laene_lif

I'm not even that into the show anymore, but still, it takes my brain a second to understand when I see a headline like House Chides Wilson for "You Lie" Comment

Song: "Disarm" by Smashing Pumpkins
Length/Size: 3:31 / 25 MB
Download link: If anybody asks, I'll put one up later.
Characters: Walter Kovacs (Rorschach)/Daniel Dreiberg (Nite Owl II)
Disclaimer: Nothing to do with Watchmen is mine, obviously. I'm just a silly fan with a crappy editing program.
Summary: This video is about the relationship between Dan and Rorschach, their estrangement at the story's start, their previous partnership, and their (brief) rediscovery of each other during the events of the movie/graphic novel. Despite their differences, at their cores, they have similar reasons for and ideals about crime-fighting; they basically want to be Arthurian knights, protecting the weak and promoting justice. They both want that to be their identity, but find their idealism difficult to maintain in the real world: Dan gives up, discouraged, and Rorschach fashions himself into a strange kind of zealot. When they come together again, they bring out the best in each other (even if it's all kind of short-lived and unproductive...), inspiring each other to new heights of heroism, and also offering different perspectives and gaining a greater understanding (of each other, the world, humanity). As Dan says (in the GN) when he searches for Rorschach in jail, "Meeting him recently, it's like he wants to make friends, without knowing how. As if the gap between us were narrowing."

Enough talk: here it is.

Oh, hey, the remix reveal was a few days ago. Here's what happened. I wrote...

Title: (Men Occultus Dormiens (The Semper Titillandus Remix))
Summary: Dumbledore has a feeling that private Occlumency lessons might benefit Snape.
Rating: G
Fandom: Harry Potter
Original Fic: All School Days' Innocence by aris_writing
Notes: Thanks for topaz_eyes for encouragement and advice!

And was written for...

isiscolo wrote an awesome remix of an old LOTR fic of mine, here: Ash and Smoke (Retrospective Remix)

Who else thought this was like the greatest thing ever (or certainly among them) as a kid?



(I was just reading Watchmen and Daniel Dreiberg / Nite Owl was talking about his love of birds and flying and his childhood romanticism and seeing Disney's "Sword in the Stone." And I thought of this. I love YouTube for many things, but one major reason is its wealth of nostalgic treasures.)

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms on my f-list!

I've been musing on Rorschach and the other Watchmen some more. I looked up quotes from the graphic novel in an attempt to get Rorschach's speech patterns down better (because I'm rp-ing him at hogwarts_hocus), and ended up rethinking some things about the character. I somehow just hadn't realized how much of an existentialist he is at his core. And now I like him even more. They did include this speech in the movie, but not in its entirety, and somehow what he meant didn't fully register. Check it out: this is Rorschach's epiphany from about 10 years before the events of the movie.

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night. Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else. Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach."

Free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world?? Ahh, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus!

It's just kind of an odd design he chooses. And somehow I hadn't realized the extent of his faithlessness because of it -- he's right-wing conservative, hates intellectualism, liberalism, decadence, drugs, sex (especially prostitution, but also homosexuality). You just kind of figure that some brand of religious fundamentalism goes along with those ideals and moral absolutism. And I do think he must have embraced that view at some point in his life, for some period of time. But he doesn't hang on to those views because he thinks God wants him to. He thinks God was a delusion, and that everything else attached to it -- that sense of morality -- has to be salvaged. He wants to recreate an imaginary past world where things made sense. It's kind of the opposite of what Nietzsche concluded upon "staring into the abyss" and declaring that "God is dead." Instead of rejecting Christian values and embracing the "will to power," Rorschach tries to rebuild what was there before God died.

But why the sweeping disdain for intellectuals and liberals? Probably because he developed fucked up associations, due to being the bastard son of a prostitute who was abusive to him, that he was eventually taken from. Sex became a far more evil thing in his head than in a normal person's. And he views the world through the eyes of the weak, little and weird. He wants to defend those people (as long as they're thinking the right things and not preying on others and being a corrupting force). That mentality is also why he's so passionate about what he thinks and does. Every criminal's punishment is a personal vendetta. He cares too much, to the point that it borders on deranged.

The Comedian, too, is a kind of existentialist. Except he doesn't quite make it to the step of embracing a new moral code. He just decides the whole thing (life, morality) is a farce. So he's your basic nihilist. Just does whatever. He doesn't identify with victims, like Rorschach, and doesn't feel a need to restore the world to something better. He's a go-getter; he's fine with things as they are. (Or so he tells himself. That guy is, of course, hugely unhappy too. In fact, he may be the unhappiest of all. Rorschach, at least, has a sense of purpose.)

Not sure why I'm writing about this. The non-fans won't care to read and the fans already know all this. Ah, well.

But I found these couple links, from googling "Rorschach existentialism" and they've got some good thoughts:

http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/03/watchmen-violence-and-vigilantism/

http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2004/07/greatest-existentialist-hero-in-modern.html

I've seen people say all over the place, in reviews and stuff, that Rorschach's name and mask represent the black-and-white, absolutist view he has. And that works, but it's more than that: it actually represents the inherent subjectivity of the human experience of reality, and morality. Rorschach looks at the world and sees one thing -- knowing that it's just a random inkblot and that other people see other things -- and he sticks with it. Revolting in the face of the absurd (Camus). Living authentically and defining mankind through his choices (Sartre).

So, yeah. This has the makings of a full-blown fan obsession...

Anyone who's seen the Watchmen movie... Rorschach/Daniel = House/Wilson? Y/N?

Not that House is really much like Rorschach at all ideologically. But Rorschach's critique of Daniel as being too willing to "compromise" struck me as House-like. And, of course, they've both got the secretly-a-wounded-child thing going on. And Rorschach even steals Dan's food.

I've seen this same character type combo again and again and it appeals every time, even though I kind of feel like it's really silly.

This icon illustrates it nicely, I think:



(taken from rraaarrlship)

Title: Read My Mind
Movie: The Neverending Story
Music: The Killers
Summary: A feel-good video for a nostalgic 80s movie. My sister gave me the DVD for Christmas and I just had to vid it. I'm really pleased with how it came out. The idea is fairly self-explanatory; it's about Bastian trying to cope with the world, through fantasy, and the world of fantasy and the characters there depending on him to keep them alive and thriving.(Thats, you know, the plot of the movie.)
Link: Watch it here

Well, I made a "Blade Runner" fanvid. It's really nothing great -- it's a melancholy, short, simple and quickly-made thing, patched-together from several downloaded scenes, but... Whatever. I hope to make another "Blade Runner" vid eventually (quite possibly to "Karma Police" by Radiohead), once I get the movie (and somehow get WMM fixed or even get a new editing program) but for what it's worth, here's this: Maybe Sprout Wings.

It's sort of about isolation and longing, and hope. An important idea in the book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", it seemed to me, was getting over the fear of caring about something that might not care about you, and sort of just... just embracing the feelings you get, that seem important to you.

( my rambling thoughts about the book and movie )