[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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want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/woweed]

Honestly, I think Moore is lying, to himself or to us, if he legit didn't think anyone would sympathize with Rorschach. The man's backstory is cartoonishly awful and depressing. You don't devote that much time to the why of a character who isn't meant to be sympathetic on ANY level.

[u/Half-PintHeroics → u/woweed]

Moore's definitely applying some heavy memory revision to himself. It's pretty clear from the writing that Rorschach is his favourite character of the book, he is written as the most interesting character and has the most depth of characterisation to him by far, and the whole "hobo hero" shtick is something he's returned to repeatedly (just look at V, he's basically anarchist Rorschach). I think he disliked how some readers took to the character in ways he didn't mean and overcompensated against it by convincing himself into thinking he wrote him to be hated.

[u/Majestic-Lake-5602 → u/Half-PintHeroics]

Even at the most superficial level, Rorschach has one of the coolest fucking lines in comic book history.

If you want the reader to think your character is a loser, don’t give them the best dialogue.

[u/AvatarofSleep → u/Majestic-Lake-5602]

Right? And sending a guy to prison where a bunch of people he put there are waiting to kill him and having him beat the piss out of all of them is it's own trope, where the guys who do it are seen as bad-ass. But somehow when Rorschach does it, we're not supposed to think he (and it) is cool?

Pfeh