explain how the Comedian seeing weird nukes (that aren't even recognizable as nukes) from far above an island would make him crazy in the movie.

What the fuck man

Well done you read and understood Watchmen. Now for the hobbit.

nope, not going through that again

>So Adrian's plan was really bad.

If there was no such agreement, would Adrian be right?

This is the kind of question I think Watchmen wants us to ask - to what extent does "right" or "wrong" depend on the _intention_ of the moral agent and to what extent does it depend on the real world consequences of the action?

These are ancient questions about morality for which we don't have definite answers yet.

Sometimes, the inability to ask such questions can result in deaths of millions or billions - like in this book/movie.

That's the point of the book/movie and its characters.

Yeah I just read issue #12 right now and there's nothing about this.

In the movie he leaves his diary before departing with night owl to find ozy, so most of the story is written and that could be interpreted as the newspaper where he left it would eventually figure out everything.

But that user is either wrong or lying, there's nothing about this.

Quick reminder that Snyderfags are cancer

Ozy knew this but he did it anyway

>truth at the cost of total annihilation

what the fuck was his problem?

One would think that the smartest man on the planet and an almost god would figure out a better solution, perhaps a counter measurement to shut down ICBMs.

WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM I'm skimming the issues now I can't find any of this.

That doesn't unite the world.

sympathise with, yes. I can get that.

but if you actually think you identify with his mindset you're just the ultimate edgelord.

Oh no, no he'll just subjugate himself to hamfisted utilitarianism

>That doesn't unite the world.
Neither does inventing a fake alien threat when the various nations will figure out there no actual aliens.

Yes it does.

makes sense, it's a very low quality post

I'll end this here:


They changed it in the movie, in the movie the weight of everything he's done throughout his life backs up on him and he has a sort of existential crisis, giving specific people cancer intentionally was the straw that broke the camels back for him, evidenced from the scene when he breaks into molochs house and cries at the foot of his bed, ozy realised how unstable he was becoming and he saw him as a liability, he might spill the beans out of guilt. So ozy killed him.

EBIN

It's also worth noting that when Adrain asks Doctor Manhatten (the near omnipotent super human) whether or not he did the right thing,
John looks at him with a sympathetic look of apathy and teleports away, with Adrian screaming for him to answer the question, it ends with Adrian looking forlorn on his throne, implying Manhatten knew what Adrian did was wrong, but chose not to tell him out of sympathy, seeing as how there's no going back now, what's the point? This seems to be the final nail in the coffin for Adrian's plan.

I don't remember if this was in the movie though, I only saw it once.

>not identifying with based Veidt
>muh "black and white"

You're not even remembering it right for the comic. I've had this discussion with another user before, it's rather silly to just up and say Veidt's efforts were for naught just because Jon was cryptic. Legislation would be made, steps to unite the world. Veidt could even make another fake alien someday.

> in the movie the weight of everything he's done throughout his life backs up on him and he has a sort of existential crisis
He doesn't give a shit about anything he did. In both versions he was concerned with what Veidt was doing.

>giving specific people cancer intentionally was the straw that broke the camels back for him
How is that any worse than killing a pregnant woman.

>How the hell can you even make comparisons between the movie and something you haven't read.
He didn't make comparions.
He said he understood all those characterizations from the movie, which a previous poster claims did not occur in the movie.

His perspective is very important because he hasn't read the comic and can truely judge what the movie told him.

I read that specific section as life moves in cycles and while Veidt might have post-poned global conflict while not necessarily bringing around a permanent peace.

25 posts before the shitpost. i'm impressed, Sup Forums.

That's literally not true. There's a lot of shitposts before that one