The longer I go on, the more I realize Rorschach was right about everything.
>>80763742
I think the point was that he was wrong about everything.
So you're falling deeper and deeper into your delusional, stubborn and cynical worldview as you get older, just like Rorschach?
>>80763742
What a sad life you must live then.
>>80763982
Isn't the point that he was wrong about everything except in the end, and the others were right about everything until they were cowards in the end?
Y'know, cause ethical codes are complex and shit.
>>80764258
>>80764227
>>80763982
Vote for Sanders :,>)
he was motivated by "good" and had a couple things right, but otherwise was wrong about just about everything - especially wrong about how he thought that he could somehow fix things
Childhood is idolizing Veidt; being an adult is realizing Rorschach makes more sense
>>80764309
Coincidentally, Rorscharch is dressed exactly like the kind of person who'd say that.
>>80764386
So is Doc.
So, I got the basic gist of the plot to Watchmen. Is the basic theme "its a world where superheroes aren't needed anymore"? Is that about right?
>>80763742
Ditto.
>>80764264
Kind of, it's asking the reader to form their own opinion. The reason it doesn't show if the journal actually gets published is to make the ending ambiguous and get the reader thinking about the possibilities.
>>80764329
You really are Rorschach! Attacking a made-up strawman instead of what someone actually said is straight out of his bag of tricks!
>>80764451
I think it's more like "superheroes were never needed" if anything.
>>80764410
We should all be dressed like that to be fair.
>>80764540
That came to mind too, actually.
>>80764309
Rorschach being right again.
>>80764451
How about you fucking read it.
Rorschach relies on an absolute sense of right, like most capes do, but the story of Watchmen demonstrates the fault in that world view.
Ozy realised, after his time spent with the Watchmen, that moral absolutism isn't always pragmatic. In a world as large and complex as ours, sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.
Rorschach's black & white world view would have resulted in the nuclear annihilation of humanity. Ozy's view stopped that from happening, but required a relatively smaller evil to be carried out. Ozy taking it upon himself to carry out such an evil deed, in order to preserve and progress humanity, is arguably more heroic and courageous than just punching bad guys and never tackling any of the bigger issues.
I do still however prescribe to the ending that the journal was published. Rorschach's adherence to the importance of truth would allow humanity to understand their nature more and possibly learn from history's mistakes.
Rorschach's faith in goodness is better for humanity in a general sense, but in this specific example it would have been a disaster.
>>80764451
The overarching moral of the story is the constant "Ends justify the means" doctrine, and where you have to draw the line for it. The superheroes were helpful at first, but they have also made things worse. The Comedian and Doc are perfect examples of this, flawed solutions to complex problems.
>>80764451
The premise is "what if superheroes were in the real world". The real world obviously doesn't have super powers, which is why none of the characters do, except Dr. Manhattan is the single difference in the rules of the universe.
Dr. Manhattan raises the question of what a person as strong as Superman/Captain Atom would actually mean to a world where nuclear arms changed the balance of everything. The threat of world war and the counter-culture anti-authoritarianism of the 70's naturally put an end to superheroics, as people started to raise the question "Who Watches the Watchmen?" and lash out against vigilantes as well as the police and government. That's where the story picks up, with superheroes forced into retirement because they were incompatible with the darkness and corruption of the real world.
None of the other characters have powers and are supposed to be within the possibilities of our own reality. The Minutemen are based on the Golden Age of comics, where everything is pretty sanitized and free of real consequences (the heroes are more celebrities than anything). The second generation is based on the Bronze Age where superheroes were subjected to more serious problems and personal turmoil. Watchmen itself is supposed to be the ultimate endpoint of the Bronze Age mentality, with heroes directly being confronted with actual real world problems and consequences with the same rules as the real world. Of course Moore had no idea that his comic would actually spur superheroes to become even more violent and serious.
It's called a deconstruction, taking a concept (superheroes in this case) and forcing you to look at it devoid of its intended context.
Rorschac never compromised on his principles and beliefs, not even in the face of armageddon.
>>80763982
The point of watchmen,for anyone who was reading closely, was that they all had ethical codes, and they were all different. Rorschach wasn't any more 'right' than the others, but he was the only one actually willing to die for his code.
So his ending is tragic and heroic, yes, but that doesn't make him "right'
>>80763982
He was wrong that destroying New York was justified? Millions of people, innocent civilians, wiped out to prove a point and try to end the cold war, which might not even work?
No, fuck that. Someone has to stand up for the New Yorkers. Killing millions of people to end the Cold War is almost as bad as if the Cold War had turned into a real war. And killing innocents is always wrong.
Remember that scenario with the train about to hit 3 people, but you can turn the train to save them, but it hits one guy instead? The correct answer is to turn the switch to the one guy and rush as fast as you fucking can to untie the person because one person is easier to untie than 3. If you die trying, so be it. Ozymandias is the kind of fuckhead who would turn it to hit the one guy and then go "Whoop, that's the best I can do". He takes the easy way out, the way that doesn't really solve the underlying problem of 2 societies that can't coexist, he just puts up an exploding squid and makes them go "Oh shit! Exploding squid aliens! We still hate each other's guts, but we'll work together against the exploding squid aliens!" That solves nothing because you still have generations of American and Russians trained from birth to hate each other's guts.
Ozymandias solved nothing. Fear is no way to turn enemies into allies. Only love can do that, and the world of Watchmen is very scarce for love.
>tortures criminals but won't let Nite Owl do it to the guys who murdered his mentor
>praises The Comedian even though he was a rapist and a murderer
>thinks bombing Japan to prevent more bloodshed was okay, but bombing New York to prevent more bloodshed is bad
Why do people act like he was at all consistent? He was explicitly NOT consistent. He fucked up men who did the crimes that the Comedian did, but the Comedian gets a pass because Rorschach likes him and that's it.
His justifications for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, coupled with his disgust at Ozymandius using the exact same justifications, was a really blatant contradiction in his philosophy.
>>80767501
Rorshack didn't care that the Comedian did it, because the women the Comedian raped were whores like his mother with loose morals.
>>80767616
That's not at all the justification he gives in the story.
>>80767683
I haven't read it in years, so I'm just wanking off a reasoning I think "might" be true.
Feel free to add your own.
>>80767732
I lost the book a year ago, but it had something to do with him being a patriot and so that makes his actions okay.
>>80767501
>thinks bombing Japan to prevent more bloodshed was okay, but bombing New York to prevent more bloodshed is bad
Japanese were trained to fight to the last human being and actively involved in a hot war. The bombs were a show of force to end the conflict immediately
New Yorkers were fat slobs who had no stake in any fight and their deaths were used in a grandiose lie to stop a war that never would've happened
Rawr Shock is right
>>80767400
Fuck yeah, this anon gets it.
>>80767786
Rorschach does not frame it that way. He says that it was okay because sacrificing innocent lives is okay if it's for the cause of saving even more lives.
>>80767786
>were used in a grandiose lie to stop a war that never would've happened
The story makes it pretty clear that Veidt knows what he's talking about when it comes to an imminent war. The build-up of an incoming nuclear war is constantly referred to through the setting. And after his plan, suddenly there's no looming war.
The problem is that he didn't see the bigger picture or the real long term, which is what Dr. Manhattan points out.
>>80767501
It's because he has a delusion of a bygone era, the 40s and 50s, in which morals were simple and good triumphed over evil. The comedian, his idea of his father, and President Eisenhower all represent that era.
Veidt and others are a part of the corruption that he views as permeating the modern world, when in fact he's too blind to see that corruption has always been around
>>80767876
Exactly. Rorschach believed that the world was black and white when it wasn't, and so he ended up calling good bad and bad good and flip flopped depending on the situation. His 1950s beliefs were incompatible with reality.
>>80764839
>nuclear annihilation
>I'm not man enough to read about the squid
You have no right to talk shit about anything
>Ozymandias is literally named after an arrogant character who thought their empire and glory would last forever
Yeah this world alliance against a threat that's never coming will surely last Ozy. Definitely not showing the short sightedness of your namesake or anything. It's not like the cold war didn't start well before WW2 even ended, or that you can argue that the Great Game never really ended only that new players sat at the table. Nah, everyone is going to play nice now great job.
It's like they needed to actually show a destroyed statue of Ozymandias in a nuclear hellscape to make this point clear to some readers.
Didn't rorschach think the bombs dropped on Japan were justified?
>>80767913
I guess it's because of his upbringing. He grew up under such horrible circumstances that he had to try to make sense of things.
So he latched on to figures who at the time were propagated as heroes, and created a version of his father that fit into that ideal of heroism.
>>80763742
yeah? Then how come he's dead? Living one gets to make the rules bitch.
>>80766744
His lack of compromise caused his own destruction.
He is not compatible with reality.
>>80768079
Yeah man read the thread, weve already analyzed the shit out of that
>>80768074
Both Ozymandius and Rorschach were clearly shortsighted and wrong. Whereas Rorschach was a hypocrite, Ozymandius was arrogant enough to think he could stop humanity from destroying itself. Dr. Manhattan's prophetic mushroom cloud at the end of the story really drove that point home.
The story was very clearly written during a time when the threat of nuclear destruction loomed on the horizon and not enough people had predicted the fall of the Soviet Union.
>>80768130
He compromised all the time, see >>80767501
It wasn't that Rorschach couldn't compromise on his philosophy, it's that his philosophy didn't make any sense and was based entirely on feelings and not rules.
>>80768074
In my head canon Ozymandias had to keep staging attacks every few years in order to keep the ruse going.
Which of course is not much better than just letting humans kill each other
>>80768130
He wasn't compatible, true.
But that didn't make the world right. The world was wrong, and he was one of the few who decided not to go along with it.
>>80764906
>The real world obviously doesn't have super powers, which is why none of the characters do, except Dr. Manhattan is the single difference in the rules of the universe.
And the psychics.
Don't forge the psychics.
Moore seemed to have forgotten to write more than a passing reference to them before the giant finale that has its very crux in you knowing psychic powers exist.
>>80768173
What do you think he did not compromise on, exactly?
Because he doesn't actually lack compromise. He's just a simplistic idiot.
>>80768164
Rorschach didn't see that as compromise though, but I get what your saying. He thinks morality is black and white but even his own views are rife with hypocrisy
>>80768173
>The world was wrong, and he was one of the few who decided not to go along with it.
>lets a rapist and a murderer get away with his crimes because he likes the guy
>doesn't let Nite Owl dispense justice onto a couple of murderers because he doesn't actually believe his own shit
>>80768210
But according to that description, Veidt also did not compromise on his values.In fact Veidt was more consistent than Rorschach, even though he was completely wrong.
>>80768245
but
why
h
y
didn't doctor manhattan just kill ozymandias
>>80768279
Because it's all a bit of a laf m8. humanity keeps on turning dog.
>>80768279
Because he didn't give a fuck. He fucked off to Mars instead of imposing world peace.
>>80768074
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ozymandias/
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
>>80768279
Dr. Manhattan isn't all that powerful when you think about it. He exists at every point in time. He can only do what he's destined to do.
>>80767029
Ozymandius was defiantly wrong though
>>80768332
You're a complete and utter retard. For real dog
>>80768279
It wouldn't have made any difference.
>>80768340
And yet he's the one guy to actually save the world.
>>80768279
What would even be the point? He already enacted his plan. The whole reason he had to stop Rorschach was so all those people wouldn't have died in vain. There would be no reason to kill Ozy except for petty revenge.
>>80768384
Do you really think that though? Unless Veidt kept staging alien attacks (further adding to the loss of innocent life), the US and USSR would just go right back to fighting each other.
Of course you do have to bear in mind that at the time this was written Moore had no idea the USSR would collapse, so it's not fair to apply that historical knowledge to this story
>>80768384
there's no evidence of that
at best he delayed the inevitable. Oh and now everyone has better anti alien squid weapons.
good job.
Rorschach was ready to sacrifice life on Earth for his own moral code. There's a point where unwavering principles become insane obsessions, and he passed that point a long time ago.
>>80768537
And they weren't even unwavering to boot.
Every character liberals a few decades ago wrote to be wrong or to be satirical end up being clearly right in the long run.
>>80768332
Except for the part when he is proven wrong and admits he does not know what is going to happen next.
>>80768384
no he didn't.
the world wasn't in danger
if he wanted peace between the US and Russia he could have just used his big brain to persuaded people in power that an alliance and close friendship would be best for both countries
>>80768537
Except that requires you to believe Ozymandias's fatalistic assumption that the world was doomed.
It wasn't. We survived the worst of the Cold War.
>>80768646
Robocop was meant to be wrong? The creator explicitly said he made robocop to be cyborg jesus, complete with a shot of him 'walking on water'
>>80768904
Part of Robocop was satire of Dirty Harry bang bang shoot the bad guys
But nobody today will deny that modern Detroit could use him
>>80767400
Watchmen wasn't a story about love or overcoming the human condition.
Ozymandias was hardly lazy. He busted his ass bringing his plans to fruition, and a point has been made about heroes only ever being reactive. What's the point in trying to save the world once the nukes have been launched? Ozymandias was trying to stop the launch before it happened.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
>>80764346
And maturity is realizing neither is completely right or wrong, because morality is subjective.
>>80763742
Nah, senpai
The point is that he was way too comic book black and white for a real, complex world.
Rorschach was everything a lot of comic book fans want -- uncompromising, tough, kills the bad guys instead of letting them break out again. But Watchmen was a condemnation of that kind of thinking. It's too narrow, too fanatical. It doesn't work in the real world.
>>80764346
A self-righteous lunatic in a mask makes more sense?
>>80768537
So like Batman?
>>80768955
You just got meme'd on, son.
>>80768993
he never sought power or absolute control. He only sought to protect the innocent and eliminate the evils in his city. He did literally nothing wrong..
>>80767834
And that was Ozymandias' entire goal, except on an even larger scale.
>>80769005
>>80769021
I did. I did get meme'd.
Cuts me deep.
>>80769020
There's something cathartic about knowing he'll hack a pedophile to death, which is about what he deserved and more than the court system would do to him.
But if we're going to start murdering people vigilante-style, we might as well burn down all of our cities and go back to wandering hunter-gatherer tribes.
>>80768893
One where the US didn't depend on a living god as their nuclear deterrence, causing all the nukes to be in the hands of the USSR.
>>80769026
Rorscharch's biggest problem with squid nuking New York was the cover up. he couldn't abide being party to keeping America's biggest dirty secret.
>>80769069
nah, we just need to go to self-governed city-states
>>80769120
Why do you think he chose death? That was his way of being party to it. He'd rather die than ruin it.
>>80766744
>>80768537
Do you think there are some principles worth dying for, /co/?I don't know, man. I just don't know.If certain principles can be reneged or suspended, then what's the underlying principle behind that?
it's almost as if different people see different things when they look at Rorschach
almost like some kind of test
>>80769625
A test with no right answer.
>>80769162
He knew death was the only choice he had with Manhattan standing right there. Rorschach knew he was going to die anyway--no way in hell was he gonna keep his mouth shut, even temporarily. His autism just wouldn't allow that. It's why he sent in his journal for publication.
>>80768943
>Ozymandias was hardly lazy.
Yeah but that's the thing. A bit more lazyness on his end could have found a more direct less Machiavellian solution that didn't result in the deaths of millions.
Why not drop the Squid in some Nevada desert and Siberian wasteland loudly declaring a message of war
with how paranoid we where of each other you think we're not gonna flip or shits of a space monster even if it didn't kill anyone?
>>80769776
Hell, governments the world over would've scrambled to use the alien as an excuse. The fact is nobody really wanted to start launching nukes, and even a fucking floating space head yelling "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT" would've been enough to make them all say, "Okay, now we have a common foreign threat to focus on."
>>80767400
>Fear is no way to turn enemies into allies.
History has proven otherwise time and again.
>>80769849
He didn't mean it was literally no way.
He used the phrase in a similar sense as "Putting the fork on the left side of the plate is no way to set a table."
>>80769913
No one said he meant it that way, just that it was evidently untrue.
>>80768305
strewth the good doc saw beyond our machinations. He saw all of humanity from beginning to ed, our 100 years were a mere blip of in consequence to him.
>>80769936
Actually he said that fearmongering is always a temporary at best solution.
>>80769317
I'd like to say I would die for my belief in the constitution but I just don;t know man
>>80767400
>Fear is no way to turn enemies into allies. Only love can do that
heh, no
https://youtu.be/S9f3UfNzrcg
>>80770048
>listening to a garbage man
Pathetic. He literally just charges you 20 bucks a month to haul off your Dixie cups and cumsocks.
Screaming like an abattoir of retarded children
>>80764664
If a literal god tells me dickgirls are women, then who am I to argue?
I might not like it, but fuck, them's the facts.
>>80770107
Don't bring /pol/ into this.
>>80770150
The description fits /co/, /toy/, and /mlp/ just as well.
>>80770173
Yeah, but they at least can stay on board-topic.
>>80763742
The Comedian was right. Not Rorschach or Veidt.
>>80770216
No. Comedian wasn't wrong. Vedit and Rorschach were wrong. That doesn't mean that somehow comedian was right though.
Those two gave invalid answers, comedian responded with a lateral alternative to answering which was valid. It doesn't mean he had the answer at all.
>all of you overanalyzing The Watchmen
The message was clearly 'Everyone is an asshole, especially Comedian.'.
>>80770369
Close.
"Everyone is an asshole ...UNTIL they see their common humanity threatened and work together."
(Thanks Ozymandias)
And Comedian was just trying through living his own public life in such a horrible way to shock people into recognizing how that's not what humanity should look.
"You hold me up as an ideal? I'm going to sour that notion and force you to rethink your ideals"
He wanted to be the biggest asshole of all but it backfired as the world only followed his example.
>>80770259
>Rorschach
>wrong
*tips fedora*
>>80770736
>>meeming about fedoras while siding with a literal fedora
![tumblr_nfs6ntnri81r6fkvbo1_1280[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/Zun85jq.png "tumblr_nfs6ntnri81r6fkvbo1_1280[1].png")
>>80770128
>>80769120
He clearly was very upset at its destruction. He was crying, even. It was the deaths that upset him, not that it was hidden. He wanted to expose the truth because he wanted Veidt to be punished for the things he did. Rorschach was a flip flopper.
>>80771202
They were Americans DAMMIT.Though is it flip flopping? It's not like FDR id his actions.
>>80770736
Rorschach can't be right or wrong because his position was never consistent.
>>80771216
>FDR
And still, it wasn't that he wanted him exposed, he wanted him punished because he thought what he did was wrong, which is the opposite of what he believed before.
>>80770128
>Manhattan
>God
Yeah right!
>>80769317
I think theoretically yes, but it has to be a hell of a principle.
Because think about it. To the best of our knowledge, you have ONE LIFE. That's it. No second chances, no backsies. Once you're done with this one, that's it, you're through. For the rest of eternity.
So if you're willing to lay down your life for some kind of cause, any cause, you have to make sure that the cause itself is worthy enough to justify an eternity of non-existence.
Like, for myself personally, I could see myself killing myself so that the Earth would sruvive, or that my death is required to reverse the heat death of the Universe. Something major like that. Or I suppose when/if I get kids, they apparently become pretty important to parents, and living on through your kids is a type of immortality.
But dying in a war, or for a political cause, or a stupid one? No. So in the case of Watchmen, IMO, Rory was wrong, and Ozzie was right. Because global nuclear war is one of those things that can end humanity.
>>80764839
>what a hero killing millions of people while he remains a rich beloved hedonistic millionaire
Fuck you
>>80768537
Which is why, in 1998, we all nuked each other for lack of a great, unknown, outer space enemy that would rape us all unless we teamed up with the Soviets.
Fuck off.
>>80771460
You do know how close we came to WW3 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, right? Like, there were warships literally with weapons primed standing there.
And you also do know that the Doomsday Clock is coming closer to midnight?
>>80769840
Initially anyway. The Soviet Union and United States had already teamed up against one common threat, and went right back to plotting, spying and being paranoid of each other thereafter.
>>80771498
>You do know how close we came to WW3 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, right?
I know that we didn't. And I have a good idea why.
>>80771526
Do enlighten me. Here's a hint, it wasn't because Khruschev or JFK backed down.
>>80768924
Nobody expected Detroit to get as fucked up as it's gotten.
>>80771536
Nobody wants to be the guy that ended the world. They will posture, and boast and threaten, but in the end people just don't have the stomach to end everything.
Rorschach was never right about anything all he did was leave behind the journal
he was a cool character with zero effect on the narrative until his death
What the hell are you cucks arguing about
>>80771684
>he was a cool character with zero effect on the narrative
he's the one who convinced the others to look into who had been killing the old capes
>>80764451
What weirded me out is that there's only ONE actual superhero. And yet, superheroes seem to have way too much of an effect!
Like, you have an entire act - the Keane Act - because of these people. How many superheroes are there, anyway? There's less than ten of them, and they're all concentrated in the same city. Only one guy is superhuman.
How much of a difference did they really make worldwide? Even the Comedian is just a very, very tough soldier.
>>80771460
The story makes it pretty clear what would happen if Rorschach exposed the conspiracy. After all, it's the omniscient godman who stops him, not Veidt and co.
>>80771684
If it wasn't for him, Night Owl would've just went on with his life not suspecting anything.
>using cuck at all
>>80771579
Kim Jong Un seems to be the perfect idiot for that.
>>80771579
You'd be surprised how many nobodies there are.
>>80771539
I blame practical effects of Robocop. They looked so realistic that niggers believed it was a prophecy.
>>80771913
The way I see it Watchmen was actually about vigilante style pulp comics, and Ozy and Doc show up to signal the start off the new era of superpowered heroes.
Also before you argue about Ozy not being superpowered: the dude caught a fucking bullet.
>>80772060
PEAK SUPERHUMAN STRENGTHmy headcanon was Ozzy enhancers that lets him fight with brawn using what he made with his brain
>>80772230
Ozy memorized the speed of a handgun bullet and perfectly calculated the necessary hand movement speed for his own reaction time and distance from the gun, for just such occasions.Or he just faked the attempted killer out by secretly supplying them a blank and was holding the bullet the whole time, I mean the guy was tying up every possible loose end for YEARS before he made his move
>>80764309
Its that gay, there is still the primary attraction to the feminine form. Hips tits and all that
But why add a cock to that?
I dont get it. That shit is kinda gay.
I cant tell you how many times Ive been scrolling through a hentai pics and clicked what looked like a hot thumbnail only to have it ruined by futa.
The only way i can deal with futa is its futa on female.
>>80764346
>Childhood is idolizing Veidt; being an adult is realizing Rorschach makes more sense
>>80768881
The world was absolutely in danger, we need to accept the narrative convention that the world is on the brink of nuclear conflict, we have no reason to believe that that wasn't what was about to happen in Watchmen's universe.
>>80772738
>>80771913
>How many superheroes are there, anyway? There's less than ten of them, and they're all concentrated in the same city.
Isn't that just one single superhero group? I'm not sure if it was ever mentioned that there were more than just the Minute Men, but they even had arch enemies and everything so even for being street-level they quite stirred something up.
If anything the Keane Act just existed to discourage this kind of behaviour and stop imitators.
>>80772330
That would not explain the bullet he catches from Silk.
>>80763742
Edgy, kid.
>>80768186
The stuff about writers and psychics was so stupid. It was a needless, superfluous plotline in what is otherwise a very tight narrative that wasted absolutely no panels.
It could have been trimmed down to be much simpler. "I, Ozymandias, have been investing in genetic engineering so I can stage a convincing alien attack."
>>80763742
It's just your autism that is getting worse and worse.
>tfw you can do a pretty funny Rorschach impression but you hate most of everything he represents
>>80763742
Morally he was right. But practically, Adrian was.
If he had not acted, he had, as far as he knew, murdered billions and the future of mankind through inaction. If you had to kill one innocent stranger to save a thousand others - knowing that he would die with them if you failed to act - is not a choice at all.
Rorschach decided he could not live in a world where such a decision is necessary.
>>80764386
Like a straight white male from the 1950s.
>>80764309
Would people who like futa fuck a cocked up transsexual who looks feminine? If not, why?
>>80767400
>Correct answer
>In a world where morality is subjective
>>80764535
its not a strawman if youre responding to ad hominem, you retard
>>80774560
do rorscharch bitching about his McDonalds experience and blaming it on a radical gay communist conspiracy
>>80768384
Manhattan implied it was only temporary, though
Well morality is subjective and rosahrchs black and white view of the world made it impossible to accept ozzies world which itself was was a short sighted plan
Huh. I only just finished re-reading Watchmen only to find this thread here. Isn't that always the way?
It really struck me this go-around just how self-centered Rorshach comes off as a character. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but he really comes off less interested in "actual" justice than he is simply judgement of others. He acknowledges what he does is pointless but he's not really trying to attain even a minor moral victory, enact any kind of positive change, as much as he's just trying to gain whatever position of power he can to punish others for their wrongdoing. He knows it's entirely meaningless but it gives him some sort of satisfaction, makes him feel like the good guy, and that is what's important. He's still sympathetic, but I came away liking him a lot less than on the first read.
>>80775202
He still gave a lot of people more time to live.
That's like saying doctors are worth shit, since everyone dies sooner or later anyway.
>Believing anyone was right
>believing there is a single, ultimate right answer.
>>80775237
I can see that but at the same time it's not about positive change or power, it's about justice. He's out to stop and punish crime, not help people, not empower himself, none of that, just a psychotic drive to dispense justice upon these people.
>>80775285
But did he? Ozymandias saved the world from a situation he himself almost brought them to the brink of.
He feared that Manhattan would check out on humanity...so he forced him to do so moving the Atomic Clock to Midnight just to avert it at the last second. He killed REAL millions to save HYPOTHETICAL billions.
You would think that with Dr. Manhattan being able to synthesize the materials for electric cars to become practical and cheap, the main reason for conflict would be resolved. I mean Manhattan could basically produce an unlimited amount of any resource.
>>80775358
And he doesn't care what the person does if he likes them.
So would anyone actually believe the new frontiersman? Judging from what we know from the comic, they are basically the equivalent of the New York Post. And nobody takes them seriously.
>>80763742
no Rorshach was right about nothing except the one thing that actually really mattered
thats why he had to die
>>80768048
What?
The US and Russia were about to have a nuclear war before Ozy gave them a joint enemy to team up against. Dr Manhattan in the movie or evil alien squids in the book.
>>80775543
yeah, it's really daft
>dear Russia. sign a treaty with us and we'll sell you as much food and fuel and vehicles as you need for an absurdly cheap cost
a more realistic story would be that just as the world starts shifting to a post-scarcity society Manhattan gets bored and leaves, and everyone just has to deal with it
>>80771335
What difference would it make whether he stays rich or not? He averted nuclear war and went on to guide the world into prosperity. Becoming a grieving hobo would have made that unnecessarily difficult.
>>80775456
>He killed REAL millions to save HYPOTHETICAL billions.
Even if. This doesn't make him 100% objective wrong.
>>80775672
how come there weren't any aliens in the movie
I knew they'd screw something up but I didn't expect it to take that long
>>80767400
>Ozymandias solved nothing
>Averted all out nuclear between the US and Russia and lead the world into an age of peace and prosperity.
>>80767400
Wrong on every count. Are you underageban?
Mutual hatred is the great uniter of humankind, and time and again it has proven to be the only true uniter of mankind.
Ozymandias felt every death. He was a hero. He didn't fight in Vietnam, he built a company to provide free unending electrical power to the world. He wanted to save people.
He's the kind of person who would indeed run to save that one person, and do it. But he was facing the END OF THE WORLD.
He killed millions in major metropolitan cities all over the world, but he saved the entire planet from unending nuclear holocaust; the end of the planet earth.
In your train scenario, he's not switching the tracks from 3 to 1. He's switching the entirety of humanity, as a force, from the ENTIRE PLANET EARTH, to mere millions of dead. And he has to live with that on his soul forever.
Behold Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my work, and despair.
>>80764843
This
there was never gonna be a nuclear war. that's the whole point of the black freighter story.
If Watchman is the greatest example of Deconstructionism in comics, what's the greatest example of Reconstructionism?
>>80768943
>>80769849
>>80770048
>>80775785
>>80775885
in the end all Adrian did was give humans something else to fight against other than themselves
the reality is he didn't change human nature one bit which is the only thing that could truly lead the earth to peace
this is ultimately what what Dr. Manhattan is inferring when he says "nothing ever ends"
Adrian fixed nothing
its still just a temporary solution to a permanent problem
>>80768168
Unless they resort to nuclear weapons and irradiate the entire planet. Then his way IS better.
>>80768279
It would accomplish nothing. Why WOULD you kill a person?
>>80775986
So?
>>80771255
The only fact here, is that you're gay.
>>80769682
the winning move is not to play
>>80770048
what a jew
>>80763742
That's funny, because the longer I go on, the more I realize he was wrong about everything. He saw everything as strictly black and white when it clearly wasn't.
>>80775948
All Star Batman and RobinI'm kidding. Try Astro City. It's a good place to start.
>>80775358
yep he's insane
The supposed "moral quandary" presented by Watchmen is such a load of overblown nonsense.
>>80776055
so he went to great lengths in order to commit genocide for no good reason
he did everything wrong
Rorschach's philosophy was so rigid and static that he was often wrong but at the end he had the right idea by pure chance that the situation lined up that way
a broken clock is right twice a day
>>80776341
>Harrumph harrumph, I hate things that are widely acclaimed! Harrumph!
>>80776353
>so he went to great lengths in order to commit genocide for no good reason
His aim was to achieve a stay of execution, which he successfully achieved.
However, he would have to be very foolish to think this is a permanent solution.
Or indeed that a permanent solution exists at all.
>>80768893
Using historical knowledge like that isn't really valid, the book was written before it was known that the USSR would collapse.
And Watchmen is alt-history anyway, it could be argued that their world was more poised for destruction than ours ever was.
>>80776035
I would kill for revenge.
>>80776413
>I rely on awards and the opinions of critics to validate my own views. How dare someone have an alternate opinion!
>>80776501
>HARRUMPH
>>80776418
yeah so he killed a ton of people all at once to save a similar amount of people over a longer period of time
he just paid it all up front
that doesn't mean that any amount actually gets saved
so what was the point then?
just to prolong the stagnant cycle a little while longer for the good of nobody?
maybe if humans actually were nearly annihilated and had no choice but to start from square one again something might actually change
>people defend Ozymandias based on his motivations when objectively his scheme failed to unite humanity
You dumb fucks always conflate character or history about who's right here. That's specious. The question isn't about whether the persons and histories of Rorschach and Ozymandias are right when applied at large, it's about one single question.
>>80776676
>save a similar amount of people over a longer period of time
He sacrificed millions to save literally all of humanity.
Those numbers are not even close to being equal.
>so what was the point then?
To keep living and trying to make the best with what he have.
>Just to prolong the stagnant cycle a little while longer for the good of nobody?
So what you're saying is that humanity is pointless unless its fulfilling some "grand purpose". You know why thats bullshit right?
>>80776826
>He sacrificed millions to save literally all of humanity.
but he didn't save all of humanity
they'd go right back to killing each other sooner or later
and anyway when you really think about it how is turning humanity against a mysterious alien species or a literally invincible omnipotent being any better for their self preservation?
you know they say the devil you know is better than the devil you don't
>So what you're saying is that humanity is pointless unless its fulfilling some "grand purpose". You know why thats bullshit right?
its not about a grand purpose at all
its about the fact that humans as they are just keep going through an endless cycle of suffering and contentment that will never change without something drastic
even if humans were somehow sent back all the way to the beginning they might make the same mistakes again but just the opportunity just the chance that things might work out differently is worth so much more than any of that I'd say
>>80777320
>but he didn't save all of humanity, they'd go right back to killing each other sooner or later
Saving someone doesn't mean preventing their deaths eternally, under that definition its impossible to save anyone. What he did do was remove the certainty of nuclear annihilation and give mankind a common enemy to work against. His deception bought time and saved humanity from extinction, which is a noble goal.
> when you really think about it how is turning humanity against a mysterious alien species or a literally invincible omnipotent being any better for their self preservation?
He knows John won't try to wipe out humanity and that the aliens don't actually exist. This is more like teaming up with your enemy to fight the devil you imagined.
>humans as they are just keep going through an endless cycle of suffering and contentment
Thats just human nature, killing the vast majority and sending the remainder back to the stone ages solves nothing
>Pic related
>>80776239
Thanks, I'll look into it.
>>80764309
This scene gave me chills.
>>80767400
>killing innocents is always wrong
Rorschach approved of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
He'd approve of everything Ozy did if the Comedian, Harry Truman, his father or any other member of the older generation he reveres did it.
For example he chooses not to pass judgement on Comedian's history of rape and murder despite assaulting or even murdering (albeit him committing murder is committed as a big deal and not something he took lightly) others for
>>80777731
Rorschach disapproved the death of a million New Yorkers because it was going to be a secret between them.
>>80777557
>the aliens don't actually exist.
hey man there's gotta be some aliens out there
and when earth eventually goes shitting on their doorstep because some dick a thousand years ago tricked them into thinking they were the enemy neither party is going to be very happy
>>80772738
The only thing that interests futa fags, is the dick. The woman attached to it, doesn't seem to be a concern to them, other than to point to them whenever the gay accusation comes up.
It's why they can never talk about a woman, unless they picture her with a dick.
>>80768074
Counter-point: The idea of Ozymandias/Ramessess II and his kingdom lives on today in history and poetry even if the kingdom itself doesn't.
His achievements do live on and are eternal.
I mean, OBVIOUSLY his empire eventually collapsed. Even Watchmen Ozy's magazine intervew had him admit that he knows he can't solve every problem forever, but that his goal is to help people move past the Cold War so at least we can live on to see and hopefully beat whatever other challenges lay ahead. Honestly, before Ozy does the deed (and before he's got this big adrenaline rush at the end after having actually accomplished it and acts all chuffed with himself) he seems very realistic in his goals. Peace needn't last forever. It need merely last long enough.
>>80777843
>People being in some trouble a thousand years ago
>Everyone being dead now
This is a really hard choice
>>80777775
No he didn't, he didn't approve of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they weren't a secret, not only is that never implied to be his reasoning in the story but it's also retarded reasoning.
>>80772011
Mah nigga
>>80777775
Rorschach disavowing peace built upon a lie, and peace built upon civilian deaths are two very different points. I had nothing to say about the former, only the latter.
Interestingly, regarding the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs I've seen people argue that Rorschach's inherent xenophobia made it easier to swallow killing innocent japanese civilians. Personally I'm not sure I buy that (even though he is xenoiphobic) considering his general feelings about most of New York civilians being vile scum as well.
>>80777929
the lives of people a thousand years from now will probably be worth way more than anybody living now
even the dumbest people will be smarter than the smartest people alive now
>>80778030
>>80771498
>And you also do know that the Doomsday Clock is coming closer to midnight?
That's because they're including shit like global warming, nowadays.
>>80777986
Rorschach is not really concerned with honesty as the highest virtue. He doesn't say he approved of the bombings because "well they were honest about it" and his reaction was due to anger at Veidt getting away with destroying New York without being brought to justice for it, not some weird "it's okay as long as people know about it" conviction.
I think he is definitely xenophobic, but he's also ignorant to the implications of his own viewpoints. What his reaction to Veidt's plan reveals is that he has a fondness for the city that he was in denial about. He didn't know the cities of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, they were a list of statistics to him, but he knew New York, and so being faced with the realities of civilian casualties shocked him into going back on his convictions.
You can't take him at his word about much of anything.
Surprised at the lack of posts favoring The Comedian. 4chan has changed.
Then again, I suppose there's not as much to argue about if you're not even bothered about trying to take the moral high-ground.
>>80778055
think about it its true
not even a thousand years ago it took the smartest people around a long ass time just to figure out that the earth wasn't the center of the universe and people still wouldn't except it right away
nowadays a five year old could tell you that shit
>>80778209
I think you're missing one very important point when comparing the value of the lives of all of humanity now and all the lives of humanity in a thousand years.
>>80767786
>Japanese were trained to fight to the last human being and actively involved in a hot war
Whatever you tell yourself, buddy. The average citizen had about as much "training" as an American citizen at the time.
>>80778209
>it took the smartest people around a long ass time just to figure out that the earth wasn't the center of the universe and people still wouldn't except it right away
But that's fucking wrong, idiot.
>>80778209
People thousands of years ago were making more informed and logical arguments than yours right now.
So either you're a Bronze Age relic recently unfrozen from ice, or a few thousand years doesn't inherently make us smarter.
Perhaps it's accumulated cultural knowledge over thousands with a society that allows for more people to learn because they don't have to go hunt down a mammoth or grow subsistence crops to survive.
Or perhaps you're right. Maybe we are literally smarter. I'd love to see your designs for an aqueduct as good as an Assyrian one from nearly 3000 years ago.
>>80778165
Why was this Psycho ever even ON a super team in the first place
>>80778209
>not even a thousand years ago it took the smartest people around a long ass time just to figure out that the earth wasn't the center of the universe and people still wouldn't except it right away
You're over looking something important.
INTELLIGENCE ISN'T MEASURED IN THE QUANTITY OF KNOWN INFORMATION YOU POSSES! IT'S ABOUT YOUR THINKING AND REASONING SKILLS! Skill's you clearly lack.
Yes we thought the Earth was the center of the universe, why would we think any different without any way of knowing for a fact.
Then along comes Copernicus and he figured out all of this on his own with just whatever materials he had to work with in the 1500s.
You can't call people stupid because they don't know something that hasn't been discovered yet, you orange headed retard.
>>80763742
>>80763982
Yup, and despite Moore's best efforts. Just goes to show, conservatives are so right about everything, they can't be wrong even in exaggerated satire.
>>80778165
because he liked beating people up and as long as he beat up people that society considered bad ie criminals communists. he was seen as a good guys its a critic of comic heroes that do nothing but hurt people but are presented as heroes
>>80771335
But he made himself feel every death.
>>80767029
if he was willing to die for his code he could have just stayed quiet and revealed the whole thing once he was safely back in america.
rorschach committed suicide because he realized what veidt had done was beyond his code, and he did not want to live in a world where he would have to admit it.
>>80767400
The thing is, he was actually successful in bringing about world peace. We can't know if it was permanent or not, but it worked at least for a little while.
>>80763742
Did you read all of the Watchman comics? If you did you'd realize that Rorschach was crazy conservative, and one of things he greatly believed was that dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a great thing, because of the supposed lives that would be saved in the process. It's supposed to be ironic that the same situation is presented to him, and his staunch view of justice will not allow him to see it as a positive thing. That's why he wanted to die.
>>80780072
is this implying that Veidt is dreaming about the black freighter?
>>80763742
No one in The Watchmen was right. They all had benefits to their world views, but every character's personal philosophy was deeply flawed in some way.
He could have used his vast wealth, secret antarctic base and extensive scientific resources to establish a number of ark projects both at home and flung into the depths of space to preserve the seed and knowledge of humanity for eons to come.
A plan that requires killing no-one.
A 'cowardly' plan.
What Ozzy enjoyed was to feeling cathartic bravery and superiority in making 'the hard choice' and purchasing a few couple decades with the death of millions and the deception of billions to save a cultural set that busy trying to destroy itself.
His was a masochistic messiah complex in which he played both the misunderstood devil and the burdened redeemer.
>>80780512
but the question is was it all necessary. Why was this plan A.
>>80778209
If that's your metric for intelligence, you're either dumb or ignorant, probably a combination.
There's tonne of undiscovered shit on the universe and even on Earth, that we don't know yet. And some bits of it I'm sure people will figure out in thousand years time. So by your standards, you're stupid for not knowing it, right? Think about that.
>>80763742
No he wasn't. Or did you miss the part where Ozymandias reveals he deliberately staged an assassination attempt on himself in order to keep Rorschach on his "mask-killer" trail because it was the wrong fucking trail?
>>80780551
Oh shit...
>>80763742
Why are adult gingers so rare?
>>80775754
Because that would have needed way more screentime to set up than "Dr. Manhattan's energy signature was detected in the New York explosion! He did it!" Movies need to condense that shit into a reasonable amount of time, or else the audience will fall asleep (or worse, leave before it's over and demand their money back).
Not to mention it would confuse the fuck out of people because it would seemingly come out of nowhere and not have anything to do with anything until the end, like the Chinese-exclusive scenes with the doctors peppered throughout Iron Man 3 before they show up in the ending to operate on Tony Stark.
>>80780937
God hates gingers
>>80768186
I think Lan Moore legitimately believes psychics are real. So that would not be a "superpower" to him
>>80773101
No, it's still gay. But there is no problem with being gay
Why didnt Dr Manhattan just transmute all of the plotonium in the nuclear missles into lead?
Why didnt Dr Manhattan just wipe Rorschach memory of Ozymandias's plan and send him back to New York?
>>80778668
>I'd love to see your designs for an aqueduct as good as an Assyrian one from nearly 3000 years ago.
not him but give me some years and i think i probably would be able to design a good aqueduct, even if you don't let me look it up in the internet or in books. the things they did back then were enoumous but the technology was very simple compared to today
The Comedian was the only one who was right.
He was an asshole, and a totally awful human being, but he was right.
I thought that was the point of the entire story.
>>80783268
About what faggot.
>>80783366
About everything? His worldview and his solution.
The appearance of Manhattan and to a smaller extent the heroes set the world on a ticking time bomb. They were fucked from the start and it was their fault.
>People who say Ozymandias was right or that his ends justified the means
Are you fucking kidding me. What the hell do you think his name means?
>>80763742
There is no wrong and there is no right, there are just actions.
That's what the Comedian knew all along.
>>80778209
Knowledge and Intelligence are 2 different things.
Future humans won't be more intelligent than us, they will have more knowledge than us, thanks to us and the other humans that came before them.
>>80783819
His name was an allusion to the fact that his plan was only temporary, even without Rorschach's journal. Man will forever be at one another's throat just as empires rise and fall.
>>80782954
Because it's something he didn't do when he was at that point of time.
>>80783819
What should he have done then? Let World War III happen?
>>80768384
What seems right isn't always right
>>80780551
Yes. I was like "Oh, so THAT's why that's even in there..."
>>80780901
Pretty much what I said when I finally got that.
>>80783711
>About everything?
Like?
>His worldview and his solution.
The worldview that leads to him raping women and then killing them while they're pregnant? You're going to have to clue me in, maybe I'm being "blinded by my morality" or whatever.
Does anybody have that screencap comic edit of the scene where Manhattan zaps Rorschach, where he says something along the lines of "I can't let you expose the plan..." and then the next panel says, "...by yourself!" and Rorschach's face is edited into a happy grin? That one always makes me laugh.
good thread
>>80784707
Yes.
