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(Comments on 'I'm like a beach ball' gifset of Vince)
Cully: #awwww Vince #I know this feel #it isn’t even about shallowness #it’s about being a people-pleaser#when you spend all your time figuring out how to be what other people want#you have no idea what you are (or even what the point of you is) when those people go away#how does Vince define himself in the absence of the people whose admiration is the source of his self-esteem and self-image? #I bet Vince has no idea what HE actually wants #(aside from Howard obviously)
This is a thing I find really interesting about the evolution of Vince as a character? Because in S1, Vince is a man who easily creates his own happiness. As Howard points out, ‘Everything’s fun for you, yeah? You see a peanut, the day’s off to a good start. You witness some soil, it’s a jamboree for Vince Noir.’ He was raised in the forest (or at least that’s one option; I like to think of all their mismatched continuities somehow coexisting) with mainly animals for company and seems to remember the time fondly, with enough adventures that Howard knows and enjoys them as stories. He writes the Charlie books and leaves them in supermarkets, never knowing if they’ll get read or appreciated. In the pilot, even things that are actively humiliating (having to dress up as gorillas for the patrons of the zoo) he thinks are brilliant fun. He still cares about being cool- his vanity about his hair, his behaviour in Electro, his aspirations to being a mod- but it doesn’t seem to be what he’s driven by. He doesn’t necessarily need his cool to be happy, and he doesn’t really seem to need other people’s approval or admiration either.
By the time we hit S3, he’s primarily defined by his ‘public’. It’s something discussed fairly frequently that Vince obviously grows up over the course of the series; if he’s a child in S1, he’s a sulky, bratty teenager who often lashes out by S3, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really seen people talking about how the sources of his happiness change. Because yeah, in S3 it’s all about the cool Camden kids and what they think of him. Tagging pop stars- not because of his own enthusiasm for them but to sell their location to trendies, biting Howard’s record so that his punk mates will think he’s tough; the whole premise of Power of the Crimpis that he thinks he is entirely defined by his look; if someone else is getting that admiration, then what is he? In Party, he makes a performance out of his entrance because that’s what he feels is expected of him; in The Chokes, his quest to thin his legs down in order to be in a trendy band.
So what changes? I… don’t really have a conclusion to draw here, I’m just putting thoughts together. ANYONE HAVE ANY THOUGHTS?
Bluey: Heh. Well, as you probably know by now, I pretty much always have thoughts. ;)
But of course you are totally right. Series One Vince makes his own fun quite brilliantly and easily, and even though there are vague glimmers of ambition (mostly in Electro and Jungle), he is pretty content to work in relative obscurity. The “Vince Noir, rock n roll star” thing is about his style inspiration more than his serious life aspirations, and even when things go really wrong and disappointing for him, he has a knack for finding reasons to be happy anyway. (The ends of Charlie and Electro are good examples.) Series Three Vince… well, you’ve just laid out the deal with Series Three Vince. He’s almost entirely reliant on external sources of admiration for his self-esteem and to define his increasingly nebulous sense of identity. He spends most of his time thinking about how to fulfill other people’s expectations of him and impress strangers. (He doesn’t even think about having FUN at his own party; he’s totally focused on arriving at the appropriate time and making sure everybody gets the “contact” they expect to have with him.) His phone is filled with names and numbers and contacts, but the minute somebody else copies his style, he’s friendless but for Howard and convinced there’s nothing inside him.
So how did Vince get there? How did the source of his happiness change so completely (and not for the better)? I think part of it, undeniably, is about, as you said, Vince having “grown up” over the course of the series. Kids have boundless confidence and optimism; teenagers and adults don’t. As you grow up, life has a way of eating at your sense of security and hope, especially when life doesn’t quite turn out the way you imagined it would. So to a certain extent, it’s probably inevitable that happiness would get more complicated for Vince, as he matures and experiences more of the world.
But… there is another factor here. And that factor is Howard. When Vince was happy and secure in obscurity, it was because he was happy and secure with Howard. As long as it’s the two of them, it doesn’t matter if what they’re doing is humiliating, or if they never actually hit the big time, because they’ve got each other and their shared small pleasures and their in-jokes and their adventures. Howard is very keenly interested in impressing other people, but up until the third series, Vince is primarily interested in impressing Howard. He tells his special stories to Howard. He shares his talent for talking to animals freely with Howard-even though he’s wary of sharing it with others. When Howard is spinning dreams about hitting it big on his own, Vince is always envisioning himself right there with Howard and asking how he fits in.
Even throughout the second series, it’s about Vince and Howard together, trying to hit the big time together, taking the humiliation and heckling and failure together. (A notable exception: Vince’s “Chosen One” interlude on Xooberon, where he shows he’s susceptible to flattery and yearns to be recognized as special by somebody.) And when they’re stranded on a desert island, Vince shows the same talent he had in his Zoonverse days for making the best of where he is and finding happiness in small things (like fashioning bamboo drainpipes), which he wants to share with Howard-until there’s a fracture in their relationship, and suddenly they’re NOT on the same team anymore. Vince keeps making things then, but from that point, they’re not actually about making himself happy so much as they are about making Howard sorry-and jealous: Look, I made a better house than you! Look, this hot girl thinks I’m good enough, unlike YOU! Look, TWO GIRLS want me! And eventually, Vince has created an entire island full of coco-people to want him and tell him how cool he is, and it’s all about the external validation.
It seems to me that Milky Joe is the point at which it gets twisted for Vince, in terms of where his happiness is coming from and how reliant he is on what other people think of him, versus feeling secure and content with where he is and able to make his own happiness. And it seems to me that the condition of his relationship with Howard is a key part of that change. With a few notable exceptions (Vince and Howard bonding over scrapbooking, much of Power of the Crimp), their relationship in the third series feels different, more antagonistic. That sense of unity and security is often missing. Their banter is pointed and often barbed. Howard even has a new friend, whose company he actually seems to favor over Vince, who often gets treated more like a coworker than a lifelong best friend (and returns that vibe-at least until they’re on the roof). That sense of unity and security is often missing, so… maybe it’s not surprising that Vince has increasingly started looking outside for people to give him validation and reassurance that he is cool and in demand and has value as a person. We already knew, from Fountain of Youth, that Vince craves somebody to tell him he’s special. The problem, of course, is that a) that’s super unhealthy, emotionally, and b) they aren’t actually his friends, just his admirers, so he’s increasingly isolated, even as he’s surrounded by people. It’s not a sustainable thing, over the long term.
…But hey, that’s why we all crave a movie or another series, isn’t it? We want some resolution on those unfinished character arcs! And that’s why fanfic is so much fun: we can come up with our own potential solutions. Endlessly. (Thank goodness!)
Guys stop before this ends up as a new fic that will break everyone’s hearts
Someone make this a fic that breaks everyone’s hearts!
Holly: I’d also like to add, if I may, the fact that the setting changed over the series and I believe that had a lot to do with Howard and Vince’s changes as well. S1 they’re in the zoo, of course. Vince is surrounded by animals, like he was growing up in the jungles, and Howard seems to be in a position of relative importance (i.e. he knows about the animals and even says he hired Vince). S2 they’ve left the zoo to try and make it as musicians on their own. This leaves room for quite a bit of failure, especially for Howard, who doesn’t quite fit in with the trendy world they inhabit. Howard’s character is constantly degraded and not often brought back up. Vince on the other hand begins to thrive in this environment and realizes that he has the potential to be very successful in his own right. This is epitomized in S3 where Howard is almost entirely looked down upon and Vince has become a crowd favorite people-pleaser. Leaving the comfort and familiarity of the zoo, being thrust into an unfamiliar and often unfriendly world did much to change their characters and their relationship. And I’d like to bring the Future Sailors tour into this, as it shows very clearly their final characterizations in a very exaggerated way. And while it ends with an apology, and crimps, and dancing, it doesn’t seem like enough of a resolution as we’d like. We know Howard and Vince still love each other very much, but the people and places that surround them, quite simply, bring out their worst.
Cully: ALSO THIS, yes.
Also, as you’ve brought up the Future Sailors Tour, this seems like a good place to mention the… primary reason why I can’t bring myself to watch it all that often, and that is the degree to which it is outright cruel to Howard. Cruelty to Howard is nothing new from the show, of course, but it doesn’t usually come quite so directly from Vince. Even in one of the most egregious examples- Vince throwing Howard over for a cape in The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox- that isn’t out of malice on Vince’s part, just him being a little too easily distracted by shinies.
The Tromboner jazz porn mag is a funny joke, don’t get me wrong, and I am as appreciative as anyone of the fact that there exist photos of Julian Barratt naked except for a tie and a trombone over his bits. But the fact that Vince found it- indeed, apparently went through Howard’s stuff with a fine-toothed comb just for the sake of finding dirt on him- went, aha, this will be brilliant to humiliate Howard with, and then SHOWED IT TO SEVERAL THOUSAND PEOPLE in the face of Howard’s desperate pleas not to. Knowing that Howard is already a figure of ridicule. That’s just. Ouch.
Howard’s a tit too, in Future Sailors, with all his pretensions and his hilariously awful, self-aggrandising play, but man. That takes it to a level, for me, that is really no longer funny.
Cully: #awwww Vince #I know this feel #it isn’t even about shallowness #it’s about being a people-pleaser#when you spend all your time figuring out how to be what other people want#you have no idea what you are (or even what the point of you is) when those people go away#how does Vince define himself in the absence of the people whose admiration is the source of his self-esteem and self-image? #I bet Vince has no idea what HE actually wants #(aside from Howard obviously)
This is a thing I find really interesting about the evolution of Vince as a character? Because in S1, Vince is a man who easily creates his own happiness. As Howard points out, ‘Everything’s fun for you, yeah? You see a peanut, the day’s off to a good start. You witness some soil, it’s a jamboree for Vince Noir.’ He was raised in the forest (or at least that’s one option; I like to think of all their mismatched continuities somehow coexisting) with mainly animals for company and seems to remember the time fondly, with enough adventures that Howard knows and enjoys them as stories. He writes the Charlie books and leaves them in supermarkets, never knowing if they’ll get read or appreciated. In the pilot, even things that are actively humiliating (having to dress up as gorillas for the patrons of the zoo) he thinks are brilliant fun. He still cares about being cool- his vanity about his hair, his behaviour in Electro, his aspirations to being a mod- but it doesn’t seem to be what he’s driven by. He doesn’t necessarily need his cool to be happy, and he doesn’t really seem to need other people’s approval or admiration either.
By the time we hit S3, he’s primarily defined by his ‘public’. It’s something discussed fairly frequently that Vince obviously grows up over the course of the series; if he’s a child in S1, he’s a sulky, bratty teenager who often lashes out by S3, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really seen people talking about how the sources of his happiness change. Because yeah, in S3 it’s all about the cool Camden kids and what they think of him. Tagging pop stars- not because of his own enthusiasm for them but to sell their location to trendies, biting Howard’s record so that his punk mates will think he’s tough; the whole premise of Power of the Crimpis that he thinks he is entirely defined by his look; if someone else is getting that admiration, then what is he? In Party, he makes a performance out of his entrance because that’s what he feels is expected of him; in The Chokes, his quest to thin his legs down in order to be in a trendy band.
So what changes? I… don’t really have a conclusion to draw here, I’m just putting thoughts together. ANYONE HAVE ANY THOUGHTS?
Bluey: Heh. Well, as you probably know by now, I pretty much always have thoughts. ;)
But of course you are totally right. Series One Vince makes his own fun quite brilliantly and easily, and even though there are vague glimmers of ambition (mostly in Electro and Jungle), he is pretty content to work in relative obscurity. The “Vince Noir, rock n roll star” thing is about his style inspiration more than his serious life aspirations, and even when things go really wrong and disappointing for him, he has a knack for finding reasons to be happy anyway. (The ends of Charlie and Electro are good examples.) Series Three Vince… well, you’ve just laid out the deal with Series Three Vince. He’s almost entirely reliant on external sources of admiration for his self-esteem and to define his increasingly nebulous sense of identity. He spends most of his time thinking about how to fulfill other people’s expectations of him and impress strangers. (He doesn’t even think about having FUN at his own party; he’s totally focused on arriving at the appropriate time and making sure everybody gets the “contact” they expect to have with him.) His phone is filled with names and numbers and contacts, but the minute somebody else copies his style, he’s friendless but for Howard and convinced there’s nothing inside him.
So how did Vince get there? How did the source of his happiness change so completely (and not for the better)? I think part of it, undeniably, is about, as you said, Vince having “grown up” over the course of the series. Kids have boundless confidence and optimism; teenagers and adults don’t. As you grow up, life has a way of eating at your sense of security and hope, especially when life doesn’t quite turn out the way you imagined it would. So to a certain extent, it’s probably inevitable that happiness would get more complicated for Vince, as he matures and experiences more of the world.
But… there is another factor here. And that factor is Howard. When Vince was happy and secure in obscurity, it was because he was happy and secure with Howard. As long as it’s the two of them, it doesn’t matter if what they’re doing is humiliating, or if they never actually hit the big time, because they’ve got each other and their shared small pleasures and their in-jokes and their adventures. Howard is very keenly interested in impressing other people, but up until the third series, Vince is primarily interested in impressing Howard. He tells his special stories to Howard. He shares his talent for talking to animals freely with Howard-even though he’s wary of sharing it with others. When Howard is spinning dreams about hitting it big on his own, Vince is always envisioning himself right there with Howard and asking how he fits in.
Even throughout the second series, it’s about Vince and Howard together, trying to hit the big time together, taking the humiliation and heckling and failure together. (A notable exception: Vince’s “Chosen One” interlude on Xooberon, where he shows he’s susceptible to flattery and yearns to be recognized as special by somebody.) And when they’re stranded on a desert island, Vince shows the same talent he had in his Zoonverse days for making the best of where he is and finding happiness in small things (like fashioning bamboo drainpipes), which he wants to share with Howard-until there’s a fracture in their relationship, and suddenly they’re NOT on the same team anymore. Vince keeps making things then, but from that point, they’re not actually about making himself happy so much as they are about making Howard sorry-and jealous: Look, I made a better house than you! Look, this hot girl thinks I’m good enough, unlike YOU! Look, TWO GIRLS want me! And eventually, Vince has created an entire island full of coco-people to want him and tell him how cool he is, and it’s all about the external validation.
It seems to me that Milky Joe is the point at which it gets twisted for Vince, in terms of where his happiness is coming from and how reliant he is on what other people think of him, versus feeling secure and content with where he is and able to make his own happiness. And it seems to me that the condition of his relationship with Howard is a key part of that change. With a few notable exceptions (Vince and Howard bonding over scrapbooking, much of Power of the Crimp), their relationship in the third series feels different, more antagonistic. That sense of unity and security is often missing. Their banter is pointed and often barbed. Howard even has a new friend, whose company he actually seems to favor over Vince, who often gets treated more like a coworker than a lifelong best friend (and returns that vibe-at least until they’re on the roof). That sense of unity and security is often missing, so… maybe it’s not surprising that Vince has increasingly started looking outside for people to give him validation and reassurance that he is cool and in demand and has value as a person. We already knew, from Fountain of Youth, that Vince craves somebody to tell him he’s special. The problem, of course, is that a) that’s super unhealthy, emotionally, and b) they aren’t actually his friends, just his admirers, so he’s increasingly isolated, even as he’s surrounded by people. It’s not a sustainable thing, over the long term.
…But hey, that’s why we all crave a movie or another series, isn’t it? We want some resolution on those unfinished character arcs! And that’s why fanfic is so much fun: we can come up with our own potential solutions. Endlessly. (Thank goodness!)
Guys stop before this ends up as a new fic that will break everyone’s hearts
Someone make this a fic that breaks everyone’s hearts!
Holly: I’d also like to add, if I may, the fact that the setting changed over the series and I believe that had a lot to do with Howard and Vince’s changes as well. S1 they’re in the zoo, of course. Vince is surrounded by animals, like he was growing up in the jungles, and Howard seems to be in a position of relative importance (i.e. he knows about the animals and even says he hired Vince). S2 they’ve left the zoo to try and make it as musicians on their own. This leaves room for quite a bit of failure, especially for Howard, who doesn’t quite fit in with the trendy world they inhabit. Howard’s character is constantly degraded and not often brought back up. Vince on the other hand begins to thrive in this environment and realizes that he has the potential to be very successful in his own right. This is epitomized in S3 where Howard is almost entirely looked down upon and Vince has become a crowd favorite people-pleaser. Leaving the comfort and familiarity of the zoo, being thrust into an unfamiliar and often unfriendly world did much to change their characters and their relationship. And I’d like to bring the Future Sailors tour into this, as it shows very clearly their final characterizations in a very exaggerated way. And while it ends with an apology, and crimps, and dancing, it doesn’t seem like enough of a resolution as we’d like. We know Howard and Vince still love each other very much, but the people and places that surround them, quite simply, bring out their worst.
Cully: ALSO THIS, yes.
Also, as you’ve brought up the Future Sailors Tour, this seems like a good place to mention the… primary reason why I can’t bring myself to watch it all that often, and that is the degree to which it is outright cruel to Howard. Cruelty to Howard is nothing new from the show, of course, but it doesn’t usually come quite so directly from Vince. Even in one of the most egregious examples- Vince throwing Howard over for a cape in The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox- that isn’t out of malice on Vince’s part, just him being a little too easily distracted by shinies.
The Tromboner jazz porn mag is a funny joke, don’t get me wrong, and I am as appreciative as anyone of the fact that there exist photos of Julian Barratt naked except for a tie and a trombone over his bits. But the fact that Vince found it- indeed, apparently went through Howard’s stuff with a fine-toothed comb just for the sake of finding dirt on him- went, aha, this will be brilliant to humiliate Howard with, and then SHOWED IT TO SEVERAL THOUSAND PEOPLE in the face of Howard’s desperate pleas not to. Knowing that Howard is already a figure of ridicule. That’s just. Ouch.
Howard’s a tit too, in Future Sailors, with all his pretensions and his hilariously awful, self-aggrandising play, but man. That takes it to a level, for me, that is really no longer funny.