crack_van | A Life Less Ordinary, by violetisblue (NC-17)

Fandom: THE MIGHTY BOOSH
Pairings: Howard/Vince
Length: 16 chapters/11 LJ posts/339K
Warnings: Angst, fluff, swearing, shagging.
Author on LJ:

violetisblue
Author Website: Sax and Violets
Why this must be read:

I volunteered to steer the Crack Van through the wild and woolly world of Boosh because of this story. Ironically, this has been the hardest fic to rec, because I despair of doing justice to this magnificent piece of writing. So, I’ll open with the author’s synopsis:

My own personal Howard/Vince origin story, starting well before season 1, continuing well past season 3 and concerning the true origins of crimping, the demise of the Zooniverse, the worst day of Howard’s life, estrangement, jealousy, passion, familial angst, jazz fusion, illegal shaman tricks, musical mind-melds, performance art and the perfect Booshian cup of tea. Amongst other subjects.

What the summary omits is the spot-on dialogue, witty crossover cameos and references (drawn from Nathan Barley, Hot Fuzz, Spaced, and others), playful meta elements (I am especially fond of the girls who become regulars at the Nabootique after they catch our heroes making out), and gorgeous descriptive passages. Above all, I am blown away by how

violetisblue has extrapolated from and expanded on canon to create a true transformative work: Howard and Vince are still the Jazz Giraffe and the Confuser that we know and love, inhabiting the same maddening, magical world, but with greater depth and heft. At one point, the author encapsulated the fic with the phrase “Mighty Boosh as directed by Mike Leigh,” and that, unlikely as that sounds, is totally accurate. Take this scene, in which Vince and Howard’s relationship wobbles into new territory:

Vince curls his legs up beneath him, looking quite comfortable just where he is. His gaze, studying Howard, isn't entirely unsympathetic. "This isn't easy for me either, you know," he tells him.

"Meaning what." Howard's voice is subdued, a deflated balloon.

Vince laughs quietly, shaking his head. "You like jazz. Your favorite color is brown. You watch ten-hour black-and-white films about Lutheran manatees with wooden flippers committing suicide, for fun. You spend days at a time arranging paper clips and collecting horrible vinyl by manky old geezers and you couldn't sell Bill Burroughs a rent boy and you dance between the beat and you wear socks with sandals and I think you still don't know who Vivienne Westwood is, I mean, Howard, what in the name of Christ am I doing here?"

"That's an excellent question, sir!" Howard resists the overwhelming urge to seize his own forearm in the mother of all Chinese burns. "Now you've kindly catalogued all my crimes and misdemeanors? Now I've told you about eighteen times running I want you gone? Why exactly are you still here, Vince? I'd love to hear it!"

Vince doesn't say anything, just fixes his eyes on Howard and looks him very slowly and deliberately up and down, down and up. Then gives him another insinuating little smile.

Howard shakes his head. "Right, now I really know you're joking."

Vince's fingers come together again, steeple, flat roof, flat roof, steeple. "I'm not, actually."

"Mm-hm." Howard gives him a jaundiced look. "So after, what, decades of not breathing a word about it, you're suddenly overtaken by mad lust for 'two hosepipes propping up a beanbag'?"

Vince sighs in exasperation. "You never can figure out when anyone's taking the piss, can you, Howard? It's threatening to become pathetic."

"Let me repeat myself, decades of--"

"Why don't you ever listen to me? I told you, I kept meaning to say something, it just slipped my mind. I've got a rich and varied life, it's like a big shimmery Karibbean Kola rainbow shining down everywhere I go, there's all these distractions and so stuff just gets lost in the shuffle. It's nothing personal." Vince lies back against the pillows, clearly enjoying the artful way this movement fans out his hair. "Besides, for a bit there I thought you really did just like girls. And you always go on and on about how you don't like people touching you--"

"Well, I don't, all right?"

Vince doesn't even dignify that with an answer.

"You're taking the piss right now," Howard declares, feeling increasingly like a murder suspect confronted with a fingerprint-smeared dagger. "Don't try and hide it, you are. Before you turn round and have a little cackle with your whole Shoreditch coven about the pathetic gullible jazz giraffe who's so hard up for a snog and a kind word that you've got yourself a handy charity case sitting right down the hall, whenever you don't fancy going out for a real--"

Howard's voice becomes more and more agitated, and he forces himself into silence. No cola rainbow, all that, just the rusty trickle from a worn-out tap. Vince studies his fingernails for a moment and Howard feels a sudden strange nostalgia for the cheap, bright shades of red, pink, sparkly blue and silver and burgundy that Vince would paint on in the schoolyard, then gnaw to shreds mere hours later. Always biting at hangnails too, back then his cuticles looked like they'd gone through a pencil sharpener. Bit them until they bled. Howard would scold him about it. Right now, he himself feels quite like he's been gnawed down to raw remnants of skin.

"You really don't understand anything at all," Vince says, without rancor.

Howard laughs again, a bitter edge to his voice. "Doesn't look that way, no."

"My friends wouldn't know anything about crimping," Vince continues on, with a somewhat stern expression, "except you spilled it to that Harold thingummy without asking me first. But I think they already forgot anyway." This thought clearly cheers him. "They don't know I can talk to animals. They don't know about my Charlie books. They don't know about the time we caught Bainbridge in the baboon enclosure with that…costume on, at least I hope it was a costume, and blackmailed him into a proper raise. They don't know about the Plan Pony or the Satsuma Wars or when I rescued Abanindra the Civet from those poachers or that sunset we saw on Xooberon or that day over in Stoke Bamford or us fighting about the Coconut Lodge or listening to the trees talk or who gave me this." He holds up the scarf's trailing edge. "That's all private. I thought you knew that. Why, do you go on and on about me to Lester, or--"

"Of course not," Howard answers, a bit snappish; shouldn't the answer to that be patently obvious? "None of that's his business."

"Yeah, well, exactly."

Howard shuffles his feet. He hadn't quite anticipated this ending with them both on exactly the same wavelength. It's an awkward feeling. "And what about Leroy?" he asks.

"What about him?"

"Well…er…all right, then."

"Yeah, all right."

"Okay."

"Good."

They both glare at each other for a moment. Then Vince's expression softens.

"Come over here, Howard," he says quietly. "Please."

Two things, the two only, all his life, that ever let him forget himself. The music. And. Neither of them can ever be adequately explained to anyone else. And someone, it seems, in fact the particular someone, understands that. Instinctively. And perhaps always did. Life surprises you, like that.

Howard walks over, sits down on the edge of the bed. Vince waits, patiently, until Howard turns to face him.

"I really don't know what I'm doing," Howard says, before he can stop himself. "You'll laugh at me."

"I laugh at you all the time anyway," Vince observes. "So this won't be any different."

"I'm always gonna be a tall Northern jazz freak with no dress sense."

Vince doesn't smile, but there's a flash of humor in his eyes. "There's an easy way round that last bit."

But what I love most about this story can be found in this passage from the final chapter, which makes me simultaneously tear up and grin like a fiend:

The moon speaks. Animals talk. Carpets fly. Magic is real. There are untold hidden treasures in the Arctic tundra, the far Eastern deserts, every neighboring galaxy, the next street down in Hoxton. There are amazing beings you never imagined could exist in the air, undersea (all right, let’s not dwell on those in particular, but still), in the forests, in the far reaches of space. There are monsters, and demons, and opportunity, around every corner. There is music in all that exists.

Whether you’re a longtime fan of the Mighty Boosh, or just venturing into the fandom, this is a must-read.

A Life Less Ordinary, on Livejournal and the author’s website.

That’s me done for the month. Thank you, mods, for letting me take the flying carpet out for a spin (er, just ignore the stains), and as for anyone who has been following my recs, I hope you’ve enjoyed the show.

A Life Less Ordinary, by violetisblue (NC-17)

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