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[scriver]

Ozymandias:  So full of himself that he was blind to true nature of his actions.

Man, if there's anything Oz was not, it was blind to the nature of his crimes.

Rorschach:  The only guy who showed real conviction, drive, dedication, consistency, selflessness, etc.  He ended up standing out so much for being the only character with these qualities, which are normally basic requirements for a Straight A protagonist.  It's not surprising that so many people defaulted to seeing him as such.  Too bad he was also a raving lunatic.  Alan Moore did NOT intend for this guy to be seen in a positive light.  He was written as satire.

All of the above is true for Oz as well, so no, R wasn't the only one. Of course, he's not one of the main characters/protagonists, really.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, he knew what he was doing was evil, but he also thought it was for a greater good.  He pretentiously believed that he was making the ultimate sacrifice of his own morality to save mankind, making him the ultimate good guy in the end.  Dr Manhattan schooled him on what he'd really done.

Before Manhattan leaves to create life in another galaxy, Veidt asks him if he "did the right thing in the end." Manhattan replies that "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. nothing ever ends," leaving Veidt in doubt about how long the peace will last.

He honestly believed that his sacrifice of so many people (the weight of that necessary evil being his burden, making him a martyr in his own mind) was going to bring everlasting peace, and because he'd kept everything to himself there was never an external interjection to shatter his short-sighted narcisism until it was too late.

That's the way I interpret it, anyway.

[Max White]

When were done with Watchmen, can we move onto the themes and morals of Scott Pilgrim? Or maybe Howls moving Castle, and the contrasts between the book and the movie. And when we are done there, we can bitch about the subtle messages of twilight and the aweful values it promotes!

And as fun as that sounds, wouldn't it be nice to not do it here?

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, I understand it's going too far.  Allow me to reconnect the tangent with its origin.

Rorscach:  Not a role-model.  Not a proper mentality for dealing with any problem, even bullies.

[scriver]

Yes, I agree, but you also forget his "main" objective: saving the world from nuclear annihilation. And without Manhattan to disturb the balance between the superpowers, the world won't come as close to nuclear war agqin, or at least not as easy. So, even while his peace won't last, his actions still saved the world. He was deluding himself about the long term consequences of his actions (world peace utopia forever), but his actions was exactly what needed to be done to make sure there would be any future at all.

Ninja'd by sensibility. But as I've already written this, on my phone no less...
Perhaps we should make a new thread, though. Arguing about such an ambiguous work as Watchmen is always fun, even if it leads nowhere.

[SalmonGod]

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Massachusetts_study_finds_links_between_bullying_and_family_violence?dpl_id=257662

Saw this today.  Thought of this thread.

[Kishmond]

There was a guy named Eric in middle school who used to moderately pick on me. It was never very violent; he was just generally a dickwad. He was also incredibly stupid. Like, I-wasn't-even-sure-he-was-sentient level stupid so I put up with his ridiculousness. End result was by the end of the year I felt more sorry for him than angry. Even though I greatly disliked him I took pity on how pathetic his attempts at bothering me were.

Maybe he had a gay crush on me. Wow that would have been weird.

[optimumtact]

I can see where are lot of you are coming from, but I would just like to share my experiences, as a senior student at my college (high school for you americans) I was involved with our anti bullying initiative. To my suprise often what was most effective was to simply tap the person on the shoulder and quietly let them know that that sort of shit wouldn't be tolerated. If the bully was shown that the community wasn't going to have it then he/she would be quick to pull their head in. There were always those however who were persistent in their abuse and many many times this was stemming from some personal problem the bully was having. Perhaps some bottled up rage/fear that needed to be worked out. Quite often they just wanted some attention so chatting to a senior student about themselves was all that was needed.

Our school wasn't a hotbed for bully activity though so I don't really have any experience for a culture where it's ingrained and persistent.

[Vector]

Maybe he had a gay crush on me. Wow that would have been weird.

... I'm just going to ask what that has to do with anything else you wrote now.

[scriver]

He was hypothesising that that was the reason he was bullied by the guy, presumably reasoning that if he was gay, and couldn't handle it, he would have turned his crushness in optimum into anger at him.
..I think.

[RedKing]

When I was in middle school, it was a school which was built for 500 students. We had an enrollment of about 1500. The teachers were all incredibly burnt-out, and the principal only cared about trying to maintain some semblance of order. At the start of the day, before the bell officially rung to start classes, all 6th and 7th grade students were *required* to assemble in the main lobby -- which was really only built to house 100 people or so. Instead, you had about 1,000 kids packed in like sardines. The halls off the main lobby were blocked with chain-link doors which were manned by teachers and only opened when the 1st bell rang. I still lovingly refer to it as "William Golding Junior High". 

Needless to say, it was an environment where bullying and fighting were not only ingrained and persistent, they were encouraged. If a fight broke out in the lobby, the larger 7th graders would form a ring around it, and charge admission fees if 6th graders wanted to watch. And they had no shortage of takers. The teachers rarely managed to push through the crowds in time to stop a fight, so after a while they just stopped trying.

I once watched two girls get into a fight near the buses at the end of the day, and one pulled out a three-foot length of chain and began whipping it at the other girl's head, who took off running and rolling UNDER the parked buses to try and get away. I got into a couple of fights myself, usually by accident when I just snapped and verbally retaliated against somebody, who then escalated it.

The buses tended to be driven by haggard little old ladies who would yell and curse at us, but did little to intervene. This lead to such fun games as "Let's dogpile 20 people on THAT guy!". They only did that to me once. I was scrawny, almost skeletal back then. I started to black out from the combined weight of all these jackasses crushing my chest to the floor, and then the next thing I knew I was pinning one of my "friends" to the roof of the bus by his throat, and everybody was cowering. Apparently I snapped and went full-bore Viking berserker. Too bad people didn't tote video camera around back then...probably could have been a YouTube star. 

The one good side-effect of that incident is that I actually didn't get bullied all that much in middle school, because I had established a reputation of being somewhat psychotic. Downside is that I didn't have a lot of friends either. And certainly no "relationships".



Unsurprisingly, I have a very strong urge to homeschool my daughter when it comes time for middle school. I know my experience was a bit extreme, even for US schools, but IMHO that age range (11-15) is when kids are the absolute worst monsters possible -- they're old enough that they no longer have an inherent fear/respect of grown-ups and authority figures, and most haven't matured enough to have developed empathy and morality. Add to that a psychological need for group identity, and the onset of puberty.....it's not a pretty thing.

And from my own experience, girls are worse than boys. Boys are physically abusive to each other, but it's like infighting in a pack of dogs. It's all about establishing the alpha, and then everything is mostly okay. Girls are psychologically abusive, and (again, this is purely IMHO) do more things out of sheer malice than for fighting for position in a social hierarchy (although jockeying for inclusion in a clique is definitely part of it)

[Vector]

I don't think that stuff is inherent to women, so much as it is the "current female culture."  I just want to say that because I feel like a lot of people wind up saying "blah blah blah girls are vicious shrews and that's why they all suck," and that certainly wasn't my experience.  Of course, I pretty much only hung out with guys and apparently give off powerful vibes of "Look, it's your alpha," so who knows =/  I might have just gotten really lucky.

In general, though, I think everyone (except for one person, but that was an outlier) basically left me alone when seventh grade rolled around.  It was worse before that, especially because I got sent to the school for problem kids that they didn't want in the other schools.

[RedKing]

Yeah, that's why I had the disclaimers. I certainly knew some girls who weren't like that, but then they weren't the "popular" girls. So it was hard to evaluate that. Seems that most 'outcastes' (i.e. people who had opted out of the bullshit game that most people play at that age) were a lot nicer to people. But they were the minority. It was really tough to find people (male or female) who were being "normal" (in that they were actually trying to be popular and liked) and weren't also abusive in some way to their peers.

And it's hard for me to evaluate objectively, because my own experience was pretty hellish compared to friends that went to different schools.

[scriver]

That differs quite a lot from my experiences, though. In my schools the girls and boys were every so much alike in their viciousness - some were into the "psychological"/verbal bullshit, and some were more physical (and these people obviously partook in the social bullying as well), but there was no real difference between genders. My best friend was bullied (though she was not my best friend at the time) got in several fights with other girls who attacked her, and once or twice when she attacked them. The guys were just as much into the whole "social" bullying scene as the girls, too, much more than they were into pushing people around or beating them up. All in all, I think verbal and non-violent harassment is a lot more common than physical stuff (And much worse, too, put that's just how I feel about it) no matter the genders.

I also never found it hard to find non-abuser in the higher levels of the social hierarchy. In fact, when I look back (though the memories are very hazy), I'm pretty sure that the only people who stayed up there in long periods of time were those who were popular just because they were cool dudes and gals (and good-looking, of course). The people who systematically fucked with others to remain "popular" swinged rather heavily up and down the scale, and were much more prone to being pushed of it entirely themselves (especially by being replaced by other assholes). I guess that's how it is when nobody's friendly with you because they actually like you.

[RedKing]

That makes sense. I kinda have a theory that the massive overcrowding and prison-like atmosphere created a negative feedback loop, bringing out the worst in people. I knew a lot of those same people before and after, and most of them were better people on either side of middle school. It's hard to tell whether it was the environment, or the age range that was to blame.