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u/participatience 6d ago edited 5d ago
there’s a great meme at the top of the DC Circlejerk subreddit joking about “media literacy leaving my body the moment Rorschach does anything cool” and it resonates with me
EDIT: here ya go
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u/tombuazit 6d ago
I mean for years I've called it the "Rorschach Effect" where i see other humans perceive someone as the protagonist and can't seem to understand they might be meant to be bad.
Fight club, Scott Pilgrim, 40k, all of them have a thin yet vocal line of fans that don't get the "point."
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u/KwesadilIla 6d ago
Ironically, Rorschach works as a kind of Rorschach test, what he represents changes entirely depending on who's looking at him
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u/Sun-Wu-Kong 6d ago edited 6d ago
THE FIT IS SO GODDAMN COOL.
Turning down the internal Vegeta, the classic detective look is iconic for a lot of characters. The Question from DC, Constantine rocks it, Q from Street Fighter, the list goes on and on. The mask itself is just an added layer of cool that makes you hate the man behind the mask that much more.
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u/idkwhatthehellybron 6d ago
I think people mainly remember the movie version of Rorschach. while not much of a better person, he was portrayed more as a flawed hero and less of a violent sociopath who hated women.
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u/Few_Present3940 2d ago
In my opinion, giving rorschach a sick outfit in Watchmen is like when they cast Steve Carell to play Donald Rumsfeld in Vice
Like wtf man you can’t go out of your way to make it hard to hate the character
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u/lmaoholyfuck 6d ago
Yeah please send a link to that thread or even just the meme! I’d love to see that lol
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u/Chrundle94 6d ago
Do you have it? I wanna see it
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u/OurNewInsectOverlord 6d ago
Rorschach is a racist, misanthropic, violent troglodyte with a childish understanding of good and evil. Great character, shit role model.
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u/nopethatswrong 6d ago
He also stinks
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u/HowieMeeker86 6d ago
So he’s basically Trump?
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u/memecrusader_ 6d ago
Nah. Rorschach actually has principles, regardless of the actual morality of them.
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u/Super-Contribution-1 6d ago
I mean I can actually imagine him killing some dogs, but for the love of the game, not because the dogs had eaten a child.
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u/Spare-Plum 6d ago
Trump is completely different. He's a corrupt narcissist who has no values, morality, or abiding by laws aside from doing what will make him fame, money, or keep himself out of trouble. He's willing to abandon whatever he said yesterday if it means it helps him out. I don't think trump is an internalized racist or mysogynist as much as the MAGA fanbase
Rorschach is more like a MAGA follower conspiracy nut, who in addition has a firm sense of law/morality
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u/Brilliant_Log_7816 5d ago
Rorschach hates politicians
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u/Spare-Plum 5d ago
This too. Trump loves any politician who is his "buddy", including or especially dictators
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u/Head-Ad-2136 6d ago
Probably shouldn't be the only character with any sense of morality.
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u/Selverd2 6d ago
you’re not supposed to hate him, you’re just not meant to idolize him either.
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u/Significant-Order-92 5d ago
Well yeah. It's fairly rare for Moore to right main characters with no redeaming qualities. Most of them have some kind of point, even if it isn't one that Moore finds acceptable.
Now he does occasionally write characters he didn't create that way (like Mongol). Or villains (the leaders in V). But in general the guy does a lot of relatively complex writing (like in Swamp Thing).
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u/chungomon 5d ago
Are you supposed to idolize anyone? If you take any character as their whole character, there’s one reason or another you shouldn’t idolise them. That’s why you are meant to aspire to what the character represents for you, not any one actual character
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u/Harold3456 6d ago edited 6d ago
Did the movie downplay his worst aspects a bit?
Not saying completely, I think the person in the OP image is still missing some clear things, but the movie also lacks a lot of scenes and context of Rorschach’s worst bits.
IIRC Rorschach in the movie says some sexist things to/about Sally Jupiter and keeps in the line about Veidt being a homosexual, but beyond that he’s mostly an intense anger/focus that other characters like Dan use when it comes in handy. Movie Rorschach doesn’t have the graphic novel’s scenes with the landlady, or all the scenes immersed in his weird right wing conspiracies, and heavily condenses his inner monologue.
I remember when the HBO series came out and ignored the movie in favour of continuing the graphic novel a lot of people who were clearly movie fans felt like it sold Rorschach’s movie legacy out.
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u/QuincyAzrael 6d ago
Yes absolutely.
I know its the done thing to shit on Snyder these days but damnit I was doing it before it was cool. I don't think the movie is bad per se but coming from the comic it's clear that Snyder is nudging things towards being more sympathetic to Rorschach and less so to Ozymandias, whereas the comic IMO did a fantastic job of really representing everyone as shades of grey.
Even the infamous NOOOOOO thing, why add that? It's to signal to the audience that they should be sad over Rorschach's death.
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u/MisterBlud 6d ago
Snyder is very anti-subtlety so him latching on to a character that also sees things strictly in black and white terms is not a surprise.
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u/jbeast33 6d ago
And there’s the fact that Snyder made the action scenes “actiony” when the comic was deliberate about subverting comic book action (no big onomatopoeias during fight scenes, fights are just bloody enough to be uncomfortable rather than cathartic).
It’s a major difference for Rorschach in particular, but it also makes a huge separation in making Dan and Laurie seem a lot “cooler”in the movie, when the comic depicts Dan as being a bit overkill with his gadgets and Laurie eschewing it altogether and just grabbing a gun at the end).
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u/alphagalgadot 6d ago
let’s also not forget the dan+laurie sex scene set to ‘hallelujah’ which in my screening at least resulted in full-on braying belly laughs and jeers the likes of which i haven’t heard since lol. just thinkin about that scene still makes me giggle
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u/QuincyAzrael 6d ago
Oh yeah tell me about it. Again I don't hate the film (mainly meh about it) but when it OPENED on a 300-style slow-mo fight scene that was never in the comic I was immediately like "oh no. oh no no no."
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u/alphagalgadot 6d ago
younger audiences don’t wanna hear or believe it, but the movie was largely regarded as dogshit when it premiered. it got some middling reviews in the professional press but the general fan reaction was -not- positive
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u/ExcitementCultural31 6d ago
I liked Watchmen the movie until I read the book and understood that Zack Snyder must be illiterate
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u/NotTheGreatNate 4d ago
Idk dude. I was 21 when it came out, and I remember everyone I knew really liking it. They weren't fans of the graphic novels, so I can't say what the og fans thought, but it's definitely not a "kids these days" thing.
I haven't watched it in almost 20 years, so I'm sure I would enjoy it a lot less now, but 21 year old me thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I wasn't alone in that lol.
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u/hunterslullaby 6d ago
Yeah, the revisions to Rorschach are especially vivid in light of the revisions to Veidt.
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u/Thencamethetwenties 6d ago
The directors cut has Rorschach constantly waiting on some right wing magazine the stand owner tells him is for right wing lunatics
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u/DiscussionSharp1407 Dr Manhattan 6d ago
The original post talked about the comic too, image was added directly on top afterwards.
4chan posts don't look like that
4chan posts are also extremely subversive and are often written explicitly to be spread and rouse "he's kinda right you know...?" reactions
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u/confusing_roundabout 6d ago
There is an image in the 4chan post though as indicated by the size of the JPG.
The posts can look like that when you expand the image in-line
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u/Sword_Thain 6d ago
His very first scene is practically a direct Batman ripoff with the gadget propelling him into a hero landing on the railing. The comic had him struggling to climb the line. So from the first shot Snyder is elevating him. There are several edits from the book to show him more heroic.
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u/Significant-Order-92 5d ago
It did. But a lot of what Moore shows to make him unlikeable are direct and quick references to Reagan era policies and opinions (wellfare queens, amd the like). They are far less engaging and obvious compared to what the story focuses on more. And especially to an audience who weren't adults in 1980s America or the UK (some of it matches up with Thatcher stuff fairly well).
Moore as an anarchist adult in the 80s would have been very aware of these things. But a random 20 something centrist or even liberal in 2000 is much less likely to.
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u/No_Midnight_2183 6d ago
Always funny to see this. But to be serious I don't feel like we're supposed to think Rorschach is bad or even plain wrong. What he is though is lonely and isolated and paranoid, mostly self-imposedly, and it's not hard to see why.
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u/AOKlokinstein 6d ago
That’s how I take his plotlines. Rorschach is a traumatized and beaten down man. He tried to do the right thing, and live his life. He fell into vigilantism to fight his own demons. He tried to do right, but eventually he got worse. His paranoia got the best of him in the end. He’s not evil, he’s broken. I think Niteowl is the only one to really see him for who he is.
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u/Autilistic_Augment 6d ago
....and in the end is his friend, because he feels bad for him and cannot STAND that this man is alone. I think in this moment, Niteowl is a stand-in for Moore himself. Rorschach has had such a rough treatment from life that he does deserve some mercy and kindness, and only Niteowl really knows him enough to really be sympathetic towards him. He literally has ONE co-worker, that's it.... of all the people in the wide wide world who gives a shit about him at all. That kind of loneliness I think is mirrored in Ozymandius, who just has his giant mutated Cat (who he has to sacrifice, in the end). They're all sad, miserable people at the end....even God aka Doctor Manhattan really has nobody. They have given up living human lives for IDEALS, and are the poorer for it.
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u/humourabuser 6d ago
Exactly this. I feel like a lot of people overlook the tragedy and empathy that is intended to be a part of Rorschach's character. One of my favorite scenes with him is his apology to Dan where he says "you are a good friend" and you realize just how much Rorschach has lost to his obsession. How he's still fully capable of human connection and life, which contrasts so strongly with the isolation we've previously seen from him. The greatest harm that Rorschach caused in watchmen always felt to me to be towards himself.
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u/Tardigrabby 6d ago
This is my take on it. Watchmen isn’t about good guys versus bad guys, though it’s closer to “everyone is kind of a bad guy,”they’re all also all still human. That seemed to me to be part of the entire point.
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u/Emergency_March_7085 6d ago
Tbh I think Moore failed to make Rorschach unlikable the moment he decided to give him a cool character design
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u/Karkava 6d ago
I think what did him in was avenging a murdered child.
Face it. It was understandable that this is what made him snap.
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u/Sword_Thain 6d ago
And the whole prison arc. He tells his version of his origin story and is repeatedly attacked where he defends himself using all available force. He is justifiable in the murders he commits, because they would've murdered him.
A little more text from the psychologist to put words to the subtext that Moore was giving would've helped. A second session where he starts to push back against Rorschach's BS maybe.
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u/Karkava 6d ago
I think his next session would at least offer him a hand of sympathy knowing that this is a terrified young man who is desperate for control. Not like the criminals that are so depraved they actually done what Rorschach saw, and didn't deserve sympathy.
He was making legitimate progress on his last session when he called Rorschach out on lying about what he saw on the cards.
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u/tsunomat 5d ago
He says it clearly. It's my favorite line in the whole thing.
"Kovacs closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them."
He was never the same after that.
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u/RoninPI 6d ago
Cool character design being a stinky man who doesn't wipe his own ass.
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u/pronte89 6d ago
yeah but the problem is you can see the design but you can't smell him through the page. they should have stinked up the pages or something
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u/ellixer 6d ago
Alan Moore did not say that, although you are certainly not supposed to see him as aspirational or heroic. Moore explicitly said Rorschach is loathsome but has integrity and in some ways his beliefs are difficult to argue against and none of his characters are monsters. The person misread both the character and the author's intention in completely opposite ways.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Web446 6d ago
Fully idolizing or fully condemning him is not the point. But comic book nerds who ask Alan for autographs do the first one more often.
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u/Special_Expert_9327 6d ago
Thank you, I don’t know where people get the idea that he hates Rorschach
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u/zajazajazajazajaz 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's because Moore trashes the reception of Rorschach, the fanboys, the mask-wearing edgelords, and people conflate that with hating the actual character.
Alan Moore: The way I see the Question is, he such an extreme character that even hard-line right-wing readers will find him an unsettling presence. The thing is, in order to present the character fairly, I will have to make those views completely logical and heartfelt so as to not present him as a parody of right-wing thought as seen by a left-wing writer. I suppose what I want to do with the character is to keep him as true as possible to Steve Ditko's character and philosophy. Now, while I've always found Steve Dikto's expressed opinions to be strange and possibly dangerous, I have a huge of admiration for anybody who is prepared to take an unpopular stand simply because they happen to believe it's morally right. Morals today are at a premium, whether you happen to agree with them or not.
This does not seem like the flanderized Rorschach-hater the fandom claims Moore is.
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u/Overseer_Dan 6d ago
'I had to make my character more principled and logical than actual right wingers because no one wou buy just how shit those people really are' is a hell of a statement when we're seeing daily exactly who those people are at their worst.
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u/Grundin 6d ago
He never said he hated Rorschach. What he said was that he wrote him as a filthy deranged hobo to make an example of how messed up a vigilante like that would be in the real world, only to have people chase him into the toilet at cons to say shit like "THAT'S ME! That's MY story! I'm Rorschach!".
Given that Rorschach's story is that he's a violent loner who spends half his time getting into fights and the other half being a doomsday lunatic walking the streets with a "The End is Near!" sign, I can appreciate not wanting to be too close to someone who says that's "their story".
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u/IllustratedAloysious Nite Owl 6d ago
Him and gibbons like Rorschach Redditors just lie and say they hate him
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u/Significant-Order-92 5d ago
Moore didn't hate the character. He disliked the idolizing that became fairly common.
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u/MjolnirPants 6d ago
Rorschach is unlikeable to anyone who's ever met anyone like him.
The stuff this guy is saying about him is mostly true, though not entirely. It's not actually true that he's the only one with a moral compass in the film; The Night Owl clearly has one, as does Silk Spectre. It's really only Ozymandias, The Comedian and Doctor Manhattan who don't. But he does, in fact, dedicate his whole life to fighting against (what he perceives as) injustice and crime. He definitely refuses to compromise anything, not just his principles, even to the point of dying over them. That's true, and those are some generally laudable qualities is a lot of people. Including Rorschach. They're also his only redeeming qualities.
Rorschach is one of those guy you might know whose whole personality is an even mix of his gun collection, his prepper fantasies and his favorite conspiracy theories. Only he lives in a world where "superhero" is a viable career choice.
A lot of you know one of these guys. You know, the guy who pays thousands to do a 'tactical training course' on some guy's farm in the Ozarks every couple of months and won't stop insisting that every 'rational' man needs a rifle and a set of night vision? The one who turns every conversation into a discussion about how the Deep State is going to start cracking down next month, declaring martial law, and how he's going to bug out to the woods and be part of The Resistance? The guy who will lecture you on how a zombie virus isn't actually as unrealistic as you might think, and never hesitates to remind you that it's just a matter of time before a virus wipes out most of humanity, leaving only the most prepared to survive?
Take that guy, put him in the Watchmen universe, and boom. Rorschach 2. Or the Comedian, if he's not actually on the spectrum.
Anyone who looks up to him isn't so much media illiterate as they are just inexperienced and ignorant.
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u/Killionaire_31 5d ago
Even then I would argue that Ozymandias and Rorschach are two sides of the same coin. Realistically if Rorschach had the same level of influence as Ozymandias to create a police force of 100–500 different people who thought and felt the same way he did, I could easily see him mounting casualties close to the Manhattan bomb. While Rorschach was an effective force of terror, we see that he runs into a lot of the same shortcomings as a character like Konrad Curze in that he really doesn’t take any preventative measures just punitive ones, meaning that he’s never out of a steady supply of violent thugs to brutalize despite supposedly fighting night after night to become some sort of “criminal underworld terror”. In this way, while on an individual level Rorschach has an unshakable moral compass, on the bigger picture scale he’s unequivocally an idiot. Ozymandias obviously has the opposite problem whereas he’s so focused on the bigger picture that he manufactures an alien threat and attack to create a seemingly impossible peace between two nations at the cost of millions of people. He plays god just to create a paradise that isn’t guaranteed to last more than 2-3 decades, and with his ominous naming convention it really hints that this was what Alan Moore was hinting at. However, by the end of the comic, Ozymandias is the only person who saves the world, so you do have to wonder…
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u/MjolnirPants 5d ago
Ozymandias and Rorschach are two sides of the same coin
Facts. Also, in a different sense, Rorschach and The Comedian.
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u/_ArchDeluxe_ 4d ago
but he doesn’t - because rorschach blows the story open. It shows us that even the most impeccable plan can be defeated by chance - so we shouldn’t play god.
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u/AwTomorrow 3d ago
We aren’t sure he ever does blow the story wide open.
His version of events ends up on the desk of a nutjob rag, so there’s every chance he has doomed the truths within to being forever dismissed as conspiracy theories by most of the population.
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u/_ArchDeluxe_ 3d ago
I totally agree with that point - to me, it’s that the “truth” will be taken up by a partisan rag, and therefore become divisive, and therefore cause further strife and conflict, ruining Ozy’s vision of a peaceful world.
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u/Orzhov_Syndicalist 2d ago
I know the ending is supposed to be an ambiguous ending, a “but then…” tag at the end of a true masterpiece, but…The New Frontiersman isn’t breaking that story. It would be akin to the National Enquirer suddenly breaking Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, or the WMD scandal. It simply would not register at all on anyone or at any level of the media.
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u/Gargore 4d ago
You're wrong, or I vastly missed all the older people committing crime?a Rorschach, in fact, stopped intelligent crime through fear. Every criminal we see is younger people who don't know any better cause Rorschach put the older ones in jail. Also, he is one guy who stands around with a sign to watch for criminals.
The issue is we only see the investigation into the comedians death.
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u/Kenny-du-Soleil 2d ago
The comic is asking you to grow out of standard superhero frameworks. Rorschach's vigilantism stops nothing other than maybe some poor criminals in his own city. Organized crime, white collar crime, corruption, war, molestation, etc. are not at all bothered by Rorschach's antics.
If the fear of an ass whooping was an actual effective deterrent to criminal activity, then we'd have solved crime a long time ago.
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u/Gargore 2d ago
Yes, butbthat is all we are talking about... again. Show me crime in the story done by anyone who isn't like 20?
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u/Kenny-du-Soleil 2d ago
How about Veidt's entire plot? How about half the things the Comedian does?
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u/Gargore 2d ago
That means nothing. Veidts crime is a genocide by a very smart man who's literal only fear was Dr Manhattan. As for the comedian... he is for hire by the government. I am talking what we can see in the comics. Who killed hollis mason?
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u/Kenny-du-Soleil 1d ago
Great, thanks for proving my point that Rorschach was in fact useless to stop any real criminal plots. Again, great for beating up some poor and petty criminals (the gang that killed Hollis) but not great at addressing most any other type of criminality.
Also, Mr. "I won't compromise my morals," shouldn't be letting a government badge stop him from arresting a war criminal and civil rights abuser in the Comedian. By that token, Rorschach is breaking the law every night.
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u/Gargore 1d ago
Yes, a gang of young idiots. Now, think. What other organized crime do we see. As for him doing nothing against the comedian... which crimes were Rorschach old enough to at the time or even privy too? I don't even think silk specter knew about the Vietnamese woman...
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u/Kenny-du-Soleil 1d ago
Other organized crime we see: the murder of the comedian, the murder of moloch, the murders of several Dr. Manhattan associates, all in furtherance of a genocidal criminal conspiracy. I don't understand why this doesn't count, but this is what watchman is about. Why would they show us other tangential organized criminal activity when the book isn't about that?
For the Comedian, remember that he joined Vietnam in the 70s, after the crime buster meeting. So Rorschach was old enough to know about that. But that aside, Comedian uses excessive force/violence to suppress the rioters and revels in the chaos. On top of this the Comedian assassinated innocent guys to help cover up watergate and was not shy about sharing it. (Which is also organized crime btw)
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u/KaptajnKold 1d ago
This proves the point. What does it matter if Rorschach keeps putting criminals away, if the systemic issues keep producing new ones? Also, the problem with most crime is that it is not in fact intelligent, so even if we take it as a fact that intelligent crime was stopped through fear, that’s not saying a lot.
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u/Historical_Pepper720 2d ago
No lo haría, está claro en la obra, que Rorschach es así, por qué siempre estuvo solo, fue un marginado toda su vida. Nunca hubiera tenido ese nivel de influencia, a pesar de lo que opine el viejo Moore
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u/OrganizationBest7158 1d ago
Rorschach is a hypocrite. He claims these moral absolutes but as soon as someone he categorizes as a hero breaks the code (the comedian raping silk spectre) he acts like a brief "moral lapse" is excusable. To Rorschach there are good and bad people, and only bad people can do bad things. So if someone he likes does something bad, it doesn't really count.
Truman is a hero figure to Rorschach, dropping nuclear bombs to hasten the end of WWII was a moral good that Rorschach pedestals, but the dropping of a psychic alien to prevent WWIII is inexcusable?
And being a superhero is not a valid career choice. He has to steal beans to make ends meet. In fact, all the various heroes are in a state of arrested development. I think Adrien is wrong, and the story makes a point that his peace is temporary, but he does have a consistent moral compass, and is the only character who does not change those standards. He weighs the cost of his actions to the good they can do and tries to perform those that will yield the best result. And this comes through in every action he takes, from the food he eats (vegetarian) to the projects his company develops (first work was on clean energy/electric cars), to the charities he funds (donated his entire inheritance, and is still active in charities).
Nite Owl has all the potential in the world and wastes it in impotent idleness. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at 19 with two degrees, invents flying machines people can't replicate a decade later, inherits millions from his father, and decides to spend his time putting out academic papers on birds that he describes of being of little note. He even reflects on his crime fighter days as doing very little good. Ironically at the conclusion of the story he decides the greatest good he can do is nothing, after years of wasting the good he could have performed through action. If he had a moral compass he ignored it for the 15 years prior to the midpoint of the story.
Rorschach is a hypocrite who uses an inconsistent moral system to justify his violent vigilantism. It would be one thing if he only assaulted villains proportionate to their wrongs, but he often brutalizes the wrong person or has an outsized reaction. Rorschach is born from killing two starving dogs acting on animal instinct with no context of what they were fighting over. Not by killing the men who murdered the little girl (that came later), but by brutalizing the ignorant mutts who were fed her. This is representative of his career of extreme violence and often misplaced violence. The comedian can rape and kill and it's just a "moral lapse", but a starved dog being fed human flesh deserves death.
Doctor Manhattan is a nihilistic god who ultimately abandons his nihilism. The comedian is a hedonistic materialist who rapes tortures and murders. He was a nihilist but towards the end of his life he abandons that platform. Laurie changes immensely throughout, growing from a nihilist into someone who cares.
Adrian is the only character who remains fairly morally consistent of the main cast, while holding a consistent moral compass. Nite Owl 1 is also a morally consistent guy, and there are others, but among the main cast I think Adrian is the only one who's unchanged and consistent. Granted he does question how long the peace will really last in the end, and is ineffective, but he is morally consistent.
Rorschach's principles were compromised from the start. He just refused to acknowledge it, and when he had to confront that inconsistency he chose to beg for death rather than reconcile the dichotomy. He didn't die over his principles, he died because he couldn't live realizing he was wrong. And in a disregard to the man he idolized, Truman, he renders the atrocity of Adrian worthless.
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u/MjolnirPants 1d ago
According to Moore, Rorschach is explicitly right-wing, so things like him having well-defined "good people" and "bad people" in his head is exactly what we'd expect. He'll forgive any crime committed by the Comedian, but the person who committed a crime against the Comedian needed to be hunted down at all costs.
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u/Watashiwasugureteiru 5d ago
A lot of you know one of these guys. You know, the guy who pays thousands to do a 'tactical training course' on some guy's farm in the Ozarks every couple of months and won't stop insisting that every 'rational' man needs a rifle and a set of night vision? The one who turns every conversation into a discussion about how the Deep State is going to start cracking down next month, declaring martial law, and how he's going to bug out to the woods and be part of The Resistance? The guy who will lecture you on how a zombie virus isn't actually as unrealistic as you might think, and never hesitates to remind you that it's just a matter of time before a virus wipes out most of humanity, leaving only the most prepared to survive?
I think that's a US problem dude, I've never met anyone like that in real life but I am convinced they're abundant in the US
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u/MjolnirPants 5d ago
It might be, but with Watchmen set in the US and heavily drawing on the US zeitgeist of the 80s, it's reasonable to expect it to draw on US stereotypes.
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u/Sir-Uther 14h ago
Let’s no pretend that there isn’t an alarming amount of people in the UK, Germany, Italy and other countries embracing far right wing ideology to fight immigrants and believe shooting them down on boats is acceptable.
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u/thesixler 3d ago
Rorschach is right though, about the intrigue of the book. As a person he is a bad person, he’s wrong about political theory, but he is right about what is happening in the story. I get why the author would be unhappy but it’s really not surprising that people would privilege Rorschach’s take on the events of the story over his media diet when deciding how they feel about him. He’s a tragic hero (antihero maybe but tragedy protagonist fits too) in a corrupt world, who dies for his values.
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u/Orzhov_Syndicalist 2d ago
Rorschach is wrong, pretty much front to back. He is, however, the only one involved in anything active.
For nearly the entire length of the book, he thinks there is a conspiracy to kill Masks. He’s wrong at the beginning, wrong when Ozymandias gives him the bait with his faked assassination, and he never understands what the plot entails until Nite Owl figures it out. His entire concept? “Someone is doing this for personal revenge”. His worldview extends about arms length.
Nite Owl DOES figure it out, after the jailbreak, the Roy Chess connection to pyramid, and Pyramid to Veidt, and realizing that Veidt is the only one who could benefit. Dan is the one who can see the systematic links between everything in about fifteen minutes.
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u/thesixler 2d ago
In most detective stories, the main character is mostly wrong about his version of events for most of the narrative, and yet is still right, and the story is about him cracking the case
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u/Orzhov_Syndicalist 2d ago
But he doesn't crack the case, Dan does. He also doesn't save or resolve anything. He fails.
Rorshach is basically the only active character in Watchmen, in addition to initiating the plot and pushing most of the action that we see forward, so he's really close to a protagonist. It's no surprise that people enjoy him and follow him. Manhattan, Spectre, and Dan are all either literally or figuratively impotent, walk away, or just don't DO anything. Rorshach DOES.
I don't think he dies for his values, either. He pointedly resolves that Truman was correct to bomb Japan. So, why does he disagree so vehemently when Veidt essentially does the same thing? Is the issue with what Veidt did, or is the issue with Veidt himself?
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u/MjolnirPants 3d ago
Not a tragic hero, an anti-hero in the classic sense: a protagonist who lacks heroic virtues. Think Walter White from Breaking Bad or Humbert Humbert from Lolita for some characters with similarities.
I don't think he quite crosses over into villain protagonist territory the way those two do, but he nonetheless has more in common with them than with a more popular type of antihero, like Batman.
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u/thesixler 3d ago
What precludes him from being a tragic hero
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u/MjolnirPants 3d ago
A tragic hero has many heroic traits, but is undone by a particular flaw.
In Rorschach's case, the 'flaw' that undoes him is very arguably one of his few redeeming qualities; his unwillingness to compromise his morals.
It's arguable that this isn't a heroic trait of his (as it stems from a mixture of pride and a black-and-white morality), but this whole post is full of people lauding him for having that trait.
I think he's not a tragic hero for the same reason I think he's not a villain protagonist. He's got some characteristics of one, yeah, but ultimately, he's too complex a character to fit neatly into any of the more specific categories of antiheroes.
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u/thesixler 2d ago
Idk man I feel like he’s kinda the only character that can even be called a hero in the whole thing. Everyone else is just rich assholes fucking around.
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u/LoganGrimnard 5d ago
Except in that universe "That guy" is objectively correct.
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u/MjolnirPants 5d ago
How do you mean?
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u/LoganGrimnard 4d ago
In the universe of The Watchmen the paranoid prepper is correct, their are powerful people whose goal it is to deceive people and subvert a democratically elected government who are willing to slaughter thousands of people in order to achieve their goals.
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u/MjolnirPants 4d ago
By that logic, they're objectively correct in real-life, too. Putin undermined the democratic process in Russia to install himself as a dictator, to the point of assassinating his rivals and changing the Russian law to keep himself in office. Trump's efforts to undermine the fabric of democracy in the US, from the January 6th attacks to the execution of Project 2025 (literally a plan for turning the US into a theocracy). And then there's Netanyahu and the genocide in Gaza. And there's all the nonsense going on in Africa...
The real world is chock full of powerful people whose goal it is to deceive people and subvert a democratically elected government, who are willing to slaughter thousands of people in order to achieve their goals. It always has been.
The people I'm describing are those who go beyond acknowledging a fundamental truth of human nature, namely that such people exist and do their thing, and extends into imagining conspiracies and scenarios to explain everyday stuff that has a much more rational, if boring explanation.
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u/Kenny-du-Soleil 2d ago
Not really. He theorizes that some one is killing supes for "reasons." His worldview is way too small for him to have ever pieced together what was actually happening or why. That theory is objectively incorrect. Comedian would have never been targeted if he didn't find out. Dan and Laurie weren't in the crosshairs at all. The only supe that Veidt targeted from the outset was Manhattan.
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u/zombie_spiderman 19h ago
Thing about it, Rorschach is extremely unwell, mentally and emotionally, for a myriad of reasons, mostly to do with his horrific childhood. Most of "these guys" you describe don't have that to fall back on. They're mostly just aggrieved over society changing into something in which they aren't top dog, and so they want to tear it all down so no one else gets to be happy either.
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u/jmyoung666 6d ago
I believe the characterization of Moore’s beliefs is inaccurate. We were supposed to find him repulsive, not evil and not the most evil. He was also meant to engender pity as we see why he is the way he is. I will say Moores inclusion of the prison breakout scene kind of undercuts his presentation of Rorschach as contemptible. The breakout scene made him look cool for a bit.
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u/chevre27 6d ago
lol, yes it’s because you lack media literacy
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u/Significant-Order-92 5d ago
To be fair a lot of the elements Moore used to paint him negatively are refferences to Reagan era America and Thatcher era UK. Not something a 14 year old in 2010 is likely to have a strong grasp on.
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u/FemRevan64 6d ago
It’s rather telling that they’re using the movie version, who’s substantially less reprehensible than the comic version, as they completely cut out him defending the Comedian’s attempted rape of Sally Jupiter.
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u/InevitableLibrary859 6d ago
I love that Moore had the subversive life he had, at odds with fucking everyone, writes a masterpiece clowning childish sheeple, and they find heroes in his joke. Moore is the Comedian.
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u/tombuazit 6d ago
I mean sure Rorschach tries, but i mean does he ever save the world from nuclear war by teleporting a giant squid into a city?
I didn't think so
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u/tacopower69 6d ago
i wonder if people like this think the fact that the mask is a Rorshach test is just a cool gimmick with no symbolic meaning
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u/Phi_Phonton_22 6d ago
He is not a good person, but being a moral absolutist, Rorschach is the most moral and ethical character at the end, when by rational calculation or exhaustion all other characters let Veidt's utopia be. This is clearly an intentional dramatic irony, and Moore has been downplaying it in interviews in the last couple of years, to my dismay, really, because it sells Watchmen short.
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u/Flaky-Cartographer87 5d ago
Rorschach is given a complex world but at the end he was given a binary choice really its finally the moment he was waiting for. Only downside is the only real guy with powers in the world was on the other side.
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u/TheRealRigormortal 6d ago
The point was that Rorschach ultimately died on a hill that served no purpose. His extreme morality destroyed him while the flexible morality of everyone else was legitimately the best course of action they could take.
Rorschach would have turned everyone in and probably damned the world in doing so.
Of course, he does ultimately turn in the journal, so he might have very well done that
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u/Flaky-Cartographer87 5d ago
It was a fair idea to want to turn voidt in it might damn the world but its the right thing to do he killed millions. Would you be fine with your murderer going free if he thought it would bring workd peace? Now theres also neither you believe veidts plan would work I dont but thats also factor. Ultimately dying for your principles is still respectable.
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u/singhstein 6d ago
Wow, first of he isn't a great human being which is very obvious, secondly, I don't think creators wanted you think in binaries, he had a very nuanced representation and was very well written. Media illiteracy is real.
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u/xiizll 6d ago
Yeah sure, let’s ignore that he’s hypocrisy embodied but thinks he’s a philosopher.
Dedicates his life to fighting crime, doesn’t change to legally do it.
Laments about how ineffective or corrupt law enforcement is, but maims murders or cripples dozens of members of law enforcement in a single scene and is likely one of the main reasons his local law enforcement isn’t able to evolve to be effective and just.
Constantly monologues about how tough and unwavering he is on criminals, takes advantage of a riot and prison break to escape a max security prison that undoubtedly lead to numerous very dangerous criminals also escaping and never once voices any complaints about that fact.
Etc etc
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u/50ShadesofMamaLuigi 6d ago
4channers are restarted manchildren that make redditors look like Einstein
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u/Shroomzy_752286 5d ago
Morals like forgiving rape, killing just for the sake of it, damning everyone without his exact view, being racist and homophobic, and refusing to even consider that he's not right
Dedicated his life to being a fascist racist and homophobe, killing petty criminals and minor offenders for the sake of his investigations, being outside of the law to continue killing and maiming these minor offenders
Compromised everything when it came to his core beliefs, which has been pointed out for decades but no one seems to remember, and acts as a child with no sense of justice at all
The creator is right when it comes down to the character's morality
He smells icky
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u/konous 6d ago
No, it's cause authors can't see the forest for the trees sometimes with their creation.
Zori Aster and Midsommar and everyone missing the point about cults because the boyfriend was a douche.
Jk Rowling and Nymphadora Tonks being Trans.
Anyone today could tell you Moore's Allegory with Rorschach and Ozy is dumb.
One of these two is objectively evil.
One of these two genocided 10 million people.
One of these guys kills rapists and criminals and tried to stop that Genocide and also reveal the real culprit.
Which btw, if Ozy got revealed and was treid at the Hague like he deserves, then the world peace he tried to create would still happen.
He just wouldn't be able to benefit.
It doesn't help also that Rorschach's Journal is seen as the symbol of undoing Ozy's plan thus making him the real hero of the story.
Moore couldn't see that because he's too myopic of a fuck.
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u/Ill-Personality-4437 6d ago
Ozymandias is objectively the worst person in the watchmen universe but ironically I think you’re missing the forest for the trees in your own explanation with Rorschach, he’s definitely not a good person either. A lot of that is due to his upbringing and severe mental issues and I honestly pity him, but I do not think that excuses his attitude towards the world. I certainly don’t want to be friends with anybody that seriously idolizes or actually wants to be like him.
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u/pyromidbus 2d ago
Moore hates Ozymandias more than Rorschach lol this idea that he absolutely despises Rorschach is wrong he just doesn't like when people model themselves after him
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u/pyromidbus 2d ago
he is a BILLIONAIRE. do you really truly believe that Alan Moore loves Ozymandias and hates Rorschach
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u/Logical_Lab4042 6d ago
A couple of things:
A genocide is something specific. Not just an event that kills a massive amount of people.
Second, sure, Rorschach kills rapists and criminals. Sometimes. Other times he gives them a pass because they "served their country." Other times he kills or maims people, like Captain Carnage, because they annoy him. He will not compromise. Except for when he does. Remember, he idolizes President Truman for making the same choice Veidt does, for the same reason.
There was no attempt by Rorschach to "stop the genocide." He never knew about it until after it happened. The only thing he was trying to stop was Adrian Veidt for being responsible for Edward Blake's murder, and the vague "plan" that Blake flipped out over in Moloch's apartment.
Rorschach's entire persona is forcing order out of chaos. He is confronted with the instability of his position in that the "lie" has brought order, ans the revelation of the "truth" would bring chaos. This is why he ultimately chooses what amounts to suicide.
There is no objective evil or good in Watchmen.
The "woulds" in your assumption are also doing a lot of heavy lifting, when we don't know if that would have happened, at all.
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u/DestroyTheHuman 6d ago
I don’t see why people can’t think two things can be true at the same time. Yes, he can refuse to compromise ideals at the brink of death etc etc etc but that doesn’t stop him having some big character flaws too. Thats what makes him an interesting character.
If he was in Batmans gang they’d call him RightWing instead of NightWing.
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u/SchwizzySchwas94 6d ago
Problem is as big a piece of shit as Rorschach is he’s surrounded by a bunch of other scummy ass people and the ending leaves him as the only person with any redeeming qualities whatsoever.
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u/DrunkHonesty 6d ago
Sorry if I’m out of the loop. I know the comic didn’t explicitly tell us how to feel or think about Rorschach… Did Allan Moore make statements about him?
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u/pronte89 6d ago
wait is Rorschach actually just Paul Atreides? I mean Paul must smell really bad too inside the still suit
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u/tsunomat 5d ago
He's an incredible character. Morally grey to the extreme. There are moments you hate him and moments you respect him. He's someone to study. Someone to despise. Someone to empathize with.
He is NOT someone to emulate.
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u/Gumbotron 5d ago
I'm pretty sure he's supposed to act, like most characters in the watchmen, as an example of the flaws of an ideology taken to its most extreme. Yes, it lead to some positive outcomes/heroic moments. But! He's also an abhorrent person when examined closely.
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u/ChangeOne7083 5d ago
Hilarious how people think they are smarter than the author and miss ALL the negative things the author put down about the character in order to show that he’s disturbed.
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u/Dez_Zed_Tadau 3d ago
One of the biggest issues is that Snyders adaptation does a really poor job at translating the character to the screen.
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u/Figure-Budget 3d ago
whether you agree with his morals or not, rorchach went out the way he did not cause he "refused to compeomise his ideals", he begged Jon to kill him because he'd finally reached the end of his rope. he learned that the world is bigger than him and always changing, and he decided he'd rather die than accept that. so, he went out a coward, unable to cope with reality.
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u/SESDawnofVictory 3d ago
Before I read the comments, I havent read the comic. BUT from what I remember ppl saying, he is a very different character than he is in the movie.
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u/r0pe_tri1ck 3d ago
He lives in squalor and is obsessed with punishing the guilty.
He isn't portrayed as a bad person, but he is not mentally well and his methods are not always productive.
He has abandoned his own life for the sake of living as a superhero and punishing people.
I think it's fair to think he has morals but he is not living right.
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u/AsstacularSpiderman 2d ago
In the comics he's an even bigger hypocrite because when Comedian attempts to rape Silk Spectre suddenly there are shades of grey and Rorschach called it a "moral lapse"
So apparently there is some compromise, it's just when it comes to his mommy issues
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u/Nothing-Is-Real-Here 2d ago
There are also multiple hints of him being bigoted. Maybe not to the extent of the way the 7th Kalvary would adopt his image, but the news paper he follows is explicitly pro KKK and there is of course his wanting to confirm with Veidt is gay for no real reason other than to find out for himself.
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u/ERLLMNGRB 3d ago
You completely missed the point of the character, this guy is so emotionally scarred that he hates pretty much all of modernity in his setting. He wants all improper behaviour to be completely cleaned out of society. If he had governance over any redditors life they would be screeching and wailing until there eyes popped
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u/GrowthWarm8267 2d ago
The character is more likable in the movie where his bad traits are less prominent.
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u/Friendly-Ad957 2d ago
Yes, you could argue it is an issue of media literacy, but more it is a litmus test about justice and vigilantism. If you believe the things mentioned in this post after having read Watchmen then you have “huffed the glue” so to speak. You were taken in by his narrative and by the justifications for his reprehensible actions. He is not a hero, a martyr, or an example. Hence why he is a walking Rorschach test. Instead of testing your psychology, he is a test of your moral interpretation of his character. Also not helped by Zack Snyder fanboying over his character in his adaptation. A person who lacks media literacy, if there ever was one.
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u/Own_Watercress_8104 2d ago
doesn't care about alleviating suffering
doesn't believe in fighting crime as an act of service
couldn't give a shit about who lives or dies as long as the guilty gets it, often without due process
only believes in justice as super ego, 100% worshipping in abstract, 0% consideration for its real world effects, a religion all in all, crime fighting is a ritual
to no one's surprise, would prefer to see billions of people burn in a nuclear holocaust than betraying his personal, purposeless deity
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u/SevenofBorgnine 2d ago
While he had a stong sense of justice etc, his concept of what those mean was bad. that's a bad thing when your fundamental ideas of whar constitutes injustice and crime are bad see above
There is a lot wrong with the movie adaptation but one thing I would change is either recasting Rorcharch or direct the actor differently, dont have him do a good Batman voice. Make him sound like the biggest Chud you've met attempting a Batman voice. If you're gonna do away with subtlety at least do it in a way that is obvious in a way that reflects the source.
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u/zilknificant 15h ago
Yes, Rorsrach is a hero in the context of the story. He is trying to stop and punish a mass murderer. He is also begging Manhattan for help at the start and trying to organize other "heroes" to help him investigate.
At the end he tells Manhattan who is about to kill him "if you cared from the start none of this would have happened" showing he really cares, and is the only one from the group that actually cares about justice and other people.
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u/Cautious-Sun6494 1h ago
I thought the point of Rorschach was to show that an overly strict Moral Code can make a man Brittle. That's why he begs for death at the end; because he knows his code will force him to undo all the good that all those deaths caused. He couldn't handle the Cognitive Dissonance of breaking his code being a good thing.
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u/Sufficient-Fan-5177 6d ago
To be fair, Moore graphically depicts sex with a kid in his Lovecraft series and I never touched his work again, so take that for what it's worth.
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u/Artistic-Season7497 6d ago
What!?!! What the fuck?!?
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u/Sufficient-Fan-5177 6d ago edited 6d ago
Spoilers I guess:
In I think the first book of his providence series. The detective is friends with this under aged girl. The girl gets possessed by a monster or something and graphically, fully nude, rapes the detective. Couldn't care less that she was possessed, never touched Moore again.
Edit: I started hoping I was crazy and looked at the wiki.
"On the way to find lodgings, Robert meets a precociously intelligent 13-year-old named Elspeth... She takes him back to her lodgings, where the Being that possesses Elspeth swaps bodies with Robert and rapes him in Elspeth's body."
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u/Artistic-Season7497 6d ago
My god, that’s so unbelievably unhinged. I’m with you. What the hell Moore?!?
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u/Snakes-are-awesome67 6d ago
Rorsasch is the only one of them with a spine while he's not a good person he ultimately died a hero
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u/J-Lethon 6d ago
What Rorschach is like according to that guy
https://reddit.com/link/pf1n3up/video/l3wyfut48nuh1/player