Serious question: How does Rorschach get away with pulling the dark and brooding edge lord and get away with it so well?
What about the writing of this characters makes it so he's not an incredibly cringe mary sue?
general edgelords in comics thread, i guess
Because he says what everyone is thinking.
He is sincere because he's grown up in the shit he's fighting.
Probably because he's not in any way idealised. In universe he's considered a nutter and a conspiracy theorist, he lives in squalor, he smells, and is so rude and such a sperg that he has no relations in his life except Nite Owl, who mostly tolerates him for old times' sake but clearly doesn't approve of his behaviour. It might also help that for all his bleakness and his over the top violence against criminals, he's not a cynicist. He was the only one to call out Veidt on his crime and to try to have it exposed, instead of saying something along the lines of humanity deserving it like a lesser edgelord might.
And then there's Alan Moore, who wrote Rorshach as a deconstruction of a superhero (like all the characters were). Rorshach was not intended to be admired, and he was rather surprised at how much audiences sided with him. So, Rorshach pulls off the edgelord archetype so well because he was never intended to be one. He was supposed to come off as a crazy loser.
There's also a class aspect.
Rorschach is from low-income or working class, Nightowl is middle class, and Ozy is upper class.
As such, Rorschach is closer to Everyman than all the other characters.
There's your reason, OP.
Nobody likes Rorshach because he's a hardcore edgelord vigilante. They like him because he's a somewhat cynical loser that people can identify with, that still has enough humanity left so that he's not too much of an asshole.
He's an ugly, homeless, dirty, bad tempered punk, his mom was a whore. You root for him because the world has kicked him around. Niteowl is the everyman.
Because his edgelordiness is explained. He also suffers and is shown to be a psychopath. The author has about as much sympathy for him as he does for any of the other heroes or villains.
They're portrayed evenly, they aren't glorified and most importantly, they're written as seperate people which is a fucking treasure in this day and age where every single god damned character is written the same way. They all talk the same way, have the same opinions, and the same world view, and the only deviation is the villains who are always the exact opposite, except they still talk the same way.
And that is what I saw him as. I am also surprised that not many people see him as that too.
Because he is insane and there is no attempt to glorify his insanity or any of his behavior. His behavior befits the environment he lived in and the psychotic state he was in. Therefore, he felt a lot more real to the readers and not a like a moping teenager who never grow up. And as mentioned in another post, he believed in something, that there will be a better future if people follows morality, laws and the greater good or cultural norms. While people may disagree, this made him felt a lot more real than the average edgelord who only had nihilism to believe in
Because he is a loser. Once the police took off his mask, you see how pathetic he really is. He cannot stop being Rorschach, it is a mental illness. He worship Truman because of the Atomic Bomb, at the end, he cannot do the same with Ozymandias. His face at his death was clearly show how fucked-up he was inside when he realized this and prefer death rather than face it.
Nightowl is an effete wanker.
He doesn't. It just happens that he is the current flavor of the month edgelord. His gritty politically incorrect hard-boiled detective character archetype was done to death back in the day but things go in cycles and it looks like it's back in style for now.
Speaking as someone who doesn't follow the Holla Forums bandwagon his character is indeed very cringey. He comes off as obnoxious and autistic (which might be part of his appeal on image boards) and he has a retardedly simple view of morality not unlike a child. He's essentially a more violent, impoverished version of batman.
Not that it matters anyway. I never understood the obsession with "edgelords" that people seem to have. If you like a character then just enjoy them, it really doesn't matter if something is edgy or not because eventually it all comes back into and out of style.
That's just the Punisher.
This statement reminds me of that one image ragging on Kenshiro from Hokuto no Ken.
Black and white morality isn't bad. Hell, comics should try and foster some morality in kids, like they used to do. Only reject /lit/ fartsniffers think that every piece of media needs to be 2deep4you grey on gray morally confused clusterfucks.
They don't exist here summeranon.
they do but they're few in numbers and not interested in comics, especially ones of mediocre quality
I'd argue Niteowl and Rorsarch were two halves of a whole being who almost needed each other.
Because he wasn't always an edgelord but a brutal vigilante who was forced to realize the consequences and expanse of evil in the nature of the modern man.
Effectively speaking, imagine if the likes of pizzagate and the legacy of Jewish Serial killers getting away with it that have plagued the US were introduced into Marvel or DC, any cape that fucking advocates bringing the criminals to natural justice would be the Grade A Definition of Lawful stupid.
Punisher, once in-fact did a similar scenario with businessmen who earned high ranking positions in the military to run uncouth operations which he promptly went on a bloodpath to sort out.
Effectively speaking a real cape comic would have the like of Red Skull travel back in time to learn the Rothschilds funded a time travel project to alter history to make all the silly stupid ass demonizations of Hitler and Germany's national socialism Legit via various capes and hired fucked up experimental goons to make the genocide possible, next to additionally being the one sto reintroduce the Mutant genes of Apocalypse via the few remaining Concentration camps that weren't converted to make the Shoa a reality.
But in an actual cape scenario, the Elite as we know them would probably be fucked, endgame being their deaths over the course of a long running series that seems to hold normie views with implications to deeper shit going on
Moore didn't expect people to like the character as much as they did. He wasn't trying to write the coolest character ever. He was writting a mentally unstable weirdo. And that ultimately makes him more relatable than BloodAxe Xtreme, or whoever the fuck.
It's like how the best action movies are always the ones that aren't afraid to show their hero taking a beating. A character who's too perfect. Who never sets a foot wrong. Who never gets dirty or exausted and always has the perfect one liner, is just boring after a point.
>the only one of the main characters who continues working as a vigilante the entire time, and by far the most grounded in the reality of the people on the streets, which makes him both more sympathetic and better able to see the problems they're dealing with
>the only one of the main characters for whom the hero persona is the real identity (everyone else but Manhattan uses it as an alter ego; Manhattan treats it as a condition or affliction that changes his original identity over time until he's unrecognizable)
TL;DR as the character who most directly confronts the core problems of the series, and as the most sympathetic and respectable character it's not surprising he's the dark horse. Alan Moore is surprisingly short-sighted to have been surprised by his popularity tbh.
No, he's a bourgeois liberal. Given the nature of his personality, heroic persona, and gear I'm pretty sure Moore meant him to be the kind of person who fantasizes about being Batman.
What did he do that was edgelordy? Aside from hurt people, which is what they all do.
If anything, Comedian was a bigger edgelord than Rorschach ever was or could be
this, he basically isnt an edgelord at all besides being unforgiving, hell he comes off more like a shonen protag but a little more visceral
Because he's the only person who throughout everything can still be called a superhero, who still stuck to his morals by the end of the story.
Ah yes, Akagi-fag
Man, that faggot was a pain to deal with
Hitting the nail on the head right there. The main difference between Rorschach and your run-of-the-mill edgelord is that Rorschach is at his core an idealist, and is the only one in Watchmen. Nite-Owl just does superhero shit to give his life some sense of purpose and to emulate his hero, Silk Spectre only does it originally because of her family's expectations, Dr. Manhattan does it because he doesn't have a choice, Comedian does it to satisfy his violent impulses and goes from being a cynic to being a nihilist, and Ozymandias does it to satisfy his messiah complex. In direct contrast with all the others, Rorschach fundamentally believes in good and evil and views it to be his moral duty to see evildoers reach their comeuppance. He has a background that gets well explored in Watchmen that lends credit to his ethos. His higher moral principles work hand-in-hand with his past experiences into leading him to become the character he is in Watchmen. Being bullied as a kid for his mom being a whore and seeing what happened to that little girl made the uncompromising fight against evil for him personal as well necessary.
Shit edgelords don't have a reason to be as such besides a callous indifference to human suffering. They don't tend to have effective foils to define their character in contrast with other archetypes (or if they do, their foils have all the depth of cardboard cut-outs). They don't believe in any higher moral principle and they generally don't see any reason to.
There was a Moore interview where he said he wanted to see what happened if you had a right-wing super hero (because all mainstream ones are progressive liberal types). It's no surprise that ronald reagan in a mask and raspy voice appeals to the altright.
That said I think he's a great character. I don't agree with his political views in anyway, but in the story he's a good foil to the other characters.
I feel like I should elaborate what I mean with regard to "shit edgelords". A fantastic example of such characters can be found in Garth Ennis' The Boys. The titular team is some kind of government task force assigned to monitoring/killing out of control super heroes. In one of their earlier issues they find out that the not-Justice League was forcing a junior member to perform sexual favors on the rest of them. The Boys have to fight/kill these corrupt superheroes for that (and maybe some other reasons, I can't quite recall).
This is a pretty typical set-up for shit edgelords. They are given a target, the viewer gets to see that the target is (presumably) deserving of violent retribution, and the not-heroes deliver it in perhaps an overly-graphic or over-the-top way. Nowhere along the line is compelling character motivation expounded upon to the reader, nowhere along the way does anyone demonstrate any set of beliefs about why they need to do what they need to do. Basically it's violently beating up a strawman. The writer introduces you to a group of assholes (or a lone asshole), says "look over here, it's a bigger asshole", shows you something that vaguely resembles something he presumably doesn't like, then shows you asshole(s) A beating up asshole(s) B. At its core, it's the most childish form of superhero fiction, even when compared to less graphic things that are actually intended for children.
I know Alan Moore is one of the last good writers in comics, and I respect everything he's done to legitimise comics as an artform, but Jesus Christ, every time he opens his mouth I want to punch him in his stupid wizard face.
You don't have to like the man to appreciate some of things he's done.
how does Rorshach being right wing make him Reagan?
Nowhere in that entire interview did Moore use the words 'Right-wing' or 'Ronald Reagan'. If you think Rorschach's 'Ronald Reagan in a mask' you're an idiot
Moore wanted to portray him as the typical IRL Holla Forums autist so he can demonize the stereotype, which already existed long before imageboards. Turns out he memed a whole generation of meme magicians into existence.
He was based on Steve Ditko, and Steve Ditko's politics, as a Randian Objectivist and moral absolutist. Watchmen was conceived as a repely to, and critique of, Rand and Ditko.
Rorshach was The Question, or Mr. A, if Ditko had been them instead of writing them.
He doesn't seek out attention and is fine with being ignored or hated as long as in the end the evil are punished
He's so tired of all the shit, and he knows that in the end there's only so much he can do as a mortal man and has accepted this but still refuses to give up
Life isn't simple, so why should people push black and white morality like it fits reality? If things were really that simple, then most issues in the world wouldn't be issues. To deny this is a rejection of reality.
SummerAnon, your shift key is broken.
Exactly I don't want reality I want fiction, you know as in non-real.
Happy ?
It only proves your the post right
I hate summer
Because fiction is supposed to be escapism from reality for the sake of telling an entertaining story.
Moore's whole deal is criticizing the way that escapist fantasy pulls people too far away from reality to the point that they forget what it's like.
Well he's not wrong in that regard.
It's probably good for kids, but not for adults because you end up with leftists who think that conservatives are intentionally being evil natzees. A lot of "mature" comics are painful to read because they parrot tweets from their twitter echochamber. Case in point:
Whatever.
This, two dimensional comics create immature people.
Sure enough, but I don't recall morality being the central theme of Hokuto no Ken and more in the lines of "basic human empathy and sympathy in a cruel world"
I really don't want to summon Akagi-fag from his exile
Because he comes off as sincere and unhinged, rather than a tryhard who wants everyone to know how unhinged he is.
Well, It is not a comic for kids.
This one?
I think he meant this one
Wait, is this Maxtaro?
huh?
So basically, it is the stronk wyman character in a masculine body. That is why I hated most edgelords. They are just assholes whose philosophy the writers agree with. I dislike Frank Millar Batman for the same reason.
Isn't that all Batman, and most other superheroes though? It's just that the thing the writer doesn't like is something most people can agree on (criminals, monsters, world conquering aliens).
Let me elaborate.
I dislike blatant propaganda. Every major characters has some sort of ideology built into them but they are a character first and foremost. The writers may agree on Batman approach to crime or might not, his rule of no-killing or might not but Batman is not there to preach the writers philosophy. And if the writers wanted to tell a message, a good would do it in a way that does not distract from the story or enhance the story.
Frank Millar Batman in The Dark Knight Return and Strike again is just a cardboard character to preach his philosophy. Other edgelords are often the same cardboard characters. They're an avatar of the author not a character of the story.
For most writers, Batman and other superheroes are characters they write about. Some parts of the characters are from them but they are not the characters.
*A Good Writer
*instead it enhance the story
I never read Srikes Again, but I don't remember the DKR Batman being much more politcal than regular Batman, He hates criminals and is willing to use force to stop them. He's just a bit more extreme about it.
Something about Harvey using corruption for his own advantage.
Batman is vigilante who break the law but he also respect them. In DKR, he is vehemently anti-government to the point of using local murderous street gangs as the replacement of a police. Criminals are not allowed a chance to be defend, they deserved death than jail.