In which I have a lot of feelings about Adrian Veidt

[anactoria]

Spoilers for Ozymandias #1, if we're still warning for that, and possibly Minutemen #2, under the cut.



I finally got hold of a copy of Ozy #1. The art is very pretty, I'll give it that, and I was going along with it right until he got home to New York. Aside from the loving and supportive parents, which I will never buy, considering how creepily nonchalant he is about their deaths in canon (I don't think they were abusive; I just don't think they ever really had a close relationship, and given that he describes them as 'intellectually unremarkable', I doubt they really understood their brilliant, isolated child), it seemed fairly consistent with his canon characterisation. Personally, I'd have liked to see him retaliate against the school bullies with manipulation as well as his fists, but that's more handwave-able, I guess; you can put it down to his being a child who perhaps hasn't yet begun to consider the advantages of understanding ordinary people and how to manipulate them.

The fridging stuff with Miranda, though... JFC. Other people have already talked very intelligently about how disappointing it is to see the Women In Refrigerators trope used in a comic that ought to be cleverer and less lazy than that, and that an apparently bi character's significant love interest just happens to be opposite-sex. What bothers me more, though, is how inconsistent it is with a fairly core aspect of Adrian's character. I blathered about my discomfort with this on watchdom, so I'm just gonna c&p what I said there, I think:

Fundamentally (and obvious this is just my reading), I've always felt like Ozy's defining characteristic -- perhaps even more than his arrogance, though obviously they're intimately linked -- is his inability to see anything but the bigger picture. He views himself as an actor on the stage of history, not a person whose actions affect other people, and that's how he's able to remain desensitized to the horror of his actions. Having an individual interpersonal relationship be this important to him seems a touch contradictory.

I'll still be reading, because the art is very nice and I'm shallow, and I hope future issues will improve. Just... rather disappointed for now.



Minutemen #2, OTOH, was awesome. I really like Hollis not being perfect and being aware of the ways he's fucked up, and becoming more aware of it through the process of writing. I like how screwed up the whole dynamic of the group is, I like Byron (though I hope he gets more to do in future issues), and OMG URSULA. I kind of wish she was a bit sarkier and bitchier, because I like sarky, bitchy characters, but I still love her. I'm going to be a wreck when she dies, I just know it.

Comments

[fireez.livejournal.com]

The whole relationship plot was just really badly done. I mean, I already ranted about it, but even from a storyteller perspective, it was badly done. There was no tangible emotional investment in it. I never felt as if Adrian really cared for Miranda, and we never found out why he was even attracted to her. So his sudden burst of "I have to avenger her death" pretty much came out of the left field for me. All the time, she seemed more like a passing aquaintance, a fling, than an honest to gods love interest.

And tbh, I'm not even sure I would be happy with the story if it turned out to be just Adrian's screwed up unreliable narrator perspective that's making thing so weird. Mostly because if it is, they're kind of doing it wrong. Unreliable narrator is only really interesting if the reader is actually clued in about where the deviations from actual reality are. I'm not a big fan of leaving the readers in the dark until, BAM, big reveal at the end. That's too much "haha, the butler did it!".

*/ramble*

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree. We don't really find out anything about her -- what she does, is he interested in her because she's brilliant, or because she's the kind of ordinary that boosts his ego, what it is that drives her to take drugs, or any of that. It's just out of the blue. :/

And tbh, I'm not even sure I would be happy with the story if it turned out to be just Adrian's screwed up unreliable narrator perspective that's making thing so weird. Mostly because if it is, they're kind of doing it wrong. Unreliable narrator is only really interesting if the reader is actually clued in about where the deviations from actual reality are. I'm not a big fan of leaving the readers in the dark until, BAM, big reveal at the end. That's too much "haha, the butler did it!".

Yeah. flyingrat42 and I were talking about this the other day, and she pointed out that the whole thing does seem to make more sense if you read it as Adrian's customary self-mythologising with him as an unreliable narrator, although it's pretty unlikely that's what they're going for. It's definitely the headcanon I'll be reading it through, though. ;) Also, the Miranda part seems more IC if you read it as Adrian's attempt to humanise himself to his (imagined?) audience, rather than representing his actual motives. Hmm.