Back with more Nimona thoughts, y'all.

- It's definitely possible that the Director wasn't reacting on instinct when Ballister reached for the "weapon", and she was lying off her ass to escalate the situation until someone killed Ballister and/or Nimona. Something something instinctive prejudice, something something deliberate evil, something something police brutality is both.

- So much of the Director's "Boohoo, that wasn't me it was the shapeshifting monster" charade could have been debunked if Ballister planned ahead and recorded Nimona shifting back BEFORE he revealed himself. Classic "underestimating the enemy" move.

- Ambrosius going from "He killed the Queen" to "He's being manipulated, I can still save him from the monster's evil clutches" is a nice parallel to Ballister going from "He didn't mean to chop off my arm, it's what he was trained to do" to "If I can show this video to Ambrosius, he'll believe me". Both of them are still clinging onto old beliefs because that's all they've ever known, but the one constant is their desire to be together again. Just. ARGH. THESE TWO GAYS I CANNOT.

- Movie Ballister unlearning his prejudices over the course of the movie is a very important thing to portray, because no one is immune to propaganda and dismissing bigots as individuals who chose to be evil instead of addressing the system that produces them is the political equivalent of bailing water out of a sinking boat while going, "Dang, why won't these water droplets magically gain sentience and stop flooding my boat—or better yet, help stop the leak?"

- (Because let's be real, a society that values conformity and authoritarian control isn't going to install a Free Will Ex Machina switch in bigots that will automatically turn them good if X condition is met. Creating mindless robots who will persecute any minority without stopping to question things IS the point.)

- (Case in point: Gloreth, who could have been Nimona's best friend forever until she fell victim to her community's prejudices and didn't even stop to question them. She wasn't secretly evil the whole time, she was just a kid surrounded by people who actively prevented her from knowing better.)

- That being said, I LOVE that Movie Nimona never gave a single fuck about Ballister's discomfort and continued to be herself until he came around. The point isn't to dismiss the impact of conservative indoctrination or make endless excuses for people who reject every opportunity to reform themselves, it's to make some room for empathy without debasing yourself for people who won't even meet you a quarter of the way.

- It's a nice contrast to Comic Ballister the Morally Grey but Still Reasonable Anti-Hero and Comic Nimona the Cool Punk Gremlin Who Kinda Needs To Keep Her Destructive Tendencies In Check.

- The comic was radical because it validated people who were tired of being nice and just wanted to go apeshit, because fuck everyone who believes you're something to be saved or fixed.

- The movie was radical because it acknowledged that destroying your enemies sometimes just destroys you even more instead of bringing catharsis, and that's okay because fuck everyone who demands you choose between burning the world or being burned when all you wanted was a life of peace.

- I can kind of see why people thought Nimona's ending was anticlimactic but honestly, I think we've had enough buried gays. We deserve a little magic resurrection.

- (Besides, there's this cool theory that Nimona deliberately took the form of a phoenix before killing the Director so that she could be reborn, and I can't remember who OP was but damn if that isn't a great in-universe explanation.)

Again, in conclusion:

[ID: A pink-haired Nimona doing the sign of the horns with a maniacal grin while Ballister, a black-armoured brown knight, looks confused and dazed in the background.]

Go watch Nimona right fucking now. Rewatch it, if you've already done so. Hell, get the comic and reread it too. Join me in my Nimona obsession.