tired.

Snorkmaiden: What?

And then I remember LMA never got married and once said this:

“I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man’s soul put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body … because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.”

And I’m just like

Moomin: Bongwater.

I love you, Anon! 

The original version of this jealous female character would be “a female who is jealous of boy-time”. Think of a wife or a girlfriend who nags because her male partner missed an important date or dinner because he was too busy playing with the boys. The narrative always sides with the boys, because they do all the fun stuff the audience tuned in to see. In many fandom spaces, this kind of jealous behavior was then reused for female characters with romantic tones added. Like all tropes, it’s not bad in itself. Having a female character be jealous of a male ship establishes that the ship is a romantic threat equal to heterosexual pairings. But if that is the only thing fans can have a female character exist for, then we have reduced women as props to male-centric stories again, even if it’s not in a romantic way.

Snorkmaiden is a wonderful female character. She is all the lovely things you described her as. She is the single character Snufkin has ever expressed admiration and respect to. All men around her respect her opinions and follow her instructions, expect her stubborn brother (and this is clearly a character flaw he has). She saves her friends and comes up with solutions in all the books where she is a main character. Sofia Jansson has confirmed that Snorkmaiden actually resembles her creator, Tove Jansson, greatly. 

Snorkmaiden deserves to be portrayed in a way that allows her to bask in the respect and admiration she has in the books. And her qualities like femininity, vanity, insecurity and romantic idealism should be explored with the depth these traits deserve. Snorkmaiden is not a perfect girl who wins all the battles and never shows weakness. She is a multi-faceted female character who displays many traits that have become unfavorable in contemporary media, despite being traits that many girls relate to.