So! Are we getting excited about Tintin yet?

[lobelia321]

Is Tintin going to be a huge fandom? Which it is already, of course, just like football always was and is but I mean the slashy part! The Peter Jackson/Andy Serkis left-over-from-lotrips fandom part!

Or is it just too canon?

The internet is rife with sites of the ilk 'Tintin -gay or nay?' and 'Tintin: était-il gay?' And that much is certainly clear to me: the man is boyish, a bachelor, has a dog, wears knickerbockers and is fit. Tintin has no female friends except the fag-haggish buxom Castafiore. He has a legion (legion!) of male friends, practically lives with Captain Haddock at Marlinspike, and braves the snowy wilds of Tibet because he had a dream that his young ward friend Chang was calling out to him tearfully. Plus there's that other young BoyFriend of his in Le temple au soleil.

Will the wonderful ligne claire wot i love translate into weirdo weta 3-D?



• Tintin/Haddock. This is too obvious for me and doesn't work psychologically. Haddock is too volatile; Tintin too maternal vis-à-vis Haddock. They are buddies. But still, I won't be averse to reading someone try their hand at making this pairing work. So bring it on, T/H shippers!



• Thompson/Thomson (in German: Schultze/Schulze; in the French [Belgian] original: Dupont/Dupond). These two appear to be twins, and are sometimes referred to as such by Tintin and others but look at their surnames! They are not related!! They are vain (forever brushing down their hats!), queer (forever dressing up in campy clothes!), besotted with each other and rife for their own fannish subculture.





• Tintin/Chang. Well, this one is so canon it's almost fanon-resistant.


• Tintin/Zorrino. This Aztec boy from Temple au soleil (English: Prisoners of the Sun; can't remember the German translation) Basically Tintin/Chang remixed. Although Zorrino looks, if anything, even younger than Chang. Our mild-mannered boy reporter is clearly into the very, very young. To wit: the somewhat illegal. Omg, we're going to have to warn for under-age sex.



• Professor Calculus/Castafiore. (Calculus = Bienlein in German and Tournesol in French. My favourite is Bienlein which means little bee. I adore that translation.) This is canon. And it's the het pairing of the crew.



• Nestor the butler/Haddock. Now this could provide some delicious moments... *has minor drooling moment*



• Rastapopoulos/Müller. What to say? Baddie plus baddie. Could be played for evol angst or for comedic laughs. Either way: promising.



• Allan/Haddock. Now this (for me) has definite angst potential. Haddock's early days at sea: drunk, under the sway of Allan. Allan, brutal, with a whip in his hand, with that whip-sharp profile of his. Yum. (Am I the only who finds that line drawn on Haddock's neck just irresistibly sexy? And the leather wristband around Allan's wrist?? *growl*


And what about Tintin's hand-wristwatch ensemble? *feels weak at knees"



• Wildcards that could go with 'fill in the blank'! Skut! (The Orlando of the pack. So handsome! So soulful! So Nordic!) Snowy! (Well, if there's octopus fic, there can be small white dog fic! And Snowy is so naughty. Milou in French; Struppi in German). General Alcazar (interesting political permutations possible here). Laszlo Carreidas (weedy, bad-tempered millionaire, anyone?).





So what are some other promising pairings? Does anyone have an OTP yet? I don't. Yet! ;-)

Comments

[ninamalfoy]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Tintin! Have you already seen the few stills that are already out? Amazing, that they are. Yis.

And heh, I agree with you re Tintin/Haddock. Not really a pairing I'd find believable, but YMMV. I'd favor Tintin/Chang more, to be honest. I think I did read some Tintin/Haddock (with some internal wincing), but Tintin/Chang? Have to look out for some. (And I suppose most of it will be in French. It happened to me with Spirou&Fantasio. *secretly curses her meagre French knowledge*)

But oooh, yes, Allan/Haddock - very interesting power dynamics... and Skut, oh yes. So cute. Damn, now I want to re-read all the Tintin comics. *pouts*

Just a wee little contribution to your pictures:

More proof, eh? *g*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahah. Not sure I know where that frame is from, nor if I ever read that in the English translation. Jolly good. And Spirou & Fantasio? Goodness. Boggleworthy. (I guess there must even be Smurfslash!!!!)

[ninamalfoy]

Me neither, but the translation is excellent, no? *g*

Hey, Spirou&Fantasio so totally makes sense. Hell, they can't do without the other one (that issue when Fantasio went crazy in some jungle? Best proof.), and they even live together! *grins* Also, no regular girlfriend for either of them, though Fantasio is more of a horndog... come on. ;-)

(Probably, yeah. I'm still slightly traumatized by the Ernie/Bert NC-17 fic I once read.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ernie/Bert NC-17 omgomgomg. Actually, I think I've heard about this fic... (possibly from you???) Is this story still around? May one have a link? *quivers in boots*

Whatever next? Winnie the Pooh / Piglet? o noes......

But Tintin! Tintin is totally adult!!! Sort of.

[ninamalfoy]

... I'm still too scarred from it to actively search it out, I think. Really. Don't ask it of me. *twitches*

After the Ernie/Bert one, I'm a fervent believer in Rule 34. Anything goes, really.

Well, yeah. Though there's that endless speculation about Tintin's age... ;-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I know, what is Tintin's age? Is he the 'boy' reporter? I think of him as in his twenties, a mature in-his-twenties.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Back when I read Tintin I had no idea of slash, but if I had, I would totally have slashed Thompson/Thomson.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I used to think of them as twins and all of a sudden it dawned on me that they are not! Twins! And even so, twins never stopped anyone slashing anyone, as far as I can tell... *g* Also I had no idea but going back now, they are so totally obvious. If just a tad wince-making.

[msilverstar]

I tried to read Tin-tin to my son and found it quite awfully racist and sexist, so I stopped.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I know. It is. But still. I love 'em. The Soviet one is totally racist but also fascinating in its own way because a document of its time and the first one Hergé did. The Congo one is fairly standard-issue imperial and it would be interesting to read more on Belgian colonial history to see the context in which it's embedded. By the time we get to the Blue Lotus, we have the standard Japanese with buck teeth and slitty eyes but we also get Chang, the Chinese boy, who is Tintin's one true love great friend. Also, in various books (Blue Lotus, Temple of the Sun), Tintin stands up for underdogs who are bullied on the basis of their race or ethnicity. If the racism bothers you, try 'Castafiore emerald' which is set in Belgium. It's one of my favourites but in a way, it lives off you already knowing the characters. Plus you lose the action-adventure-travelogue element of the ones that are set in far-off climes. I also love the drawing. I love the ligne claire which Hergé pioneered, and the love of detail. The first one I read when age 10, was 'Flight 417 to Sydney'; the racism is all but gone by then; and I realised the foreign elements are incredibly well researched. E.g. he has the plane fly low over some Indonesian sailboats, and the sailors jump up and curse the pilot in flawless Malaysian. I can't read Arabic but I'm sure the Arabic script that features in the Red Sea one and the other one set in the desert (title escapes me) is also accurate, as are all the languages.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

P.S. Re sexism: I can't find any as there are practically no women!!!

[ninamalfoy]

Yeah, the first issues (Congo, wtf) were quite so, I agree.

But by the time of 'Blue Lotus', Hergé changed his stance (also because he met a Chinese guy who then became a very good friend of his, and who is the one Chang is modelled after) and did incredible research to get everything right. The latter issues are way better - like lobelia321 also says. :-)

Sexist - yeah, I guess a bit of it stems probably from Hergé's bad luck with women (I think he modelled Bianca Castafiore after his first wife, and that's not a compliment... *g*). Also, back then it was quite rare to have a female hero of a series. Nowadays it's better, but back then? Not so much. I think Yoko Tsuno was the first female comic hero I stumbled over - she was created in the 50/60s, if I remember rightly. Maybe your son would like her? TvTropes has some info about her.

[msilverstar]

That makes sense, we got a compilation of the first issues and that's what I couldn't read, so I'm glad to know it got better.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

What redeems them and makes them fantastic is the beautiful art, the terrific adventure action, the sweet-naturedness but also toughness of Tintin, the whimsy of his dog Snowy, the motley cast of characters, the exotic locations, the whacky humour (Captain Haddock is an endless delight). I don't know; I love 'em. (But you're right: the early ones I never re-read, they are too cringe-worthy - Soviet Union, Congo, Tintin in America; also not yet so well-drawn but of course, interesting to buffs for that very reason).

Tintin in Tibet is fantastic. Start with that. And Red Sea Sharks is another classic.

[blithesea.livejournal.com]

Yay, Tintin! Tintin/Chang feels way too obvious and vanilla, I don't know if I could get behind that. Maybe if you wrote it. *waggles eyebrows*

I always liked Klep a lot! Who seems to be called Skut in English? What an odd name. I can't resist a man with an eyepatch, and I'm sure neither could Tintin!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Klep? Translations are so weird. And doesn't he have a rakish nose as well? And he's sort of reticent and sweet. And yes, eyepatch, *growl*.

[vasiliki.livejournal.com]

The English names sound totally foreign to me - the Greek translation I read as a child retained the original French (Belgian) names, so I'm used to them. I believe the Duponds are an item, and I like the idea of Tintin/Chang and Tintin/Skut. But I haven't read a single fic yet - do you have any good links?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I saw one fic but it wasn't fantastic and I didn't save the link. I think it was on AO3?? But there aren't very many fics at all yet!! Tabula rasa for us!!