What was Rorschach's problem anyway? Trauma and abuse alone wouldn't make a person act the way he does. Was he autistic?

What was Rorschach's problem anyway? Trauma and abuse alone wouldn't make a person act the way he does. Was he autistic?

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he was american

>Trauma and abuse alone wouldn't make a person act the way he does

oh boy are you ever in for an education

not from me though, because i know you're too dumb to listen

enjoy your (You)

Did you miss the part where he explained why he's like he is to that prison psychologist?

Don't think that part was in the movie

He went through a bit more than abuse, though.

Going from a shitty, unstable life to an even shittier, more unstable, super violent life where you have to live with the knowledge that you weren't quick enough to save a little kid from dying would fuck anyone up.

>there are people out there, right now, at this very second, who think the Punisher is a better he-who-fights-monsters vigilante

>muh dead child
>muh slutty mom

Still doesn't explain his general sperginess.

I think he was just very insane, but he took it in a different direction and used it for justice. Before the whole dog incident, he was only "Kovacs pretending to be Rorschach". Only thing that is really confusing is how/what made him feel so obligated to do what he did.

What was Question's problem anyway? Trauma and abuse alone wouldn't make a person act the way he does. Was he autistic?

the substance he uses as a mask makes him crazy

Did you read the comic? He explains this in detail when he's with the psychologist.

Probably. You'd have to be autistic to believe in objectivism.

youtube.com/watch?v=P8Y2-j2pMVk

Enjoy the only known recording of Steve Ditko speaking. From a 1989 special about comic book artists called "masters of comic book art". Ditko declined appearing, but sent this instead

Yeah I just finished it a couple days ago. I worded it weirdly. It's just really funny how he's nihilistic as fuck, but yet wants to preserve justice and all that.

he's not really nihilistic, though. he believes that life is meaningless and chaotic, which necessitates the need for order and rules. he rambles about how the world sucks, but he says multiple times that hope can exist as long as there's still life.

best theory: he's trying to live objectively and struggles with the concept because a) it's not possible, and b) he's crazy, hence the hypocrisy. if he truly believed in the kind of rhetoric he spouts, he wouldn't find it difficult to side with veidt.

>Trauma and abuse alone wouldn't make a person act the way he does.


Actually m8, yes it does. Years of abuse causing actual, literal, physical brain damage. Probably what's going on with PTSD.

Let's look at this, shall we?

- childhood filled with constant physical, emotionally, verbal, borderline sexual abuse from his mother and the kids around him
- further abused in shitty system for orphans probably given Watchmen universe
- one of his clients became famous example of what utter pieces of shit human beings are
- witnessed horrible crimes including brutal murder of little girl who was raped, killed, fed to dogs
- lifetime of poverty, practical homelessness

To be honest he's far more functional than a lot of real life people in similar conditions are. You can't expect a person with his backround not to be a total lunatic. Most mentally ill, formerly abused homeless crazies aren't collected enough to be vigillantes on the cover of TIME or whatever, either. Rorschach had something inside of him, brilliance or anger os I don't know what, that let him become that be it wasn't enough to make him not desperately want to die, and in the very end, he got his wish.

That makes a lot of sense. Maybe i'm just kinda still inhaling the whole thing. I really wished I read the comic much sooner.

How do you feel about a sequel?
I personally think it ended perfectly.

damn, ditko sounds badass. why the hell does moore make fun of him so much? he seems really intelligent.

If only my all-time Crack OTP could be real, he could be happy...

a direct sequel? doesn't need one. leave it alone, it's fine the way it is.

i do wish dc had at least tried more with before watchmen. silk spectre and the minutemen were fantastic and it took me by surprise because you don't really expect a universe like the one watchmen is set in to have the potential to be lighthearted and optimistic, but it works out nicely. they should have explored that more or made a series that focused solely on rorschach and nite owl's partnership. that's all i ever wanted desu.

Sigh. Oh well.

He was a sociopath.

I've never heard Moore make fun of him. Closest thing was telling an anecdote about what Ditko thought of Watchman

Right??? what a fucking clueless zed. OP: Seriously dude the next time you find a little girl raped killed and eaten by dogs make a new thread

>- childhood filled with constant physical, emotionally, verbal, borderline sexual abuse from his mother and the kids around him

i thought it was really strong implied that he was sexually abused, though. the patient report says that he was exposed to the "worst excesses of a prostitute's lifestyle", he has that fucked up dream he writes about as a kid, and he has this aggressiveness to anything sexual being shoved in his face to the point where he threw a guy down an elevator shaft for propositioning him. that and all of the crimes he punishes the most harshly are rape-murders. it seems to me like there was something going on that went a little deeper than seeing his mom fucking her johns.

>- further abused in shitty system for orphans probably given Watchmen universe

idk about this. they make the orphanage that he was put in sound pretty alright, given the fact that he was able to get as involved with his studies as he was described to have.

I'm surprised so much of that was cut. It wasn't even in the extended version

seems like something snyder would like, really

>sociopath
>able to genuinely express emotion, no matter how stunted it is

Cool, brah.

Remember that Rorschach was fucked up but not full on fucked up until after Blaire Roche. Before that he was relatively, emphasis on relatively, normal in comparison to how he was afterwards.

There's nothing about his character that doesn't make sense. He was abused in his youth and then went through a lot of trauma later.

We don't have any proof of this except for something halfhearted Dan said. I don't think there's any supplemental material out there, even noncanon, where we see what Rorschach was like before Blair Roche.

My read is that Rorsarch created an ideal out of everything his life wasn't and everything he wasn't. He made an ideal out of John Birch Society conservative vision of America, when he himself is a literal son of a whore, of eastern European immigrant stock, there's subtext to suggest he's gay, and oh yeah, is a lawless vigilante killer.

The contradiction between this self-created ideal and the life he's driven to lead based on his strange moral compass is something he can ignore. After all he talks about Harry Truman, and Mr. Truman was involved in vaporizing a couple of cities for world peace. He can ignore until he sees the one man he has some affection for going along with an act of mass murder.

Suddenly, he can't ignore it anymore. He either has to abandon his ideal, or abandon his moral code. Which is why he's practically begging Dr. Manhattan to murder him.

He coped with everything by mentally compartmentalizing reality. Everything is black and white. The concept of the lesser of two evils or forgoing justice for the greater good after mass murder is something he can't deal with. So he doesn't.

His death is like Javert's from Les Miserables, essentially.

I wish something like Netflix or some crap picked it up. Like some adventures or something of the Minutemen or the Nite Owl/Rorschach partnership. It'd be pretty neat, but too bad all we got was a 2 parter game.

I'm actually really surprised DC hasn't tried to integrate the Watchmen cast into the main DCU yet. They tried doing something similar with Carrie Kelley with from TDKR, but I think they'd have more options with Watchmen.

I mean, if they wanted to go full on hack mode, just handwave that Rorschach was teleported to the DCU by Manhattan instead of vaporized. Normies would eat that shit up.

We know he had a regular job before Blair Roche. With that and what Dan said, it's pretty clear that he was more adjusted until that incident. Rorschach even says so himself.

we're supposedly getting an HBO show, so maybe that's what it'll be about.

maybe this makes me a stupid autist scrub, but i'm more interested in seeing the broader watchmen universe as it was when costumed heroes were still the norm. like, we've seen the fallout and there's not much more you can do to deconstruct that, so just focus on what the actual superheroics were like. show us some fucked up villains or how rorschach and dan have to learn to reconcile their differences, or give us a reason to like the other crimebusters.

i didn't even think laurie could be likeable until her before watchmen issue. i want to see more stuff like that where they expand upon the characters, or at the very least show that in spite of their flaws and shitty lives they can still find room to have hope or be optimistic.

>there's subtext to suggest he's gay
where do you see this? not judging, but i'm curious. i always read him as asexual.

It's a bit tenuous I'll admit, but the handshake with Dan. That's the only bit of physical intimacy he's shown experiencing. He just as easily could be asexual, or just so fucked up that he cannot deal with anything sexual.

I always read him as asexual due to trauma too. His preoccupation with sexual things makes me think that he's not actually asexual, but he associates sex with too many terrible things to ever act on it.

It was one of the best issues, and they cut it out to turn it into prison action.

for all its flaws, can we all agree that the one good thing the movie did was cast Rorschach really really well? i don't think i can imagine anyone else as him.

Don't you dare fucking jinx it.

What are you talking about? I saw that movie in theaters and it's part of the movie.

Yeah. The Comedian was pretty good too.

It was very different though.

I think all of their cast was good, but the characterisation wasn't.

I thought the whole implication is that he's like a mutation of Taoist ideals, hence the whole negative and positive (Or really just mirror images) motif

He would've been better if he didn't talk with a Batman voice, but that's a minor nitpick.

I kind of wish Robin Williams had been cast from the Gilliam pitch. Anyone who kept putting him up as a punchline clearly never watched One Hour Photo. He was monotone and creepy as hell in that.

Who had bad characterization? The only one I can think of is Ozy.

“Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world."

Everyone except for Dr Manhattan and Comedian. Rorscharch was made too heroic and Ozy was a complete villain.

So he technically won right? Yeah there's the whole thing about him being kinds dead but he did deliver the journal.

Ever think that maybe it's a combination he was born a bit spergish and his home life didn't exactly help him?

To a newspaper no sane person would trust. And everyone thinks he's just some psycho anyways.

And on top of that most of his journal is him rambling and the only thing that they could get Viedt with is that he killed the Comedian.

>He would've been better if he didn't talk with a Batman voice
It's true to the comic.

>Rorscharch was made too heroic
He was made too try-hard-to-look-noir in my opinion. To the point it was just funny to watch.

>Rorschach
>too heroic

How?? He was exactly the same as he was in the comic. The only thing they did wrong was leave out chunks of his backstory.

He talks in a flat monotone in the comic. He doesn't do that in the movie.

Wrong. The comedian put up a fight in the intro and Dr. Manhattan wasn't manly enough.

Also, Ozy was made heroic in the movie, feeling more guilt for what he did. The only problem with Rorscharch is that they didn't put enough emphasis on his insanity but mostly because they lacked the time.

Nobody won

>Create alien attack
>Everybody starts working together and through that cooperation we create even better weapons to fights the alien menace
>No Aliens ever appear
>We go back to fighting each other armed with Ultra nukes

Great plan Veidt

What I understand from his speech is that he speaks at a constant calm pace but his voice is guttural. I don't understand why people say it's supposed to be a dull monotone.

Was nuclear war an absolute certainty? Was Russia going to for real attack the US or was it just typical red scare paranoia?

How silly is Veidt and everyone else who went along with his plan going to feel when they learn that all they had to do was wait another few years for all of this to blow over?

Because they say so in the comic. Several times.

>Was Russia going to for real attack the US or was it just typical red scare paranoia?

Always seemed stupid to me that they would consider it with Manhattan around. Even if they did destroy the US, what would be the point hen the unstoppable God comes for your ass?

Why did the Comedian go to Moloch and not any of the other superheroes or his goddamn government employers? Yeah, I get that he has no friends and it's supposed to be ~a tragedy~ but there's no reason for anyone not to believe him and they could've actually stopped Veidt.

But no, instead he goes to a dying old man with elf ears instead of Doctor Manhattan or the president, the two people who would've immediately taken him seriously.

He was the kind of person who saw things as black and white in the comic. His moments of insanity were shown as heroic in the movie. Like the one where he burned the guy and the one where he burned the other inmates face with oil. Comic has the shrink saying the line "I'm not trapped here with you..", while the movie makes a heroic and badass prison brawl with it.

It seemed like they were desperate enough to believe the could take on Manhattan with the nukes.

idk, maybe i missed the whole fucking point of the comic, but the only things i considered really detestable and insane about rorschach were his right-wing ideals and his fucked up view of sex/women, and even in the latter's case it's pretty easily explained by his history of abuse.

it's a little hard to feel sad for the people he maims and kills when 99% of them are vicious murderers/rapists who have it coming. hell, he's the one who has to pull dan of all people away from murdering that gang member after hollis bites it.

I don't think you were meant to find that heroic. I think they portrayed his general state of being unhinged and his brutality pretty well. His arrest and that stunt with the oil was some psychopathic shit.

imo this is one of the reasons why watchmen hasn't really aged well.

the setting works for the time period it was written in because it came out at the height of the cold war where it really did feel like a certainty that the world would end and it would take a miracle to stop the conflict. now that we know the real story and we've seen that all it took was to wait for it to blow over, veidt's solution seems far too extreme and everyone else seems like they're overreacting.

I wouldn't classify Rorschach as insane necessarily either and definitely not detestable. But there's nothing heroic about his story, either. He did do some good and in some ways you could call him heroic, but his story is a tragic and violent one.

I don't think you're meant to think he's a terrible person. But you're supposed to do the exact opposite of idolizing him unlike other comic heroes.

I meant more of a badass than heroic. Snyder just showed us how hardcore and badass Rorscharch was. He did the same with Nite owl and Silk Spectre.

>I don't think you're meant to think he's a terrible person

Not according to Alan Moore. I bet he really regrets giving him that sympathetic backstory now.

He wasn't asking for help, he wanted a confidente and that's why he vented to Moloch who, as Roscharch said, nobody would believe. He never tried to stop Veidt, even he realized it, he just killed Blake because he had a grudge on him from that time The Comedian beat him up and used the situation as an excuse.

You missed the whole point.

Rorschach is hardcore and badass though. It's just not in the typical way you'd celebrate in a hero. It's too brutal for that.

I won't argue that the movie didn't glorify them too much sometimes because it did. But Rorschach was relatively on point, if missing some important details in not focusing on his shitty background and his general state of shittiness (the smell, etc). I mostly think of the Dan and Laurie breaking Rorschach out of prison scene when I think of the tone failures of the movie.

I thought Moore just lambasted people who looked up to him or thought he was a cool hero because that was the exact opposite of what you were supposed to do. Rorschach would have been somewhat sympathetic from his death scene alone even minus the background.

honestly, the only thing i can even see as remotely heroic about him is that he believed in his morals and the truth so strongly that he was willing to die for them instead of selling them for veidt's false peace that probably won't even last, unlike dan and laurie did. i think the fact that he never gives up and stays true to himself even after all the horrible shit he goes through is why people find him worthy of hero worship.

but even that misses the point of the broader narrative. like, yeah those are objectively good qualities to have but only if you exercise them in a healthy way. rorschach wasn't healthy. instead of finding salvation in his ethics, he was consumed by them and it destroyed him. that's so tragic and poignant because you look at the guy and think that, if this were a lighter story written by dc on the same level as batman or some other mainstream series, he'd totally be the hero.

but he's not. he's a tragedy and a trainwreck, and that makes him so compelling by itself so idk why people ignore that and seem to focus on propping him up as this can-do-no-wrong badass the way they do with the punisher.

That's mostly what I meant by "heroic". And he probably did help some people out at some point in his vigilante career. But in the big picture he was just a sad, violent trainwreck of a fucked up life. And I like him as a character for it.

I think doing that diminishes the Punisher too but that's a whole other story.

He may be smart but he's also a Randroid loon.

No, I got the point, but it's fucking stupid and makes no sense unless the Comedian had zero drive to stop what he saw and just wanted someone to whine about it to.

Why wouldn't Manhattan have believed him? He has government connections. Why didn't he use them? It's no more unbelievable than a giant blue naked god man, and even if they were skeptical, Blake has the clout and reputation to at least warrant an investigation.

I got the point just fine and I knew his backstory with Veidit, but that doesn't make his actions any less illogical. The only possible solution I can think of was that Veidt murdered him literally hours before he could tell anyone who actually had the ability to stop him.

Huh, the Javert comparison is interesting. I don't know why I never thought of it before, but it's pretty apt.

>I don't think you're meant to think he's a terrible person

You're exactly wrong. Moore has said he specifically made Rorschach a terrible person.

He's physically disgusting, a paranoid conspiracy nut racist, and a hyperviolent thug. Unfortunately, being the force that drives the narrative and being the "badass", people idolized him anyway.

>people were actually pissed that Nite Owl saw Rorschach die in the movie and beat the shit out of Veidt for it

Explain why this was a bad change, comicfags.

>unless the Comedian had zero drive to stop what he saw and just wanted someone to whine about it to
Exactly. How can you see this and not see it at the same time?

Watchmen has aged just fine. It's like saying we can't enjoy works set in WWII because we know how it turns out.

"Not in muh comic". I agree that it was one of the better things of the movie.

When I say "terrible", I more mean some evil and entirely unsympathetic character. If that was Moore's intention then he messed up badly. Rorschach is a piece of shit in more ways than one and for all the reasons you said, but he's also a product of his environment, has ideals that could be considered heroic if they weren't so warped and obsessive, and entirely fucked in the head, which makes it hard to hate him.

That being said, anyone who idolized him seriously didn't read.

Wrong. People like him because, as we've already established, he's a sympathetic, fucked up wreck of a human being who went through a disproportionate amount of shit and was driven crazy for it. All those qualities that you listed just further hammer the point in that this is a person who's fallen so hard from whatever heroic standard he used to hold himself to.

Again, if Moore wanted to make him a monster, he shouldn't have gone out of his way to give him his backstory. The Comedian doesn't have one and he's just fine for it, no one will argue that he's not supposed to be a horrible human being.

I think it's actually better in the context of knowing what happens just because of everything you said, honestly. It makes the whole thing even sadder.

Then again our context doesn't exactly fit, because we didn't have a Dr. Manhattan. Who knows, maybe the Watchmen universe would have gotten blown up if Veidt hadn't acted.

Thing is he didn't even need the sad backstory explained. We would have gotten the picture from his actions, mindset, reaction to Blair Roche, the preoccupation with sexuality, and the circumstances of and emotional reaction to his death. Moore would have to basically change nearly everything about the character's story to make him entirely unsympathetic.

youtube.com/watch?v=4SNKRo0Zalk

Close enough.

And even the Comedian has tragic elements without it and in spite of being a horrible human being.

>Wrong. People like him because, as we've already established, he's a sympathetic, fucked up wreck of a human being who went through a disproportionate amount of shit and was driven crazy for it.

Nope. People like him because he's a violent badass who, "even in the face of Armageddon" would "[n]ever compromise."

The 90s was born because of this facile and childish adulation. It's why that era was marked by superficial violence with zero depth.

I think that did work somewhat, but the biggest problem was how Rosarch's death was played in the movie.

It was played like he was the last moral person in the room. That everyone else had abandoned decency and morality. In the comics, it's made clear that Rorschach can't see the bigger picture and is just following an incredibly flawed philosophy. For while Vedit's actions are amoral, they are also objectively right.

When Nite Owl beats up Vedit in the movie, it's not just for Rorschach. He does it for mankind which he feels has been deformed. In the comic while he hates himself for it, but Dan agrees with Adrian. He keeps quiet because he realizes that Adrian has saved the world. In the movie, it's unclear if he is doing it because he agrees with Adrian, if he is scared or worst of all he is so apathetic that he doesn't care anymore.

>"It just felt right" - Zach Snyder on having Nite Owl witness Rorschach's death

and people still call him a hack

He IS a hack but even a broken clock strikes the right time twice a day.

>and people still call him a hack

It's BECAUSE of shit like that that he's called a hack.

Maybe some people. But others just straight up feel bad for him.

I personally like him because I always like fucked up characters. I'm sure I'm not alone.

By definition, isn't that why he's a hack? He manages to do good things even if he doesn't know what the fuck he is doing most of the time?