Biggest surprise when you read the book...

[gbaji]

Further, Veidt attacking a major American population center indiscriminately is important because of Rorschach. That he has been an apologist of the Hiroshima Bombing since his teenage years, and how Veidt's plan is basically that, except perpetrated against the US which clashes with his patriotic fervour is a key element of what leads to his emotional meltdown.

I didn't get that aspect of things at all from the comic. Rorschach may have started out with some ideological aspects to him, but by the end he was highly disillusioned with just about all of it. He was certainly not some flag waving patriot, nor was he motivated by such things. He had become a kind of bitter psychopath, obsessed with the corruption of moral society, and fought against basically street level thugs and scum as a result (kinda of a really really pathetic and dark/disturbed Batman). The idea of him at all being political/patriotic/ideolistic was an unfortunate invention/recreation of the character used in the Watchmen series to make his followers into something else entirely.

He was motivated, in his own somewhat warped way, by "doing the right thing". Always. To a fault. Even if it caused him great harm and suffering, and pretty much regardless of where they fell in the sense of any specific ideological viewpoint. Someone harming someone else? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone selling drugs on a street corner. Wrong. Must be punished. Someone pimping women? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone beating their spouse? Wrong. Must be punished. Those were the kinds of things he obsessed over. To suggest that there was any sort of thought in terms of commonality of "ends justify the means" in terms of nuclear weapons used to end WW2, and "giant alien squid attack" used to end/prevent WW3 exissts only in the minds of people projecting a heck of a lot of their own ideas into the character.

He was opposed to what was going on for one and only one reason: It was wrong. Innocent people were being harmed, and other people were trying to cover it up. It had nothing to do with which city was attacked, or which "side" of anything he was on personally, but entirely about the fact that Veidt killed tens of thousands of people, and was going to get away with it, if he didn't try to stop him. He didn't care if the effect of Veidt's actions did actually prevent WW3 and save billions of lives for the cost of those lives in NYC. That was "not the point" for Rorschach.

Which, of course, was why he had to die to protect the secret. We can debate the morality of Manhattan killing Rorschach (and it's kinda the point of the comic), but Rorschach's motivation for wanting to tell the world what really happened, was not at all out of some kind of misguided patriotism or "us versus them" mentality. He lived by an absurdly rigid moral code. That's what drove him. Watering that down by suggesting that he only cared about it because it was Americans who were killed and not some other nations citizens, totally steps on the message and weight of the scene (and its shock value). He was the moral absolutionist in the comic. That was the point. What was done was morally wrong by his rules (and arguably intended to be viewed that way by the readers). The rest of the heroes reluctantly accepting the result, is "wrong" as well. Rorschach is supposed to be viewed as the "one true hero" in the bunch (well, for heroes in this setting, of course), actually wiling to "do the right thing" regardless of the cost. And... well... he pays that cost.

The interesting (and arguably heroic... or psychopathic, take your pck) thing about Rorschach is that, even if you told him ahead of time exactly what would happen if he refused to go along with the cover up, he would have still done what he did. Dunno. I always found that aspect of the character very interesting. Which yes, made the treatment of his "followers" in the HBO series just sad. So many interesting things that could have been done, and they went... there.

One of said mortals using tools that all mortals have access to to outwit said godlike being is significantly better storytelling than one of said mortals pulling superpowers straight out of his ass at the end.

Um... Isn't that exactly what happened though? Veidt used technology to enact his plan. Sure, it's comic book technology, but... flying owl ship ring any bells?

[Rynjin]

Um... Isn't that exactly what happened though? Veidt used technology to enact his plan. Sure, it's comic book technology, but... flying owl ship ring any bells?

Yes, it's "comic book technology", exactly. Which is a superpower. Rather than him just being just some smart guy, he now has supernatural powers out of nowhere.

[Bohandas]

I didn't get that aspect of things at all from the comic. Rorschach may have started out with some ideological aspects to him, but by the end he was highly disillusioned with just about all of it. He was certainly not some flag waving patriot, nor was he motivated by such things. He had become a kind of bitter psychopath, obsessed with the corruption of moral society, and fought against basically street level thugs and scum as a result (kinda of a really really pathetic and dark/disturbed Batman). The idea of him at all being political/patriotic/ideolistic was an unfortunate invention/recreation of the character used in the Watchmen series to make his followers into something else entirely.

He was motivated, in his own somewhat warped way, by "doing the right thing". Always. To a fault. Even if it caused him great harm and suffering, and pretty much regardless of where they fell in the sense of any specific ideological viewpoint. Someone harming someone else? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone selling drugs on a street corner. Wrong. Must be punished. Someone pimping women? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone beating their spouse? Wrong. Must be punished. Those were the kinds of things he obsessed over. To suggest that there was any sort of thought in terms of commonality of "ends justify the means" in terms of nuclear weapons used to end WW2, and "giant alien squid attack" used to end/prevent WW3 exissts only in the minds of people projecting a heck of a lot of their own ideas into the character.

He was opposed to what was going on for one and only one reason: It was wrong. Innocent people were being harmed, and other people were trying to cover it up. It had nothing to do with which city was attacked, or which "side" of anything he was on personally, but entirely about the fact that Veidt killed tens of thousands of people, and was going to get away with it, if he didn't try to stop him. He didn't care if the effect of Veidt's actions did actually prevent WW3 and save billions of lives for the cost of those lives in NYC. That was "not the point" for Rorschach.

Which, of course, was why he had to die to protect the secret. We can debate the morality of Manhattan killing Rorschach (and it's kinda the point of the comic), but Rorschach's motivation for wanting to tell the world what really happened, was not at all out of some kind of misguided patriotism or "us versus them" mentality. He lived by an absurdly rigid moral code. That's what drove him. Watering that down by suggesting that he only cared about it because it was Americans who were killed and not some other nations citizens, totally steps on the message and weight of the scene (and its shock value). He was the moral absolutionist in the comic. That was the point. What was done was morally wrong by his rules (and arguably intended to be viewed that way by the readers). The rest of the heroes reluctantly accepting the result, is "wrong" as well. Rorschach is supposed to be viewed as the "one true hero" in the bunch (well, for heroes in this setting, of course), actually wiling to "do the right thing" regardless of the cost. And... well... he pays that cost.

The interesting (and arguably heroic... or psychopathic, take your pck) thing about Rorschach is that, even if you told him ahead of time exactly what would happen if he refused to go along with the cover up, he would have still done what he did. Dunno. I always found that aspect of the character very interesting. Which yes, made the treatment of his "followers" in the HBO series just sad. So many interesting things that could have been done, and they went... there

Thete's nothing morally ambiguous about stopping Veidt, Veidt is clearly in the wrong, he's nothing more than a monomaniacal psychopath with a messiah complex, like Thanos from the MCU (or VICKY from I Robot, or the Imperial government from Warhammer 40K, or the Anti-Spiral from Heaven Piercing Gurren Lagann)

[GloatingSwine]

Thete's nothing morally ambiguous about stopping Veidt, Veidt is clearly in the wrong, he's nothing more than a monomaniacal psychopath with a messiah complex, like Thanos from the MCU (or VICKY from I Robot, or the Imperial government from Warhammer 40K, or the Anti-Spiral from Heaven Piercing Gurren Lagann)

“I did it thirty five minutes ago”

It’s not about stopping Veidt because he’s already done it. It’s about whether to reveal the truth about what happened and risk the world sliding into nuclear war which it is right on the brink of (because Veidt’s control of the media stoked fears and tensions to bring it to that point, because he is the only reason the Black Freighter came to his town).

The other characters go along with the deception, Rorschach cannot because his moral code is absolutist. A thing is either right or wrong, black or white never mixing to shades of grey.

[Saph]

Which, of course, was why he had to die to protect the secret. We can debate the morality of Manhattan killing Rorschach (and it's kinda the point of the comic), but Rorschach's motivation for wanting to tell the world what really happened, was not at all out of some kind of misguided patriotism or "us versus them" mentality. He lived by an absurdly rigid moral code. That's what drove him. Watering that down by suggesting that he only cared about it because it was Americans who were killed and not some other nations citizens, totally steps on the message and weight of the scene (and its shock value). He was the moral absolutionist in the comic. That was the point. What was done was morally wrong by his rules (and arguably intended to be viewed that way by the readers). The rest of the heroes reluctantly accepting the result, is "wrong" as well. Rorschach is supposed to be viewed as the "one true hero" in the bunch (well, for heroes in this setting, of course), actually wiling to "do the right thing" regardless of the cost. And... well... he pays that cost.

The funny thing is that Alan Moore got incredibly pissed off at Rorschach's popularity in the post-Watchmen years. He envisaged Rorschach as a sort of real-life Batman, concluded (correctly) that such a person would be a psychopathic nutcase, and expected everyone to just dismiss him. When they didn't, he decided that his readers had missed the point.

The counterpoint – that yes, Rorschach is a psychopathic nutcase, but he's also the only one out of the supposed "heroes" who ISN'T willing to help cover up a giant exercise in terrorism and mass murder – seemingly never occurred to him. I guess it's to Moore's credit that he can do such a good job on a character he fundamentally disagreed with, but you really would have thought that at some point he might have considered that readers might sympathise less with the supervillain and more with the guy who gets murdered for refusing to go along with the supervillain's plan. But then, I suppose that tells you something about the way he sees the world.

[Moak]

3 things comes to mind:

1) After seeing Tales from Earthsea by Mihazaki's son, I started to read the full saga and... I was surprised. A lot. Especially because Sparrowhawk is the protagonist and not the Gandalf like mentor? And... it starts a lot BEFORE the movie, even if the movie say that they adapt the first 4 books?

I loved the strange world of Earthsea in the books. It was SO different, and evocative... I loved the atmosphere of the tomb of Artuan.

The movie is a strange disconnected mess of abandoned plot points that leave you with a lot of "maybe this was cut for time reason" and actually... are only "there" to be there.



2) Avatar - the last airbender

I've seen the M.Shyamalan movie before... and I liked it. It wasn't "good" but it wasn't that bad. (also, the DUB solved some tonal problem compared to the english version)

And I decided to get the cartoon. I remember coming here to see If I could skip the first book and go to the second (I wanted to know who was that girl put as a sequel bait! )
I red the hate for the movie.

I was a lot "why?"

Then I viewed the Legend of Aang.

And I understood. I understood SO MUCH.


Interesting note: as an experiment, I did the same thing to a friend of mine and my brother. Same result.

3) Shinobi: Heart Under Blade

Never read the original novel, but after this I red the manga Basilisk and... it was VERY different.
I was under the impression that the movie was based on the manga (that was what my friend who suggested it told me), but now I find that they are both adaptation of a third media... so, let's simply say that they are VERY different.

Even the titular Basilisk is a different person between movie and anime/manga. Also, the manga/anime ending is very romance tragedy, and I love it so much.

[Cikomyr2]

Thete's nothing morally ambiguous about stopping Veidt, Veidt is clearly in the wrong, he's nothing more than a monomaniacal psychopath with a messiah complex, like Thanos from the MCU (or VICKY from I Robot, or the Imperial government from Warhammer 40K, or the Anti-Spiral from Heaven Piercing Gurren Lagann)

Eh. There is a scene in the comic that highlights that Veidt determined the tension and collapse were inevitable. Dr Manhattan was too much of an unbalancing factor, and it drove the USSR into much more desperate posture and the US into a much more aggressive posture, basically pushing ultimatum at every occasion.

So he precipitated the tensions by manipulating Jon in leaving, made sure both sides would immediately react to this sudden shift in power, and then smash them with the aliens so the two superpowers would not be too far into their crisis, and thus able to step back.

One would guess he didnt triggered his plan earlier because he couldn't.

[Mordar]

Thete's nothing morally ambiguous about stopping Veidt, Veidt is clearly in the wrong, he's nothing more than a monomaniacal psychopath with a messiah complex, like Thanos from the MCU (or VICKY from I Robot, or the Imperial government from Warhammer 40K, or the Anti-Spiral from Heaven Piercing Gurren Lagann)

Well, in one out of the three cases, the oppressive, controlling messiah did save humanity. It's the followers that turned it into The Dystopian League of Dystopia, now with Added Executions!

The funny thing is that Alan Moore got incredibly pissed off at Rorschach's popularity in the post-Watchmen years. He envisaged Rorschach as a sort of real-life Batman, concluded (correctly) that such a person would be a psychopathic nutcase, and expected everyone to just dismiss him. When they didn't, he decided that his readers had missed the point.

To a select group of people, perhaps. Moore struck me as always being terribly impressed with himself, and normally the type who writes manifestos in between sets at the coffee house. Just because he was a pretty great writer of fiction doesn't mean anything other than he was a pretty great writer of fiction, and I think he forgot that point.

On topic, when I read LXG I loved the idea but hated the execution. One of a small handful of "liked the movie better than the book", and the movie was no great shakes...

- M

[GloatingSwine]

The counterpoint – that yes, Rorschach is a psychopathic nutcase, but he's also the only one out of the supposed "heroes" who ISN'T willing to help cover up a giant exercise in terrorism and mass murder – seemingly never occurred to him. I guess it's to Moore's credit that he can do such a good job on a character he fundamentally disagreed with, but you really would have thought that at some point he might have considered that readers might sympathise less with the supervillain and more with the guy who gets murdered for refusing to go along with the supervillain's plan. But then, I suppose that tells you something about the way he sees the world.

I think he was rather more concerned that they were identifying with the emotionally stunted violent little fascist who is completely incapable of relating to humanity.

Rorschach is the way he is because he’s a moral infant, absolutely incapable of seeing anything in terms other than pure good or pure evil. That’s his entire symbolism, and his lack of compromise at the end is also his willingness to see the nuclear war happen and have all humanity die because he simply can’t process that some things have both good and bad in them at the same time.

It’s not him standing on principle, it’s him giving in to the death-drive because he’s a broken child who can’t grow to view the world through an adult lens.

[Batcathat]

I think some people tend to view "completely uncompromising principles" as something more or less automatically positive or at least admirable (similarly, a lot of people seem to view "unconditional love" as something positive, which seems crazy to me).

[Cikomyr2]

I think some people tend to view "completely uncompromising principles" as something more or less automatically positive or at least admirable (similarly, a lot of people seem to view "unconditional love" as something positive, which seems crazy to me).

Because its simple

Uncompromising principles is simple ton understand. Its simple to admire.

Once you actually have responsibilities and you realize multiple systems are arrayed in a way to break you if you dont consider them, rulers realize they have to play the cards they are dealt. But people dont appreciate these difficulties, they just like to call them "corrupt politicians" or "two faced individuals", because its simpler to believe they deviate from their principle because they are morally flawed rather than the world is more complex than they daydream it is.

[Metastachydium]

I didn't get that aspect of things at all from the comic. Rorschach may have started out with some ideological aspects to him, but by the end he was highly disillusioned with just about all of it. He was certainly not some flag waving patriot, nor was he motivated by such things. He had become a kind of bitter psychopath, obsessed with the corruption of moral society, and fought against basically street level thugs and scum as a result (kinda of a really really pathetic and dark/disturbed Batman). The idea of him at all being political/patriotic/ideolistic was an unfortunate invention/recreation of the character used in the Watchmen series to make his followers into something else entirely.

I haven't seen the series, honestly, and I still see it. The Truman essay (even if that was Walter, not a full-grown Rorschach) and Veidt's reasoning are just all too similar, and the subtle hints keep surfacing throughout, the biggest being the "only people he can trust" (as stated right before setting out to Antarctica, and to whom he sends his journal, the one big proof of Veidt's terrorist trickery) turning out to be… The New Frontiersman people, whose extremely Red Scare stuff he is established as a regular reader of earlier.

He was motivated, in his own somewhat warped way, by "doing the right thing". Always. To a fault. Even if it caused him great harm and suffering, and pretty much regardless of where they fell in the sense of any specific ideological viewpoint. Someone harming someone else? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone selling drugs on a street corner. Wrong. Must be punished. Someone pimping women? Wrong. Must be punished. Someone beating their spouse? Wrong. Must be punished. Those were the kinds of things he obsessed over. To suggest that there was any sort of thought in terms of commonality of "ends justify the means" in terms of nuclear weapons used to end WW2, and "giant alien squid attack" used to end/prevent WW3 exissts only in the minds of people projecting a heck of a lot of their own ideas into the character.

So… Yeah, I respectfully disagree. Rorschach is mostly that, and he envisions himself that way – which is why the realisation that he's being hypocritical about it, even in some small way, stings all the more.

He was opposed to what was going on for one and only one reason: It was wrong. Innocent people were being harmed, and other people were trying to cover it up. It had nothing to do with which city was attacked, or which "side" of anything he was on personally, but entirely about the fact that Veidt killed tens of thousands of people, and was going to get away with it, if he didn't try to stop him. He didn't care if the effect of Veidt's actions did actually prevent WW3 and save billions of lives for the cost of those lives in NYC. That was "not the point" for Rorschach.

Which, of course, was why he had to die to protect the secret. We can debate the morality of Manhattan killing Rorschach (and it's kinda the point of the comic), but Rorschach's motivation for wanting to tell the world what really happened, was not at all out of some kind of misguided patriotism or "us versus them" mentality. He lived by an absurdly rigid moral code. That's what drove him. Watering that down by suggesting that he only cared about it because it was Americans who were killed and not some other nations citizens, totally steps on the message and weight of the scene (and its shock value). He was the moral absolutionist in the comic. That was the point. What was done was morally wrong by his rules (and arguably intended to be viewed that way by the readers). The rest of the heroes reluctantly accepting the result, is "wrong" as well. Rorschach is supposed to be viewed as the "one true hero" in the bunch (well, for heroes in this setting, of course), actually wiling to "do the right thing" regardless of the cost. And... well... he pays that cost.

The interesting (and arguably heroic... or psychopathic, take your pck) thing about Rorschach is that, even if you told him ahead of time exactly what would happen if he refused to go along with the cover up, he would have still done what he did.

Also, that would make his tearful "DO IT!" very baffling. If his issue was merely Veidt being morally wrong, I'd expect he would have just marched on or fought (as he went to Antarctica to fight Veidt, even though he expected he and Dan will both die and fail).

Dunno. I always found that aspect of the character very interesting. Which yes, made the treatment of his "followers" in the HBO series just sad. So many interesting things that could have been done, and they went... there.

Again, I didn't know that, and I'm inclined to agree that reducing him to that component (whether chiefly or alone) is strictly a downgrade that makes tings less interesting. Him having a personal little undercurrent of twistedly human political opinion that colours his absolutist stance is not that, at least for me.

[Saph]

I think he was rather more concerned that they were identifying with the emotionally stunted violent little fascist who is completely incapable of relating to humanity.

But presumably he found readers identifying with the mass-murdering psychopathic megalomaniac to be just fine.

I'm not really interested in getting into the the "should you help cover up nuking a city with an alien death squid" argument. I'm saying that if those are your only two choices , the fact that a significant proportion of readers choose to be on Team Anti-Death-Squid should be about as surprising as the sun coming up. The fact that Alan Moore apparently couldn't understand that is kind of revealing IMO.

[gbaji]

I haven't seen the series, honestly, and I still see it. The Truman essay (even if that was Walter, not a full-grown Rorschach) and Veidt's reasoning are just all too similar, and the subtle hints keep surfacing throughout, the biggest being the "only people he can trust" (as stated right before setting out to Antarctica, and to whom he sends his journal, the one big proof of Veidt's terrorist trickery) turning out to be… The New Frontiersman people, whose extremely Red Scare stuff he is established as a regular reader of earlier.

When did you first read the comic? Without going into the why's and wherefore's, there are a host of social, ideological, and political associations that are assumed to exist between the readers/supporters of a newpaper like the New Frontiersman that exist today that simply did not exist back in the early 80s. That's what I meant by projections of modern readers (regardless of whether they've seen the HBO series, but certainly reinforced strongly by it for those who have). If even part of your assessent of Roschach is a form of "he believes in A, therefore he must also believe in B, C, and D", that's coming from your own assumptions, and not what is actually writen about the character.

And that's before we consider that this is a different world, with a different timeline. These people really did live in a world where there was a corpo/government cabal controlling everything, with massive control of the media going on (and manipulation of public opinion as result). So we should be very careful to make assumptions about Rorschach's idealology based on the mere fact that he read this paper and trusted it to "speak the truth" about his journal if he should not make it back. We must restrict outselves to just what Rorschach himself says and does and not try to overlay that character with other external assumptions.

So… Yeah, I respectfully disagree. Rorschach is mostly that, and he envisions himself that way – which is why the realisation that he's being hypocritical about it, even in some small way, stings all the more.

It's been a while since I read the comic, but IIRC that was more of a brief bit of self reflection, which he ultimately rejects and moves on from. Whether that's because he rejects the comparison between the two events (there are objectively some pretty major differences beyond just who's city gets destroyed going on there), or whether he considers himself to have "evolved" (well, for him anyway) from things he believed when he was younger, is unclear (and again, my memory is extremely fuzzy on that detail entirely). The point is that his decision at the end is entirely compatiable with the personality, motives, and actions we'd seen from Rorschach in the comic itself. How he arrives there is at most a footnote.

Also, that would make his tearful "DO IT!" very baffling. If his issue was merely Veidt being morally wrong, I'd expect he would have just marched on or fought (as he went to Antarctica to fight Veidt, even though he expected he and Dan will both die and fail).

I'm not sure what you are asking here. Rorschach had no ability to stop what was happening right there and then. This is him simply acknowledging that fact. But that's not going to stop him from telling the world what just happened. That's literally the only power he has here. He is "heroic" in that he continues to be determined to do the one thing he has left to do, despite knowing it's going to get him killed. One could even speculate that he wants Manhattan to kill him. A conspiracy theorist like him would see the risk if he is captured and tortured, that they might find out what he did with his journal, so by not even pretending to go along with things he pushes the outcome a bit.

Which, yeah, makes the treatment of what happened to those who read his journal in the HBO series all the more disappointing.

Again, I didn't know that, and I'm inclined to agree that reducing him to that component (whether chiefly or alone) is strictly a downgrade that makes tings less interesting. Him having a personal little undercurrent of twistedly human political opinion that colours his absolutist stance is not that, at least for me.

This. Times 1000. In the HBO series, I kept expecting the "twist" to be that his followers were not really what they were portrayed as, but were the smallish group who had read his journal, and knew what actually happened, but they were intentionally labeled as "that" (cause... massive government/media control going on, which they certainly didn't shy away from in the tv series), so as to silence them, and ostracize/marginalize them so much that no one would believe them. Would have perfectly fit with the distopian nature of the setting (which none of the main characters were happy with as they realize that pretty much everything they believe is a lie), and would have provided some sort of redemption for Roschach's heroics in the comic. But... no. They were just as absurdly one dimensional as they were portrayed to be.

Yeah. It was just... bad.

[Bohandas]

The funny thing is that Alan Moore got incredibly pissed off at Rorschach's popularity in the post-Watchmen years. He envisaged Rorschach as a sort of real-life Batman, concluded (correctly) that such a person would be a psychopathic nutcase, and expected everyone to just dismiss him. When they didn't, he decided that his readers had missed the point.

The counterpoint – that yes, Rorschach is a psychopathic nutcase, but he's also the only one out of the supposed "heroes" who ISN'T willing to help cover up a giant exercise in terrorism and mass murder – seemingly never occurred to him. I guess it's to Moore's credit that he can do such a good job on a character he fundamentally disagreed with, but you really would have thought that at some point he might have considered that readers might sympathise less with the supervillain and more with the guy who gets murdered for refusing to go along with the supervillain's plan. But then, I suppose that tells you something about the way he sees the world.

There's also the issue that Rorschach comes off at least as much as a saner friendlier version of the Punisher as he does as a crazier meaner version of Batman

Edit:
Also, I don't see how telling on Veidt spoils the plan anyway. The whole point was to give the world a common enemy. The space squid and framing Jon Osterman are tangential to that, being in the plan only because Veidt was too cowardly to openly take on that role himself but not in and of themselves essential parts of it.

[Batcathat]

Also, I don't see how telling on Veidt spoils the plan anyway. The whole point was to give the world a common enemy. The space squid and framing Jon Osterman are tangential to that, being in the plan only because Veidt was too cowardly to openly take on that role himself but not in and of themselves essential parts of it.

I really doubt Veidt's plan would have had any chance of working with himself as the common enemy, whether by design or being revealed after the fact. A super rich, super intelligent terrorist is certainly a scary threat, but not at the level of lovecraftian aliens or a god in human form. The world would deal with him (he might have been able to hide, but it's very unlikely he would be a continued threat for long) and then it would be back to business as usual.

[Manga Shoggoth]

3 things comes to mind:

1) After seeing Tales from Earthsea by Mihazaki's son, I started to read the full saga and... I was surprised. A lot. Especially because Sparrowhawk is the protagonist and not the Gandalf like mentor? And... it starts a lot BEFORE the movie, even if the movie say that they adapt the first 4 books?

I loved the strange world of Earthsea in the books. It was SO different, and evocative... I loved the atmosphere of the tomb of Artuan.

The movie is a strange disconnected mess of abandoned plot points that leave you with a lot of "maybe this was cut for time reason" and actually... are only "there" to be there.

Tombs was the best of the original three Earthsea books, with Wizard not far behind. Farthest Shore was OK (it had some good ideas, at any rate), but Tehanu was such a mess that I can barely remember anything about it, and it put me off the rest of the books.

I've only seen bits of Tales from Earthsea - it looked good, but it was clearly pulling bits from all of the books, and not really doing a very good job of putting them together.

[Metastachydium]

When did you first read the comic? Without going into the why's and wherefore's, there are a host of social, ideological, and political associations that are assumed to exist between the readers/supporters of a newpaper like the New Frontiersman that exist today that simply did not exist back in the early 80s. That's what I meant by projections of modern readers (regardless of whether they've seen the HBO series, but certainly reinforced strongly by it for those who have). If even part of your assessent of Roschach is a form of "he believes in A, therefore he must also believe in B, C, and D", that's coming from your own assumptions, and not what is actually writen about the character.

And that's before we consider that this is a different world, with a different timeline. These people really did live in a world where there was a corpo/government cabal controlling everything, with massive control of the media going on (and manipulation of public opinion as result). So we should be very careful to make assumptions about Rorschach's idealology based on the mere fact that he read this paper and trusted it to "speak the truth" about his journal if he should not make it back. We must restrict outselves to just what Rorschach himself says and does and not try to overlay that character with other external assumptions.

That's fair. I absolutely didn't read it in the '80s for a… Khm, whole variety of reasons. Yes, The Frontiersman is one of the very few media outlets that actually supports Rorschach and his activity, which may be a factor. But its editor also can't tolerate the word borscht being spoken in his presence after world peace is achieved, and Walter Kovacs did write the Truman essay. I don't know.

It's been a while since I read the comic, but IIRC that was more of a brief bit of self reflection, which he ultimately rejects and moves on from. Whether that's because he rejects the comparison between the two events (there are objectively some pretty major differences beyond just who's city gets destroyed going on there), or whether he considers himself to have "evolved" (well, for him anyway) from things he believed when he was younger, is unclear (and again, my memory is extremely fuzzy on that detail entirely). The point is that his decision at the end is entirely compatiable with the personality, motives, and actions we'd seen from Rorschach in the comic itself. How he arrives there is at most a footnote.



I'm not sure what you are asking here. Rorschach had no ability to stop what was happening right there and then. This is him simply acknowledging that fact. But that's not going to stop him from telling the world what just happened. That's literally the only power he has here. He is "heroic" in that he continues to be determined to do the one thing he has left to do, despite knowing it's going to get him killed. One could even speculate that he wants Manhattan to kill him. A conspiracy theorist like him would see the risk if he is captured and tortured, that they might find out what he did with his journal, so by not even pretending to go along with things he pushes the outcome a bit.

I mean, he doesn't fight. He doesn't run. He tried to fight Veidt, repeatedly. And then there's the issue with his face. Rorschach qua Rorschach considers the mask his actual face, and that's certainly as true for the most part as Walter Kovacs being gone is true for the most part. But Walter is kinda in there. He's suppressed, yes, but… He doesn't take pity on his landlady because her betraying him wasn't wrong. It's the presence of her children. Because Walter's mother really was a prostitute and that scarred Walter. And Rorschach still has that scar somewhere.

I his final moment, his face, which is to say, his mask comes off. The last we see of him is Walter's face. And it's not the jaded, beyond-it-all, emotionless face we see previously when the mask isn't on, nor is it the crazy person guise. He's crying. Maybe I'm wrong about what it is, or I'm stressing a component of it too much, but there really is an undercurrent there which is not the blind justice crusader.

Which, yeah, makes the treatment of what happened to those who read his journal in the HBO series all the more disappointing.

This. Times 1000. In the HBO series, I kept expecting the "twist" to be that his followers were not really what they were portrayed as, but were the smallish group who had read his journal, and knew what actually happened, but they were intentionally labeled as "that" (cause... massive government/media control going on, which they certainly didn't shy away from in the tv series), so as to silence them, and ostracize/marginalize them so much that no one would believe them. Would have perfectly fit with the distopian nature of the setting (which none of the main characters were happy with as they realize that pretty much everything they believe is a lie), and would have provided some sort of redemption for Roschach's heroics in the comic. But... no. They were just as absurdly one dimensional as they were portrayed to be.

Yeah. It was just... bad.

Oh, geez. I hated mostly every moment of the movie (except one particular scene), but I'm increasingly convinced not giving a chance to the series was the right call. Thanks for the heads-up on that.

[Cikomyr2]

But presumably he found readers identifying with the mass-murdering psychopathic megalomaniac to be just fine.

I'm not really interested in getting into the the "should you help cover up nuking a city with an alien death squid" argument. I'm saying that if those are your only two choices , the fact that a significant proportion of readers choose to be on Team Anti-Death-Squid should be about as surprising as the sun coming up. The fact that Alan Moore apparently couldn't understand that is kind of revealing IMO.

I dont think Alan Moore was casting judgement on being on Rorschach's side for the final dilemma which lead to his death, but rather to the popularity of the character before that.

He's a violent vigilante who clearly has a thrill inflicting pain and suffering on those he decided deserves it. Who "deserve" it is heavily biased and informed by his political leaning, and he shows an iota of introspection about the judgement calls he made.

The comic may highlight the most egregious of his victims (the child rapist, etc..) but we also see he has a soft spot for sociopath-for-hire Comedian, distrusts Veidt for being a potential homosexual.

Rorschach is a man who think he has the true clarity of who is worthy of life and who deserves death, but is just another man with his failures and hangups. That is scary, because these people are a lot more common than Adrien Veidt, supersmart egotistical billionaire who manipulated world governments.

[Saph]

I dont think Alan Moore was casting judgement on being on Rorschach's side for the final dilemma which lead to his death, but rather to the popularity of the character before that.

He's a violent vigilante who clearly has a thrill inflicting pain and suffering on those he decided deserves it.

You might be right, but again, I think it says something about Alan Moore that he was shocked by the fact that a lot of readers had more sympathy for the crusading vigilante then for the manipulative billionaire.

[Tyndmyr]

I didn't get that aspect of things at all from the comic. Rorschach may have started out with some ideological aspects to him, but by the end he was highly disillusioned with just about all of it. He was certainly not some flag waving patriot, nor was he motivated by such things. He had become a kind of bitter psychopath, obsessed with the corruption of moral society, and fought against basically street level thugs and scum as a result (kinda of a really really pathetic and dark/disturbed Batman). The idea of him at all being political/patriotic/ideolistic was an unfortunate invention/recreation of the character used in the Watchmen series to make his followers into something else entirely.

I fully agree. I hated that the "No Compromise, even in the face of armageddon" became "do whatever, so long as you wave a flag" or whatever. It was incredibly sloppy. If you wanted a movement worshipping a dead face of misguided patriotism, the Comedian would have made a far more logical symbol.

The TV show was utterly awful, and I have no idea why it was made, or why it gets any positive ratings whatsoever.

The funny thing is that Alan Moore got incredibly pissed off at Rorschach's popularity in the post-Watchmen years. He envisaged Rorschach as a sort of real-life Batman, concluded (correctly) that such a person would be a psychopathic nutcase, and expected everyone to just dismiss him. When they didn't, he decided that his readers had missed the point.

Rorschach absolutely is a nutcase. We, the readers do not want to live his life, the man is literally homeless, and suffers constantly. Yet, suffering for what you believe is heroic, especially when do so out of a desire to provide justice to others. Everyone in this world is deeply flawed, so the one who never stops fighting and is at least nominally on the side of good is certainly the most heroic. He is obviously a flawed man, yet also someone who literally gave up everything trying to fight for what was right when nobody else did.

This gets into a big conflict between western and eastern storytelling. In western storytelling, the protagonist frequently suffers or fails, then learns to change himself, and consequently prevails. In eastern stories, a protagonist more frequently realizes that his path is doomed, and chooses to fight and die anyways. This defeat or death is portrayed as a heroic adherence to ideals over even ones life. Rorschach's path follows this very closely. Both stories are valid, but there is no character that follows the western path and can reasonably be called heroic in this story.

[Batcathat]

Rorschach absolutely is a nutcase. We, the readers do not want to live his life, the man is literally homeless, and suffers constantly. Yet, suffering for what you believe is heroic, especially when do so out of a desire to provide justice to others. Everyone in this world is deeply flawed, so the one who never stops fighting and is at least nominally on the side of good is certainly the most heroic. He is obviously a flawed man, yet also someone who literally gave up everything trying to fight for what was right when nobody else did.

Rorschach beats people up, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. Veidt blows up a city, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. That seems like a difference of scale, more than anything else. Both of them have some impressive qualities, but I wouldn't call either of them heroic.

[Rynjin]

Rorschach beats people up, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. Veidt blows up a city, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. That seems like a difference of scale, more than anything else. Both of them have some impressive qualities, but I wouldn't call either of them heroic.

Let's not pretend like scale doesn't matter. Killing a person is bad. Killing a million people is roughly a million times worse.

[gbaji]

Rorschach beats people up, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. Veidt blows up a city, hoping to make the world a better place according to his self-righteous beliefs. That seems like a difference of scale, more than anything else. Both of them have some impressive qualities, but I wouldn't call either of them heroic.

That entirely depends on whether you are juding the ends only, or are looking at the means as well. Both are arguably trying to make a better world. One is doing so by targetting evil people and stopping them (brutally, to be sure) and making the world better, one bad guy removed at a time. The other is targetting an entire city of random people (most of them innocent of any crime) and killing them all in pursuit of his dream of a better world. That's a whopper of a difference in terms of methodology.

One could argue (and I would) that this is precisely the difference between "hero" and "villian". It's rarely the end result/objective that makes the difference between those two things. It's almost always the means used to do it that is. So yes. Alan Moore's intention or later reaction aside, Rorschach is the "hero" of the story, while Veidt is the "villian". What makes the Watchmen interesting and shocking is that the villain wins, and the hero dies. That's... kinda the point. Which is what makes Moore's later statements about the character all the more surprising (I had never known that to be honest, so yeah... shocking to me since I would assume that was the actual intent of the story).

I'm kinda left wondering what he thought people were supposed to take away from it with if not that. Rorschach, for all his personal faults, is actually treating each individual person in the world around him as an individual person, and judging each based on their own actions. And yeah, applying some extremely harsh justice, but he does actually care about who the people are that he targets. Veidt treats all people as statistics to be manipulated in his own calculation to find "the best world possible", and if that calculation says "this number of people over here have to die to save a greater number overall" he calls that "good". He's making a pretty obvious contrast between those two approaches to "making the world better", but if Moore didn't actually intend to make those points, then he maybe should have written the story and characters differently.

Unless he actually thought people would cheer Veidt as the savior of mankind maybe? Which maybe speaks volumes about his own disconnect with what his audience might actually think about such things. Dunno. Again though, not really super relevant in itself. But to me, what made the story interesting and compelling was that conflict between the ideas of "what makes the world better", and showcasting that neither exreme is a great thing at all. But yeah. If we are forced to choose, it's not surprising that most would choose Rorschach as the more heroic character. A flawed person, trying to do his best to make things better, in a world in which his own individual actions seem small and meaningless, but he continues to try anyway? Yeah... Can't see at all why more people might connect with that character than with Veidt.

Let's not pretend like scale doesn't matter. Killing a person is bad. Killing a million people is roughly a million times worse.

I think who you are killing and why you are killing them, also matters a whole lot. More than the number even.

[LaZodiac]

I mean Niteowl is right there. There's someone who also does his best to fight for what is right, without being a volatile homophobe and racist, who doesn't die needlessly when he realizes sometimes there isn't much one man can do against someone as powerful as Veidt.

It's telling people don't go for him, the person we actually are in a situation like this, and instead devolve into Rorschach's screaming lunacy. This is what Moore is confused about- not that people aren't siding with Veidt, but that people are so willing to dehumanize into a creature of violence and anti-thought instead of recognizing themselves in the shlubby guy who was just too late.

[Rynjin]

I mean Niteowl is right there. There's someone who also does his best to fight for what is right, without being a volatile homophobe and racist, who doesn't die needlessly when he realizes sometimes there isn't much one man can do against someone as powerful as Veidt.

It's telling people don't go for him, the person we actually are in a situation like this, and instead devolve into Rorschach's screaming lunacy. This is what Moore is confused about- not that people aren't siding with Veidt, but that people are so willing to dehumanize into a creature of violence and anti-thought instead of recognizing themselves in the shlubby guy who was just too late.

Most people don't "identify" with Rorschach (though there are definitely some crazies out there) but it's hard not to sympathize with the guy who comes closest to making a difference and has principles he stands behind.

A man's convictions and efforts can be laudable without condoning all of his actions and beliefs. Refusing to bow to tyranny, even in the face of death, may not be SMART, but it is courageous.

Rorschach is given the option to either lend his tacit approval to an act of terror and the creation of a new shadow regime, or die. Niteowl chooses to either truly bend the knee and give up, or perhaps play the long game, it's left somewhat ambiguous. Both options are understandable. Neither are perfect.

Off topic: Love your new profile pic.

[gbaji]

How many solo comic series or graphic novels have there been about Cyclops? How many about Wolverine? How many about Punisher?

There's your answer. Rorschach is an interesting and cool character precisely because he's an edgy vigilante, prone to violence, and with questionable methods. Whatever his personal flaws may be, he is unquestionably heroic, and refuses to give in, no matter what. There's something powerful about that, that "well, I'll go along with it, but maybe do something behind the scenes later on" with a side order of <insesrt appropriate collaborator label here> feel to it, can simply never approach.

You don't have to like the character of Rorschach, but he earns respect for making that choice. Dan is likeable, but "goes along" at the end. There's a reason why folks like that get labels like "sell out" applied to them. And sure. Maybe most people actually do associate the most with Dan, because maybe he's the most like most of us. But he's not the kind of person we want to be, even if maybe, most of the time, he's the person we are. We want our heroes to be more heroic than we are. Dan ain't that.

[LaZodiac]

Most people don't "identify" with Rorschach (though there are definitely some crazies out there) but it's hard not to sympathize with the guy who comes closest to making a difference and has principles he stands behind.

A man's convictions and efforts can be laudable without condoning all of his actions and beliefs. Refusing to bow to tyranny, even in the face of death, may not be SMART, but it is courageous.

Rorschach is given the option to either lend his tacit approval to an act of terror and the creation of a new shadow regime, or die. Niteowl chooses to either truly bend the knee and give up, or perhaps play the long game, it's left somewhat ambiguous. Both options are understandable. Neither are perfect.

Off topic: Love your new profile pic.

While I get what you mean, the old adage of "close only matters in horseshoes and hand grenades" comes to mind... and while it has admittedly been a while since I've read Watchmen, I feel like a lot of the stuff Rorschach stands so firmly for is also pretty ****ty. Like he'd for sure find me to be an inherently evil person simply by my personal existence.

All that which is to say; dogmatically standing for your ideals no matter what can seem laudable, but it matters what those ideals are using as a foundation. A modern day Rorschach would probably believe certain modern day bugaboos that would make him feel a LOT less easy to sympathize with, and it's really only in contrast TO Veidt's evil that the man comes off as even remotely good (and even then, barely).

I think Niteowl was thinking of working from within the system to try and undermine Veidt, when the moment is right. There's a lot to say about how this sort of strategy doesn't... work, basically ever, but fundamentally speaking "avoiding dying so you can fight in the future" is more productive long term, imo. Ultimately the ending is simply where Watchmen kinda falls apart; Rorschach looks too heroic in contrast to Veidt's banal "for the greater good" villainy, Niteowl and Spectre are too ineffective and perhaps too reflective of a world where the Veidt's of the world are winning, and Veidt's plan is doomed from the start; not because of the journal, or because of the errors in his coverup, or because Manhatten may return one day, but simply because "there is no world where this actually unifies all nations under a single banner". Even if only for a moment, it just isn't reasonable to assume that'd work. Used to be, and in a sense (bitter though it may be) that might actually paint Watchmen as a surprisingly optimistic story.

Thanks! I could have sworn I've been using this one for the better part of a year now but I guess not. This is the full version.

[Lord Raziere]

.....I don't think Alan Moore expected people to root for ANYONE.

A writer like that, writing a story like that, isn't caring about normal narratives about heroes and villains, about protagonists and sympathies and the like. He was writing to examine the concept of superheroism in general and to criticize it from multiple perspectives. To question it on every level he can. Rorshach is far from being above this criticism or examination. Take off the sympathy goggles and he is a man obsessed with a personal crusade that eats up his entire life and doesn't affect anything or make a difference. He neglects his personal life so much that he is homeless and its not clear why he even takes off the mask to go around in disguise except maybe to lay low to keep the cops off his tail probably. He probably doesn't have any real friends, there is no indication anyone sees his superhero guise as inspiring or even terrifying because there is no indication that most people even know OF him aside from the criminals that he has put in jail in the past and the police, painting him as this thug that goes around beating criminals up whom no one really knows about except the people whose job it is TO know about him. I'm pretty sure the intended reading is to look at this guy and think he sucks because he is supposed to represent what a superhero vigilante looks like when you strip away all the little tropey breaks from reality that make it look glamorous and worth it and try to see it what effect trying to act that way without any of those breaks from reality holding it up would look like, its essentially making someone act as close as you can to a superhero in a world where the tropes don't apply not for comedic effect but for dramatic effect.

Where he goes wrong is that he made Rorshach too cool anyways despite that not being his aim. To be fair, this was written in the 1980's and media wasn't the way it is now, thus he wouldn't have predicted the phenomenon that any fandom with a villainous character will inevitably have a section of it proclaim that character right as long as they're charismatic and cool enough. Rorshach with lines like "I'm not locked in here with you, your locked in here with ME!" and being defiant and choosing his principles in the face of death makes him look way too cool for those kind of people to not see him that way, add in the fact that he is the closest thing that Watchmen has to a protagonist and its not hard to see why the delivery was bungled a bit. Alan Moore gave the guy little too much respect and expected people to see that he was human not right when they're coming from a media of simplified black and white morality where beating up people for what is right and sacrificing yourself for a greater cause or principle Is Fine. Also he probably didn't count on people to unironically like him because of his flaws, because this kind of character appeals to people for whom being a Violent Thug is THE POINT.

Adrian Veidt of course, does not get off scott-free. He is quite obviously compared to Ozymandias, aka Alexander the Great and how his works are ruined and how all empires fall to sand and dust, quite simply the way he sucks is that he is a believer of Great Man Theory. He explicitly says that he only feels Alexander the Great would understand him, a conqueror when there are numerous examples of conquerors throughout history, Alexander the Great is hardly unique in that sense I doubt the people he conquered would see him in a good light, and sure he is a smart but that is no excuse to not make friends with people. he talks a big game about achieving everything though his "self-made man" persona, but the people who assist him his project he poisons to keep the secret hidden and safe and despite his attempt at saying wealth doesn't matter to him and he gave his inheritance away to start at nothing, he clearly made that money back and more, and you don't make that wealth alone and thus he can't really be credited for obtaining that wealth alone due to the many workers, scientists and so on that contributed along the way in some form or other, just as Alexander can't really be credited for his conquests alone due to all the soldiers and people under him making any of his plans possible. sure he treats people around and under him better than most and he actually walked the walked but fundamentally he attributing what is a matter of luck and the work of many people (getting rich) to his own skills which is the mistake every rich person makes and he is clearly willing to expend them without them knowing, and his whole self-realization thing where believes anyone can be great if they just try, ignores maslows hierarchy of needs where just because people have the potential to achieve such heights, doesn't mean everyone has the time, luck and resources to do so.

Furthermore his entire plan to stop the nuclear war is ridiculous and pretty much worked because he got lucky, the US could've easily suspected it was a weird form of russian nuke and fired back anyways, and the kind of genetic engineering he did to make that squid-monster thing is possible, I doubt its the kind of science that only he knows about. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl could still decide to reveal the plan if they feel its necessary. This plan could've went south, just not for the usual supervillain reasons. its very possible that due to how things were going that the nations were looking for an excuse to end the cold war anyways if they were this willing to suddenly declare an end to hostilities because of a random psychic octopus attack, which means he arguably cost millions of lives to accelerate the time tables a bit. There is also the fact that the nations wouldn't be moving up to Defcon 2 to the first place if he hadn't made Dr. Manhattan retreat to mars in the first place, a plan he made out of fear that he would stop this attack which was unfounded and even if he could there is no reason why being on Mars would matter, Dr. Manhattan is godlike, he got to Mars easily, he can easily get back to Earth just as fast, his entire plan with Dr. Manhattan was essentially done for nothing. That and the plan relies on like, one of the biggest deceptions in history which isn't tenable. Like y'know the saying about to cover up a lie, you have to keep making bigger and bigger lies? Yeah, uh, what would Veidt do when people start trying to find the aliens that he made them believe tried to invade? I doubt that even he has the money to fake a full alien invasion and surely if Mr. Veidt himself is to believed about humanity having potential to be great, someone could figure out how to solve the mystery of where the squid thing came from and trace it back to him sooner or later, I mean if someone like RORSHACH, y'know, the poor homeless violent thug who reads conspiracy theory newspapers and a couple friends can figure it out, what makes you think people with more resources, manpower, organization and so on CAN'T? Even if Rorshach's attempt at revealing the truth fails, that hardly means people can't figure it out some other way. he is a former superhero rich guy living in freaking Antartica! there's no way people aren't snooping on him, especially as the years go by and internet becomes more of a thing. his empire will crumble and given the times he lives in, it would be sooner rather than later. and whether he is right or not to do this all is irrelevant because HOW he did this matters and could make this all fall apart on everyone for the worse anyways sooner or later- his solution was only a delay, a stopgap, not a real one.

in short, Adrian Veidt is no one special. he is just another rich jerk who thinks he controls more than he actually does and got lucky- just like all the conquerors in the past with an empire.

If I'd accuse Alan Moore of anything, its of overestimating some readers, not all of them, many people are perfectly capable of seeing The Point, but lack of media literacy is rampant now and isn't particularly kind to stories like these which practically require media literacy to make sense of, but he wouldn't have known this state of how things would turn out back in 1986.

[Batcathat]

.....I don't think Alan Moore expected people to root for ANYONE.

Yeah, this is my thought too. Basically all the characters have some sympathetic and/or admirable qualities, but none of them come off as anywhere near completely correct.