#and some of them that do only have region locked releases so they're obviously not meant for me without doing more unintended cracking

[tantumuna]

"oh please purchase the movies/shows you've been pirating uwu face"

how. where. where am i supposed to purchase movies/shows that do not ever get physical releases because streaming services would rather you pay to access them only to completely remove them on a whim?

piracy is media preservation and I'll die on this hill

[tobi-smp]

I think it’s been long enough, now that we’re out of the main tags lets do some Crime.

for people out of the loop: like I said earlier, moomins is Largely unavailable in the us. obviously you can buy the novels and the comics no problem (it’s just paper after all, hard to region lock that), and there’s a few of the more obscure shows that I believe are available for streaming? but things like the 90s anime or the 2019 adaptation have just never come over, which is a shame when those are the most popular versions to date.

so back in 2019, when moomin was shooting up in popularity, there was a project started where people were coming together to compile all of the moomin content they could find in one google drive. That was how so many people had consumed the series at the time.

it was genuinely Extremely interesting. it had the expected things of course, but it also had things like the 1970s anime adaptation that tove jansson had Hated, a weird little beastie, it had the show that’d been done entirely through puppets, it had Movies (including the fan made english dub for the 90s anime movie), they’d had soundtracks and documentaries, and loads and loads of curiosities.

I’d been following the project Very closely at the time, it was an Incredible community effort that not only made moomin Accessible, but celebrated it as a franchise. I remember people were even coming together to subtitle media that had never been translated before just for this.

so of course it’d been taken down. that was to be expected honestly, it became the face of the new wave of fandom rather quickly. what was Not expected was the absolutely absurd lawsuit that moomin company filed on the host of the google drive, which they followed through on: [Link]

capitalism is what it is, but it’s a shame to see something This shady attached to a series that had been a love letter from its creator. it’s despicable on it’s own, but it’s just outright Shameful when they absolutely will not provide this content themselves.

that said ! I love moomin as a story, I have no respect for moomin as a company. I can’t give you Everything that was to be found in the drive, but I can offer a start.

First, we have pdfs of the novels: [Link]

I’d recommend reading the novels in release order if you intend to read them all (or most), if only because they’re written so the characters obviously mature and change over time. that said, do what you want, I’m not a cop.

though a note: the very first in the list (the moomins and the great flood) is written for a younger demographic than the rest. if you’re trying to test out whether you’d enjoy the novels or not it might be best to start with the second (comet in moominland).

Second, we have the 2019 adaptation, “moominvalley” [Link]

I don’t have a way to download that at the moment, but I’ve been using that site since middle school (albeit through a few domain changes) and this upload has stayed up consistently since 2019. so I can’t imagine it’s going anywhere any time soon.

Third, we have the 90s anime:

This one is a little different !

first of all, there’s that movie I mentioned earlier. unfortunately I don’t have a way to the (utterly delightful) fandub at the moment, but the same site from above has a subtitled version [Link] as well as an alternate sub that appears to use the same translation but a different font/color on 9anime [Link] the movie is a loose adaptation of comet in moominland, so it takes place before the show chronologically!

now, the actual show itself is in a Slightly Humorous if Frustrating position.

moomin company has an official youtube channel where they upload things like trailers and behind the scenes and the like ! it’s pretty neat all things considered. that said, I do believe it’s being run by dinosaurs.

at some point they’d started uploading all of the english dub for 90s anime just, For Free. and in Much higher image quality than any of the bootlegs that’d been floating around until that point. it was genuinely very nice!

that was until copyright shenanigans.

moomin company has struck down roughly half of the uploads From Their Own Official Channel and in three years it’s never been fixed. I genuinely can’t understand how this is a problem that’s never been resolved.

I still have my playlist that has all of the remaining videos in order [Link] and moomin company have their own playlist which is, Interesting [Link]

that said, wco once again comes in clutch with All of the episodes available (albeit in a lower quality) [Link] 9anime Also has the whole show in 480p, but more interestingly it has 30 episodes of the japanese dub of the show with english subtitles! the show was never fully subbed, and Any of the english sub can be really difficult to get your hands on, so it’s pretty amazing that it’s an option [Link]

9anime Also has 5 episodes of the 70s anime, which is frankly Incredible [Link]

and there’s [aHem] other options floating around if you can find them

And if we want to get Weird:

through the 70s and 80s there was a stop motion adaptation called “The Moomins” that used felt puppets in live action ! [wikipedia: Link]

it’s actually one of the few moomin properties that you can buy digitally outright in america, but we’re not interested in That right now. in 2010 there were movies released that were remasters of the show’s episodes compiling the storylines into bigger Chunks. while I’m not sure where to find All of them, I know where to find two [Link 1, Link 2]

the big things that are Completely missing are probably the 60s anime, the movies (such as moomins on the rivera, I loved that one) and the Comics, which are floating around all over the place but difficult to track down in, say, a pdf. I’ll try to update this if I run into them anywhere !

but if you’re curious about more moomin media the wikia has a comprehensive list ! [Link]

I’ve also got my own animatics playlist, though I haven’t filled it out in quite some time now so it’s rather short (Give Me Suggestions, I Want Them) [Link]

Please what’s the moomin reference I’m dying to know

Context: [Link 1, Link 2]

*breaths deeply in two year long hyperfixation* wELL

I've tried to write this post a Few times without going into a full essay about what moomin is, as that's Not necessary for answering the question. however, I am unfortunately me and this is the Writes Essays Blog. so I've simply decided I will be a nuisance instead.

but the plus side is that I've been thinking about writing about some of my other fandoms here for a while ! so, for a crash course on the franchise:

“moomin,” “the moomins,” or “moominvalley” is a franchise originally stemming from first novels and then comics written in the 1940s-50s by the finnish author tove jansson, which has since ballooned with Many adaptations and other such goodies (like themeparks and games). 

it’s most popular adaptation is hands down the 90s anime adaptation ! which took tove’s charming designs and calming atmosphere and kicked it up to 11 with a long-form slice of life series

but all versions have their own particular flair and tone, even two versions created by tove herself are Very different. with the comics having a focus in on the absurd and comedic and the novels, while certainly Having those elements, also focus in on more serious themes and melancholy!

(here's a brief rundown for the differences in the adaptations for anyone interested ! [Link])

of course, moomin was a relatively unknown entity in the us because it never officially released here, but there was a brief boom here on tumblr in 2019 thanks to the release of a new adaption (called moominvalley)!

it was a perfect storm for a couple reasons:

1: while it can be a bit difficult to track down the series in the us, the Characters are all extremely accessible. with their designs alone you can pick up on who and what the main cast are both Quickly and Scarily Accurately, with the fandom largely rising Before most people had found access to the content itself flkjfdaskjkjl

they're Incredibly Simple characters that still lend themselves well to complexity. they aren't blank slates in the slightest, but they're easy to Bend and reimagine and flesh out. which is really appealing to fandom spaces!

2: having multiple different fleshed out iterations to choose from meant that if you looked you could most likely find something that suited your taste! (it'd be an incredibly accessible franchise if they'd actually make their content Accessible world wide)

3: this is Especially relevant in how the franchise can act as both escapism and catharsis. the 90s anime especially is a comfortable cottage-core fantasy to sink yourself into and forget the woes of real world (something that was about to become Very relevant in 2019), but the novels were specifically written for an audience that was actively living through war.

and while tove never wanted to make the franchise Dark or Gritty, she wanted to create a series that could help children process and come to terms with some of the feelings they Would realistically be experiencing. one of the very first novels is "Comet in Moominland," where a great comet is coming down to crash into the earth. it still engages with comedy and with the absurd, and of course nobody Dies, but it was very intentionally trying to create an accessible outlet to understand Tragedy and Fear. among lots of other things ! and this is, of course, tempered with the warm comforts of friends and family and community.

I think there's a lot to be gained by sifting through this franchise Now honestly. something that can both Distract from the bleakness and help process it, with a certain gentleness either way.

4: tove jansson was an Incredibly queer woman, and this absolutely bleeds into her work and the adaptations that followed!

while inspiration isn't an Exact one-to-one, tove Has spoken about her inspirations for her characters before. moomin (the character) draws a great deal from herself while snufkin, moomin's "best friend" and a funny little beastie, draws from her lovers both in personality and in relationship to moomin!

a big inspiration for snufkin was a man who had nearly been her husband, a vagabond and a socialist for that matter. the official moomin site (which is cannot stress enough, is representative of the franchise itself and heavily curated) describes That as follows [Link]:

In many ways the relationship of Moomintroll (Tove’s alter-ego) and Snufkin describes the relationship between Tove and Atos. Moomintroll admires Snufkin who still is quite distant and very often Moomintroll is also experiencing a deep sense of longing and yearning when Snufkin is leaving to his adventures or choosing to be at peace with his own thoughts. Moomintroll tries to understand Snufkin’s desire for freedom, even though the waiting is not easy.

Just like Tove admired Atos and just like Tove waited for Atos, his love confessions and commitment.[End transcription]

but it was Also based, in part, on the woman who was her wife in all but legality. [Link 1, Link 2] Having met some time 1956 and having stayed life long partners until tove's death in 2001.

they'd built a home together on an island where they'd go to stay every summer, enjoying their own travels and adventures along the way !

come winter, moomin would pine for snufkin as he made his yearly travel down south, but the spring and summer months would always bring snufkin's return! and all the love and warmth that came with him uwu

How exactly that bleeds through in the franchise itself is well. Extensive. picking literally any iteration and trying to lay out, in full, the queer themes present would be an essay longer than this one. so instead have a small selection to illustration the point:

[Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5, Link 6]

now, naturally, this was (and is) queercoding rather than explicit representation, but this was a queer woman pushing the boundaries of what was allowed to Be in children's media starting in the 1940s and onwards.

there's something About a woman who lived a full and happy life with the woman she loved, pouring that love into her life's work to create a foundation of care and acceptance for the generation that'd come after her, only to see a resurgence of queer teens See her and say what she wasn't allowed to out loud.

which brings us to !

5: the general blanket of pure acceptance radiating from the series.

that's not necessarily anything New for a children's franchise, but in combination with everything else it creates an environment for an absolute comfort series. this fragment of an article about the series has far and away wormed it's way into my mind in some irreversible way (and that's quite a good thing) [Link]:

In most fiction, family is what you escape from if you want to fulfill yourself. For Jansson, family is a place of tolerance, where we can fail and become ourselves. Her experience of growing up gay is there in Snufkin – who is all the more loved for being different. Like the prodigal son, everyone is so thrilled to see him, no one ever asks him where he has been. It’s there too, in Too-Ticky, Jansson’s portrait of her partner. And above all it’s there in the wonderful story where Moomintroll is transformed into the bug-eyed King of California, and his mother recognises him straight away.[End transcription]

the quickest and most accurate description for this series, this franchise as a whole, that I could give is Warmth.

that's not to say that it's All roses. tove herself was an icon, but moomin company is a Company in charge of a franchise in the same ball park as disney properties. but considering there's no way to legally support moomin in the states I'd say the morality of engaging with it on that basis isn't exactly the most pressing of issues.

now with all of That out of my system: the actual information relevant to the comparison.

one of the stories in moomin (the novels, the 90s anime, and the 2019 adaptation, though I'm most familiar with the latter) is "The Invisible Child." [Link]

it's the story of ninny, an invisible child that moomin and co find and bring into their home to try to figure out Why she's invisible and how to fix it.

as we come to find out, ninny went invisible and lost her voice (even the ink on paper she tried to write on going invisible) because she'd been made to Feel invisible through the neglect of her aunt.

the moomins help ninny find her confidence again, with small aspects coming back to her as they make progress and regressing as they make missteps. but the ultimate point is that she needs to feel Seen and Heard.

that feeling of not having a voice, of not having a Presence, taking on the form of a Physical curse of invisibility.

it's a concept that meshes Extremely well with tommy's situation, even Without the headcanon.