#girlonlineeeee

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

Hehe Vyvyan for the honest opinion game

- GirlOnlineeeee :)

Hello! An excellent choice of character!

I love Vyvyan. I should post about him more. When I first got into TYO, he and Rick were both competing for favourite character with me (and, for the record, Vyvyan is a VERY close second).

So, why do I love him? Let's get the obvious out of the way first: he's played by Ade Edmondson, the absolute legend. His overall look makes him an utterly iconic Britcom character (this includes the Scrunch™), as well as his entrance to the show in Demolition. Plus, I really love the voice Ade gives him and it makes me think that the man has super strength vocal chords or something because that is A LOT of shouting. 😂

What makes Vyvyan great is how he is both sadistically violent but with childlike curiosity. He also, as Rik pointed out in an interview, puts the other characters in their place when they're moping and complaining, so the audience kinda sides with him. Vyvyan just... There is virtually nothing he sees as "too far".

He'll swing a wrecking ball through the kitchen to try and set off an atom bomb; he'll single handedly attempt to demolish a house in one evening; he'll rig a bomb up to the front doorbell; he'll detach windows just to smash over people's heads; he'll attack at close quarters with a howitzer; he will, with his bare hands, push the front of a house inwards just to get the video player closer to the plug socket; he'll rig someone's bed to saw them in half when they lie on it; he'll eat a TV and a dead rat and drink an untested potion; he'll stick a leg to the bonnet of his car; he'll blow up the competition on University Challenge; and, most importantly, he will drive a double decker bus off a cliff. There is literally a page on the TYO wiki listing his attacks.

The character in so many other shows would be a villain, someone to fear, some kind of feral beast with no humanity whatsoever... But this is The Young Ones, a world of surrealism, and Vyvyan Basterd continues to attract our adoration. Have you seen that grin at wanton destruction? He relishes in it! He can be misanthropic and likeable.

And you know, I don't believe he is completely one dimensional. I mean, all of them are in essence, since they're cartoonish and represent stereotypes, but even when we have Vyvyan saying he doesn't care about life or himself in one scene... A few scenes later he's sobbing, heartbroken, over the loss of his car and hamster. So maybe he does have a limit. And, maybe then, it's good that he exists in a world where violent outbursts largely have no consequences. Btw him crying that one time is my justification for giving him emotional depth in fics.

Ultimately, I think Vyvyan is almost entirely what we see on the surface. He wasn't designed to be a secretive character in the way Rick and Mike both are (albeit in different ways and for different reasons) or to be a sensitive character like Neil (or Rick, again). Apart from his outburst about The Good Life (typically Ben Elton, I trust you'll agree), he isn't really a political character, despite being a punk. I realise that's maybe a bit of a controversial thing to say and I don't mean that the idea of having a punk on a show wasn't political, more that Vyvyan himself doesn't seem a massively political person. He and his punk friends just like destruction and boasting about kissing girls. Vyvyan even says in Interesting that he'd really like to join the police. 😂

There is one area where I think canon gives us something beneath his surface to tug at and that is his intelligence. Now Vyvyan, like all of them at different points, can be dumb as fuck. He's also got that childish element to him like Rick does. However, he's shown occasionally to be quick witted with numbers (just don't ask him to tell the time) and when he starts explaining to Neil the process of vomiting it's clear he has paid attention at least somewhat to his course. He's also invented mad scientist level potions and pepped up a vacuum cleaner to such power that it sucked up a hippie. In one sense Vyvyan being smart is a contradiction, but it's not such a contradiction once you remember that he is easily bored and doesn't care about much.

The fact he's gotten into university on a medical course (famously difficult to get on to), albeit at Scumbag College, does say something about him, I think. He isn't like Rick or Neil, who come from upper middle class backgrounds and for whom university in the 1980s wasn't such an outlandish goal - Vyvyan's working class, never knew his father and hadn't seen his mother since before teenagehood when he met her again in Boring. He comes from what New Right sociologists (who are gits, by the way) dubbed "the underclass" so Vyvyan being a university student says a bloody lot about him. Impressive, no?

I don't actually think he's particularly angry either, though I understand why anger is usually tied to him. It's not that he doesn't ever get angry, it's just that when he's attacking things or people it's usually because he's bored or he's getting pleasure out of winding (most often) Rick up. He's not even as short tempered as Rick, though they perhaps equal each other in terms of impatience. I can see how he would be intimidating to average people in TYO (if average people exist in TYO) so I think intimidation might be mistaken for anger. And he is intimidating... If you apply the logic of our world to him... But I for one am not intimated by this brilliant madman. I'd much rather join in his stream of chaos, despite being a rather shy and quiet person myself.

That's what fictional characters do to us. 😂

Anyway, after this long ramble, some take aways: Vyvyan - would kiss, looks cool, would like to blow something up with him.

Thanks for the ask!

#asks #peachmilkkktea #the young ones #tyo #vyvyan basterd #me rambling

[historicalsnail]

1 for cheeky questions!

-Girlonlineeeee

1. First celebrity crush

I already answered this one but I'll tell you my second celebrity crush because it's related: Hugh Laurie, but when he's Bertie Wooster from Jeeves and Wooster.

And I'm not in my 60's, that show was already super old when I watched it. But they got to me, with their outfits and their being tall and handsome.

#asks

[moonahstone]

Just out of curiosity, what day did you go to see Wicked in London?..

-Girlonlineeeee

Saturday! It was absolutely brilliant and would definitely recommend to people. Is it safe to assume you also went to see Wicked recently?

[neil-neil-orange-peel]

Vyvyan 6 + 18! (girlonlineeeee is my side blog btw)

Hello! I recognise you from my notifications. 😊 Thank you for asking me about my favourite mad lad™. ❤️

6 - Favourite thing this character has said?

That's so tricky! I have such a hard time choosing favourite lines because there are so many good ones! One of my top pics is: "Did I say kiss you on the bottom? Oh, beg your pardon. I meant to say, STICK A PICKAXE THROUGH YOUR SPINAL COLUMN!!!!!!!"

18 - What's something you associate this character with? E.g. a certain colour, object or scenery?

I think I subconsciously assign most characters I get to know at least one colour. Primarily, I associate orange with Vyvyan because of his hair and I guess also because orange is hot and firey and so is he. The secondary colour I associate with him is blue though, because of his denim yes I have two colours for all of the young ones okay they are my special gross boys 😂. I also associate stars with him now, as well as doc martens, hamsters, the song Wrecking Ball by Mikey Cyrus (for the meme value), babycham, the word "bumbag" specifically, face scrunches, punks in general (sorry, real life punks) and Ford Anglias.

Thanks for the ask! I don't talk about Vyv on here enough but I do love him. The bastard.

#asks #peachmilkkktea #the young ones #tyo #vyvyan basterd