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

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[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.