#a kind of fandom joke that he has an infatuation with architecture

[undeadboyfriendsupportgroup]

Imo, Tim's interest in Smirke is more of a trauma thing than him actually liking his work. Even the wiki goes on to say Tim is a "fan" but like

He says this in 104 and it is essentially saying that Tim got into Smirke AFTER the event. Tim looked into a lot of things after Danny because he wanted to know as much as possible about it and, in my opinion, it clearly comes out of a place of being traumatized

What it reminds me most of, though, is a scene in "Nope". For anyone who hasn't seen it (you should it's great I love it), this guy, Ricky Park, was on a TV show that had a chimp as part of the cast. After a loud noise goes off, the chimp goes insane and ends up killing a bunch of the cast members. Park ends up hiding under a table and right before the police arrive at the scene, he and Gordy (the chimp) touch hands before Gordy is killed. (The scene. Trigger warning for blood and a bit of gore)

When we see Park years later, he has a collection of memorabilia from the show and viewers realize that his fascination with the event comes from a place of trauma.

Tim's situation is similar, I think, with Smirke only being a component of his overall interest in this event that ruined his life.

So yeah, I don't think Tim is genuinely interested in the architecture, I think he is just traumatized and trying to figure out the whole fears thing ✌️ I think the reason we see him act so light-hearted about it is because well, it's Tim, and he is huge on masking/avoiding his issues