Adrian Veidt

Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt, in a rare photograph of the character that's not awash in purple.

Adrian Werther Veidt III, also known as Ozymandias, is originally from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel Watchmen (and the 2009 film version) but is currently played on the Sueniverse by Megan (who is also very, very strongly influenced- particularly regarding his background- by how he is written elsewhere in the interwebs by a non-Suethor friend of hers). His very presence on the 'Verse has lead to many, MANY arguments about the legitimacy of his moral system and the decisions he makes based on it, which has prompted Megan to coin the term "Veidtjacking" (occasionally spelled as "V-V-V-VEIDTJACKING!") for when one of these discussions takes over a totally unrelated thread, but one fact remains unassailable: Adrian Veidt is fierceness incarnate.

Appearance and Personality

Veidt in his usual purple, floppy-haired glory, as rendered by his Suethor.

Tall, slender (but built enough that he can pick up a gigantic gold floor lamp and hit a man into a fountain with it with no more signs of exertion than gritting his teeth), and apparently eternally youthful in spite of debuting on the 'Verse at the age of 46 (which in Sueniverse years usually means old enough to have been retired to make way for one's offspring's plot taking over), Veidt is usually seen wearing obscene amounts of bright purple with gold accessories. What's even more obscene is the fact that he makes this look good. He also happens to have blond hair with the ability to go from gelled back to floppy in less than a second and hazel eyes that, in the right photograph, have been known to distract his Suethor for nearly thirty seconds at a time.

Personality-wise, Veidt is something of an enigma. To most people, he comes across as warm and affable, and his public persona is almost saintly. However, he's an extremely difficult person to get to know on a level of any depth unless he wants you to; and it's pretty safe to say that he's not exactly one for the sitting down and the discussion of feelings. This may stem from his reputed status as "the smartest man in the world", or it may just be because he is one deep, secretive son of a bitch.

While speaking in public or to strangers, Veidt affects an American accent, but he tends to slide into a German one when with old friends such as Dan Dreiberg or with others he doesn't feel he needs to hide his heritage from (including his ward Micaela Ruth Heekin). In fact, this is pretty symptomatic of any number of things Veidt hides from the world at large- the full truth of his upbringing, his homosexuality, and another, far darker secret he doesn't share with anyone else at all but will eventually come to light.

Background

Early Childhood

When asked by an interviewer from a television show or a newspaper about his early life, Veidt will simply say that he was born to a pair of German immigrants, Friedrich Werner Veidt and his wife Ingrid Renata, who both died when he was still a teenager. This is basically true, but doesn't give the whole story. Friedrich Veidt was a high-ranking member of the Nazi party in Germany, and became wealthy through the manufacture of Zyklon B (the chemical used to slaughter millions in concentration-camp gas chambers during the Holocaust). He and his wife were devout supporters of the Third Reich, and they pushed their son into joining the Deutsches Jungvolk (more commonly known in English as the Hitler Youth) whether he liked it or not when he was still a very young child. This had a profound effect on young Adrian, who grew sickened by his parent's actions and was further traumatized by postwar propaganda by the Allies that declared the atrocities committed by Hitler's government the collective fault of the German people, including children and teenagers who had no voice in the matter. In addition, his severely advanced intelligence was actually causing problems for him in school- his consistantly high marks lead to suspicions of cheating, and Adrian had to learn to hide his intellect just to get by.

Teen Years

When Adrian was around twelve, the family emigrated to America, where Adrian devoted himself to trying to amend for his parents' evil. He developed an obsession with Alexander the Great, and began to dream of uniting the world in ways Alexander had tried to do but failed at. Both Friedrich and Ingrid Veidt were dead by the time Adrian was seventeen, and while they left him a substantial fortune (gained through their dealings with the death camps), Adrian gave it to charity, keeping only enough to live on during a trek through Alexander's domains in the East. During these travels, he consumed a ball of hashish in the desert and came to the sort of conclusion that eating hashish in the desert generally leads to: he would become a superhero. Upon his return to America, Veidt simultaneously began laying the foundations for a vast corporate empire and began fighting crime under the alias Ozymandias.

Costumed Adventuring and Other Important Life Decisions Based on the Consumption of Hashish

Veidt in full costume as his vigilante alter ego Ozymandias

As Ozymandias, Veidt was recruited to join a new superteam called the Crimebusters, but the meeting came to naught. He was, however, made powerfully aware of the futility of fighting evil on a street-level scale, and ultimately revealed his identity and retired from costumed adventuring to become a full-time industrialist and philantropist.

On the 'Verse

Megan is still disappointed that this will never happen.

By now, Veidt was a self-made billionaire and a popular public figure in his own right, and was the only freelance vigilante to stay in the public's good graces after the passing of the Keene Act banning superheroes in America. He continued to garner strong public support even as he marketed his own name and image (and a lot of purple and gold products), thanks to contributing much of the money he made to charity. (More personal projects funded by Veidt's wealth included the genetic engineering of his pet lynx Bubastis and the construction of his Antarctic retreat Karnak.) He also aligned himself against rival corporate mogul Rotti Largo of the biotechnology firm GeneCo by opposing GeneCo's policy of organ repossession (having implanted organs carved out of their recipients and returned to GeneCo if they were not properly paid for, a usually fatal process for the recipients of the organs).

However, Veidt was also funding a secret plan of his own, a plan which he felt necessitated his search for an heir, which he found in the form of an unusual young girl named Micaela Heekin.

Personal Relationships

Veidt is not generally inclined toward closeness with other people, but there have been a handful of others with whom he has obtained something at least approaching a bond.

Dan Dreiberg

Like Veidt, Dan Dreiberg is a retired costume adventurer. Dan fought crime under the alias Nite Owl (a name he acquired from his idol Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl) and was a friend of Veidt's both when he knew him only as Ozymandias and then later when they made their identities known to one another. This relationship continues to this day. The rather sweet and unassuming Dan manages to still come off as an adorably bewildered, innocent nerd, a quality which has aroused romantic interest in Veidt's ward Micaela Heekin... and perhaps has always raised similar feelings in Veidt himself.

Micaela Ruth Heekin

Gifted with extraordinary reality-warping powers, Micaela came to Veidt's attention when she saved him (and a whole crowd watching him) from a runaway car by teleporting the whole mass of people three blocks away from the car. Veidt immediately began offering to let her become his ward (in spite of already being almost eighteen years old) and heir to his fortune, but she did not accept his invitation until he threw in the bonus promise that he would pay for her tuition to any college she could get into.

THE FUTURE OF VEIDT ENTERPRISES

Micaela is viewed by the public as the daughter Adrian Veidt never had. She physically fits the role, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and pretty features. But the resemblances also run more than skin deep, for she also has an extremely high IQ and a long-standing interest in the ancient world. Veidt has begun to try to shape her into almost his small female doppelganger through providing her with clothes in his usual color scheme and giving her her own genetically enhanced pet, a cave lion cub she has named Moo (short for Mufasa). However, it remains to be seen if Micaela will allow herself to be so thoroughly assimilated into his scheme.

Bubastis

Bubastis.

Bubastis is Veidt's genetically enhanced pet lynx. Far larger than a wild lynx and much more intelligent, she is also purple (as though Veidt would have it any other way) and has extremely long, tufted ears. She is capable of reducing Veidt to nearly babytalking his affection for her, and enjoys privileged status within his organization. Veidt takes her with him on nearly all of his travels and doesn't shoo her from the room while he entertains rentboys, a fact that has provided endless amusement to Megan and Sarrin.

Adrien Baillon

A young rentboy and hooligan also known by the nom de drag Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, Adrien Baillon became fascinated with Adrian Veidt after Baillon's roommate Divine jokingly implied that a photograph of Veidt in the newspaper was of the similarly named and loosely resembling Baillon. He managed to gatecrash a party Veidt was holding in honor of Micaela's birthday, and was astonished to be picked up for the night by Veidt himself.

Running Jokes

Veidt has been the subject of a few running jokes, many of which originated outside the Sueniverse.

Fierce

According to Urban Dictionary, fierce is "a word used by two fashion divas, Tyra Banks and Christian Siriano. It is used to describe someone or something that stands out from the crowd for all the right reasons. It gets noticed."

And from the very start of the film fandom for Watchmen, it was a word that became permanently associated with Adrian Veidt, particularly by female fans who enjoyed basking in the purple glow of how very, very gay Veidt was portrayed as being in the movie. Which brings us to the next running joke:

BOYS

In the graphic novel, Rorschach suggests that Veidt is "possibly homosexual", but no concrete evidence is given to suggest Veidt being interested in either men or women. In the movie, on the other hand, just in case the audience didn't already pick up on all the gay vibes deliberately planted by director Zach Snyder and actor Matthew Goode (who played Veidt), this little Easter egg was featured on the desktop of Veidt's computer:

No, really. Adrian Veidt apparently keeps gay porn on his computer.

This lead to much squeeing from fangirls, who (though often accused of homophobia) seemed to think that this made the character that much more, well, fierce, and has since fuelled all kinds of slash and jokes involving the word BOYS in simple, unpunctuated capital letters.

"Suck my dick, I don't give a fuck"

Megan the Suethor models her comic!Veidt mask. He, uh, wasn't as pretty in the graphic novel.

Matthew Goode was the last addition to the Watchmen film cast, and this news did not sit well with many fans of the graphic novel. After all, there is very, very little physical resemblance between film!Veidt and comic!Veidt (and even less between Matthew Goode in out-of-character mode and comic!Veidt), and die-hard graphic novel purists are not as easily won over by eyes one can get lost in and fierce German accents, especially when these attributes come from an actor some twenty years younger than the character he's playing, as the average fangirl. But Goode grew tired of the nitpicking and complaining, and finally voiced his sentiments in a profanity-laden statement to The Sun in Britain:

"The negative feedback is relayed by my friends. I think the fanboys aren't particularly happy - there are a load of people they'd have rather had in before me. But if fanboys still hate the film after going and seeing it, they can all line up and suck my dick. I don't give a fuck. I'm having a child and that's more important to me - so I don't give a fuck. Grow a dick."

And thus, yet another running joke was born, along with a quote that Matthew Goode will probably never, ever be able to live down.

(However, it's unknown what those fanboys in question would have thought had they know that one of the main contenders ahead of Goode was Tom Cruise. No, really: Tom fucking Cruise. How weird would that have been?)

Links

• ontd_ozy, a LiveJournal community devoted to the, um, crackier sides of the Veidt fandom: http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_ozy
• veidt_fans, another, less cracktacular community: http://community.livejournal.com/veidt_fans
• A large collection of Veidt pictures ranging from the serious to the ridiculous: http://s177.photobucket.com/albums/w218/MeganPhntmGrl/Ozymandias/
• The Veidt article on Watchmen Wiki (warning: contains spoilers): http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/Adrian_Veidt