{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1783",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1783,
    "subject": "Watchmen comments",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-09-16T12:38:39+00:00",
    "last": "1999-09-16T12:38:39+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0117@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alex David Groce",
        "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu"
      },
      "date": "1999-09-16T12:38:39+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Watchmen comments",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Aha.  My own classification (which I avoided giving in the original post\nto get a feel for whether anyone was interested) is that the difference\nbetween Severian and Veidt can be broken down into a few main categories.\n\n(1) is probably (for me at least) the most emotionally relevant:  Severian\nlacks Veidt's triumphant <glee> at the results of his actions.  It is\nimpossible to imagine Severian, as Veidt does, \"mugging the camera\" and\nshouting \"I DID IT!\"  While Veidt does have concerns about the harm he's\ncaused, he is usually able to dismiss them; Severian seems more genuinely\ndisturbed by the destruction.  Case in point:  the people Severian personally\nkills in BOTNS have varying degress of guilt.  Some of them are probably\nless \"deserving\" of death than the Comedian.  However, although Severian\noften takes a great degree of pride in his execution techniques or combat\nskill (much less the latter), he never seems to simply enjoy having \ntriumphed over a personal enemy.  In fact, Severian's \"foes\" fight for him\nin the end (Baldanders is the best case in point here--although Severian\ntries his best to kill him, one is fairly sure he'd be grieved if he did so).\nVeidt expresses an odd kind of respect for the Comedian, but it's clear from\nthe images of the murder and from nuances like the NOVA EXPRESS interview that\nVeidt got a personal charge out of defeating the man in combat--there is\na reason he didn't just shoot Blake.  It's this personal glee, and Veidt's\napparent (probably justified) hate of Nixon/Blake and the political \nmachinery that, for me, lifts him from being wrong to being evil.  He hates\nhis enemies (while respecting them) and thinks that he, by contrast, really\nis perfect.  It's impossible to imagine Severian giving \"the Autarch's \nmethod\" for becoming perfect or shilling action figures (in one sense, \nRorschach is right to dimiss Veidt's depth, but wrong to underestimate his\ncleverness, in the first chapter.)\n\n(2) Veidt, by virtue of faith in his own smartness, seems much more \nconvinced that an end to not just the political tensions of the moment, but\nto fighting and war and all bad things, is right around the corner as a result\nof his cutting the Gordian knot.  One has a feeling that at least part of\nthe reason Veidt chose such a weird, lateral, (psychopathic) plan was \nprecisely because it was something \"only he could think of\" and thus it \nmust lead to, not utopia, but something sounding suspiciously like the\nHappy Good End Time of all the other 20th century efforts to \"immanentize\nthe eschaton.\"  But we the readers have no reason to be certain that\nVeidt's faith is justified--the assumption that the possibilty of nth-\ndimension Cthuluoid horrors would unite mankind forever in peaceful unity\n(even if Veidt plans on nastily repeating the threat every now and then\nto remind everyone to be nice) isn't axiomatic.  The subtext strongly implies\nthat like Alexander, Veidt may have united the world briefly, but he has\nlimits and may cause things to get <worse>.  Severian, on the other hand,\nwho has much more impressive reason to suspect that the path he's chosen\nis right (Master Ash's future, the Green Man, Tzad) and fairly clear \nindications that the Increate is \"on his side\" is still far from Veidt's \nhubris.  Severian's aware that whatever is going on is not completely in\nhis control, although he, in some ways, has more power behind him than\nVeidt does (for instance, Severian has some genuine knowledge of the future,\nwhile Veidt blocks the only access he has--Dr. Manhattan).\n\n(3) The last point is that Veidt precipitates the crisis.  Perhaps Veidt\nhas done some amazing psychohistory by watching his TV screens and knows\nwar is coming, no matter what (or, more likely, suspects that Dr. Manhattan is\neventually going to go build his own worlds), but from what we see, the \ncrisis (long, long planned, mind you--he hired people years before the\npresent of WATCHMEN in order to give them cancer) is a direct result of\nVeidt running Jon off the planet.  It looks suspiciously like Veidt is \ndoing the equivalent of the Wodehouse story where Bertie Wooster pushes\nsome kid into the lake so his friend can save the kid from drowning and\nimpress a girl.  Only Veidt is pushing the world to the brink of holocaust\nso he can \"save\" it.  Besides the obvious usefulness to throwing Rorshach off\nthe track, I think this same motivation is what pushes Veidt to hire the\nassassin to kill himself--he wants to show that he can't be killed.  Severian\ncertainly didn't cause the Old Sun to slowly die, and, as someone else said,\nseems to be chosen to save the world, rather than deciding that the world has\nto be saved, and he's the one to do it.  Severian, I would argue, generally\ndoes the just thing (with lots of exceptions), and ends up accidentally \nsaving the world.  His means, in fact, seem to determine the ends--the \nimplication is that had Severian chosen a ruthlessly goal-oriented approach\nto bringing the New Sun, he would have failed and only ended up another Typhon.\n\n\nVeidt, on the other hand, subjugates his moral concerns, and the just action\nof the moment (and Veidt is clearly aware, as evidenced by his last question\nto Jon, that his actions have been unjust in this sense) to his goal of\nsaving the world--but in the end, it seems that (A) he may have been the only\nreason it needed his brand of saving and (B) he may not have saved it after\nall.  I suppose though, that in the end it boils down to a conviction that\nno just order can be built on, in Mandelstam's phrase \"mounds of human heads.\"\nRorshach, who is \"crazy,\" seems to be the only Watchman who intuits that \nby the logic of story, at any rate, that the monstrosity of its foundation\nwill pervert the resulting world.\n\nYou really have to hand it to Moore, though, for balancing things nicely--\ngiven his politics, to make Rorshach as hero a very plausible interpretation\nof WATCHMEN really is brilliant.  It shows that he, like Wolfe, is not\na simplifier of human complexity.  And although he's evil, at least Veidt's\nmuch closer to good than our friend Typhon.  Typhon may or may not be a\nsadist, but I'm pretty sure he would never have asked Dr. Manhattan if he\ndid the right thing (Veidt's most redeeming moment).  It's easy to understand\nhow one could see WATCHMEN as on Veidt's side.\n\n\n\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}