Howince Head Canons, because it’s Cully’s Birthday!
Approximately a million years ago, the glorious culumacilinte prompted me for a number of Howard and Vince head canons… and I am slow as molasses, but I still have them all and have been plugging away. Today, in honor of her birthday, I am pleased to present the very first of those head canons, this one devoted to the subjects of Howard Moon & Childhood and Vince Noir & Family.
I hope you have fun with this, Cully! I felt like nothing could be a better present than the gift of tons of character thoughts and feels to roll about in, so: Happy Birthday! I got you a bag of assorted Feels and Thinks! Have the best day! <3<3<3<
Howard Moon and Childhood
Howard was the very much wanted and loved child of very responsible, very comfortably middle-class, very loving parents… who really were not all that adept about openly expressing that love.
Howard’s parents gave him a tidy, safe, comfortable, liberal-minded, well-organized place to grow up and a terribly stable, structured home life (some would say boringly so), but they were never all that comfortable at doling out affectionate hugs and cuddles or gushing with effusive, encouraging praise and cheerleading and pride. Which is not to say that they weren’t supportive-quite the opposite-but Mr and Mrs Moon were just a bit too private and reserved and, frankly, too Northern to really feel comfortable with that sort of thing, beyond comforting pats on the back or a good clap on the shoulder, the kind that spoke a thousand words that would kill them all of embarrassment if ever expressed aloud. On the whole, this suited Howard rather well, because he himself is rather Northern and reserved-at least when it comes to certain things-and has the same instinctive wariness of too much open, genuine emotion. Or touching. He’s more inclined to handshakes than hugs in most cases, and he always was.
Howard could see that what others might misunderstand as cold or indifferent was anything but. Howard understood that when his parents took care of him and looked after him and taught him that the best fun was safe fun, they were showing their love. He knew that when they told him to eat his vegetables, or didn’t let him watch too much television and took him to the library instead, or when his dad would sit and listen to jazz with him, or his mum made his favorite meal when he was feeling down, they were saying that they loved him. Howard didn’t need them to say the words to know that it was true. (Though admittedly it might have been nice to hear them a bit more often.) But caring for a person and looking after a person and doing little things to make them happier-that was a way of showing that you loved somebody.
(This knowledge does, now and then, pop up in Howard’s mind at odd moments. Mostly when he’s doing things like changing Vince’s sheets, or baking little cakes for Vince when the Little Man’s feeling a bit blue, or reminding Vince that he needs to eat actual meals instead of grazing on sweets all day. And then Howard’s mind will flee from that line of thought as quickly as possible.)
Beyond that, Howard’s childhood was mostly average and unremarkable, rather quiet and sedate and… well, a bit lonely. He grew up in a nice, average house with a nice little green garden, like so many people do. Nothing grandly tragic ever happened to Howard, but nothing special or particularly interesting ever happened, either. The unhappinesses he suffered were mostly of the common and ugly sort: small-minded bullies and awkwardness and friendlessness and the agony of feeling himself to be filled to bursting with untapped greatness but not seeing that greatness ever be recognized by his teachers or peers. He towered over his schoolmates, always uncomfortable and ill-at-ease with his gangling long limbs and too-large hands and feet, and he had trouble making friends; for all that he had a knack for knowing all the rules one could know, he could never seem to master the strange secret art of knowing how to relate to people or make them comfortable in his presence. His small talk always sounded impressive and brilliant and sophisticated in his head but somehow came out of his mouth a stilted and embarrassing mess.
He could never entirely decide whether he minded the loneliness or not. On the one hand, he loved the idea of having actual friends, beyond just acquaintances. Real friends, like the sort in books and films, a gang of associates and like-minded colleagues who understood and respected you-that would be brilliant. But on the other hand, when he looked at the kids around him in school and the neighborhood, he had to admit that he didn’t think he’d actually enjoy being friends with any of them. They neither understood nor respected him, much to his bitter disappointment and chagrin, and he certainly didn’t understand them. And somehow it seemed much worse to have friends who didn’t actually understand or accept you-friends you didn’t even like, who didn’t even like you, who snickered when they talked about you-than it did to just not have any friends at all.
That didn’t stop him daydreaming, though. Someday he would meet a person of great class and substance and discernment, he was sure, who would be capable of seeing everything he had to offer and would smile instead of smirking. And until then, he had books and jazz and atlases to keep him entertained. And above all, he had adventures, grand and sweeping adventures filled with courageous and distinguished and noteworthy Men of Action-and if the adventures were only inside his head (and occasionally in the stories he scribbled into the notebook hidden at the back of his sock drawer), well, that did not make them any less wonderful to him, at least until he had to turn his attention back to the real world.
And then one day, Howard met the new boy at school-a promising but naive and undomesticated little ragamuffin named Vince Noir-and, recognizing a diamond in the rough and a truly worthy companion, bestowed upon him a generous offer of friendship and mentorship. Or perhaps Vince had attached himself to Howard like an enthusiastic limpet and simply refused to be shaken off; afterward, Howard could never quite remember exactly how it had all happened. (Sometimes, even, he finds shards of memory where Vince looks small and vulnerable and quite lonely, for all his charm and bravado, alone in a crowd of gawkers who would get close enough to stare but never close enough to touch, and he thinks that maybe it was their shared sense of forlorn, lonely strangeness that brought them together-but that can’t be right, can it?)
It seemed as though Vince and his cheeky grin had just always been there: perpetually tagging along behind Howard, catching Howard’s eye with a shared moment of perfect understanding and picking up where Howard’s thoughts had left off, giggling at Howard’s jokes, asking questions and listening to Howard explain everything and giving Howard’s knowledge the awe and admiration it deserved (maybe a bit more than it deserved, if he was being honest with himself, which he wasn’t usually), chatting with animals and translating them for Howard, spouting stories about something so completely and utterly preposterous until Howard could never help but to just laugh out loud. It all felt so natural, in fact, that as an adult, he has a distinct tendency to forget that a time before Vince ever even existed. He should have known Vince forever, and his memory is often happy to make that so.
Once Vince had entered Howard’s life, the time before him instantly felt featureless, colorless, dull, and flat in comparison to the time After Vince; he added an entire dimension to life that Howard hadn’t previously even been aware existed, though now Howard couldn’t imagine living without it. Having grown up in the jungle, Vince was a stranger to many things Howard had always taken for granted and marveled at nearly everything (although sadly, not jazz-but Howard was determined to work on that), something that made Howard want to marvel along with him. The world, even the most mundane bits of it, seemed more complete, more sharp and clear and vivid and intense and somehow magical when Howard was experiencing it with Vince. Everything was just-more. Howard had the distinct feeling that he’d been looking at the world through a dirty window all his life, and it was only now that Vince had come along and cleaned the window that he could fully appreciate everything for the first time.
It was Vince who looked at Howard’s painfully organized desk, every bit of stationery and each office supply in its designated space, and saw a living, breathing city, rather than useful tools (or perhaps impending neuroticism). To Howard, it had only ever been a collection of things, carefully maintained, and a source of pride for that. But Vince had seen it differently, proclaiming Howard’s desk “Genius!” and instantly grabbing up things and tinkering with the arrangements of paperclips and pencils and pushpins, pushing them this way and that, out of their designated containment areas.
Before Howard could even voice his objections-it wasn’t Vince’s fault, he just didn’t know these things, and his grasp of concepts like personal space and property and organization could be shaky at times, but all the same-Vince turned to him with a beaming grin and exclaimed, “Look! Everything all lined up and laid out all neat-it’s like a little stationery city, yeah?”
And there, under Vince’s fingers and through Vince’s eyes, it suddenly was. He pushed eraser cars and buses along pencil lined avenues, past silvery streams of paperclips and bright pencil-top flowers dotting the desktop meadow alongside. Howard could practically see the little people who would live there, bustling about their own lives in their little office-supply settlement. It was daft, it was silly, and none of their schoolmates would understand it in the least, but it was-really kind of brilliant, too. And strangely beautiful.
“Do you see it?” Vince asked into the silence, something suddenly a bit pinched and intense in his face, beyond his smile.
“I do,” Howard admitted. “It’s perfect. It’s a… a Stationery Village.” And from then on, it always was.
Vince’s arrival transformed Howard’s childhood in the way Vince tended to transform most things that he touched-which is to say that he made it much weirder and brighter and more chaotic, but also more interesting-and Howard found he didn’t mind the inconveniences in the slightest. He still had adventures of course, all the time in fact, only now they tended to be out in the real world (well, sort of) rather than in the pages of his notebooks, and always with Vince tagging along right behind. And if the kinds of adventures he had were not exactly like the adventures he’d always fantasized having, well… he was surprised to find that he didn’t mind that at all, either. These were stranger and better. These were real. And Vince, truthfully, was much better company than any of the Man of Action colleagues Howard had ever imagined for himself, though Howard never admitted as much.
Vince still is, of course, and Howard still can’t really say it out loud, because he’s Northern, but he’s sure Vince must know it all the same. And they are still having strange, daft, beautiful adventures, because just about everything is an adventure with Vince by his side.
Howard wouldn’t have it any other way.
Vince Noir and Family
“Family” is a bit of a weird and foreign concept for Vince, or at least it had used to be. He’d never had one when he was a nipper, after all-not a real, proper one, or at least not that he can remember. Maybe there was one, once, but that’s a mystery lost to time, and Vince makes it a point not to have room in his head for pondering such things, when he can help it; it tends to lead to wrinkles and sadness, and he likes to avoid both when possible.
(He does wonder though, every now and then, usually when it’s late at night and the world is too quiet and still and there’s nothing more interesting to distract the voices in his head. As much as he enjoys styling himself as Mother Nature’s Son and a Starry Child of the Universe, he knows that he didn’t really grow from a tree in the deepest jungle or simply spring fully-formed into existence. He must have come from somewhere. But the riddle of his existence isn’t one he’s all that sure he’d really like the answer to, so he’ll leave that be.)
Vince did have Bryan, of course, and Jahooli and Kolto and Kalooni and Sameera, and all his animal friends, and they’d actually been quite genius. They’d taught him all sorts of dead useful things and kept him from being eaten and having his face stolen and all, and they’d tutored him in the ways of glam rock, for which he’d always be grateful. It had been a fun early childhood, filled with adventures and the climbing of trees and sunning on rocks and all sorts of harrowing escapes; he could never complain about that at all. But he had been the only human in the bunch, except for Bryan, obviously. Only Bryan was usually off elsewhere, either touring or in the studio, and even when he’d been around, he was brilliant but he wasn’t really much for warm hugs or games of footie or listening to heartfelt confessions or looking through Vince’s paintings and saying encouraging things or any of that sort of thing. It was nice to be a part of that group, and he’ll always love them-but he’d figured out enough to know that it wasn’t the same thing as having a family, a tribe, a place where you belonged and there were other creatures like you. It seemed ungrateful to feel it, much less put the yearning into words, even in his own head, but he felt it with a twisting, painful tug in his chest and an ache in his throat when he watched the animals with each other, especially with their own kind. He’d never want to take that from them, of course, but-well, it would be nice to be able to experience that, too. And he wondered what that would feel like, to know that you belonged somewhere, with somebody.
He’d used to think that, if he tried hard enough to fit in, he could eventually win his way into one of their families-their herds-and they would want to adopt him as one of their own. (It had worked for Mowgli, after all.) And so Vince had got very, very good at noticing little things and imitating their customs and body language and behaviors and echoing every grunt or squeal or squawk. In time, Vince had learned how to speak fluently with every animal and understand what they said in return, which led to many delightful conversations and also helped in getting him out of the occasional sticky situation. He also became a master in the art of How to Look Like You Belong.
The animals even came to Vince with their problems and trusted Vince to come to their aid when it was needed, as he spoke their languages and understood their needs better than any other human could, a fact that gave Vince a curious, warm, nearly glowing sensation somewhere beneath his breastbone. It was nice to be responsible for something, to feel worthy of being trusted with something important.
The problem, though, was that no matter how expert he got at acting and talking like his animal friends, and no matter how much they trusted him and how helpful he was and how close and friendly he got, they never, ever seemed to forget that he wasn’t really one of them. They liked him and even loved him, in their way, but the mother creatures always had to eventually explain to him that he couldn’t come with them, couldn’t join them and run away with him and live as one of them, because he simply didn’t belong there and this was a place where he could not go. They had invariably been very gentle and kind about it, but that had never made the rejection sting less, and despite their assurances that he would one day find the place where he, Vince, belonged, he began to wonder, secretly, if maybe there just wasn’t a place for him. Maybe some creatures didn’t belong anywhere or with anybody. Maybe he was one of them. It wasn’t a good thought, so when he felt it welling up inside, Vince made it a point to fill his head so full of happy things that there was no room in it for thoughts and feelings of any other kind.
When Bryan had sent Vince off to London, that rejection had stung, too, but Vince had at least been able to console himself with the notion that he was at long last going to a place filled with people-and surely he’d be bound to find his herd in a place like that! From everything he’d heard, London was brimming with eccentric characters, and they’d probably be waiting to meet Vince with open arms, kind of like that story about the swans-or was it ducklings? Maybe it was loons; Vince hadn’t been paying that much attention to the details. The point was: they’d be waiting for him, and he was finally going to the place where he belonged. That was the way these kinds of stories worked. A family would probably even adopt him and all, and how cool would that be?
The reality had proved to be much more complicated, of course; it was sufficient to say that there had been no family-of either the literal or figurative sort-waiting for Vince with open arms. There were loads of people, so many more people than even he could have imagined, but they were all so busy and brusque; they didn’t have time to explain the things that apparently everybody outside the jungle just naturally knew, but that nobody had ever bothered to tell Vince. It wasn’t that they were mean (although some of them were, for no reason that Vince could understand, and that was a nasty shock), but they just didn’t especially care, because most of them already had their own families and herds. He didn’t belong to or with any of them; they didn’t look at him and see anything worth special notice. They certainly didn’t seem to particularly think that there had been a small, Vince-shaped hole in their lives. And although Vince figured out quickly that he could use the same skills he’d learned in the jungle to figure out how to give people what they wanted and expected to see and hear, so that they’d like you, he also discovered that, as with the animals, that would only work up to a point. When it came right down to it, the different groups he met always seemed to know, deep down, that he wasn’t really one of them. They were often happy to listen to his stories in the schoolyard, but only when he pretended they were really jokes. Things got a bit strange and uncomfortable otherwise; he could always see it in their eyes and hear it in the snickers and whispers that sometimes followed in his wake, and that was how Vince learned the difference between being special and being considered just plain weird.
And then Vince met Howard.
Howard had not obviously looked, on the surface, like he and Vince could have any point of connection at all, aside from both being young and at the same school and that sort of thing. He’d been quiet and shifty and small eyed and awkward, all covered in corduroy and cardigans and sensible shoes and earth tones (somehow the worst offense of the lot), the sort of boy who knew all the rules and reminded others of them, and, when he did speak, talked with a lofty sense of reproach for his fellow students and more than a faint air of the know-it-all. Howard and Vince didn’t seem like they ought to be able to fit together at all; they were barely even the same species.
And yet. There was something different in Howard’s small eyes, a thing that felt just a little bit like recognition. Howard didn’t laugh at Vince when Vince forgot to pretend that his stories and ideas were just silly jokes. And when everybody else got bored with Vince and contracted to their specific little groups and left him behind, Howard lingered. Howard didn’t have a herd, in the same way that Vince didn’t have a herd. Howard was considered weird, just as Vince was considered weird, albeit in a slightly different way.
Maybe, Vince thought, they could be weird together. Maybe that was what families and herds were all really about, anyway. Besides, their schoolmates could snicker all they wanted, but he rather liked that Howard knew all the rules, because Vince didn’t know any of them at all, and when he explained them to Vince he never acted like Vince was stupid for not knowing them in the first place. And unlike the other people Vince met, Howard didn’t seem to need Vince to act like him in order for Vince to be worth his interest and attention-which was just as well, really, because Vince didn’t think he’d ever be able to stick jazz and earth tones and-shudder-sensible shoes. No matter what group Vince was emulating on any given day, Howard never seemed to mind or care, aside from a bit of teasing about his clothes; it seemed enough for Howard that Vince just… was.
And that thought gave Vince another warm, glowing sensation in his chest, only warmer and deeper and safer and more radiant than he’d ever felt it before, until it came beaming out in his smile and his eyes and the laughter bubbling out of him, and he felt sometimes, being with Howard when Howard was being particularly Howardy, like he might just explode with the sheer pleasure and joy of it, of knowing that this was where he belonged and there was no other place on earth that he’d rather be.
Vince isn’t sure whether Howard is what people mean, when they ask him about his family, but he is sure that he and Howard (and now Naboo and Bollo) are a herd, that he is where he’s meant to be and with the people he’s meant to be with. It turned out that Howard had had a small, Vince-shaped hole in his life, and that had been fortunate-because without ever really knowing it, Vince had been going around with a big, Howard-shaped hole in his life, too. And it doesn’t really matter if there’s another family out there that Vince can’t remember and has never found, because he’s already got a brilliant family, and however different they look from each other, they know that they’re really the same.
And Vince can’t imagine needing anybody else, really.
MY RESPONSE
So, NOT QUITE A YEAR LATER, here I am with all these fucking feels that you wrote me for my birthday, you beautiful human. There is so much about this to love. SO MUCH. LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT IT.
Howard Moon and Childhood
You killed me right off with Howard could see that what others might misunderstand as cold or indifferent was anything but…, that whole paragraph. Both because Howard isloved and knows it, but also because you still see that ache of- it would be nice, maybe, sometimes. He doesn’t need the words, doesn’t need effusive praise or warm parental hugs, but that doesn’t mean he can’t sometimes want it. And it explains a lot about adult Howard’s tendency to save those words for big terrifying/climactic/important moments.
(And indeed, the little ways in which he cares for Vince, which his mind tries its best not to think about).
You gave me a little ache in my chest at the unhappinesses he suffered were mostly of the common and ugly sort, just because… that is an amazing turn of phrase, and I know precisely what you mean by it. There is a sort of petty ugliness to those sorts of unhappiness, especially when you’re of a romantic mindset like Howard. And just- knowing all the rules there are to know, but unable to get a handle on the strange secret art of knowing how to relate to people or make them comfortable in his presence. And the bitter lonely confusion of wanting friends, but also not wanting to settle for people who merely tolerate him, being the friend who’s the butt of the rest of the group’s laughter. It’s quite easy to see how that kind of loneliness would turn into Howard’s particular brand of snobbishness. That he’s destined for ~better things, his understanding is just deeper than everyone around him, and one day he’ll find people who understand him and are really deserving of his company. Even if that started as a lonely kid daydreaming and hiding self-insert adventures in his sock drawer. (Oh, Howard, baby).
AND AND AND, you know how much I love the weird mutability of memory in the Boosh- maybe it happened all those ways? Somehow. But neither of them can quite remember, and it’s whatever version they both remember most vehemently that must be true. That’s just how that works. And small, forlorn, vulnerable, lonely Vince surely isn’t a thing that could have been, they’ve both agreed on that. And so indeed forgetting that there had been a time before Vince. His memory is often happy to make that so; there’s something both heartclenchy and slightly creepy about that, and I love it.
And oh my god, I love how the whole little Stationery Village vignette works as a microcosm of Vince’s impact on Howard’s life. That he doesn’t really change anything as such, he just introduces to Howard the capacity to see them differently. The magic was already there, Vince’s presence and outlook just helps Howard see it too. It still is a collection of useful tools (and indeed a harbinger of impending neuroticism and coping methods, oh, Howard), but it’s also a whole little world full of its own office-supply people living their own little lives.
And, fff, “Do you see it?” Vince asked into the silence, something suddenly a bit pinched and intense in his face, beyond his smile.- EVEN THOUGH Howard can’t really pick up on what’s under that, it’s still there.
And just- BOTH OF THEM HAVING ADVENTURES TOGETHER BECAUSE THAT’S HOW IT OUGHT TO BE, and them being truthfully better than any of the Boys Own silliness Howard had imagined for himself.
Vince Noir and Family
What was I thinking asking for this? WHAT WAS I THINKING, because right away you just broke my heart and continued to break it, and ohgod tiny Vince halp
Just- Vince makes it a point not to have room in his head for pondering such things, when he can help it; it tends to lead to wrinkles and sadness, and he likes to avoid both when possible.
and As much as he enjoys styling himself as Mother Nature’s Son and a Starry Child of the Universe, he knows that he didn’t really grow from a tree in the deepest jungle or simply spring fully-formed into existence. He must have come from somewhere. But the riddle of his existence isn’t one he’s all that sure he’d really like the answer to, so he’ll leave that be. NOT KNOWING IF HE’S REALLY SURE HE EVEN WANTS THE ANSWER TO THAT, because the answer might just be too awful, that he was unloved, unwanted, abandoned, that his biological parents are dead (and would he even care if they were? Should he? Is he supposed to have feelings about people he only theoretically supposes to exist?), something sordid and awful and lonely.
*falls over* I JUST WANT TO HOLD TINY VINCE FOREVER AND EVER OH GOD.
Gahhhhhh, and then just- that his childhood had been fun, it had, and he loved all the animals and appreciated the things they taught him, only, only, only [Bryan] was brilliant but he wasn’t really much for warm hugs or games of footie or listening to heartfelt confessions or looking through Vince’s paintings and saying encouraging things or any of that sort of thing. The difference between having a group and having a family, and feeling that ache, especially when looking at the animals with their families, other people like them.
You capture with exquisite perfection the weird, twisty ache of Vince simultaneously feeling proud and warmed and happy at how trusted and loved he is by the animals- that he can be for them something on-one else can be, that he’s appreciated and cared for- with the knowledge that that is never really enough. There’s still always that line, and he’s always going to be on the other side of it no-matter how hard he tries. And feeling ungrateful for feeling it, but he can’t help it. The idea that his interest in and skill at trying on different looks, different personas, came from a childhood of trying desperately to belong, noticing all the little things that no-one who was really an outsider would notice, would they? makes… so much sense and is SO AWFUL GOD. Little baby Vince just wanting a herd of his own. And I can just imagine him trying to follow a family of elephants, or chimps, or whatever, make it all casual-like, like he’s supposed to be there, hoping that no-one will notice and shoo him back.
And then, augh, consoling himself from the sting of rejection when Bryan sends him off to school that London is*bound to be full of people- human people like him, eccentric characters, he’ll surely find his herd there. And his confusion and hurt at all the rules he suddenly doesn’t know, at the inexplicable meanness of some people, that human people aren’t magically different from animals just ‘cos they have the same shape as Vince, that they all already have their own groups, constructed from confusingly artificial differences, and that was how Vince learned the difference between being special and being considered just plain weird. And that is a painful thing to learn. I realise I am just basically quoting this whole section back to you, but seriously you are killing me so hard. SO HARD.
BUT THEN HOWARD SHOWS UP. And I love just… Well, first off, your initial description of Howard is genius; I love how it provides an outside perspective of precisely the things you were describing in the first section. And how all of that indicates someone that should have nothing in common with Vince at all, except- except he lingers. And I know precisely that kind of awkward schoolkid lingering, when you’re not friends with someone yet, but you… think you’d like to be, because you haven’t got anyone else, to retreat to. And Vince picking up on that and going … maybe? All hopeful faintly breathless epiphany.
I have so much love for Vince appreciating Howard’s know-it-all, rule-mongering tendencies, the things that Howard gets stick for from other kids, because Vince doesn’tknow most of that. And in turn, Howard not needing Vince to be anything other than Vince, and the revelation of that. And your description of the particular sort of happiness that induces in Vince! It’s so sensual and physical, as Vince’s understanding of his own emotions often is, and I can just feel it. That helpless beaming and laughter from just being so happy, and the fact that Howard’s acceptance of him at his weirdest makes him feel so desperately fond of Howard when he, too, is being particularly concentratedly Howardy.
And then the entire last paragraph happened, and I cried. Actual tears. Because found family, and it’s so good oh god. And Vince finally knowing that even if he did have another family somewhere, before the jungle, that doesn’t matter, because this is his herd, his people, and he finally knows what it feels like not to have to search for that. You have emotionally exhausted me with how good and true this whole section is.