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 don’t like him. I never understood why he has my parents fighting on his mask wth?!

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?”

Because most people haven’t actually read Alan Moore’s Rorschach, they’ve seen Zac Snyder’s Rorschach. These are not the same character

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

It’s so sad that Steve Jobs died of ligma 😫

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.”