#Moomin loves his children though

[floralstorms]

inspired by my sleeping cat

[fizzingwizard]

Something else I love about Moomins...

When I was a kid, like nine or ten years old, I had a book called What Kay Did. In the book, Katy is a selfish and mean young girl, who falls off a swing and I think breaks her back or something. As a result, she can't walk, and is cooped up inside and miserable. Little by little, she learns how her nasty behavior made her siblings afraid of her and not want to be with her, and now that she can't go out and amuse herself, she's really dependent on them for fun. So she learns to be nice. She becomes almost saintly, really.

Then, near the end of the book, the family finds out that there's a possibility that Katy will be able to walk again. And instead of being happy for her, the siblings say, "But she's become so nice since she got hurt. If she heals, will she be mean again?" Fortunately, Katy both relearns how to walk, and stays nice, so everyone's happy.

I hated this book. And it's not like, as a kid, I wasn't familiar with moralizing children's books where the main character learned a lesson and grew into a better person. I knew exactly what the book was doing. I just hated it. And I also knew that the siblings weren't meant to be interpreted as cold and indifferent for their lack of enthusiasm on hearing Katy might walk again. It's probably realistic even, if you've been bullied by someone before, to worry that a return to the circumstances where they bullied you would trigger it again. Still I hated them. I hated the book for telling me Katy had to behave a certain way for her to deserve to walk. Even though the way she used to be was truly awful. And I hated the book for requiring me to sympathize with the siblings, who had been treated badly by Katy, when what I really thought was that their resistance her recovery, however brief, was worse than anything she'd done to them in the past.

I hated being told what to think. I hated being preached at about right and wrong. And more than anything, I hated that Katy went through a character arc so dramatic that, in the end, she was completely unrecognizable as the girl in chapter one. That was meant to be good thing, because chapter one Katy was an asshole. But even as a kid, I didn't believe people change that much. Katy ended up more or less a saint. Always kind, always giving, always patient. Because of that, her relearning to walk came across like a reward for being a good person.

I haven't picked up this book again since I was a kid. So I may be forgetting important points. It's always possible I'd feel differently as an adult. That's my disclaimer, but i don't really think so. Because it's not like this kind of book was unusual. Another one comes to mind, the title of which I've forgotten, which was about a plate. In the world of plates, if you let just anyone eat off you, you wound up a dirty paper plate no one wanted. But if you waited and remained pure and clean, one day the King himself would change you into a beautiful porcelain plate and you'd be part of his household. It was a metaphor for Christianity and for virginity. It was more preachy BS.

Part of the reason I hated it was because I really took it to heart. I felt that I was horrible like Katy, and that unless I could achieve her saintliness, I would be always coming up short. Every time I committed a sin, even just in my head, I felt like I was back at square one. And I was doomed to fail, because of course it's impossible to be as good as Katy. We can change some. We can strive for self-improvement. But we'll be fighting our demons forever. (And in the book's defense, I believe I remember a scene where Katy admits she still struggles with her temperament later on, but she does her best not to let it affect her siblings.) With the plates, same thing: you can't live a totally pure and clean life. No one can. In Christianity, that's supposed to be a prerequisite for being human: we are all sinners, all of us. The goal is to try your best to live a righteous life and to be humble. But there's so much judgment and so many attacks on people who falter, and so much smug superiority among those who are convinced they are living righteously.

The Moomins books say something completely different. They were about self-acceptance. "All nice things are good for you," Moominmamma says. That would never fly in my Christian children's literature. And it's not like the Moomin book were anti-religious. (on a tangent: I wondered if what Moomintroll left under the fir tree, the thing that he didn't even tell Snufkin about, was meant to be him giving his soul to God on Christmas. It's impossible for me to tell whether I read that story right or if my deeply religious upbringing is screwing with me again.)

The Moomins don't say it's fine to be a bully or it's fine to do things that hurt you or others. But they don't go around breaking your back for being a bully or rejecting you eternally for not doing what you're told. Things happen in Moomins - characters make choices in step with their nature, and although they rub each other the wrong way sometimes, it always turns out that there was this or that reasoning and no one's really right or wrong. They're all just people. Moomins doesn't expect you to ever try to be perfect. And hiding your demons doesn't protect your family from them, rather it creates more distance between you and makes it harder to support each other and feel supported.

Characters in Moomins aren't so dynamic. But they also aren't completely stagnant. No character would undergoes the vast change that Katy did, or the complete transformation of the porcelain plate. Instead, characters are confronted with themselves again and again. And, again and again, they learn to accept themselves warts and all. A hemulen is a hemulen, a fillyonk is a fillyjonk and it's no use for them to try to be anything else, because that's what they are. Sometimes they're fed up with it and yearn to be anyone else. It's only natural, because no one is perfect, so we can always find bits of ourselves to hate. But inevitably they'll miss themselves. It's when characters listen to voices that tell them they're not enough, whether those voices are internal or external, that they become nasty and mean and mistreat each other.

There are no real bad guys in Moomins. We can only wonder what would happen if someone really mean were ever introduced. But the stories aren't missing such a character - they especially aren't missing the chance to chastise their young readers for their imperfections and urge them to be righteous because otherwise, hell awaits. I much prefer the take that everyone has their own personality and temperament and history, which informs their actions, and that most of the difficulties people have with each other come from not respecting that. You can't have a community by forcing everyone to be the same. A community is different people making the same choice to support each other's differences.

Actually, there is one bad guy in Moomins. It's the aunt in "The Invisible Child." Notably, she doesn't feature in the story. The story is about helping Ninny. About Ninny learning that she is important. That she doesn't deserve to be mistreated and degraded, her every misstep nitpicked. That her wants, her needs, her voice matters. Her cruel aunt doesn't matter at all. So she's not part of the story.

And, when Ninny rediscovers who she is, she's praised in this way: "She's even worse than Little My." I wonder how different Katy's story would have been, if she had Little My to knock some sense into her, without also sapping her of her individuality. I bet that plate never would have become porcelain either, but would have enjoyed life in the Moominhouse cupboard just as much.

[alwaysmanages]

What do you think Little my's relationships with the other characters are? Like her friends and the moominparents.

Hey there! Thanks for asking, and that's a good question because I know I don't put nearly enough attention towards the rest of the crew.

Ok so before I get into this I need to preface that while I'm basing my thoughts off of a variety of Moomin sources, it's not all gonna align with canon because I'm also mixing in a bunch of stuff that 6+ years of writing and headcanoning for this little lady has built that just feel good to me. But anyway, here goes.

Moomin Parents

As much as I love the Mymble's character, and how I'm sure she loves her children in her own way, being adopted by the Moomin parents (in the comics and Moominvalley) is by far the best thing that's ever happened to Little My. Through Moominmamma especially, she is given the love and attention that a girl like her needs to grow up healthy, and with enough space to level out that anger inside of her. In their care, she feels seen, safe, and secure in the family, and she knows they would never leave her behind. A little more on Moominpappa, I think it's interesting to give her a father figure when she never really had one before. She knows his stories are a load of bull, but will humor him because dangit does he spin a good tale. It's a bit hard to pin their relationship, because on one hand she can be a pest to Pappa, but I like to think she warms up to that silly old man and anytime he acts especially fatherly towards her, she feels a little warm inside (she probably thinks she's getting sick).

I think her relationship with Moominmamma and Moominpappa mean a lot more to her, personally, than her relationship with her biological mother. I don't think she feels resentment towards the Mymble, but she does realize that that wasn't a home where she could grow up in.

Moomintroll

That's her adoptive/foster brother right there. She took the role of annoying sister pretty quickly with him and it pisses him off so much at the beginning (I mean can you blame for having been an only child prior to her?). Gradually, I think he learns to appreciate her companionship over time as her harsh truths are more like the heavy blows of a hammer to a slab of metal on an anvil. Like the elder sister she is, Little My is another influence on Moomintroll's character. She loves him enough to give him a swift kick in the teeth when he needs it, but he's also the sibling she can bully a bit.

Snorkmaiden

Pulled mostly from MV and the 90s anime, I like to think they're good friends. I headcanon Little My to be on the aroace spectrum, but the Little Maiden/Snorkmyden ship can be cute and is probably one of the non-canon ships I find really sweet if done right. For the most part though, because Little My is more on the rougher side as opposed to Snorkmaiden's more gentle nature, I think they can have very funny interactions where occasionally they trade off on who gets to endure the other's antics. Maybe Snorkmaiden teaches My how to be a little more comfortable with a bit of femininity, and My teaches Snorkmaiden how to throw a strong left hook.

Sniff

Kind of going off of the 90s anime more because I really like their back and forth banter and I don't recall them having a relationship as strong in any other adaptation. I don't think their differences are as stark a contrast as Sniff and Snufkin, but I do feel like Little My watches Sniff get up to his get-rich-quick schemes and rolls her eyes. She thinks his endeavors are silly, but she's not above joining in if it sounds fun. At the end of the day, despite their differences and their bantering, they're still good friends who laugh at the same stupid jokes (even if that joke is each other). I'll also say that I really loved the episode in Tanoshii Mumin Ikka s2 where Sniff faces heartbreak and his friends are there to snap him out of it. My chasing him around just to get him to laugh and have fun again was so sweet.

Snufkin

Dunno if you wanted me to include him because I feel like I talk about their relationship more than anyone else, but he is part of her circle of friends so it'd feel weird to exclude him. I recognize that in canon, they're not as close in a sibling relationship as, say, My and Mymble Jr. or My and Moomintroll. In fact, according to The World of Moominvalley, they didn't even know they were siblings during Moominsummer Madness. I think the only time it's ever covered in canon is the slight mention in Moominpappa's Memoirs where Snufkin is coming to realize he's related to the Mymble and therefore Little My is his sister. It doesn't get deeper than that (and it's frustrating as hell). So Snufkin has gone most of his life not knowing he had a family, nevermind a big sister; meanwhile, Little My has so many siblings that finding another one in the wild probably doesn't faze her. My point is, I get why their relationship isn't explored much in canon adaptations, but that doesn't make it less important to me. Even though you could say they started out as siblings after Snufkin was born, you could also say they didn't consciously know each other until they were much older, and at that point they were friends before they were siblings. Being friends with your sibling is a very defining factor for Little My, because among her horde of siblings, how many can she say is someone she'll willingly hang out with and consider an equal? And for Snufkin, who's probably overwhelmed learning he not only has parents, but A PLETHORA of siblings, it's a relief to learn that he at least has one he gets along well with. So I'd like to think in post-learning they're related, there's a bit of awkwardness on Snufkin's part in figuring out how differently he's supposed to treat a sibling as opposed to a friend, but eventually they figure out that what they had was fine enough and learning that they're siblings is just another building block to an already solid relationship. She doesn't bully him as much as she does with Moomintroll, but occasionally they have their playful jabs and it's hilarious.

I love her relationships with the valley folk. They really shaped her into the well-rounded person she is and teach her what it's like to have a family that will love and support her. Because really, no matter the relation, they're all part of her found family.

[flowerbloom-arts]

Hi so I've had the idea of utilizing my Winter break to create a sketchy comic adaptation of a Moomin chapter, just to see if I could do it! Here are the description for each story I added to the poll, as to provide context of each story for you to make an informed decision in case you haven't read these:

Chapter 5 of Moominland Midwinter

Adapted as "Visitors in Winter" in the 90s series (though rather unsuccessfully in scope), it follows the story of Moomintroll trying to manage hosting some guests in the winter after the Lady of the Cold had disrupted their food supplies. In particular, a dog named Sorry-oo wants to join his supposed cousins - the wolves - after practicing his howling, a big Hemulen skiis in and annoys everyone, and a little Creep named Salome is the only one who wants to keep the Hemulen around. However, everyone including Moomintroll is too polite to ask the disruptive Hemulen to leave because of his jolly attitude, how will this fare?

The Hemulen Who Loved Silence (Tales From Moominvalley)

Adapted as "Snufkin and the Fairground" in the 2019 series (though shifts the focus to characters who weren't in the story), it follows a pushover of a Hemulen who worked as a ticket puncher for a noisy pleasure-ground, until a flood swept everything away and he decides to retreat to his grandmother's abandoned park, tired of his noisy life with his family. A group of children have recovered most of the pleasure-ground's attractions, however, and ask the Hemulen to rebuild it for them.

Secret of the Hattifatteners (Tales From Moominvalley)

Very partially adapted/referenced in the 2019 series, Moominpappa gets a case of the old wanderlust and stumbles upon a trio of Hattifatteners, he tries to make polite conversation with them but they don't respond. Undeterred, Moominpappa joins these Hattifatteners on their sailboat and finds out what these mysterious creatures get up to.

Cedric (Tales From Moominvalley)

Roundaboutly adapted as "Mrs. Fillyjonk's Last Hurrah" in the 2019 series, it follows Sniff as he is heartbroken and depressed over giving his prized stuffed animal, Cedric, to a brat due to a conviction of Moomintroll's. Sniff wanders outside and meets up with Snufkin, who tells him a story of his aunt who was on the brink of death and decided to fulfill her bucket list before she kicks the bucket.

[timomoe]

finny for the blorbo bingo? (not to be predictable but i love the way you draw him sm)

K let's go through this 1 by 1

1. I Don't Trust The Fandom With Him

Alright so idk how long the ppl reading this have been in the fandom but I have been here since 2012 or 2013. Back then, the fandom was absolutely horrendous to Finland. They had this awful habit where they would make him weak, fragile, and hyper femanine, which normally is fine, but they almost always did this because of SuFin. They only did this because of weird stereotypes about gay relationships. They perceived Sweden as the dominant partner and as the top, and Finland as the sub and bottom. This lead a lot of people to call Finland "the woman in the relationship," and this ticked me off so much at the time that not only did I throw canon Finland in the trash, but it very high key lead me to dislike SuFin as a general rule. It also lead me to heavily hc Sweden as submissive in general romantically, while Finland is dominant and outgoing in his relationships. It is getting a lot better nowadays, though, since most of the people in the fandom at that time were children with no idea what they were doing, and were probably just following in the footsteps of older fandom members at the time.

2. If I Could Rescue Him From the Narrative, I Would & I Know Him Better Than the Creator.

I feel this way with about 50% of Hetalia characters. I'm just so attached to the Finland I wrote up in my head. I do like canon Finland (so much that when I came out as trans, I looked at the name I hc him to have, Timo, and said "hey what if that was MY name instead?") and honestly, most of the issues I had with him were a result of the fandom, and - for once - not Himaruya. Finland is a good character, but at the same time... I really really love my gay, trans, burly, one-armed, profane, scar-covered sharpshooter that loves the Moomins and causing problems on purpose.

3. I Would Trust Him With My Drink

This one's pretty simple. I just think Finland would be the kind to watch everyone's drinks and then absolutely demolish anyone he thinks is trying to mess with them. He's a good dude.

[hemulenish-hijinks]

The November Hemulen

Part of the main cast of the book Moominvalley in November, he is a man whose job was to tell people how to improve their lives, but due to the lack of motivation from his clients he himself became depressed and longed for the hazy summer memory of Moominvalley and his friendship with Moominpappa whom he barely remembers. He has an interest in boats but never sailed one until the end of the book, and his specialty is organizing events and tasks among people, though this aspect of him gets criticized for being bossy. He tries his best to prepare Moominhouse for the Moomins' arrival and build a treehouse for Moominpappa, but alas, all things return to the same state.

The Hemulen Who Loved Silence

The main character of a chapter of Tales From Moominvalley, he lived in a noisy family who ran an even noisier pleasure-ground. After a weeks-long flood washing the pleasure-ground away and his family coming up with the idea of opening an ice rink, he had enough and declared that he wants a pension and move out somewhere quiet. He also says his dream is to build a dollhouse but gets laughed out of wanting it anymore. After he moves to his grandmother's abandoned park, he is made by the children to rebuild the pleasure-ground with the parts they recovered. In the end, he opens a park of silence where there is no screaming or loud laughing, and much to his relief the children still enjoy it.

[very-grownup]

Book 49, 2023

I mentioned when I started reading it that I had a fraught relationship with the presence of Noriko Ogiwara's "Dragon Sword and Wind Child" on my shelf. I've owned it for 20 years at this point. It has been on the shelf in every place I've lived aside from the house my parents were living in when I was born.

I'm glad I kept it, because this battered North Carolina library discard with the weakening binding feels like a rare glimpse of an English publisher taking a risk on juvenile Japanese fiction, long before manga publishers dipped their toes into light novel waters.

Ogiwara appears to be a successful writer of children's fantasy novels in Japan. "Dragon Sword and Wind Child" was published in English in 1993, at least a decade before western releases of anime and videogames began to consider 'maybe we don't have to call these rice balls jelly doughnuts'. It did not have its moment and Farrar, Straus and Giroux did not gamble on having its sequel translated. It seems like the book quickly went out of print, until Viz bought the rights to it and republished it in 2007. In 2011 they published a sequel, "Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince".

(Did you know Viz published novels? Viz might not. Some digging on their website shows the last one as the final book in "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" in 2019.)

You can get the Viz releases on kindle for $10.00. You can even get "Dragon Sword and Wind Child" in paperback for $20.00.

If you want a hardcopy of "Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince", you can currently buy a copy for $241.00.

There's a third book in the series.

It has not been licensed.

Thus ends the English language bibliography of Noriko Ogiwara. She appears to have at least two other successful fantasy series, which have both been adapted into anime.

Parents, don't let your children fall in love with Japanese genre fiction (unless it's detective fiction, in which case they might not suffer too much).

"Dragon Sword and Wind Child" is the story of Saya, an orphan adopted by an elderly couple in a small village. Saya doesn't quite fit in and may be an orphan of the enemy people who worship the Goddess of Darkness. Raised to worship the God of Light and his immortal twin children, Teruhi and Tsukishiro, Saya is a dutiful daughter, worshipper of her god, and content with the humble life she expects for herself, even though as she enters adolescence she becomes more aware of differences between her and her peers.

Everything changes when the visiting Tsukishiro becomes enamoured with Saya and takes her to be one of his handmaidens. But messengers from the Goddess of Darkness have also found Saya, and she becomes further drawn into the world of immortals, politics, and war.

What sounds like the premise of a Chosen Girl Dystopia Young Adult Series to a 2023 reader is a children's fantasy adventure novel in a world inspired by the Warring States period but equally inspired by English fantasy novels from the first half of the 20th century. In an afterword, Ogiwara specifically cites The Chronicles of Narnia as being the start of her love of fantasy and the inspiration of the sort of books she wanted to write.

I love that.

We're familiar with the fondness in Japanese culture for Jansson's Moomins and works such as "Anne of Green Gables", but I think a lot of that can be traced back to the wildly successful anime adaptations. I love those things, too, but there's something about reading this book written by a woman who, like my mother and aunts, read C.S. Lewis as a small girl and fell in love with Narnia, unrelated to the religious everything of it.

The world was so large, the distances between people and languages and countries so vast, back then.

I enjoyed Saya's journey, her adventures and her complicated relationship with worship and identity in her world, the very real and present gods, and the fact that death is alongside it all in that very matter-of-fact way you sometimes encounter in older children's fiction. The body count in "Dragon Sword and Wind Child" is high.

But what really made it special, the thing that made me glad I held onto the book for all these years, despite the upsetting memories associated with how it came into my life, was the awareness of how it came to exist in the world and what a unique work I was lucky enough to have access to.

I just think it's neat.

[homunculus-argument]

I think I've said it before but I'll say it again: I do love the way in which Tove Jansson depicts men and women, and interactions between genders.

While she did rather famously live happily ever after with a woman, she had no resentment or dislike of the male sex. Men and boys in her books and comics are masculine - from adventurous boys and family patriarchs to ladies' men and stoic philosophers, but whatever flaws and faults they may have as people don't stem from it.

Childish, silly boys are differently silly from childish, silly girls, and how this takes shape reflects on the culture of the time it was written - when Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden play pretend, he wants to be a brave rescuing hero and she a beautiful but vulnerable maiden - but it is clear they are simply playing roles. In real life, Moomintroll is vulnerable and gets frightened by things and is unsure and clingy, and Snorkmaiden is determined and driven.

Moominpappa is an old-fashioned patriarch who reminisces of the wild adventures of his youth, and is regularly torn between longing to go on adventures again, but also the duty to be the family protector who deeply loves his wife, son, and the weird collection of adoptive kids his son has gathered around himself. While he makes mistakes in trying to compromise this, or going overboard, it is only out of impulsive ideas, not deliberate indifference of their wellbeing.

While Moominmamma is first and foremost genuinely content in her role as a mother, she mainly tolerates her husband's ridiculous ideas because she knows and loves him. She doesn't need a man to do all these things for her, but knows he wants to feel important, so she doesn't stop him. She is gentle and compromising to a fault, but that is a trait of her own personality, not an inherent trait of being a woman.

Both Fillyjonk and the whole Mymble clan live entirely without men (save for Snufkin, whose absent father is the only other male mymble we ever see or hear of), they aren't happy nor unhappy specifically out of the lack of them. Mrs. Fillyjonk does refer to herself as a "housewife", though she has no husband - either dead or absent one - but her anxieties about being a proper one have nothing to do with living with a man or trying to attract one, but how she is seen by other women in the valley. Explosively reproductive Mymble the elder has and needs no man, and just keeps having new children because she enjoys it.

Hemulens largely appear to be an one-gender species, each defined by a hobby or special interest, with largely traditionally masculine ones, from sailing to stamp collecting. While some of them are happy and some are not, this also has nothing to do with their relationships with the opposite sex - it is only by whether they can engage in a genuinely fulfilling special interest. The one who tried to pick one he didn't like purely because it "sounded manly" was profoundly unhappy with this, and only learned to be happier when he chose something he truly enjoyed.

While the main protagonists of The Moomins are a nuclear family consisting of a mother, father, and their son who worries about girls in an age-appropriate way, gender roles in and on themselves aren't depicted as rigid boxes one is born into and must strictly remain in, but more like a buffet where each individual can and will pick whatever they want on their plate.

Having been written and published between mid 40s and early 90s, no character is explicitly entirely outside the gender binary, but there's a vibe that were one to appear, the first question after "are you a boy or a girl?" would be "does that make you happy?"

[bwoahtastic]

Pleasssse Nico and Kevin thinking it will be fine cause the littles just want snuggles and they can play with the older children or take them to the park to get zoomies out

NOPE

Lando is on a huge sulk that he can’t feed from Momma, and even though Nico lovingly rumbles and wraps his tail around Lando, Lando just pushes the bottles away and screams and cries for ages because its not the same!

Yuki is okay but then Oscar tugs his ear muffs off and can’t get it back on and Yuki goes full siren whilst Kevin was in the middle of bathtime with Mick and Lando so now he has to try and call someone to fix Yuki’s little ears without abandoning the water babies

Val just sadly crying at the door to the garden because he wants to splash in the pool but Nico and Kevin are busy and can’t supervise him!

PLLSS pure chaos! Kevin and nico thinking its easier cos the bubs love them but they get so grumpy and chaotic when momma isnt there.

Lando is actually a grumpy little fucker when moma isn't there cos no momma means milk from a bottle snd that SUCKS. He just sulks and grumps and is being a pain in the ass until finally Nico just swaddles hi snd hugs him close kskss

Yuki being a cutie and just wanting to play snd snuggle, but then his earmuffs are pulled off and krvin is helping Mick and grumpy Lando I the bath and Nico is overseeing some bubs doing their homework. Yuki wailing because its noisy in the house too and Oscar tries to help him put the muffs on but its difficult. Oscar rying really hard not to cry cos that would be too loud for Yuki! Little Guanyu padding out of his padding spot to help, carefully putting tbe muffs back on and changing his hair to momma colour to soothe Yuki and Yuki noses into him and calms down

And pllss poor little Val! He wants to swim but its baby bath time and no one can watch him I the pool so he just stays plonked I front of the window holding his moomin and whining until Lance wobbles over and asks Val to watch finding Nemo with him! Thats ocean stuff!!

Just plls unexpected babies helpjng out too!

[box-of-chaooos]

So moomin age, this has been on my mind for ages now. How old are the moomins? We’re talking moomin snufkin sniff little my snorkmaiden kinda thing. Mama and papa are very obviously like 30s almost 40s age range.

Well start with moomin

See here snufkin looks to be rather short looking but he looks taller than moomin even though If you took snufkins hat if he’s be the same size. In the show moomin is show like a child speaking like one playing like one but surely he’s not. He’s not 10-12 years he’s got to be at least 15 if his parents let him go to different islands at night, he would surely not have a knife of his own either. Now moomin mama and moomin papa are pretty lenient moomins allowed to do most things he asks but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been told no before. The show makes him seem way younger than he probably is but moomin valley is a better way to go off. Moomin Is taller than snufkin in moomin valley and he is more mature and seems more his age so to me moomin is around 15-16 years old the 90s version just makes him seem more childlike.

Little my, well lead into little my for now since this plays part with snufkins age. So, little my is a mymble and she has a lot of siblings. Little my is short we know this she’s very short but has a big personality and for someone so short looking she sure does have a mature sounding voice.

If you look at the mymble and mymble jr they’re not short at all but mymble is still mys sister mymble jr is probably in her 20s early 20s to be exact and she is tall as her mother who is a good 30 years.

Mymble here isn’t to short either standing she would also be pretty tall. So mymbles don’t stay short. Mymble definitely doesn’t have that many children from having one baby at a time. She probably has a litter meaning small babies but they’ll grow bigger at a certain age. So my guess is if mymble jr mymble and the mymble are all passed 18 and not short than my is probably 17.

Snufkin, I told you my would play into snufkins part. Little my his snufkins older half sister. Snufkin acts very mature but you have to think he lives on his own and raised himself he would’ve taught himself that there’s no time to play around and have fun if you want to survive like this than you have to keep it up at all times. He doesn’t convey much Emotions at times either and has this rather sleepy glare all the time. Snufkin would end up shorter than moomin

Moomin papa is fully grown and is taller than snufkin. I think the reason snufkins going to be shorter which might not help people Figure his age out would be just that but he is a mumrik born from a mymble. Mymbles have growth spurts from being small children at a certain age but as a mumrik snufkin doesn’t get that growth spurt mymble genes make him short but because his isn’t a mymble he will remain short. So he’s going to be short and act very mature but he is younger than little my so he is around 15-16 just like moomin maybe 14 I’m sure he knows his age but just doesn’t share it.

Sniff is fairly easy, he’s mature sometimes and has a good sense of money and value to things he also lives on his own so he’s probably 16 or 17

Snorkmaiden, now snorkmaiden is very mature and knows a lot in romantic relationships and such she cooks dinner for snork often too so she’s not young. I’d say snorkmaiden is 16 on the dot a young sweet 16 who wants love and romance in her life.

So rounding it all off

Moomin is 15

Little my is 17

Snufkin is 14

Sniff is 17

Snorkmaiden is 16

Poor snuf ended up short and youngest soured snufkin 😂

[ask-lock-shock-and-barrel]

How does your reboot au differ from the movie, character and storytelling wise?

((So the fun thing about the movie is that it leaves us with so much open ended possibilities with what these characters' pasts and futures are like that honestly anything goes. The only things the movie really establishes as ~unchangable~ are that Jack is growing tired of Halloween, Sally is a creation of Finkelstein who likes Jack, Jack and Oogie don't like each other, and that the Trio work for Oogie up until he Dies In Minecraft.

There's not any set timeframe of how long these circumstances have been. And like I've said before, I do not consider the games canon.

So this 'reboot' still has those circumstances, but it takes place a good couple of years after the movie events. That allows character dynamics to shift and for other events to have happened inbetween the end of the movie and now. And since games are not canon, I can do what I want with past events and dynamics too.

For characters, Jack is more of the same, a charismatic leader who wants what is best for the town, but he is prone to messing up when he is too focused on his aspirations. And there is an aspect of misinterpreting the actions of others when it comes to his character too. Like in the movie where Sally attempts to warn Jack of her visions or he misinterprets the humans' fear of him as joy. This is a flaw of his that I implemented in my own storytelling, such as him not realizing Shock was wanting his help to stop Oogie, which resulted in bigger repurcussions than anything else.

Sally I personally see as someone who acts as the voice of reason like in the movie, but deep down she can be just as unhinged and impulsive as Jack or other townsfolk. The difference between her and them though is she has more than one working braincell and she's a lot craftier. Idk, I think Sally has the right to go nuts sometimes, and smash a chair over someone's head.

Lock, Shock, and Barrel, my three terrible children, get the biggest glowup because they deserve it. I always thought the games sort of mis-used them and didn't put any real consideration into developing them beyond repeating their role in the movie. And sure that can be fun, but I think in a reboot/continuation it would feel repetetive. The childlike villainy they have in the movie is cheeky and endearing, but for it to repeat itself without substance or development like in the games would result in them being in a flat 'evil sidekick' role that could easily make them come across as shrill and unlikable if done too long. And they're fun chaotic characters who deserve to be explored and allow that fun chaos to grow along with them. They're allowed to be nasty sometimes, and cause mayhem, but they're also allowed to be kids, who have feelings and worries and joys. Like if Little My from Moomin lived in Halloween Town? I think she'd be besties with them.

I more or less expanded on their few different traits from the movie so they could act as individual characters AND a trio of friends at the same time. In the movie, Lock is the self proclaimed leader and likes to be in charge but he's not the brightest. I expand on that by allowing him to be an absolute ball of chaos and energy and always big on ideas for nonsensical things, and the epitome of Gen Z shenanigans. To quote the inner 11 year old in my head: Lock is Cringe, like most kids. He's an airhead most of the time but convinced he's the smartest guy in the room, and he's quite the little ham. He's also got some big issues with loneliness as a result of being abandoned by his family and often acts out for attention, not genuine malice. Shock is the most cunning in the movie and a big know it all, and most lore seems to establish her as the oldest, so my incarnation develops those traits in her too. She's genuinely very smart, and whilst she is a bossy know it all, deep down, it comes out of love for her friends and she's their big sister. She's also dealing with serious growing pains as she's starting to process some of the terrible things she was exposed to years before, and realizing how much fear and terror had forced her into keeping her loyalties with Oogie for so long and keeping the other two in line with her. Barrel was always my favorite as a kid because they're so quiet but always seemed happier and more carefree than the other two. I thought that was the perfect grounds to make an emotionally intelligent, nonconformist, free-spirit of a child who could act like the Bugs Bunny to the combined Lock and Shock's Daffy Duck. Nobody expects the quiet weird kid to be a prodigy of sorts, but Barrel is a pint sized well of untapped potential and is much sweeter and empathetic than the other two. I also portray them as nonbinary because nonbinary can be anything!

In a reboot/continuation, these kids are a couple years older than they were in the movie, so their brains are bigger, and they've had a couple years to move on from the Oogie Boogie days. They're still all about causing mayhem, and are at various levels of coping from 'doing great' to 'sweet murgatroyd get this kid a therapist', but they're slowly and unconsciously allowing themselves to integrate into town society, and it's the care and guidance of Jack, Sally, and others who really help out with that.

As for other characters, like the Mayor or Dr. Finkelstein, their characters are more or less the same, but they have more room to live their lives and develop outside of a 70 minute movie. ))

[alwaysmanages]

I have SLEPT and I can’t help but remember some of the small things from ep 1 again. Just how episode 1 Moomintroll differs from the end of season 3 Moomintroll and how he’s presented as a boy still trying to be a grown moomin in the eyes of everyone and himself. 

This isn’t meant to be a hot take or anything, I mean, even Gutsy says that one of the big focuses is Moomintroll growing into adulthood and what develops through that process. But I’m just eyeing the little things like how the first time we see him (awake) he’s got his head stuck in a cloud mobile above his bed, everyone treating him like a child despite him insisting he’s grown (though, as we’ve witnessed, he’s got a lot of growing up to do outside of insisting he’s not a child), his standing on his toes while greeting Mymble to appear taller, even when the mymble children are terrorizing the family, Moomin’s expected to “play” with them to keep them occupied (I use the term expected loosely, it’s more like an assumption put on him by family who are used to treating him like a child). This is a boy trying to appear older to his family and their friends because he’s finally decided that he’s not a child anymore, he’s ready to make the leap into adulthood.

ALSO also, I can’t wait to see him grow up some more, because boy does he need to be more conscientious of his actions and how they affect his loved ones, and there are moments in s3 that remind me that...yeah he is still a bit selfish and he needs to work on that.

So like, bottom line, I love seeing how much Moomin’s grown since e1 s1. He’s still got a lot of growing to do, but at least we can see the differences from the then and now.

[ask-artsy-oncie]

Saw u were asking for asks so i was wondering what was the process in designing Tys character :)

Tagging @fox-faced as they had sent a fairly similar ask to @swindle-comic and I felt it would be more effective to kill two birds with one stone.

I am honestly so sorry for taking so long to answer this. This is going to be a fairly long post!

So, as far as designing Ty goes, it was mostly a process of learning how to draw bears. Specifically Disney bears.

When it came time to design Ty, I was definitely not practiced in the art of drawing cartoon bears. In fact, I was mostly doing Moomin fanart at this point, and was still trying to figure out how I wanted to draw DT17 characters in a way that wasn't just the style of the show. Ty's design hasn't changed much, conceptually, but instead has been heavily tweaked and refined as I simply got better and more used to drawing bears.

As Ty was, at the time of his creation, so derivative of Kit, my plan of attack was pretty much just "figure out how to draw a bear cub in the DT17 style" using Kit's design as a reference for drawing a Disney bear cub to begin with. Lolly had been the one to choose which species of bear Ty was, so I was trying to focus instead on his general aesthetic while translating the proper features over. Once again, I used Kit as a reference - or rather, his athleticism - and pushed it to the point where Ty looked very jock-ish (though you can blame my love for letterman jackets on that).

You can tell in a lot of my older drawings of Ty that I really hadn't actually gotten used to or properly figured this bear thing out, yet. His face, especially, looks extra blocky and awkward. However, these early drawings were where I quickly decided to make Ty fairly large and thick as a teenager. This was before I had really considered the idea that he grew up underfed, it was more just "I want to play around with this body-type".

Among these earliest drawings was also one of Ty and Louie as adults, where, again, you can tell that I hadn't quite gotten the hang of drawing bears, but you can see that from the very beginning I had wanted him to be a more top-heavy adult (mostly just to allow for some variety between him, Kit, and Baloo. As much as I do love Kit's adult design, Disney has a bad habit of copypasting character designs from parents to their children, and I really wasn't interested on continuing that trend).

I wasn't super confident on how I was going to properly refine this design, so his adult design ended up taking a back-seat for a while as I instead focused on getting better at drawing his teen design.

This was pretty much accomplished simply by drawing him more, and lord knows I was hyperfixated as FUCK on this funky little bear cub, so drawing him a ton was not hard to do. I think what really helped me figure him out were these drawings, here, where I had to really think about what angles I had him posed at, and how his features would properly look in a more 3D or dynamic space. This was also where I started looking at any details I wanted to add to his design (the stripes on his collar were introduced to his design at this point, for instance).

At a point, I felt as though I had gotten good enough to at least create some proper "stock" images of the boy to properly solidify his desgin and all the little tweaks I made. I think the differences between this and his very first drawings are more subtle, but you can DEFINITELY tell the difference between these drawings and my other early Ty drawings.

And interesting fact was that I hadn't been drawing early Llewerius art with the idea that Ty had gone through a growth spurt before they started dating, so you end up with sketches like this:

PART 1 OF 2 BECAUSE TUMBLR SUCKS AND WON'T LET ME UPLOAD MORE THAT 10 PICTURES EVEN THOUGH THIS TECHNICALLY QUALIFIES AS A TEXT POST (as it, for whatever reason, decided to switch to mobile mode even though I'm literally on a desktop computer, I hate this broken-ass website)

[renchinworld]

Okay but imagine husband Renjun hugging u from behind and planting kisses on the side of ur neck while ur making coffee in the morning,

listening intently to your stories and offering u the best eye-opening advices like the 700 year old sage he is,

ruffling ur hair while brushing y'all teeth together at night,

feeding u then teasingly taking it back before u eat it "say aaah--sike",

u pouting and him laughing & making it up to u by buying u flowers and singing ur favorite song,

being strict & domineering in public but clingy & gentle asf in private (unless u piss him off),

making the wittiest jokes & giving up halfway because he thinks it's unfunny but u think it's fcking hilarious,

dropping all the events in his schedule for you because his family is now the biggest priority in his life,

recommending you everything that reminded him of u because he's sentimental like that,

having u at the back of his mind 24/7 that no other pussy can compare even if it was offered to him on a Balenciaga platter oops this was supposed to be a fluffy post,

letting u do his nails and makeup & styling because he's comfortable in his masculinity & believes everyone should be free to express themselves however they want,

validating yours and your children's (if u decide to have babies) emotions like a boss,

decorating the kids room with moomin plushies and his artworks,

making your home smell like heaven in every corner even Jo Malone is proud,

singing you to sleep when you've had a rough day even though he's also tired because seeing you at peace is enough to bring him rest,

loving you and only you for the rest of your lives because Renjun only goes for the best of the best and to him you are even way beyond that 💖

[hemulenish-hijinks]

Wimsy

A recurring minor character in the comics, he is Moominpappa's old best friend from his youth. He is a constant smoker, poker player and prefers to sleep under the table rather than a bed, but he is a charming and fun man who also became friends with Snufkin as they were building a jetty in Moomin and the Golden Tail. He also played a major role in Moominpappa and the Spies, in which he and Moominpappa try to relive their youth but get caught up in Soviet espionage.

He also gets adapted into an episode of the 90s second series, though with a new look and an original plot.

The Hemulen Who Loved Silence

The main character of a chapter of Tales From Moominvalley, he lived in a noisy family who ran an even noisier pleasure-ground. After a weeks-long flood washing the pleasure-ground away and his family coming up with the idea of opening an ice rink, he had enough and declared that he wants a pension and move out somewhere quiet. He also says his dream is to build a dollhouse but gets laughed out of wanting it anymore. After he moves to his grandmother's abandoned park, he is made by the children to rebuild the pleasure-ground with the parts they recovered. In the end, he opens a park of silence where there is no screaming or loud laughing, and much to his relief the children still enjoy it.

[flowerbloom-arts]

I actually wanna know a little bit more about Phill E. Yaunk

Phillip Edward Yaunk, informally known as Phil E. Yaunk or simply Phil, was a child born into the upper middle class in the country of England with a fillyjonk as his mother and a fuzzy as his father (though most people would classify him as a fillyjonk). After a divorce of which happened at a very young age for the child to remember the reason, his mother had full custody of him and remarried to another fillyjonk, Phil lived a pretty quiet, average but lonely childhood with alot of insecurity about his status.

Enter school, he was classmates with Hodgkins' brother (Diggory) and they got assigned to do a school project together, Diggory was pretty friendly to him and though he is terrified of Hodgkins/Samuel he became friends with them and Jane, thus forming the original Oshun Oxtra, with Phil being the Sniff of the group.

The adventures were pretty stressful and one of them gave him poliosis (the grey streak in his hair) which he did not like. Soon the group drifted apart with their own lives and Phillip became a police Sargeant, a pretty mean one at that, he did not have sympathy for the creature he thought of as "lower than", not even children. And sadly those creatures included muddlers which really got on Hodgkins' bad side when he adopted Muddler and went to town with him every now and then and Phil would insult the poor thing.

Phil then married a woman he was not in love with because he was a closeted gay man and had a son called Felix who went on to get married with someone he actually liked, had 3 kids and then died at the tail end of world war 2. The death of their son caused Phil and his wife to divorce and Phil is left retired and really tired, he settled down and persued his interest in playing violin which he still is to the "present day" of the Moomin canon.