P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Kelly
OOC Journal: devilishkurumi
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: Nope
Email + IM: devilishkurumi@ yahoo.com // devilishkurumi
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Eridan Ampora & HAL 9000

C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Walter Kovacs / Rorschach
Canon: Watchmen (2009 movie)
Original or Alternate Universe: original recipe
Canon Point: Post-Death
Number: 010, 080, 181, basically anything that has that symmetrical thing going on, otherwise a random number will work.

Setting: Watchmen takes place in an alternate universe where masked superheroes and villains are normal occurrences. Nixon is still president, masked vigilantes are outlawed, and its somewhat technologically superior to the 1980's of the real world.

History: (As a head's up, the movie makes Rorschach 10 years younger than the comics for who knows what reason, so my exact dates may be off because of that.)

Walter Kovacs was born in 1950 by his single mother, a prostitute with an abusive attitude towards her young son. Though he never knew his father, he always assumed that the man was a staunch conservative and was most likely in the military. Growing up, Walter was at first unable to understand his mother's job, which led to a significant amount of verbal and physical abuse. As he came to understand his family situation better, he became an aggressive and introverted kid; when he was ten years old, he got into a vicious fight with two older boys who had insulted him and his mother, beating the ever-loving crap out of them and biting a chunk out of one kid's face. The assault was written down as unprovoked, and when the state investigated Walter's home life and found out how awful it was, they removed him from his mother's care and put him into the Charlton Home for Problem Children.

Walter was an excellent student - particularly when it came to literature, religious studies, boxing and gymnastics - but remained a very reserved child who would occasionally report having physically upsetting dreams about his mother and the men who came to her. His mother never visited or even contacted him during his stay at the Charlton Home, and when he was sixteen, his mother was found murdered in an alleyway. The only thing he had to say about it was, "Good."

When Walter left the Charlton Home, he began working in the fashion industry - though this probably makes it sound like he did something glamorous, when all he did was sew clothing, working as an unskilled laborer. During his time working with clothing, a woman requested a special dress made of white fabric with heat-sensitive black ink that would change shape in symmetrical patterns. The woman found it to be too ugly for her liking, and Walter ended up receiving it as a throwaway garment. Walter found the fabric to be beautiful, but he couldn't figure out what to do with it and so he put it away and forgot about it. Two years later, though, he read in the newspaper about a woman (Kitty Genovese, though the movieverse most likely made it a fictional woman instead due to the anachronism) who had been raped and tortured outside of her apartment building while her neighbors listened and failed to call the police. Walter came to believe that this woman was the same woman who ordered the dress, and the crime opened his eyes to the horrors of humanity. He used the dress to make his mask, which he then donned in order to fight crime. He took the name Rorschach due to the way the fabric seemed to resemble the Rorschach inkblot tests.

He spent a year fighting crime on his own before he met Nite Owl, AKA Dan Dreiberg, and the pair of them partnered up to solve crimes and find the culprits. Dan's technological skills complimented Walter's investigative techniques and so the two of them quickly found that they were a very good team. They attended Ozymandias's revival attempt for the Minutemen (called the Watchmen in the movie) together, though Walter found it to be pointless because to him, the act seemed like a publicity stunt and the group was too large to be an effective unit in his mind. Though Walter and Dan kept in contact with the other Watchmen, the group in general seemed to operate individually rather as a coordinated attempt.

Up until this point, Walter had been harsh and violent towards criminals, but he never killed them. There was also no real distinction between Walter and Rorschach. All of this changed when a six-year-old girl named Blair Roche was kidnapped. Walter felt strongly about the case and dedicated all of his time and energy on finding the little girl so that she could be returned to her parents, but by the time he found where the girl was being held, it was too late. He found her remains in an old shop in Brooklyn; her clothes were found in the furnace, and the two guard dogs were found chewing on a leg.

Rorschach later said that this was the moment Walter died.

When the man came home to his supposedly empty hideout, he found Rorschach waiting for him. He was beaten over the head and handcuffed to the furnace. At first, he taunted Rorschach, but when Rorschach lifted the meat cleaver the man had used to kill the girl with, he turned to pleading, begging Rorschach to arrest him because he was "sick" and needed help. The last lingering bit of Walter, who was "weak" and afraid to actually kill anyone, hesitated only until the man started pleading. Rorschach told the man that while men get arrested, dogs get put down, and then proceeded to use the meat cleaver to split the man's head in two.

Rorschach became a nearly full-time vigilante after this moment, killing murderers and rapists and becoming more and more violent. Later on (I can't figure out the exact date in the movieverse, though it was in the 70's), there was a full fledged riot in NYC when the police went on strike because of the masked vigilantes. This riot (and presumably others in other states) resulted in the passage of the Keane Act, which banned all masked vigilantes. While his partner retired and others disappeared, Rorschach refused to quit, leaving the body of a serial rapist outside a police department with a note that read "NEVER .][.". Rorschach became the only Watchman to continue his vigilante pursuits, though now he also had to avoid the police as well.

Because the story of Watchmen is highly convoluted, I'll be going over the actual movie plot more briefly, specifically following only Rorschach's plotline. One night in 1985, the Comedian - one of the oldest and most well hidden Watchmen - was murdered. Rorschach assumed it was because of a "mask killer," and at once went to warn Dan, who assumed Rorschach was being his usual paranoid self. He then attempted to warn Laurie, AKA the Silk Spectre, and Dr. Manhattan - an all powerful superhero who had almost omniscient powers - but they also refused to believe him. He tracked down an old enemy of the Comedian, thinking that the man who was once called Moloch could be the culprit, or know who killed the Comedian. Moloch revealed that the Comedian had come to him a week before his death in a state of intense distress, and though it sounded unbelievable, Rorschach accepted it as fact.

Ozymandias, AKA Adrian Veidt, was the subject of an attempted assassination shortly after Dr. Manhattan took an abrupt leave of Earth, and Rorschach decided that it was time to visit Moloch again, realizing that he had a link connecting Moloch and a shell corporation called Pyramid Delivery. When he arrived there, however, he found Moloch murdered, shot between the eyes, and quickly realized it was a frame job when the police showed up calling for his surrender. Rorschach made a valiant attempt at escaping, but was apprehended by more than a dozen policemen, who ripped off his mask and took him under arrest.

In prison, he spoke briefly to a psychologist about his past and informed him that Walter Kovacs was dead, and all that was left was Rorschach. Though he was surrounded by criminals he had put in prison himself, he held his own and managed to cause severe burns with hot oil to an inmate who had tried to kill him. The man was put in intensive care and wasn't expected to live through the night; an old enemy of Rorschach's, Big Figure, told Rorschach that when that man died, there would be a huge riot, and that would be when Rorschach was killed.

Sure enough, the riot came, and Big Figure came to collect his pound of flesh out of Rorschach's hide. Rorschach, however, outwitted and killed his two minions, then chased Big Figure into a bathroom just when Dan and Laurie showed up to break him out of jail. Rorschach took the time to murder Big Figure once and for all, and then the three of them left to figure out what the hell was actually going on. Laurie, however ended up disappearing with Dr. Manhattan, who wanted to have a conversation with her about the future. Dan and Rorschach hit up the old hangouts to extract information; what they learned led them to Ozymandias's office, where they realized that Ozymandias had been orchestrating everything that had been happening for some supposedly nefarious purpose. The two of them found the location of a secret base in Antarctica, and decided to go pay their old friend a visit.

Since Ozymandias was the strongest, fastest and most intuitive man in the world now that Manhattan was out of the picture, Dan and Rorschach both failed miserably at stopping his plans - which were to prevent total nuclear war and to bring Utopia to the world. In order to do this, Ozymandias rigged several large metropolitan areas around the globe to detonate with cosmic forces only Dr. Manhattan could have created, causing the world to believe that there was a bigger threat than nuclear war out there, and that Manhattan was watching them. Though his plan killed millions of people, it seemed to work. Unfortunately, Rorschach couldn't accept the peace - it was a false truce, and once the word got out, everything would go back to the way it was. This belief led him to walk away from the promise of silence that Dan, Laurie and Manhattan were willing to take. Manhattan, understanding that peace was more important than ideologies, appeared to Rorschach outside of the Antarctic base.

Dan showed up in time to see Rorschach remove his mask, and to see Walter tell Manhattan to do it. Manhattan barely had to blink for Rorschach to be completely disintegrate him. The Watchmen Wiki page has an interesting comment about Rorschach's death that I think is pretty accurate, so I'm including it in its entirety just for the sake of thoroughness: "It's possible that Rorschach believed that his death would remove the last perceived blemish from Veidt's "utopia" and justify Manhattan's image as a murderer (in the film version)."

Personality: Rorschach is a very blunt, straightforward character who's more than a little socially awkward. He tends to speak only when it's necessary, and rarely participates in small talk. Rorschach's primary conversational skills come from his vigilante acts, so he has trouble handling interactions that don't involve exchanging information or punching people in the face. He has no trouble stating his opinion, though, mostly because to him, his morally absolute opinions are pretty much fact. If someone is a criminal, they are always a criminal and should be the first suspects on the list; if someone voted liberally in the past, they are a liberal and possibly a socialist; if someone has sex with more than one person, they are a whore. It's pretty basic, with him - things are one way or another, and it's easy to move from being a "good" person to a "bad" one in Rorschach's books. (Of course, some people can slip back from being "bad" to "good," but nobody hedges their bets on it.)

Rorschach, however, is somewhat influenced by Walter's feelings in these matters; for example, though Daniel "abandons" their cause when the Keene Act is passed, and though Rorschach often questions his loyalties and his proclivities (especially when it comes to Laurie), he still considers him his partner and trusts him implicitly. He even goes so far as to apologize to Dan when he ticks him off, indicating that even though Rorschach attempts to be emotionless and impartial, he does still have a "softer" side ("softer" being used liberally).

Rorschach's philosophy can be easily understood simply from looking at his mask. He's a right-wing extremist who views the world through a very limited, black-and-white moral fiber. Good and evil are clearly defined, and there is no overlap; justice will be served to those who commit crimes (even crimes that seem petty) and the good will prevail. He's paranoid and his theories often veer wildly into the realm of conspiracy; he tends to believe that the more outlandish explanations are more likely to be true, and while he does seem to acknowledge that mundane situations do occur more often than the improbable, he is never satisfied with the easiest explanation, preferring to punch his way to the most difficult - though usually the most true - explanation.

There is some divergence between "Rorschach" and "Walter" as far as personality goes; while both share all these traits, Walter is considered the "weaker" of the two egos. He is more prone to compromise than Rorschach, though not by much; he's more likely to be influenced by his emotions and allow some things to slide just a bit more than Rorschach ever would. Walter believes that he is Rorschach, however, and that any soft or emotional side of him died during his fateful investigation of the Blair Roche case. This is seen to be untrue as canon progresses, because there are several times where Walter does seem to bleed into Rorschach's decisions (especially by the end of his canon, and when talking about the death of Blair Roche - it stands to reason that kids are a soft spot for Walter, and most likely Rorschach as well).

Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: Rorschach is a skilled fighter, especially in close combat, and he's been known to take on up to ten cops at once and hold his own for a little while. He's very talented at finding new objects to use as weapons, too. However, he is still human, and he has no extra powers.

Inventory: His mask, hat, and trenchcoat, as well as a busted (but possibly repairable) grappling hook.
Appearance: He's heavily freckled and has short red hair. He's only 5'3", and he's generally very lean, muscled and sinewy without being disproportionate. He's dirty, with... not the best hygiene, His psychologist in prison actually once called him "fascinatingly ugly," which is a pretty good descriptor of him.
Age: 35 years old


S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
Rorschach is taking in his surroundings before he even becomes coherent enough to attempt opening his eyes. He can feel himself floating in something viscous, his throat flexing sporadically around the tube inside it as he starts to regain consciousness, the muscles in his body attempting to resume their normal activities even though they're being impeded. He feels the fluid around him shift, like mud draining through a sieve, and it's only when he feels cool air on his face that he opens his eyes.

This is not New York.

All he can see is the clear glass in front of him and a dim room backlit in science fiction colors. The fluid draining through the floor is thick and gooey, a substance he doesn't know but immediately assumes to be some kind of sedative. Perhaps some kind of anesthetic. He can feel the mask on his face - not his mask, not his face - retracting, and though he's disoriented, he doesn't allow himself to gag against the tube being pulled out of his throat. He relaxes the muscles and lets it go instead. When his feet touch the ground and the tube is removed from his throat, he immediately crouches low; he is naked and vulnerable and will not be making himself any easier of a target than he already is. He has to find his clothing, his mask, and he has to...

There's a distinct memory lapse between this moment and the last thing he remembers - standing with Daniel, saying, "I know it can be difficult with me, sometimes," and gripping his hand hard - and when Rorschach realizes it, he knows he's fallen into some kind of trap. Someone has put him here to keep him from finding out the truth about the Comedian (thirty-five minutes ago comes to mind, but why? What happened thirty-five minutes ago?), from finding the person responsible for the attacks on masked vigilantes, and he knows that he hasn't given them enough credit so far. They're proving themselves to be a real threat - not just to him, but to so many people - and when the glass in front of him moves, giving him an opening, he leans through it and takes in his surroundings.

There are other people here. A lot of other people. Too many, he thinks suddenly, Too many people left, and then he thinks thirty-five minutes ago, am I some comic book villain? Your schoolboy heroics are redundant, thirty-five minutes ago -

The realization - the memories - don't come back all at once. Amnesia. It will take a while. But he does remember Veidt, and Dan screaming, and Dr. Manhattan standing in front of him while he takes off his mask. There's a sinking pit in his stomach, a black hole, and he remembers an intense millisecond of pain.

He needs his clothes. His mask - his face - will be kept with them. He needs to manage around these people, find his clothing, and find out why he is here, and not in New York, telling the world some dark and terrible secret that he can't completely grasp at the moment. It's too tremendous. He thinks about it, and decides that since he cannot be traumatized, the secret he can't bring himself to think about yet must be foggy because of his amnesia. He'll get it back soon enough. Once his hand stops shaking, once he has his clothes, and once he has his answers.

Most importantly, it will come back when he has a weapon.

Comms Sample:

not sure what date it is, therefore cannot accurately preface this message.

will attempt to keep this brief and will not ask questions about our location and situation. there is enough information available publically now to learn on my own, though the sources are dubious and cannot be considered beyond repute until further study. apologies for improper grammar; never liked computers and cannot find shift key.

only one question i need answered, only applicable to those from the timeline that i am from. never assumed multiple timelines to be a contending philosophical theory, but there have been stranger things. the question:

where were you when utopia came?