#anyway this is the arc *I* see when i read tintin as a whole

[incomingalbatross]

All right, here’s my personal timeline of Tintin Development, largely organized by volume.

Volume 1: Boy Reporter Travels World With Dog! No visible home or mention of home, serial adventures that result in no permanent change to his life.

Volume 2: Boy Reporter & Dog Have More Adventures! This time they always start from and end at home base (Labrador Road, Brussels), and though we’re not given much reason to become attached it does make Tintin a little more grounded. Similarly, we now have continuing bit characters--they’re more colleagues than friends (and more comedy than either), but they are a visibly recurring presence in Tintin’s life.

Volume 3: The Boy Reporter Gets a Friend?? The first two books look a lot like Volume 2, but Captain Haddock is here and preparing to break the “friendship of circumstance” mold--as seen in the third book, where the adventure is started by their friendship instead of the other way around. Tintin is going out of his way to socialize with someone?? Tintin and Captain Haddock apparently REGULARLY HANG OUT?? UNPRECEDENTED.

Volume 4: Boy Reporter’s Friend Acquires More Friends--look, Captain Haddock has the Adopting Instinct. That’s just a fact. Admitting that Professor Calculus gets some of the credit for buying Marlinspike, the fact remains that the Captain ended up permanently adding to his surrogate family a man he’d only met earlier that book. (And who he frequently couldn’t stand.) The only reason Calculus is a bigger presence in Tintin’s life than, say, Alembick is because Captain Haddock made them both His People. The three of them spend this volume A) getting the Captain a home big enough to hold the whole cast and B) generally Being Important To Each Other.

Volume 5: Boy Reporter Functions Within A Community. Here the stories are a little less easy for me to lump together, but Land of Black Gold is BRIMMING with Tintin’s continuing connections--Captain Haddock having to call himself out of the story just emphasizes that A) they’re close enough that his first move on being drafted is to let Tintin know and B) that Herge had to ship him out in the first few pages to make Solo Tintin at all believable--and, of course, the premise of the Moon books is just “if one of us is leaving the planet I guess we’re all leaving the planet.” Beautiful.

Volume 6: Boy Reporter Now Officially Adopted. This one opens with Tintin living at Marlinspike, no explanation, and I love it. He’s part of a household now. Each story here opens with the Marlinspike Family being domestic, until Adventure shows up--and then Tintin and Captain Haddock go through it together.

Tintin in Tibet, though, really deserves its own point here. It has Tintin reconnecting with a Volume 1 friend, bringing the changes in his life into stark relief; it has him pulling Captain Haddock into danger more blatantly than any other story, also emphasizing the bonds he has now; and it’s one of the bleakest stories out there, with Tintin in a darker place and everyone almost dying repeatedly.

It’s ALSO the last time we see Tintin running into danger of his own initiative...

Volume 7: Boy Reporter Has A Home (And Would Like To Keep It, Thank You). While Tintin still copes well with whatever situation he finds himself in, of course, these stories are remarkable because he really does have to find himself in trouble--he’s not looking for it at all. Plots range from “Everybody Stays Home” to “It Was Supposed To Be A Normal Plane Flight” to “Tintin Would REALLY LIKE Everybody To Stay Home”. And I think looking at that in relation to Tintin in Tibet is FASCINATING. He’s had a priority shift...and it makes sense, honestly. It’s harder to run headlong into danger when you know what you’re risking, huh?

In summary: Boy Reporter Has Adventures, Forms Real Relationships, And Finds Himself Maturing In Ways He Didn’t Know He Needed To.

(Also I very much love Captain Haddock.)

[thelreads]

And that’s it for today. I was made a fool today, and I shall not let this offense slide, Horikoshi shall know it soon enough...

Well, it was a nice chapter, not gonna lie. They laid the groundwork for A LOT of stuff to happen, so I can already see why there’s so many readers trying to get me to read the next arc before getting into Vigilantes.

Oh boy, and to think that Monoma’s quirk actually was working correctly... I still like my theory, but I can see it was way too convoluted, when the answer was simple and effective. Like a reader sent, “Monoma steals a car, but the tank is empty”.

Damn, I was expecting THE SUN TO RISE AGAIN MOTHERFUCKERS, but I guess its not the time yet... Which means that there’s definitely a villain that tintin would be useful against, and that’s why we can’t have him back yet. Crap. Well, at least we got Eri, and she’s getting better at smiling, so I’ll say this operation was an absolute success, 99% of it worked out in the end.

Anyway, that’s it for today, and I’m sorry that I won’t finish this joke, but I had classes the whole day long, and that was after I spent the whole night writing my WIP, so excuse me, but I’m just going t