I don't need to be forgiven...

My guild asked me to become an officer...

I declined. The position would have been DPS Nazi. And who needs that kinda stress... especially since I'm thinking about jumping my mage to a more active guild to follow a friend.

So... first interview with Melvin... the question..

"Would you please transcribe your recollection of the story following the commentary "Ret pallies are simply too easy." I would love to hear your methodology on this theory."

Melvin... "I click a couple of insta cast buttons, and something (someone) dies. There isn't a lot of thought involved."

The context was him killing a boomkin. Now... I never really ask him if he just goes out ganking or what. I suspect so. Melvin is also very impressed that when playing his ret pally, alliance tends to avoid him. Unlike the 4 other 80's he has, who tend to get murdered with minimal notice. He really hates his mage in this regard.

Anyway... finally saw the Watchmen movie. The ending didn't suck anywhere near as much as I thought it would. A coupla notes on important differences between the movie and the book...

Veidt. In the graphic novel, he comes off much much freaking worse. The scene BigBearButt had problems with, where Veidt tells off the captains of industry for failing humanity completely reverses the meaning of that same scene in the novel. See... Veidt was the sellout. He saw the Keene act coming, and went public well before hand, leveraging his fame into his millions. In the relevant scene, he is discussing ending the line of Minutemen action figures... a fallen hero making money offa children's toys. And instead of evil money grubbing capitalists getting gunned down by the assassin Veidt hired himself, it was his attractive assistant. At the end of the scene... he is supposed to look lost and pathetic. That he isn't, and that we find at the end that it was all an act, is part of his evil. HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK PRINCIPLED GODDAMNIT! His namesake, Ozymandius, built massive monuments to his own vanity at the cost of thousands of lives, and the suffering of slaves. That should be a BIG tip. And when he finds his plan go off... in the novel he cheers. He doesn't give a little speech about how "this hurt me more than all those people I just killed." He doesn't give a damn.

Comedian. The movie really rips on him. For good reason... Moore wrote him to be as obscene as possible. However, one of the strands of the story is the redemption of the comedian. And can we bitch about Gugino in old person makeup? They couldn't find an actress of an appropriate age? WTF? Anyway... one of the signs of Veidt's evil is his misinterpretation of the Comedian's breakdown. Veidt claimed that the comedian was broken by the knowledge that war would be ended forever. This was Veidt's twisted view. What really broke the comedian, as revealed in the scene with Moloch, was the knowledge that the sick joke of a humanity always at its own throat was being taken to its logical extreme. What broke the comedian was, for the first time, a realization of horror. At that point, he stopped being the comedian, and was simply human. And it was a human being that Veidt killed, dying (hint hint) in a bathrobe, not in battle armor.

The comedian is redeemed at the end by sally jupiter. Sally didn't forgive Eddy because he was the father of her daughter. That was complete nonsense. She forgave the brutal almost rape because she loved him. The graphic novel begins with a man being murdered, and ends with a woman weeping over his death.

Last was the corner. The heart of the graphic novel, in a way that the movie didn't capture, is a corner with a news/magazine stand. Where an annoying kid reads comics and doesnt pay for them. Where the stand owner doesn't mind because he likes the company. Where a bull dyke lesbian (sorry for the language, but she is... straight outta central casting) pushes everyone around, while physically abusing her girlfriend. Where everyone shows up... all colors, all types, all ugly, flawed, normal people. All given a panel or two to introduce them to the reader. And at the end, it's where Veidt's "bomb" shows up... killing everyone.

When Rorschach talks about the pile of bodies Veidt's new world is based upon... the reader of the graphic novel knows, because Moore took the trouble to show them.

Now one thing about Moore... sometimes, he really really isn't terribly subtle. One thing completely left out of the Movie... Veidt's ad campaign for the new future featuring beautiful blond people looking into the future... at the end Dan and Laurie more or less sell out to Veidt... and the last scene shows them visiting Sally... in the graphic novel both dyed their hair blond. Like Veidt. Like good little nazis. A beautiful future for beautiful people...