this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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Moomin Valley
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This is a community for all things Moomin.
The Moomins is a franchise created by finnish author/illustrator Tove Jansson. It features a vast amount of comics, TV series, movies, books and games, telling various stories mostly set in moominvalley.
If you are new to the Moomins, this video essay is a fantastic starting point to learn about this family-owned franchise.
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Tove never claimed these were for children. Her idea, among many, was to take hard subjects and cartoonify them into bite-sized nuggets for easier mental digestion, essentially making it easier for us to deal with hard pasts. Say what you will on the Moomin line (hopefully it's all good things), Tove was a genius, and her Moomin line has helped me deal with a lot of shite in my past.
Something I really appreciate, as an adult, is how Moomin stories tricked me into learning things about the real world as a kid.
The Moomin world is simple and fantastical, but something it doesn't do, is dumb down real problems.
"The invisible child" is a top one for me. In it, the Moomin family takes in Ninny, a child who has gone invisible due to the abuse of her guardian. She canno't be seen or heard. In the Moomin world, making someone feel like they should disappear, can actually cause exactly that to happen.
By showing kindness to what is essentially thin air, the Moomin family slowly help her recover and become a person again.
Tove essentially wrote about child abuse, at the hands of adults, no less, in a way that even kids can understand.
Her stories concisely make points about decency, respect, and kindness, in such powerful ways that I feel they effortlessly implant in you the desire to be a good person.
I remember that episode! It actually taught me how to help a classmate who seemed like he was going through something. I didn't know what it was then, found out later he was being beaten by his shite of a father. I got him to smile because of the lessons I learned from that episode. I do miss that bloke.