the state of me; also, Tintin

[kindkit]

There are some difficult emotional things going on in my life right now. I'll still be around and talking about fandom, because fandom is a happiness and a comfort for me. But I may be a bit flaky for a while. Your patience is appreciated if I, for example, fail to answer your comment promptly (or at all). I don't plan on that, because I want to

Comments

[kindkit]

the idea that Haddock has taken the whisky aboard as a (bad idea) means of coping with how he's starting to feel about Tintin

Yeah. I think Haddock would probably have taken the whisky aboard anyway, but the difficult emotional situation he's in with Tintin (according to my head canon, which is not unrelated to yours) provides an extra level of self-justification. He's unhappy, frustrated, probably a bit ashamed of himself for being in love with a deeply innocent teenage boy, and at the same time worried that his love isn't and never will be returned in the same way. It could drive a sterner man than Haddock to drink!

Tintin cracks because Haddock has come so close to leaving him forever

And that, in my head, is Tintin's first hint that his feelings for Haddock are more complicated and intense than any friendship he's had before. The hint becomes an anvil later when Haddock almost dies.

Ooh, thanks for the info about the radio shows! Miraculously, shortly after you mentioned them they fell off the back of a lorry and into my lap, and now I'm looking forward to listening to them.

[halotolerant]

deeply innocent teenage boy
I agree absolutely that Tintin is sexually innocent, and emotionally quite - I don't want to say immature, but inexperienced, maybe? I think before meeting Haddock Tintin thought people were either good and heroic and therefore one liked them, or black-hat evil and one thwarted them. I think Haddock shows him that some people manage a mixture of good and less-good actions, and battle personal demons as well as Great Big External Issues. At the same time, though, he's in some ways tremendously precocious, and I reckon matured in some ways faster than the rest of him could keep up with. There's no one place in text I can point to to support this, but my head canon is that Tintin is oblivious to sexual undertones when Haddock first meets him, and, yeah, I bet Haddock would feel bad about changing that, but Haddock can also protect him from predators he doesn't even recognise on his radar.

They have a weird little intro to each show with Tintin typing a 'report' and then (for some reason) a little rhyming couplet (Tintin's preferred journalist style is apparently poetry...) but thereafter they're fab, and I particularly love the emotion the actor playing Tintin puts into the interactions with Haddock *g*

[kindkit]

Tintin's very precociously self-sufficient, but in a way that I think may have arrested his emotional development. As you say, he's got some childlike reactions and thought patterns. It's as though at a very young age he decided to be a knight in shining armor, and he's clung to that past the point where most people lose it because their own personal lives become more complex and attention-demanding. There might be a level of unconscious self-defense happening--I find the backstory you created, with Tintin's mother telling him that if he cries she doesn't want him around, to be a compelling explanation for why he's made himself into the stoic hero. And until Haddock, no one's ever stuck around long enough that Tintin couldn't keep being the hero for them, if that makes sense. No one until Haddock has ever made things complicated.

my head canon is that Tintin is oblivious to sexual undertones when Haddock first meets him

*nods* My own developing head-canon is that Tintin didn't quite connect his own sexual urges with other people or with emotions; mostly he dismissed his sexual feelings as unimportant distractions, and it takes him a long time to understand that what he feels for Haddock has a sexual component. That lack of emotional connection may have protected him from sexual abuse (when he was a young boy--I'm thinking he'd somehow been living on his own from the time he was fourteen or so--unprotected among adults, there must have been someone who tried to take advantage) because no one was able to twist and exploit his affection.