It's the same story with tons of films: Taxi Driver, Joker, The Boys, Watchmen. They get universal praise from the left and right.
The Left: "This insightful satire shows the protagonist's slow descent from obsession and inceldom into terrorism and psychopathy. It serves as a stark reminder of how these thought patterns are the beginnings of a societal tragedy."
The Right: "I fucking love this guy. He just shoots the people he doesn't like. Based. Highly recommended."
To anyone who thinks this may be exaggerated, it's not.
My former friend got swept up into the right-wing pipeline hard these last handful of years.
Right-wing often folks like these characters because they unabashedly hurt people they think justify being hurt. Just like they would like to be able to do.
Once my friend started ranting about how he thinks the US is "overdue for another genocide" then staunchly defended himself over it, I told him to never fucking come back.
You forgot Punisher. My first thought was "here we go, it's Punisher all over again".
Permanently Deleted
Honestly? Because he’s a good character. No one takes his morality to heart that wasn’t already deeply damaged, but a character who builds their psyche and motivations around trauma and idiosyncrasies creates a fascinating piece of a story, nonetheless. Similarly, Breaking Bad is never viewed as a tutorial on losing your morality by a thousand cuts, people view it as the chronicle of an intelligent character intentionally blinding themselves to the damage they cause and reacting in a relatable way. The fall from grace and subsequent dwelling in hell is a beautiful story arc and there’s a reason it’s employed so frequently.
Except /pol/. They’re into him for other reasons.
I remember coming across a post of tumblr where someone said that if a guy says his favorite movie/tv show is Breaking Bad, Rick and Morty or Fight Club, you should run immediately.
The reason was that while these are good works exploring complex, broken and often violent men, a certain subset (the kind of people who would claim that one of those was their favorite of all time) doesn’t have the reasoning ability to understand that they’re the villains of their universe and should not be idolized.
Rorschach easily fits within the same mold as Tyler Durden, Rick Sanchez and Walter White, a complex and entertaining protagonist who’s also a terrible person who no one should want to be.
That is a garbage reason to run immediately.
Tumblrtards are kind of infamous for magical thinking, often bordering on or just outright being delusional, being unimaginably pretentious, incredibly emotionally unstable, and absolutely loving to glom onto bandwagons of virtue signalling one-upsmanship as well as hate brigading ideas they dont understand and people that they dont like.
They often jump to conclusions ludicrously.
Here is what I mean. If a person's favorite movie /is/ Fight Club, all you have to do is then ask them 'why?'.
If you tell me your favorite movie is American Psycho, and the reason why is that you think its a gripping, iconic film criticizing the superficiality and violence of the chauvanistic capitalism of the late 80s...
...that is a lot different than if your reason is that Bateman is just so cool and crazy!
See the context of this 'advice' is ostensibly whether or not you should be a friend or partner of someone.
If you are deciding who to have in your circle by whether or not they like one of three objectively popular and excellent films, which are misunderstood by some, but not others...
...then you are actually being very shallow, and impersonal.
Superficial, even.
Right like with Rick and Morty I can tell you I loved the show for the first few seasons...
...but then its quality went down, culminating in the show eventually entirely abandoning one of its main foundational truisms:
Life is brutal, unpredictable and unfair.
The latest seasons of the show abandoned the total /randomness/ factor that defined the earliest episodes, and replaced it with much more standard... and structured plots.
The fanbase clamored over fan theories and details, anything to make there be a grand overarching plot, continuity, and eventually they got it.
But to me that is the show betraying itself. There isnt supposed to be continuity. It is supposed to be unpredictable. Most fans of the show entirely missed the point, and thus cringe ensued.
Now say what you will about my interpretation of the show here...
... but its a little more nuanced than uh, Rick is zany Pickle man.
And I dont think my interpretation indicates I am some kind of maladjusted chauvanist fascist.
What does it say about me that my favorite movie is, and I apologize in advance because I’m speaking genuinely, The Game?
Yep, for normal folks good characters don't have to be good people.
The internet is a place where nuance goes to die and everyone talks out of their ass. Watchmen was all about nuance. Here's why I think this post is full of shit:
Rorschach was an extremely flawed individual. However that title could basically be applied to every single hero except Nite Owl I. A huge portion of Watchmen revolves around that while none of the characters are necessarily admirable they all have some redeeming qualities.
Calling Rorschach an "incel man child " is an idiotic oversimplification of his character. He didn't decide he hated women after watching too many Andrew Tate videos; Rorschach went though an extreme amount of childhood trauma. We see how horrifying the situation was via flashbacks. Even after all of that, he manages to rise above it all and become a genuine hero. He only went full psycho after being exposed to the most vile shit Moore could get printed. There's even a whole subplot which more or less mocks attempts to be an armchair psychiatrist and dismiss him outright.
Rorschach's philosophy also doesn't exist in a vacuum. A huge part of his role is an ideological counterpoint to Ozymandius, who is the ultimate "ends justify the means" type of person. The entire last act makes you appreciate Rorschach's philosophy a lot more. The ending of the book presents a "Lady or the Tiger?" situation where you're not really sure which of the two was more right.
Finally, he has a decent number of badass moments. The whole "you're locked in with me" is straight up cool. It is on some level meant to be such. It's hard not to look at him and be on some level impressed.
Rorschach isn't someone you're supposed to idealize. However you're not supposed to just dismiss him either.
For whatever reason Internet Media Discourse(tm) can't include the possibility that a character is meant to be sympathetic to some extent but ultimately wrong. They're either perfect and did nothing wrong or an irredeemable monster, no in between.
Absolutely right, although I would say Nite Owl is also flawed, at least the second one. He was only a hero because he a) worshipped the first Nite Owl and b) he felt like a loser and couldn't get it up when not in costume, basically turning his vigilante life into a sort of fetish.
Yeah I was talking about the first Nite Owl. I think the second one is called Night Owl.
The first one is honestly just a chill dude.
Because most people haven't actually read Alan Moore's Rorschach, they've seen Zac Snyder's Rorschach. These are not the same character
If I remember correctly, there was talk about how closely the movie followed the graphic novel when it was being made and im sure that didnt help people want to to check out the source material.
I think most people aren't interested in both mediums. Especially at the time most people only really experience fiction from some sort of film/television
The movie was very much an abridged version of the novels. Meaning all the nuances and hints that were disseminated throughout the pages or in the backgrounds had to be set aside until we are left with the movie version. A very "Loyal Stupid Paladin" character, which really isn't a misrepresentation; it is the same character. Just, you are not given quite enough in the movie to see where he's actually coming from.
Because the world that he lives in, despite all of the machinations and ulterior motives of characters and "lesser of 2 evils" scenarios, is actually still incredibly black and white. It's OUR world that has nuance. We like Rorschach because he's principled and we wish we could treat our problems the way that Rorschach deals with his problems: kicking the door in and punching them. In Watchmen, everyone gaslights Rorschach to believe that he's a crazy psycho who isn't onto a huge conspiracy. Characters in Watchmen are very much good or evil but possessing complex motivations.
Make an asshole character charismatic and you'll have people taking their side or at least liking them unless the story spares no effort to make it resoundingly clear that they're not justified in their positions or actions. Similarly, take a character who's cringe in their mannerisms and expressions and you can paint them as the antichrist, and far fewer readers/viewers/players will critically examine if your framing is appropriate for what the character actually does.
This is because humans are wired to associate good aesthetics (in looks, speech, symbology) with moral correctness, and that sips down into how people relate to media. It takes a bit of effort to reason your way out of blind accepting what your instinct is telling you about someone, which is why you can find so much people willing to say "I love people from [backwater shithole], they smiled so much to me when I visited" despite [backwater shithole] being racist as hell, having just outlawed abortion and being perfectly fine with rampant bullying in their schools, and a lot of people just don't put in that effort.
I liked Rorschach when I was a dumb teen by the way. The good news is that, even if humans are inherently flawed, we have tools to overcome those flaws.
Rorschach is a satire of Batman and Batman-like characters.
Anon gets it, but doesn't make the leap to wondering if other people don't.
Unless they're also against people enjoying characters who do awful things for terrible reasons. In which case: how do you not write off Watchmen, altogether? My guy: that's the whole point. Moore wanted to take a Charlton Comics proto-Justice League and utterly destroy them with a rigidly-paneled masterwork essentially titled Superheroes Are Bad, Actually. DC said he had to make up his own guys. So he did, and held absolutely nothing back. Everyone is terrible. Some subtly... some super duper not. And it's fucking awesome.
No less than David Bowie has highlighted the appeal. "Take a look at the lawman, beating up the wrong guy - oh man, wonder if he'll ever know, he's in the bestselling show?"
I just like him because he's a wildcard that fucks shit up. His unhinged philosophy just makes it funnier.
Permanently Deleted
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned that it's because he's the polar opposite of Ozymandias, and Ozy was the villian(?).
Ozy is the epitome of "the ends justify the means." He's logical, calculating, and willing to murder countless innocents if it means bringing about a better world.
Rorschach is a moral absolutist. No end ever justifies evil actions; he does have a harsh sense of justice - there's no "reforming" in his playbook. If you've sinned, you get punished, and for him they're biblically just punishments. Sinners get fire, brimstone, pain, and hell.
Ozy could be reasoned with, if anyone had been as smart and capable; Rorschach could not. These two characters were the bookends of the morality scale in the comics.
I think Rorschach is the most relateable character, at least for men. He represents our inner edgelord. He's the only Everyman character: like us, he has no abilities, training, or gadgets. He's unwaveringly convinced of his rightness; his conviction is his only superpower. He's a little like Orson Scott Card's Ender: when he acts, it's with complete commitment to the destruction of his opponent; he doesn't hold back, and that lets him win (most of the time).
I wonder how populer Rorschach is with women readers; I suspect his fanbase consists mostly of men, because Rorschach is testosterone: rage, violence, righteous anger. There's no negotiation, no rational debate, no weighing costs... just action and reponses to the immediate.
Since when is he a hypocrite, terrible detective, or manchild? Or even a psychopath? There are a lot of things wrong with him, but not those particular things IMO. But maybe it's been too long since I read Watchmen and I'm forgetting something?
He doesn't try to prevent crime, he simply delights in the sadistic act of beating up criminals, which is ironically a crime.
He instantly judges people based on which side of the law they stand on, but when he is declared a criminal himself, he doesn't even attempt to reflect on it. He just keeps punching.
When his own friend is revealed to be a rapist, murderer and war criminal(?), he has no interest ["I'm not concerned with speculating on the moral lapses of men who died in their country’s service"], because he doesn't actually care about crime, he just uses 'fighting crime' as an excuse for his real passion, beating up those he considers undesirables.
He's a hypocrite (and a fascist).
If I remember correctly he was a pretty good detective in the sense that he figured shit out as fast as literal supernatural humans
He figured out Ozymandias was going to do something terrible. He beat the smartest man in the world. He is a terrible "hero" for a variety of reasons but that isn't one of them.
Aye, arguably he's the only one of the heroes who sticks by a moral code, albeit a brutal one. Even at the very end, knowing it would kill him, he sticks to it, and dies for it.
Because resentment has moral weight, and people feel that intuitively. It's very taboo owing to being in conflict with more popular moral paradigms, so most of the time with resentment based moral thinking people pretend that's not what they're really about. But that means it is especially novel and satisfying when a character comes right out and says it, even if that character is supposed to be wrong or the bad guy.
Lol, I love Rorschach, easily the best character IMO.
Anon is right.
