We Know Tintin Is a Reckless Bastard, but Why Is He Like That?
Writing shit because my computer is being fixed.
So, I wanted to talk about a topic that isn't being discussed enough by the Tintin (and haddotin) fandom: Tintin's self-destructive behaviour.
This (young) man works as a reporter and lives in a flat in which he barely stays because he's always busy travelling around the world, following any kind of danger that occurs as if he was willingly submitting to his danger kink.
We had multiple occasions to learn about the fact that he's totally reckless and gets shot at, shots back, gets into fights, gets kidnapped, threatened and so on, only to then get out of the situation (whatever it is) nonchalantly.
All the fans seems to agree on the fact that he's probably been like this since he was a child: he was probably the type of kid to come hom with skinned knees and bloody knuckles after beating the shit out of kids who made fun of him for his red hair (just to bring a scenario into this). He is athletic and knows how to move on roofs, ships, planes and around dangerous people, meaning that he for sure has put himself into so many situations to basically being able to improvise the right behaviour at the right moment.
He's also able to do shit like this:
So, where does all of this come from?
My first guess, as a psychology student that can't help but analysing any character at this point, was that growing up he barely had something certain in his life.
I don't necessarily mean that his family was poor (you're free to think about it the way you want, but I personally Headcanon Tintin's family as belonging in the middle class of society), but what I had in mind was something uncertain coming from the emotional sphere of a family: he might come from a dysfunctional family in which either the parents kept fighting on a regular basis, or the love of his parents towards him was measured basing on his success and worth at their eyes (or also both scenarios); Tintin is a person that values his worth basing on his success or failure a lot, and it's a taught behaviour.
(This can be seen in the scene of Haddock's emotional speech).
Also, before he met Haddock he went on adventures with Milou and Milou only (Snowy); he's always had friends, but has never established a strong relationship with them: he's afraid of rejection and avoids it by not establishing strong connections with other human beings; his adventures are being used as a way to forget the fact that he's alone and that everyone will leave him in the end.
So does all of the danger that occurs to him: danger gives adrenaline to the body, which prevents the brain from thinking about anything that's not what is happening at the moment.
Basically, if Haddock has whiskey, Tintin has danger.
In a very dark view of the entire issue, danger can be seen as a way of seeking indirect suicide: every sane person with a bit of self-preservation instinct would stay away from all of those problems, but Tintin is a person that looks for self-destruction but just can't destroy himself with his own hands. He needs an external help.
Then, it came WWI (following Headcanons he should have been ten or something when war started).
Together with the dysfunctional family theory, war brought Tintin into a state of mind in which he needs to be cool in any situation otherwise he loses (or dies). This is the main reason why he's unable to lose his shit in front of danger or problems, because one wrong move or one sign of weakness by himself and he has lost.
It's something that in dysfunctional families occurs pretty often (anything can be used against you) and war isn't soft with humans.
He's also probably very uncomfortable with his own emotions as well; he shows anger, irritation and curiousity, but we've rarely seen him scared or in panic. He looks like he always knows how to solve the situation. He probably has lots of fears and phobias we know nothing about (I'll advance an Headcanon about a fear of dark, sudden sounds and occasionally fire) because he bottles everything up.
Tintin for sure has attachment issues and anxiety, because the only very close friends he has are Milou, Haddock and Chang (with Dupont and Dupond he's got a formal relationship more than anything else).
But why do these friendships work for him?
Milou: he's a dog and Tintin doesn't need to worry about his judgement;
Haddock: Tintin might have been worried about being abandoned after their first adventure together, but as Haddock kept accompanying him, he grew less and less worried about it;
Chang: they see eachother rarely and Tintin doesn't really have to worry about his judgement.
I forgot the point of this post.
In general, Tintin is pretty reckless due to trying to escape the belief that everyone will leave him behind at some point, or would stop loving him if he makes mistakes (which brought him to always try and be the best in every situation).
But he's also very curious: you can literally see his eyes light up with wonder when he learns about something new, and his curiosity is what gets him in all of those situations as well (for example, he learns about the Unicorn because he's curious about it).
That's it, I think. That's it.
