So we're supposed to be conflicted about him? He's the noblest of all the shitty people in that book. Hands down

So we're supposed to be conflicted about him? He's the noblest of all the shitty people in that book. Hands down.

Same thing I thought. Probably the only man to stand true for what he believes in.

Thats the point though. His black and white worldview was incompatible with a morally grey world.

Ozymandias did that too. So did Comedian. So many other characters did what that they believed in, whether we consider them good or bad. Hell, that is the same for real people.

...

It's great, isn't it though? He does everything right, and if he continues, he'll lead the world to Armageddon. The comedian sort of makes that remark when he says you can't change human nature.

You got fooled into thinking that ozymendias seemingly altruistic plan wasn't in it's core motivated by vanity. Just look at his name.

The comedian was just a weak man.

>idealizes capitalism and Muh American Way, but bums out on the streets
>hasn't grown up from masked vigilante days even after meeting Doc. FUCKING Manhattan
>pulls Dreiberg back into vigilantism cause of his conspiracy theory

I don't know, I root for the guy, but there's clearly some level of conflict we're supposed to feel towards him.

That's the strange part though, he grew up in reverse. Started as a pragmatist and wound up seeing the world in black and white.

All this stems from the fact that he stayed true to his principle. What should he have done? Rot in his cave being a spineless beta like Dreiberg?

His conspiracy theory was half right tho. He should get credit for giving a fuck unlike blue dick

It's not *really* about whether he's right or wrong. He's fucked in the head.

Remember Watchmen #6: the psychiatrist who ends up adopting some of Rorschach's worldviews. The takeaway from that chapter, in the larger context of the story, isn't that Rorschach is right, but that a negative worldview easily infects sensitive people (and yet, if they're aware enough, like the psychiatrist eventually was, they won't let it destroy them -- we later see him try to stop a fight because he cares so much about actually helping people and has some faith in the world).

This.

I mean, I'm paraphrasing the quote, but he LITERALLY talks about how a "day's work for a day's pay" is a good thing yet spends his days talking about the end of the world.

True, but then again, Manhattan was starting to grow jaded of life until his confrontation on Mars. The nigga just stopped caring cause he thought that humans were wasting their precious gift, and to him, a gift ruined isn't a gift worth having. Only after learning about the miracle of existence in itself, ie, how literally everything had to be *just right* to give rise to life on earth, his friends, his own self and everything, he snaps out of it.

I admire that about Rorschach, he wasn't gonna compromise even when death was upon him. It just kinda bothers me that Manhattan still killed him, even though he probably saw (or figured out) that Veidt's utopia wasn't gonna last.

He's a fucking crazy person.

No the Comedian is. Eddy Blake is the only person who has a problem with Adrian's plan. Rorschach sells out.

Rorschach totally agrees with Adrian and reading the prose part of Fearful Symmetry explains it with the mention of Truman dropping the bomb

>Comedian
>noble
He was a war criminal, a rapist, and when the moment to rise to an actual noble occasion and stop Ozymandias with his government connections (since Ozy never factored Blake finding the island), he crumpled at the absurdity of it

>He's the noblest of all the shitty people in that book. Hands down.

That's not Hollis.

I'm saying "noble" as far as sticking to your guns is concerned. He's the only one who doesn't agree to Adrian's plan.

I'm not saying he's sunshine and rainbows, but that's kind of the point of the story. It begins literally after the climatic duel of ideologies.

Rorschach isn't commited to his ideals as much as he's commited to being commited. He takes (sometimes inconsistent) hardline positions on nearly everything because he thinks that's what "strong" men do and he desperately wants to be a strong man like President Truman, Edward Blake or the father he never knew. It's less that he truly believes that moral relativism is wrong and more that he thinks it's simply weak, and he despises weakness. Compromise is for gays, basically.
I think a fair amount of Rorschach's behavior can be tied to that fixation on a kind of pure, untarnished sense of masculine strength and his almost inevitable falling short of an already kind of murky ideal.

But then again what the fuck do I know. That's just the impression I've gotten on subsequent re-reads.

The strangest thing about Rorschach is how many people miss what drives him over the edge.

The movie included, especially when he explains it on panel in the comic.

>capitalism is still better than the commies at the time
>if Night Own and Spectre hadn't started acting as heroes again, they would have died because of the squid.

I've always seen it as more pathological than that.
Think about how he omits personal pronowns and such: he's in the process of erasing his own inherently impure identity in furtherance of that objective of ideal morality, but he doesn't understand that morality is subjective - as with the Watchmen twist ending, there's no pure right vs. wrong in reality.
So he ends up, though initially motivated by empathy, without any trace of human empathy at all: declaring that he would ignore the cries for help by a humanity he sees as unworthy of life before the main story even starts.
All because he believes there's a perfect "superman's world" morality that should be followed.
That's what's so brilliant about Watchmen: "truth, justice, and the American way" has to be made of compromises in harsh non-comic reality, or else it becomes madness.

Nah, that sounds quite accurate to a certain extent. Also, it makes sense with him agreeing with Adrian's view in the end.

And the mass killer, the freak couple that saves the day as a fetish, and the cold asshole god deprived of humanity aren't?

>obvious joke villain tells him to lock him up in jail
>throws him down an elevator shaft
niqqa's cray

And that is?

Cammon, Ownman cared besides the fetish. He was a bro.

It is that scene I posted, the true innocents he killed the dogs, it is why he keeps repeating and showing the dog with its head split throughout the book.

It is a splinter in his brain that he can't forget.

Classic Rorschach

Nuuuuuuuttyyyyy

>it is why he keeps repeating and showing the dog with its head split throughout the book
literally only like two instances
and they're both when he's talking to the psychiatrist.

Sounds like a splinter in your brain if we're being honest

His focus on dogs is throughout the book beginning with the first lines of the comic.

Also if you read the image I posted he literally is explaining that is what is happening when he kills the dogs.

But if you want to ignore the text in front of you go right ahead.

It's easy to talk about the "sacrificiable minority" when you are not in it. Most people that go "Ozymandias is right" are not in the sacrificiable minority.

Yeah but dogs can't really be seen as a Rorshach motif of he mentions them a grand total of one (1) time(s) in the entire story aside from talking to Malcolm.
And it wasn't the dog killing that caused his insanity, though it could be the absolute turning point.
I think the dogs were just an outlet of all his pent up frustrations since he started being a hero, and he tipped over and raged out against the dogs after imagining what happened to the six year old girl, I think it was implied possible rape and murder, then it was basically shown that the guy chopped her up.

I think if that was true this wouldn't be the image that comes up, and that isn't how the pages in the comic read at all.

Rorschach grows as a person throughout the comic. He used to believe that a Truman-style attack could be justified (and was indeed the right decision), but his views on that (among other things) change by the end of the book.

>but his views on that (among other things) change by the end of the book.

I don't agree with that per se. I think it's telling that the book begins with Rorschach's journal doing the whole "Save us!" and I'll tell them "No."

And then when he should try and save them (by not publically being an ass) he doesn't and takes of his mask and is crying about his own failing to be what he wants to be (uncompromising) when in the end he compromises too.

Well, it's the whole scene of finding the remains of the girl that drives him over the edge, but it culminates with him killing the dogs.

It's hard to take up with someone who is very clearly a psychopath. Walter Kovaks would have become a violent criminal in nearly any case. He was a violent, abused child who grew into a violent vigilante adult. We're not supposed to be conflicted with our feelings towards him, is spelled out that his line of thought is not the right one. Neither can he exist in a peaceful world (Even if it WAS a lie). All of the storied heroes behave villainously.

>
And then when he should try and save them (by not publically being an ass) he doesn't and takes of his mask and is crying about his own failing to be what he wants to be (uncompromising) when in the end he compromises too.

I mean sure but Manhatten would have probably killed him even if Rorscach did make an earnest attempt to get back to the mainland

Why dogs?

I put it at he was forced to kill them and they were not the problem in this case but just used by their owner, innocents in a certain sense.

I don't think we're supposed to hate him for having bad politics or anything stupid like that, more that were supposed to see that he's ultimately a very sad and broken man

I kinda see what you mean, he could face a gruesome and horrible crime head on because he felt like he understood and could punish the human evil behind it and then the dogs confront him with the complete indifference of the universe towards human evil - he goes from being committed to his ideals for reasons of personal morality to being committed to his ideals because they're all he has; it's been a while since I've read it but doesn't he basically say something to this effect in the book?

>He's the noblest of all the shitty people in that book. Hands down.
That would be Hollis Mason, but whatever.

>noble
>killed an innocent man

>that
>canon

how do people miss they're all fucked up

He's a guy with a black and white morality in a morally grey world but that doesn't make him any worse of a person than half the other cast Nightowl is a loser geniuse who can't do shit with his life if it isn't being a fucking vigilante, Spectre is on the same boat while Manhattan is a detached autistic God, and ozzy is a sociepathic asshole who thought that building a peaceful society on a foundation of The lives of millions no one in this story is anything close to a decent person

Honestly Rorshach the only fucking guy worth rooting for

Well, WHAT IS DECENT when Armageddon is about to go down?

Rorschach is /r9k/ taken to its absolute peak. It's a bunch of self contradictions. He gives up on life because he knows he can't succeed. He can't understand nuance and context so he forces everything into black and white. Hell, his mask is a constantly mumbled blob, he has no real identity. It's just a kid in a man's body with no real understanding of the world, just making the events that transpire fit into his narrow world view.

What is he fighting for? The people? Society? Goodness? Justice in a society where he himself doesn't follow the laws?

There is no descent person in the face of the aupocalypse, especially in watchmen

Once you start rooting you have lost the book.

Fight it all you want, it's going to be canon just Rebirth

Well some people figure it out exactly too late

Watchmen is largely a book about how we are all fucked up but loving each other is worth it.

>implying the people rushing to break up the fight at ground zero weren't decent, and their death was Moore's clue to how flawed Ozymandias was to view the conflict in the middle east as the Doomsday tolls
Do you even Watchmen bro?

>Adulthood is realizing...

I don't mean it like that, I meant if your going to choose someone who you hold to be slightly superior morally to everyone it could be Rorshach but in a story like watchmen that isn't saying mich

Watchmen the book is a far more life affirming thing that most give it credit for.

It also doesn't hide it at all.

Yes, he is afflicted with the cognitive dissonance found in those who grew up with constant emotional trauma.
Regardless, that you know his childhood and the cause of his personality should make him more relatable than any other character in the story. You as the reader know why he is that pitiable way.

In a way, he is what the ideals of all the other characters ignore - the righteous scum, the angry contradiction. Everyone else believes in some simple "truth" while Rorschach is an amalgam of writhing, vague complexities never quite coming to rest, hence his mask.

Granted, but to be able to see that you have to start from a place of either great maturity or great cynicism.

Well yeah at the end right before they all died

I'm meaning more to the main cast since none of them are good people they tried to prevent an aupocalypse and failed and your right about ozzy being wrong

It also loves darkly joking at that premise

For as dark as the book is, The book really does seem to have faith in humanity. Like that mini arc with the newsman and the kid. Or what the shrink says before the end of the book.

Kinda a joke on love and war

What did he say?

>I will give you bodies beyond your wildest imaginings
>-Veidt

Well, that pic demonstrates he wasn't wrong.

And going that much through Ground Zero before getting Adrian talking about how he lived every death puts doubt in us that he could have lived that brutality.

The real problem with Watchmen is whenever there is a decent thread about it I want to read it again, so so so many perfect scenes.

This is the best on though.

>He can't understand nuance and context
When you learn a little girl was murdered, chopped up and devoured by dogs because the criminals saw no other out than to get rid of the evidence, witness and victim for their convenience and get on with the nuance and context of their petty lives avoiding justice and law, with intention of far worse violations than Rorschach at that, you start to understand society and its people are collectively a long series of perpetual excuses but ultimately no real reason.

Rorschach is an apt reaction to that underlying absurdity of his time and place much the way Comedian was before. If crime intends to be senseless then he won't waste time with pleasantries. Rorschach isn't fighting for anyone, that was the job of the government, the police, all the failed heroes before him. Rorschach is simply focused on bringing due to everyone who falls under his radar as the sort of sociopathic pissant casually indulging vice like Veidt.
The sort of person who for the sake of their peace of mind deludes themselves into the belief they can genuinely be absolved of anything and everything if no one finds out or if they spit carefully chosen words to fool the already gleefully gullible and willfully ignorant.

Also all of the individuals at the end of the story check out of the reality of their world in their own way, Walter and Jon's were just the most visibly obvious and unapologetic.

I think andrian just wanted to feel the guilty because if he didn't that would basically prove he's just as much of a sociopaths as everyone thought he was by the end

He was, Adrian was the sum of every characters fucked up personality traits by the end.

This is the best thing I have read about him

>in the comic, Adrian’s far madder than Rorschach, more inhuman than Jon, more pathetic than Dan…his life more damagingly composed of lies than Laurie’s. Of course it’s just this that causes the Comedian’s sense of humour to shatter, in the end — a fucking space squid!?

>a sociopath with enough pride to feel actual guilt for the sake of appearances

It's not uncommon, but they usually turn up the crazy to 11 when they recover from such unexpected bouts of humanity.

For fucks sake it wasnt the fact he killed the dogs its what the perp did to the child and that the innocent dogs just ate her remains without thinking, because theyre dogs.

then he put them down.

Rorschach's "morality" is so skewed and pathological that you can't root for it.

>The hypocritical, murderous, self-righteous, bigoted maniac who is perfectly willing to work with people who are exactly the kind of people he claims should be put down is morally right.
>Tortures then kills people because "society would be better without them" but objects to the painless killing of a lot of people at once so as to prevent the total annihilation of everything.
I fail to see what is noble about him.

At the very end before he got squid'd, he was going to try and break up the lesbo fight. When his wife told him to stay out of it, he basically said that they were hurting each other, and he had to try and help.
>It's all we can do, try to help each other. It's all that means anything...

>Gloria... I'm sorry. It's the world...
>I can't run from it.

Unless user meant something before that, in regards to Rorschach maybe.

That he can't not try to make things better.

>objects to the painless killing
Knowingly injecting a psychic-rape squid directly into a material construct causing a violent explosion and giving every survivor within range horrible visions and nightmares was anything but painless.

Freudian, poetically ironic, Machiavellian, any number of terms. But not painless.

At least his ideals don't involve sitting in your basement and feeling sorry for yourself or living a life full of lies living with a increasingly detached apathetic God or just being a plane asshole who sees everything as a joke but at the very least he wasn't someone who'd consider mass genocide as a means for a short living peace, his ideal are filled with paranoia and violence but at least he only targets rapist, killers and other lowlife and is probably the most effective at actually accomplishing shit which isn't much

He's Mr A but insane

Compared to leaving a man chained to a stove in a burning house with a hacksaw? At least Ozy was trying to solve an issue, not just attack the results of it. Both are wrong, anyways.

So he's Mr. A?

He was right wing because her mother didn't like president Truman. Remember he thought Hiroshima was neccesary?

Rorschach talks about how gays, leftists, hippies, yuppies, and just about everyone who isn't him are all just trash worth less than shit. He was okay with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the only part of Ozy's plan he didn't like was that it hinged on a lie.

That part always reminds me of mad max

That's subjective

He isn't a good guy and shouldn't be taken to be more than anything but a completely deranged killer, but he only human compared and At least he doesn't try to his what he is unlike everyone else

That is because that is exactly where Moore took it from.

>Compared to leaving a man chained to a stove in a burning house with a hacksaw?
He knew what he had to do, he did it to a victim beforehand easy enough, he just didn't want to do it to himself.

Adrian didn't give anyone else nearly half as much a choice. It was the Squid or death.

People on the boat he hired to help setup a ruse?
>Explosive Death.
His own hired gunman to feign an attack?
>Cyanide Death.
Janey, Wally and Moloch?
>Cancer Death for the first two, Cancer and a bullet to the head Death for the last.
His own hired servants in a remote location who were already loyal to him?

It's not like the guy didn't deserve it

>noblest
That was Dan, who was a dreamy idealist who did small time things for the excitement. And knew when he was out of his reach.
Laurie never wanted to do it.
Doc M fell into it without any real interest.
Comedian was a psychopath who delighted in other people's suffering.
Ozy thought himself above other people.
Rorschach was schizoid, stabilizing as a mildly functional human being by creating an inhuman set of beliefs regarding other people.

They were all really flawed, Rorschach was psychotic but Ozy was vain, Manhattan selfish, there's not a good guy or a bad guy in Watchmen, people do the right things for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons, so of, but it is not clear what is right and what is wrong.

Ozy was above other people though. Except for Jon he was the closest thing to superhuman the world had.

He was basically watchmen only true super villain his plan is the equivalent to something you'd find in a silver age story just applied in a real morally grey setting with serious consequences for those involved

I see what you did there.

>Implying that the squid saved anyone
>Implying that there would be a Niclear war after Manhattan left.

MAD worked in our world. With Manhattan out of the picture, it would work in theirs.

But all animals are technically innocent, they lack the cognitive ability to make moral decisions. I doubt Rorschach has that much guilt in killing the dogs, I think him seeing the dog with the head split open in the ink blot is just an image he associates with the day he went over the edge.

The difference is Rorschach kills/tortures people he knows are terrible people like the child rapist/killer. Of course he's going to object to killing a bunch of innocents, even if it is "painless" and for the supposed greater good.