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Comment by atupis | Hacker News Reader

Moominpappa at Sea is somewhat similar to Watership Down where they are children books but themes are very deep. For Pipi it is kind silly adult point of view but generally chilren some weird reason loves it, nowdays my 4-yeard old dresses like pipi several times a week.

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My favourite bits were:

1. A statement that they still didn't figure everything out, but they finally had something important: a decision.

2. When they repaired a boat they found, and Moominpappa said it doesn't matter that they don't know who it belongs to... the worst case is they'll give someone back a repaired boat.

For someone who grew up in Poland, this attitude is borderline mind-bending.

What was mind-bending about them?

I think it goes against common Polish mentality. Consensus is rare. Compromise is often called a "rotten compromise", there's a concept of "having right" which implies only one person. Swedes have a phrase "Polish parliament" to describe a fruitless, noisy argument. Second, Poles often see things they find as windfall rather than items lost by people with feelings.

Something unique to Poland is meme pictures with proboscis monkeys. They poke fun at perceived national vices. You might want to do image search for "nosacz".

Excellent! Guess I'll have to rewatch Life of Brian to see if there might be a bit about "Blessed are the big noses."

Where I am, when Napoleon invaded, the local militia defeated one of his recco squadrons. And then went back home and Threw A Party. After all the soldiers had already celebrated victory with a[1] well-merited pint[2], the french main force showed up...

[1] or possibly some

[2] or possibly smaller volumes of stronger beverages

I think what's liked about Pippi is her independence and how she believes she can do almost anything, without it becoming a cliché. It's a fine line. I remember Artemis Fowl for instance (when I was a bit older) became too much for me.

>I think what's liked about Pippi is her independence and how she believes she can do almost anything

Absolutely. I read Pippi as a child (in English) and always thought she was wonderful.

Amusingly, a friend and I both came to the conclusion that Lizbeth Salander[0] was Pippi all grown up.

I wonder if Stieg Larsson had Pippi in mind?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbeth_Salander

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson

Addendum: I found Larsson's Salander novels to be quite good, and thought the Swedish TV movies (with Noomi Rapace) were pretty faithful to the novels. I didn't bother with the American version, as American movies are mostly crap (then again, Sturgeon's Law[2] applies everywhere)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

I don't have a source at hand, but I remember reading an interview where Stieg Larsson confirmed both influence of Pippi and that Mikael Blomkvist was inspired by and named after Astrid Lindgren's character Kalle Blomkvist (translated to English as Bill Bergson).

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