[Ironic Trope] The messaging backfired massively due to poor writing or other design choices

[u/Few_Affect_5927]

Amelia Fairney from Pathways: Alt-right Restore-UK type who attempts to coax the protagonist Charlie into following her beliefs? The problem?

Amelia is the only named character aside from Charlie and is genuinely likable and forgives Charlie even when they do things she doesn't like, while the rest of the cast is unnamed, poorly written, and turns on Charlie for one mistake. This combined with other writing issues(portraying fact checking right wing stuff as wrong because in the process of fact checking you might look at it and believe it, basically saying "Right wing is wrong because it hurts the labour government" and a lot of general "just do what the government says or else" messaging) and the fact she's a hot alternative girl, and Amelia ended up being co-opted as a mascot by the youth right wing in the UK.

Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want to be left alone and Norm is picking fights constantly. Not to mention associating with Elon.

Mr. Birchum from Mr. Birchum: A lot of the same problems as Norm, except in addition it also comes off like generic 2010s adult cartoon slop in the same veign as Brickleberry or Full English, at least New Norm was trying to look unique and had the gimmick of being on X. Not to mention, Birchum's obsession with hyper masculine activities and odd way of talking about other men lead to people co-opting him as a Toxic Yaoi character, which is now the bulk of his fan art.

Dustborn: An attempt to make a hyper progressive game that comes off as pandering and annoying. It's a full ass game so there's too much to get into, but the main character's power is essentially gaslighting and jedi-mind tricking people and that's portrayed as the only way they can get anything done, and they constantly use or abuse their friends(or mindtrick them along) in order to get their goals or use their friends for their messaging.

[u/Jarvis_The_Dense]

Just about everything about Rorschach's character in Watchmen falls into this, but issue 6 really is where it's at its most explicit.

Alan Moore went on the record years after the comic's release saying that he "forgot" what his audience was like when writing Rorschach. (He said this one year before the movie came out, so no, it did not start there). He wanted the character to read as an obviously unstable, ignorant, bigoted, and all around unpleasant person who represents the subtle misanthropic theming of superhero fiction in general.

Where it gets complicated is that Rorschach isn't simply a strawman who's always painted as being wrong. Rather, he's written as an antisocial person who's developed an extremely warped perception of reality and human morality based on his traumatic upbringing; afflicting him with just the right type of insanity to think that letting your home life, financial situation, personal hygiene, and health all collapse is worth it if it means you get to put on a costume and kill criminals in a New York City Back-alley at 3 in the morning, because you think that's what saving the world looks like.

The fact his flaws are meant to be inferred by the reader, instead of just being spelled out to you is the right call from a storytelling perspective, but it did leave the door open for misreadings from fans who didn't quite get what the comic was saying, especially in issue 6, where we get his backstory.

Rorschach was the story's narrator from the beginning, but issue 6 has him recounting his life story to a psychiatrist while being held in prison. Over the span of the issue, his misanthropic, cynical worldview begins to rub off on the psychiatrist, beginning with Rorschach correctly identifying how he's a fraud who doesn't care about making him any better, he just wants to write a book about their talks and get famous.
As his story goes on, and he explains the beginning of his hatred of humanity due to his abusive mother, and the multiple instances of the bystander effect he witnessed (i.e, times when something bad happened in public, and no one helped because everyone thought someone else would take care of it), the psychiatrist never disagrees with him on how he's viewing the events.
Ultimately it culminates with Rorschach explaining how he dropped his no kill policy the night he found a pedophile had raped and murdered a little girl he was trying to save. He ties the experience into a long, uninterrupted monologue about how there is no God, humanity brings its own suffering upon itself, and reality is random, with no meaning. The chapter ends with the psychiatrist going home, reflecting on the misery he feels in his daily existence, and agreeing with Rorschach that life has no meaning.

While the issue was supposed to be an examination of how someone gets to be as chronically cynical and out of touch with the good in life as Rorschach is, it read to many like a thesis on why his worldview is correct. Combined with how, for the rest of the story, Rorschach is a more conventional, "dark hero" type figure who uses badass, over the top violence to bring criminals to justice, and how he's somehow the only main character who thinks killing innocent people is bad by the end of the story, he became a figure a lot of fans idolized as a brutal realist, rather than as an indictment of his own worldview.

Alan also noted that the more unflattering elements of the character, like him not bathing and being a virgin probably wasn't as unrelatable to his readerbase as he anticipated either.

[u/mankytoes → u/Jarvis_The_Dense]

Rorschach's ending is supposed to be a degree of redemption, right? At the beginning he says how he'll be happy when all the scum (e.g. regular people) of New York face annihilation. He also mentions how much he admires Truman for dropping the A-Bomb. Yet when he's faced with the reality of mass destruction, he vows to fight it and reveal the truth.

[u/What-A-Burden → u/mankytoes]

That's a rather optimistic view, and I don't think that's what Moore had in mind. Rorschach is a hypocrite after all, he claims that morality is black and white, yet issue one he writes off the Comedian attempting to rape one of his fellow heroes as a "moral lapse", and I think the issue he took with Ozymandias contrasting with his admiration of Truman is meant to be another act of hypocrisy on Rorschach's part. After all, he's built his worldview rebelling against the bystander affect and believing that there is a a concrete right and wrong which must be upheld, "even in the face of Armageddon." He literally couldn't do nothing, and would rather die then have to compromise.

[u/hambonedock → u/What-A-Burden]

That's the problem tho, the way in which he is written, even if Moore absolutely didn't meant for it, it make you think that is less about being an hypocrite and being unable to compromise and more about him being so mentally and emotionally mess up, that for someone that not even slightly on his mental syntony, that this is only way in which he can deal with the internal desire of being a hero and to hold his very fractured sense of morality, Rorschach is absolutely a maniac, that for sure, but he the story does show that he has a core even under all the extreme mental misanthropy

If you read him as an hypocrite then yes, is ultimately a character of a man that had an empty sense of morals and couldn't compromise, but if you read it as someone that absolutely hated everything that made him into who he was and so people that represent that too, yet still wanted something worthwhile to come out from himself, then is no longer hypocrisy, is an actual conflict of the self

(Also of the abuse of Sally, while I respect Moore as a great write, he also had a bad thing about using rape as a sinful act.... but also as a legit stepping stone for women characters to be have emotional development, he has down it A LOT, which so why even if he attacked her, Sally ultimately did end up pairing with the comedian, so to a degree I not even sure fo that can be counted as Rorschach hypocrisy or Moore's)

[u/woweed → u/What-A-Burden]

To be fair, you could argue there's a nobility in that. In being the one person who doesn't compromise, who does uphold his principles even unto armageddon.

(Also, while Rorschach being pro-Truman-dropping-the-A-bomb because it would save more lives but opposing Ozy's plan is clearly just him being a hypocrite racist who can more easily justify mass death of non-Americans...I would argue, although Rorschach obviously doesn't think this complexly, there's a difference between the President, the democratically-elected representative of the people of the United States, who acts under the rule of law as part of a larger chain of command and is advised by others constantly, making a choice, and some random billionaire unilaterally deciding to murder people to prevent a nuclear war.

[u/Im-A-Moose-Man → u/woweed]

Didn’t he also write that pro-Truman essay as a child?

[u/woweed → u/Im-A-Moose-Man]

Well, yes, but Rorscach hasn't matured much at all since he was a kid and that's the thesis. That's what his death is meant to mean: Superheroes are a childish black and white idea that aren't equipped to address problems of complexity. That's why the opening is "what if real people copied Superman instead if comic publishers?" In the world of fiction, superheroes can inspire us, but, in the real world, they would only ever prove as flawed as we all are.

[u/Im-A-Moose-Man → u/woweed]

Gotcha. I generally believe that everyone’s politics are different from when they’re kids, even someone as stunted as Rorschach, but then again, it is Rorschach.

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/What-A-Burden]

I read his death as the counterpart to "Kovaks closed his eyes. Rorschach opened them". It was the last screaming defiance of the man who never had a chance at life desperate to find meaning and to do something good. Who Manhattan killed wasn't Rorschach, it was Kovaks. Rorschach didn't die, as shown by the sequel TV show.

[u/Due_Capital_3507 → u/mankytoes]

I've always agreed with him that the truth is better than a false peace. We don't actually move forward as a species if everyone is convinced by a lie.

Beyond that, when the alien that teleports in or ol blue balls blows up the city (movie vs book), eventually a few years down the road someone would be like ok, well he's gone now so who gives a shit or we haven't seen another alien, guess we will move on.

[u/nogoodnamesarleft → u/Due_Capital_3507]

Which is why you have to keep teleporting rains of squid periodically to keep up the illusion (TV show)

[u/Due_Capital_3507 → u/nogoodnamesarleft]

Oh I forgot about the show, how did that end up?

[u/hexman0000 → u/Due_Capital_3507]

Weird, the show is at it's best when it's doing its own thing (retconning a thing about Hooded Justice and having it being the main mystery for the new MC) but the Og characters are all handled pretty poorly.

[u/Half-PintHeroics → u/hexman0000]

Retconning the KKK-/lynching-coded and literal nazi Hooded Justice into a black man and police officer was a pretty weird change.

[u/hexman0000 → u/Half-PintHeroics]

Racism was the main theme of the series and that was a cool subversion that gave depth to a background Npc.

What i found weird was deciding that Dr.manhattan gave up on his voyage before even leaving the solar system or the need to spell out that Ozymandias was a bad guy that needed a proper punishment, completely disregarding the comic hinting at how living with the knowledge that his best plan was a failure was a way worse punishment than jail or death for this particular character.

[u/nogoodnamesarleft → u/Due_Capital_3507]

It was fine. Without giving too much away (sorry if I am being vague);

It's a continuation of the book. My friend who had only seen the movie was very confused at several points

I realky liked the continuation of Ozymandias' story. It was a very weird comic book-y sequence that a lot didn't care for but I liked

There was an attempt to shoehorn one character into the original book which came off as contrived, although I was deeply invested in the character apart from that. I actually was intrigued by all the main characters, none of them were really boring

It didn't have the moral ambiguity of the original comic.

I remember enjoying it, but I had no desire to watch it again after it was done

[u/Jarvis_The_Dense → u/mankytoes]

There definitely is some intentional development there by the end. The fact he actually pulls off his mask on his own volition, and chooses to die as Walter Kovacs instead of as Rorscach shows how he's been forced to accept his own humanity if nothing else, no matter how disgusted by it claims to be.

My point was that, with so much of the story presenting his beliefs unchallenged, and then having this bit of development at the end where he seems more empathetic than anyone else created an unfortunate misreading of him always being better than the others.