It's Just Not My Love Language

Today we’re continuing our movie reviews series with a recent animated feature film, the Oscar-nominated Nimona, in which a shapeshifter teenage girl decides to become the sidekick of recently proclaimed “villain of the realm” Ballister Boldheart.

Transcript

Kat: 0:06

Hello, everyone.

James: 0:07

Welcome to the Queers of Time Podcast.

Matt: 0:10

I'm Matt.

James: 0:11

I'm James.

Camille: 0:12

I'm Camille.

Kat: 0:13

And I'm Kat.

Matt: 0:14

And this is a podcast to talk about all the gay stuff in the Wheel of Time.

Camille: 0:18

Because we're gay, and we like the Wheel of Time.

Music: 0:20

[intro music]

Camille: 0:42

And as always thank you to Lurkz, our Feral Venerator of Siuraine. So today we're continuing our movie review series with a recent animated feature film, the Oscar nominated Nimona in which a shapeshifter teenage girl decides to the become the sidekick of recently proclaimed villain of the realm, Ballister Boldheart ,except that he's not really a villain, and yeah, it's...it's one of my favorite movies that came out last year.

James: 1:11

Yeah!

Camille: 1:12

I've been meaning to, like I've been, like I've - I have wanted to chat about it for for a while. So I'm just using the podcast to bully my co-hosts into talking into... about Nimona.

James: 1:23

Okay, so, this is just you pushing your own agenda.

Camille: 1:27

[chuckles] Absolutely!

James: 1:27

Okay.

Camille: 1:28

Matt and Kat could not be here today, and I am very sad about that because I intended to push my agenda and everyone, but unfortunately, they are busy with other stuff. So...

James: 1:38

That's okay. That's how it works sometimes. I mean, you don't have to push your agenda on me. I've been a fan of ND Stevenson for like, a decade now, so...and their partner, Molly Ostertag. Very cool.

Camille: 1:51

Very cool. Yeah, no, I... I've been a fan since 2020, like, when's the last season of She-Ra...the legend of...and the Princesses of Power.

James: 2:05

Oh, so overt gay stuff had to happen before you were a fan.

Camille: 2:09

I started like, I watched it before the last season released.

James: 2:14

Okay.

Camille: 2:15

Yeah, I like I got... for a long time, I wasn't really into animated, like movies and shows and those kinds of things. I had a whole phase when I didn't get the time to catch up on anything, and it just, like, around the end of 2019, I ended up hanging out with people online that were very fond of like She-Ra and those kinds of things. So, I gave it a try, and I really loved it, and yeah, that's kind of how it started for me.

James: 2:38

Yeah, She-Ra is just pretty amazing. It was my first show. I remember that I like really, really just loved how queer it was like it was clearly a kids' show, and it was aimed at kids, and that's great, and it was also just like, really, really fun.

Camille: 2:54

Yeah.

James: 2:56

And I had AJ Michalka in it, and that made me happy, so... She's the voice of Catra.

Camille: 3:02

Oh,

James: 3:02

She's also part of-- She's a Disney.

Camille: 3:04

Oh, yeah. AJ, Yeah.

James: 3:05

AJ, yeah, from "Aly and AJ."

Camille: 3:07

Yeah,

James: 3:08

As a band that I've loved for like, 20 years.

Camille: 3:11

Okay!

James: 3:11

EW. I'm old.

Camille: 3:13

That's fine. So anyway, Nimona! It's based, I don't know, what I don't know, how do we how do we start at that episode? Do we start with--

James: 3:16

Oh yeah! So, I mean, Nimona is just based off of a graphic novel that ND Stevenson wrote when he was, or when... in what year was it? 2015?

Camille: 3:36

Yeah, so the web comic got published from like, 2012 to 2014. And then got released as a graphic novel in 2015.

James: 3:45

Okay. Yeah, that's, I remember getting that right when it came out as a graphic novel. I didn't read it as a webcomic.

Camille: 3:51

Yeah, and apparently, like, he started publishing the first few chapters online and very quickly got contacted by an agent in order to publish it.

James: 4:01

Okay.

Camille: 4:01

So yeah, he was still in school, I think by then, so...

James: 4:05

Okay.

Camille: 4:06

Yeah, I've always been--ND Stevenson is honestly someone that I'm like, he's only a year older than me, and if it feels it feels like he has done so much. I'm so impressed by him.

James: 4:19

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I get that. Like, I think he's a year younger than me, and I'm just like, oh, okay, so you just like gone and did the thing. Like, that's amazing, that he puts--like, he's put so much queer out--queer art out in the world, that like I've really loved every bit of it.

Camille: 4:34

Yeah.

James: 4:35

Do we want to talk about, kind of the general plot of Nimona?

Camille: 4:38

Um, sure! I mentioned a little bit. Do you want to go ahead?

James: 4:42

Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's basically like a medieval futurist kingdom. I mean, you wrote this, right.

Camille: 4:48

Yeah, I mean, I wrote it, but like you can, like I don't want--

James: 4:51

Yeah, I'll read it.

Camille: 4:51

I have a bunch of notes, but we don't have

James: 4:53

Okay, okay. Okay. So in the medieval futuristic kingdom, to...[chuckles]. Ballister Boldheart is the first commoner to become a knight, after 1000 years, graduating from the Institute for Elite Knights, which protects the kingdom against monsters outside its outer wall, but during the knighting ceremony, the kingdom's queen is murdered and Ballister is framed for it, losing an arm in the process. As he barely manages to escape and wants to clear his name, Ballister meets Nimona, a teenage outcast who has faced persecution for her shapeshifting abilities and now wants to be his sidekick.

Camille: 5:25

Yeah, and it's, it's hilarious. It's an...it's such a fun movie, and also it goes so deep, and the last like, the last third of it is so dark, actually!

James: 5:37

Yeah, I think...so, I mentioned this before we started recording, but I've seen Nimona twice before, but I only had an hour before this recording to, like, prep for it, so I watched the first half hour and then the last half hour and I was like,"Oh, that's a tone shift!"

Camille: 5:53

Yeah, and it's...I think like the the genesis of the movie is also kind of... quite interesting, because it's...that movie almost never got released, because at first it was Fox who had the rights, and one of its studios, Blue Sky, was producing the movie, and then Disney bought Fox, and Disney didn't really like the movie, like, they wanted to push back a lot on the queer content in it.

James: 6:23

Yeah, well, fuck Disney.

Camille: 6:25

Fuck Disney. It's Oscar nominated! Fuck you, Disney! Take that!

James: 6:29

Yeah, it's so, it's yeah, like it's a very successful show, so kindly fuck off, Disney.

Camille: 6:35

Yeah, kindly. And, and then, like Disney basically shut...shut down the studios that was producing Nimona, so they had to find a new studio to, like, a new source of funding, and I think who ended up funding it was Annapurna Pictures, who is founded by Megan Ellison, basically like is a daughter of a billionaire... the billionaire that founded Oracle.

James: 7:03

Oh, okay!

Camille: 7:04

Yeah, Oracle, I don't know how you say that in English.

James: 7:07

That founded...I was pretending to know what you said. What did you say?

Camille: 7:11

Um

James: 7:12

Annapurna?

Camille: 7:14

It's the founder of...

James: 7:17

Oracle!

Camille: 7:18

Oracle. Yeah. big tech company.

James: 7:21

Yeah.

Camille: 7:22

Yeah.

James: 7:22

Yeah, the...the vision... or the...AR...a...AR? Alternate reality stuff?

Camille: 7:28

Ah, no, they do a lot of...I don't even remember what Oracle do[es]. It's... it's [a] computer software company. They've been working, like they've been doing a bunch of things since like two thousand--

James: 7:38

Oh! Okay,

Camille: 7:39

Yeah, it's...

James: 7:40

Okay. Somehow it's apparently the third largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization.

Camille: 7:47

Yeah.

James: 7:48

Huh. Okay, well, cool.

Camille: 7:50

It's, yeah, and... and anyway, so it's someone who got a lot of money from daddy, and she's like, I'm going to fund...I'm going to fund movies, and I'm gonna fund that queer movie, especially-- specifically!

James: 8:03

Daddy, Daddy, give me money.

Camille: 8:06

I'm like, so you know, what? Trust babies are fine, as long as there's enough diversity with them, I guess?

James: 8:13

I mean, I will say one of my points was like, the amount of diversity within this movie was great, so it's kind of cool to see.

Camille: 8:22

Yeah, it's...I think it's interesting to see how that movie get funded, because like, pretty much all of the big company just considered like, didn't want to take it on, like... Disney say, no. It had to be, like, a very small studio that, like it's a passion project, in a way.

James: 8:44

Yeah!

Camille: 8:45

Funded by someone who had enough money to make it, like, go to the finish line, and... and yeah, so like, I...when Nimona came out, there was a few articles about, you know, the whole process of...of the movie, and there was also some article when they were mentioning, oh, like, when they were writing the movie, for a while, they were wondering whether they could actually handle a third act that was very dark, and whether they should, like, lighten it up to match the rest of the movie, and like Ellison, like the founder of the studio that... that took over was like, well trust your instinct. Do you think it would go with more jokes or not? So they just went with their first instinct to, no, keep the subject dark because it's a dark thing, and it's...

James: 9:34

Right.

Camille: 9:35

It works well within that movie. Yeah.

James: 9:37

Yeah, no, I think it's.. I think it's really, really good in how it, like, shows the...hmm...it shows the depths of morality in a very surface level way that can lead to a lot of, like, more discussion. So, like, it's approachable, but it's also very deep.

Camille: 9:57

Yeah.

James: 9:57

And I don't know how to, like, say it without going into, like, too many spoilers, but, like, there's a whole bunch of, like, existentialist stuff in here.

Camille: 10:05

I think we can go into spoilers because...I mean.

James: 10:09

I mean, we'll get there.

Camille: 10:10

Yeah, we'll get there. Um, yeah, is there, something you want to start with?

James: 10:15

Oh, I mean, I was just gonna start with, like, what it means to be a villain, like...

Camille: 10:20

Yeah.

James: 10:21

I don't know if you have that in your notes. I didn't have a chance to take a look, but...

Camille: 10:25

I had some stuff, but like, yeah, get it going.

James: 10:28

Yeah, I mean, if someone is treated as a villain, and they're forced to survive that way, especially if there's some kind of, like, immortal being, like, they're forced to survive in a world where they are an outcast, so could anyone resist becoming that archetype? Like, that's my thing is I don't think anyone could, like, we don't know, kind of what happened af--before Gloreth, and we don't know what happened after... in that thousand years after Gloreth until, like, the events of this movie. That must have been really hard on Nimona. Like, that's psychological torture, kind of.

Camille: 11:03

Like we have a basic idea of what happened before Gloreth because what we found out towards the end of the movie is that Nimona is the monster that resulted in that kingdom being founded with that big wall around and that Knight Institute that is solely designed to fight the monster from the outside world.

James: 11:24

Right.

Camille: 11:25

Like these big bad monsters that they all basically...they're all being scared of something they have no clue about because they haven't looked outside for a thousand years.

James: 11:36

Right, and that's what I'm saying. I'm, like, what kinda happened before the thousand years of Nimona, like before...er like, what...hmm...What am I getting at? Before Nimona, or before Gloreth, like, what was Nimona doing? Like, her life seemed pretty sad, but also, like, she wasn't a villain.

Camille: 11:51

No, she was just trying to find--

James: 11:53

[singing] Friendship never ends...

Camille: 11:56

Like, we see a little bit with... there's this moment where we see her trying to talk to other birds, trying to talk with other deer, trying to match...like, to fit with all the groups, and...

James: 12:10

Right. Right, and I think that's part of it is, like, I had a

Camille: 12:11

...all the time being rejected, and then she finds this little girl, Gloreth, that, like, they get to play with for a while, and, at first Nimona doesn't shapeshift with her, and then at some point she does because she doesn't realize that it's a bad thing, and then people could be scared of, and at first Gloreth accept her because she's a kid. She doesn't see how that is bad. The friend just as some cool powers. hard time disliking Gloreth because Gloreth is pretty...There's a lot of Galadriel in Gloreth. She's just a kid!

James: 12:50

I know! But Gloreth is kind of a bitch.

Camille: 12:53

Yeah!

James: 12:53

Even though she's a kid!

Camille: 12:54

That's like... it's... what happened is that her parents and the rest of the village find out about Nimona's power, and immediately start being scared of because at first, like, they see Nimona as a bear, I think she is at that moment?

James: 13:10

Yeah, they see her...Yeah

Camille: 13:11

Playing with Gloreth, so a threatening beast playing with a kid, and then they find out that it's, like, a shapeshifter, so a monster and...

James: 13:21

Yeah.

Camille: 13:22

...and basically, they attack Nimona and, like, Nimona keeps shape shifting, and that result in the village burning, but it's solely the fault of the villagers, but as a result, like as a kid, you cannot see Nimona doing the things that the adults are saying she's a bad person for.

James: 13:41

Right. I mean, it's all about perception because...

Camille: 13:45

Yeah.

James: 13:46

...and also, like, history is written by the victors, and Nimona is clearly not a victor in that situation. I don't even know if Gloreth was the victor in the situation.

Camille: 13:58

No, like, especially, like,for example, I don't blame Gloreth for rejecting Nimona because when you look at what happens one thousand years later, when Ballister learns about Nimona being the monster from history, he...he immediately rejects her when he's been spending so much time with her and should know better.

James: 14:20

Right?

Camille: 14:20

And he's an adult.

James: 14:22

Right, and I think...I have a hard time with that because I'm just such, like, a radical acceptance type of person, that for me, I'm just, like, "Okay, cool. Well, she's clearly shown her character, so why are you still persecuting her?" But also those ingrained prejudices...

Camille: 14:37

Yeah.

James: 14:37

...are so hard to get rid of, like, when Ballister drew his sword against her... er, started to, that was really sad!

Camille: 14:45

Yeah! That broke my heart, and especially since like the movie does a great job, I think, showing how Ballister is progressively shifting his mindset regarding Nimona as a shapeshifter because at...at first he's, like, he's scared because he doesn't understand the shapeshifting things and is very much, like, intimidated of... "Oh, Nimona is a monster. So that's not a good thing."

James: 15:10

Right.

Camille: 15:11

...and then he switched to the, "Can you just be a human, so it would be easier?" And...

James: 15:17

Right.

Camille: 15:18

Which is, which is, as a queer person, the "Can you just be normal for a second?" is kind of a slap.

James: 15:27

Right. I mean, I think...[sighs]...I don't know, it's really hard for me to watch those scenes, because it's so much, so much of it is just sad, and I don't know how to, like, process sad.

Camille: 15:41

Yeah, it's, there's, there's a few quotes that I, that I mentioned, like said I put in the dark, right? There's...the movie talks a lot about what it means to be normal. And, and what is normal? And for who.

James: 15:56

Right.

Camille: 15:56

Like, is that...is that just so that other people feel better about themselves? Or is that...it's really just about having to conform to society's requirements, for example.

James: 16:07

Right. Normal is defined by society, and society is, like...[sighs]...a societal construct in itself. So...

Camille: 16:15

Yeah, so we go, like, we really go for a moment where Ballister is, like, "Can you just be you, please? Like, I don't know, girl you." "But I'm not a girl. I'm a shark!" Right? To, like, at some point, he wants her to shift, but only when it's convenient, so like,"You want me to shift. You don't want me to shift. Pick a lane," which I like, too. But at some point, he just evolves a bit and kind of

James: 16:38

Right. asks her, like, what's happening when she doesn't shift. Right! Like, it's kind of made implicit by that her default shape....here, let me see, like, I'm trying to figure And 'cause at one point Ballister is, like, "Put it into

Camille: 16:52

Yeah. out how to phrase it...like, her default shape is that girl your girl shape." "I'm not a girl. I'm a shark." Like, that's shape, or that typically feminine shape, but she doesn't identify as a girl. Like, she doesn't seem to have a gender, which is pretty awesome. just a very quick fuck you to gender, which I really, really love, and also, like, it's just cool to be a genderless being, I guess? Yeah.

James: 17:23

I don't know. I'm biased.

Camille: 17:25

There was also a moment where...where Ballister was, like, "And now, you're a boy.""I am today."

James: 17:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Camille: 17:32

That was so cool. Like, it's like, it's just a shape for her, but that doesn't change who she is, and she doesn't define herself by, like...like neither gender nor, like, a specific form, a specific shape because even, like, even the shape we see her during most of the movie as, like, Nimona is that teenage girl with the short hair and this kind of thing, is not even the shape that she was using when she first met Gloreth.

James: 17:58

Right.

Camille: 17:59

And it's the shape that she still does...she still goes back to sometimes.

James: 18:05

Right. I think it's... I'm curious about like, the age thing because, like, if she was a girl when she met...like, she was, like, a girl of, like, what, like six to seven, maybe - eightish? - when she met Gloreth? I don't know how...

Camille: 18:20

I mean, I think she just took a shape that looked similar to the person in front of her.

James: 18:26

That's true. Okay, that makes sense. 'Cause I was, like, is she aging? If so, she's gonna live for like, she looks she's gonna live for like 15,000 years, or... that was another thing was, like, how old is Nimona? We don't know.

Camille: 18:41

I think she's gonna stay here forever. She's a goddess.

James: 18:46

Yeah. I think she's, like, part of the world.

Camille: 18:50

Yeah...and she's just trying to make sense of it, I guess, and to find other people so she's not lonely.

James: 18:58

Yeah.

Camille: 18:59

Yeah, because at the end of it, like, that's also why she she went to see Ballister in the first place is because she has been rejected by everyone since, like, the start that now, she sees that person that the whole society rejects and is, like...

James: 19:15

Right.

Camille: 19:15

Yeah, maybe we could go along, and also do chaotic things because she likes chaos.

James: 19:20

Yeah, I mean, I think, like, as a being, she is pretty young, or, like, she just has the attitude of someone young because she's like an aspir-- she wants to learn to be a villain or something, and she-- her whole thing is being a sidekick when she clearly has the potential to be a villain, but I don't think it's really villainy that she's after. I think it's just that's kind of what she has been trained to do slash how things have...how she has been perceived slash...I don't know. I don't know how to...

Camille: 19:51

Yeah.

James: 19:52

I don't-- It's so...her motivations are very interesting to me because I don't, and I want to just take it, like, surface level, which is really, like, what it is. Yeah, I don't know.

Camille: 20:04

Yeah...It's, it's hard to say whether there is as a motivation or not with her. She's...it's just loneliness. I think, like, there's also deeply, like, she despises that...the systems, the whole Institute, the whole kingdom because, like, she knows that their origin is bullshit.

James: 20:24

Right. "Go back to the shadows from whence you came" is such a like, it's a Galadriel line.

Camille: 20:31

Yes.

James: 20:32

Galadriel says, "Go back to the void from whence you came," and I'm just, like, it makes my heart happy, but I don't like that it's being said by a villain. Multiple villains.

Camille: 20:42

Multiple villains. Yeah.

James: 20:43

'Cause I think what Gloreth chose to be afterwards

Camille: 20:43

Yeah, but, like, you know, I'm so curious about how makes her a villain, but in that moment, I don't think she's the villain. the kingdom was founded because she's too young to found a kingdom.

James: 20:58

Right. I think it had to have happened when she was an adult.

Camille: 21:03

So, was she the founding member, or was that, like, the village after the fight that decided to build a wall. And...

James: 21:12

Then it just grew from there?

Camille: 21:13

Then it just grew from there.

James: 21:15

Or is it like a Jesus situation and Gloreth never really exists? Or Gloreth was just a person that they had a counsel about in 350 AD, and were, like, "Well, Gloreth, is our Chosen One?"

Camille: 21:29

Maybe! Maybe? Who knows? Who knows?

James: 21:32

Yeah, the world may never know. I don't think the world is meant to know.

Camille: 21:36

Yeah, and I think one thing that is interesting about that movie is that the whole part with Gloreth, and, like, this kingdom and the origin of the kingdom is something that is completely invented for the movies. That's not something that was part of the graphic novel originally.

James: 21:54

Interesting!

Camille: 21:55

Yeah.

James: 21:55

Yeah, I have not read the graphic novel. I have owned it for almost a decade. I have not read it.

Camille: 22:01

Really? I think I bought it like back in 2020 and ended up reading it like two years ago. So...

James: 22:07

Yeah, I...I have owned it since it came out. I think I skimmed through it a little bit, or it's been so long that I can't remember anything about it, but...

Camille: 22:16

So from what I remember, there's still this premise of, like, Nimona finding Ballister and wanting to be his sidekick. Ballister is a lot more of a villain in the comic even if he was wronged by the Institute, but he has a desire for revenge.

James: 22:36

Right.

Camille: 22:36

When in the movie it's really about proving that he's not a bad person.

James: 22:41

Right. 'Cause the same event happened, like, he is...his sword still kills the Queen and stuff?

Camille: 22:48

No, I think...apparently there's, like... there's a knights' joute...joute? ...I don't know, like, you know those...I don't know how to say that in English, but you know the thing where knights are on their horse, and they have lances?

James: 23:02

Joust.

Camille: 23:03

Joust. That's how you say that...and he was fighting Ambrosius.

James: 23:08

Okay.

Camille: 23:08

Who is still his lover kind of in the books.

James: 23:12

Yeah, yeah.

Camille: 23:13

And...and I think the Director of the Institute made a deal with Ambrosius to swap his lance so that it will explode on Ballister, and Ballister lost an arm because of that and then got expelled from the academy for, like, some bullshit reason.

James: 23:31

Right. Okay.

Camille: 23:32

So it was, yeah, it was a bit different.

James: 23:37

But the meat of it still kind of the same, or...?

Camille: 23:39

Yeah, I mean, kind of. It's...He's still been wronged by the Institute. Ambrosius still has a role in chopping his arm off, which is not a love...love language, as the movie repeats multiple times.

James: 23:55

Chopping people's arms off is a love language. It's just not my love language.

Camille: 24:00

Arm chopping is not a love language!

James: 24:02

Yeah, yeah. There were so many good one liners in here.

Camille: 24:06

Yeah. So like, which one I had said...When...When Nimona meets Ambrosius for the first time, and Ballister is, like, "Ambrosius," and Nimona immediately answers,"Gesundheit."

James: 24:21

Right.

Camille: 24:22

Because that name is so weird. That made me laugh.

James: 24:25

Yeah. "Ambrosius... Ambrosius Golden...loin" is a very odd, hilarious name.

Camille: 24:33

Yeah. All of the name I'll pretty hilarious.

James: 24:36

Yeah.

Camille: 24:37

Like, it's...what's the name of Ballister, again? It's"Ballister Boldheart?"

James: 24:42

Yeah, they're all, like, very fantasy.

Camille: 24:45

Yeah.

James: 24:46

I also liked the idea of, like, a high tech fantasy world.

Camille: 24:50

Yeah.

James: 24:51

Like, 'cause that...I don't...I can't think of a time that I've seen something like that before. But I don't know.

Camille: 24:57

I don't remember either. Yeah. Yeah! It was a fun mix to see, like, flying knights with still crossbows, but fancier crossbows. It's like they had part of the technology, and other parts of the technology, they had, like, television and...

James: 25:14

Right.

Camille: 25:14

Like, social media and they had YouTube and...[chuckles]

James: 25:18

I think it was because, like, they just chose, as a society, not to use technology for weapons, and that's...

Camille: 25:26

Oh, they definitely use technology as weapons because...

James: 25:29

Right

Camille: 25:29

...their swords are fancy, and... crossbow, like...

James: 25:34

But maybe not, like, nuclear

Camille: 25:38

They don't have any gun power.

James: 25:39

Yeah, they don't have, like, nuclear...they never discovered nuclear power. They never discovered like, gunpowder. Like...

Camille: 25:47

Yeah.

James: 25:47

Or maybe they know those things, but they're like, "No, those are bad," and I'm like,"Cool, those are bad."

Camille: 25:53

Yeah, and they're still wearing fancy armors.

James: 25:57

Yeah.

Camille: 25:57

Yeah. I...I really liked the aesthetic of that movie for that.

James: 26:01

Yeah.

Camille: 26:02

I was thinking about something, and then I forgot."Says the miscreant whispering in his ear". Says that while whispering in Ambrosius' ear. The Director has some fun lines, also.

James: 26:13

Yeah.

Camille: 26:14

Yeah, it was an...it was a... it's weird because that movie goes dark, and I see I find it kind of comforting to me.

James: 26:23

Yeah, I think... I'm trying to... I can't remember the name of the actor that I love... or the... Todd. I think Todd... Todd had my favorite one liners..just... it was just like... it... He's so dumb.

Camille: 26:39

He has a punchable face.

James: 26:41

He has a very... he's a very Chad. He's a Chad.

Camille: 26:44

Yeah. He is a bully, he's dumb, he had some fun lines. And yeah,

James: 26:50

Let me just... here. I'm just gonna pull up some of my favorite movie quotes. Like, Nimona I think has the best but like, "I love the secret lair. The garbage and smell of sadness really pulled the whole thing together."

Camille: 27:04

Oh, yes.

James: 27:07

Yeah, "Once everyone sees you as a villain, that's what you are. They only see you one way no matter how hard you try."

Camille: 27:13

Yeah, and then it kind of gets reversed later on because there's... so there's a scene where they try to convince Ambrosius that Ballister is not guilty by showing him a video, but the video gets destroyed before they manage to do so, which by the way, the stupid thing should have uploaded it before.

James: 27:36

Yeah, they have the technology.

Camille: 27:37

Make a copy! Make a copy before!

James: 27:40

Yeah.

Camille: 27:41

Anyway, so they fight, which it's a nice, like, it's a fun fight. It's a cool fight, but at the end of it, Nimona basically saves a kid and then goes back to, like, a kid form that she had when she first met Gloreth, and is like trying to reassure the kid, who obviously say, like, consider her as a monster.

James: 28:04

Yeah. Right.

Camille: 28:04

And, and after that, like, they go back to to their lair, with Ballister, and Ballister basically decides to leave with Nimona to go outside the wall because it's like,"You're right. No matter what we do, we can't change the way people sees us." And then he went outside... "You've changed the way you see me, didn't you?" So, I do like the... that balance. That scene was the kid, kind of, was sad for me. It led to like... That quote is just so fucking sad, like, "Did you see the way that little girl looked at me? Kids, little kids, they grow up believing they can be a hero if they drive a sword into the heart of anything different, and I'm the monster? I don't know what's scarier, the fact that everyone in this kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart, or that sometimes I just want to let them?"

James: 28:57

Yeah, yeah, that, I think, is the most tear jerking line, I think, "Everybody wants to run a sword through my heart. Sometimes I want to let them." Like yeah, that makes me sad.

Camille: 29:11

Yeah, it's a few days ago... so we had already decided to to record about Nimona today, But a few days ago, there was a video from Rowan

James: 29:19

Uh huh. Ellis, I don't know if you if you know her. She... She does a lot of YouTube video, but queer media in general. And she had a video about queer villains, and like, I think the title was, like, "Queer Villains and the Death of Media Literacy"...the death of media literacy, which made me laugh, and she was mentioning Nimona, and she had a quote when she was saying, "Just as queerness has often been subject to the debate of nature versus nurture, Nimona asks are monsters born or made? And if they are made, who is responsible for the havoc that they wreak?" And it's a good video, by the way. You should check it out, and yeah, I love that movie. But it's a slap."It's a slap." Yeah, I just really love...I'm, I don't know...I get so caught up in like the background lore of it all, like, the entire backstory is kind of fucked. The Protectors of the Realm have to be descendants, and then it took a 1000 years for that to be rectified, only for them to, like, only for The Director to be like, "No, I'm gonna kill the entire queen to preserve the bloodline that she isn't even part of?" It's just...

Camille: 30:34

I mean, I think she's a noble.

James: 30:36

Okay, well, regardless, she's fucked up.

Camille: 30:38

Oh, yeah, she's completely fucked up, but like she framed Ballister because she was afraid that letting a commoner become... become a knight would lead to the end of the kingdom, but by doing that...

James: 30:51

Right.

Camille: 30:51

...pretty much, like, caused that ending.

James: 30:54

Yeah, I mean, it's a self fulfilling prophecy or self-fulfilling... like, yeah. It's just The Director is really...

Camille: 31:02

Yeah.

James: 31:03

The Director is the real villain of the show, but also, Gloreth has a lot to account for, I think, if what Glorerth did is true. If, and that's a very big if.

Camille: 31:14

Yeah, I feel like everything was built on a lie, so I'm not even sure how much Gloreth has a part in all of that. I just like Gloreth, so I'm like defending her, but maybe I'm wrong, and maybe she turned a bitch. That... she could totally have turned out a bitch.

James: 31:28

I love both.

Camille: 31:29

Because like, I mean, she's just a kid. It's so easy to be, like, it would be so easy for her parents to manipulate her, like, she already fought a monster so, of course, she's...she's going to make... now, she has the destiny of fighting monsters, and now, everyone needs to be protected because what if the monster comes back?

James: 31:46

Right. And that's the thing, like, what if the monster comes back? What are they going to do? Like, it's just really fucked up, I think.

Camille: 31:53

Yeah.

James: 31:54

Oh, I thought my favorite Todd line. My favorite Todd line is about the fat unicorn. The thing with the horn that broke everything and then Ambrosius says, "You mean rhinoceros?" And Todd says, "If I meant rhinoperis? I would have said rhinoperis."

Camille: 32:10

He's so good!

James: 32:11

It's... It's normally those jokes don't get me but like that got me.

Camille: 32:16

It's...I really liked that. So, like so... the discussion about the otter...."So then an otter comes around the corner, and he bit me," and like there's a debate about whether it's a sea otter or a regular otter, and then at some point, the otter, like, Nimona changes... shapeshift again as the otter, and somebody's like,"Oh, yeah, I could see why you were confused! It has the tail of..."

James: 32:36

Yeah, I love that.

Camille: 32:38

"...a tail of a sea otter." Yeah, it was so random and very funny. Yeah. Do we have a lot more to say?

James: 32:47

I mean, do we think Nimona is alive? Obviously, Nimona is alive, I think, at the end.

Camille: 32:53

Yes, she's alive. She's alive. I don't know how she can die, which is a sad thing to think about... to think about. So I'm trying not to think about the After, but, yeah...

James: 33:05

I mean, I love seeing Ambrosius and Ballister kiss at the very end, like, that made my heart happy.

Camille: 33:11

Oh, yeah.

James: 33:12

I also thought Eugene Lee Yang did a really good job, like, voicing the Ambrosius... voicing the character Ambrosius.

Camille: 33:20

Yeah.

James: 33:21

Because it's very much his style, I think of like, a little flamboyant, pompous character, like, he plays that really well, and I also love at the very end, there's that scene of them looking at the wall that has all the Nimona tributes, and Nimona is written by ND Stevenson, like, the artist... He, like, drew the original cover of how Nimona looks in the comic books in there.

Camille: 33:49

Yeah, I saw that too, it's...it's like the... the big picture on that wall is....

James: 33:54

Yeah.

Camille: 33:54

... a nod to the comic. I thought that was cute.

James: 33:57

It was really cute, and I think... I think he also did the, like, "We love Nimona" one or some.... that one that they pick up off the ground.

Camille: 34:07

Maybe! That's possible; that does look familiar.

James: 34:10

It looks like something that he would do a little bit but he also had the other one, so I don't know.

Camille: 34:16

Yeah. Did you see... I think it's when... when the movie came out, ND released a few... a few of the comics about Ambrosius and Ballister onto the...?

James: 34:30

No, I didn't see that. I need to look them up.

Camille: 34:33

I...I need to send it to you because, like, it's just... it's cute... it's... it's-it's Ambrosius and Ballister basically as... as dads for Nimona or something like that.

James: 34:44

Aww! That makes sense.

Camille: 34:46

He's like, "Awwww!"

James: 34:49

That makes me happy.

Camille: 34:50

Yeah, I just wish that that last scene, we would see Nimona, but I know that there's a purpose for not showing Nimona, but still I just wanted to see her again.

James: 35:02

Right. I think... yeah, I think... I liked the ambiguity of it, like, Nimona is obviously alive. It's a different voice, I think.

Camille: 35:13

No, it's the same voice.

James: 35:15

It sounded different to me.

Camille: 35:17

Really? I didn't notice anything.

James: 35:20

Let me... I have it up in another tab right now. Let me just listen to it really quick.

Camille: 35:23

I have it somewhere.

James: 35:25

Okay. It's a much quieter voice, I think, so maybe it's just, like, a tired voice. I don't know.

Camille: 35:31

Yeah, I get what you mean. I do think it's the same voice actress.

James: 35:36

Right. I think it is.

Camille: 35:38

Maybe she's recovering because she...it did seem like she exploded. I'm pretty sure she exploded, and then her body came back together, something like that?

James: 35:48

Right, like, it took a few weeks to reform.

Camille: 35:51

Yeah, she's unkillable.

James: 35:53

She is immortal, which is sad.

Camille: 35:56

Yeah.

James: 35:57

But yeah, I really love Ambrosius and Ballister. I think they're a really, really cute couple.

Camille: 36:05

Yeah, and they have some, they have some good moments in... in the movie, and it's, it's a nice ending for the two of them. It's a...

James: 36:15

It's a nice ending because... oh, I was gonna say because they're not the main story... main characters. They're very much side characters, But at the same time, we get very invested in their story. So yeah... Yeah.

Camille: 36:27

Yeah. I mean, they are not the title characters....important to the story, but yeah. Gosh, I'm Theyre' still... I feel like there's three main characters: rereading a quote from The Director, and I really hate her, Ambrosius, a bit less than Ballister, but Ballister is still very much... like, "I see what it really is, and so did Gloreth. That monster is a threat to our very way of life." And what if we're wrong? And what if, what if we've always been wrong? It's funny, because The Director it's very much about, "We had a way of life, and this thing is threatening it." And it's so much like, every conservative talks about minorities, about immigration, about queer people, about this kind of thing, it's like... this is like... it's... when gay marriage was legalized......it was, "Oh, this is gonna threaten the sacrament of

James: 37:17

Right. the wedding, and..." Right. Yeah...

Camille: 37:25

It's some people would rather live surrounded by walls, than accept that some of the people can be different, and that's fine.

James: 37:33

Right.

Camille: 37:34

And yeah.

James: 37:36

Yeah, no, I think it was just a really, really good film overall, and it made me really happy to see, and I agree with the... what was the name of the person that funded it? Megan Elilson?

Camille: 37:48

Yeah.

James: 37:49

I agree that it was, like, the message... or the movie I needed to see growing up, so I get very happy when I see movies like this aimed towards kids because it's nice to see casual queerness and have it be just casual and never talked about, ever.

Camille: 38:03

Yeah.

James: 38:03

That's what I want. I never want queerness to be talked about I just want it to be, and that's what we're kind of all fighting for.

Camille: 38:09

It's... She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, that was that, too, and that made me... my heart, so... so warm. It never was about queerness. It was, like,... the conflict is not about the queerness.

James: 38:22

Right.

Camille: 38:22

I mean, with Nimona, I... I feel like the conflict def... definitely has some LGBT similarities.

James: 38:30

Yeah.

Camille: 38:31

Because it's like being different from the rest of the world, but yeah, it's a good movie. Everyone should watch it. Anything else to add, or should...?

James: 38:39

No, I think that's good. As always, thank you for

Camille: 38:40

Can I... I'm sorry to tell you that, but... although, listening to the Queers of Time. We are a gay podcast that talks we still have a bit before having to renew Riverside. It's about the Wheel of Time. It also talks about like, you know, other stuff like Nimona, and we do author interviews, and maybe other interviews. Who knows? If you would like to connect with us, we're on Twitter and Discord mainly, and you can listen to us anywhere that you listen to podcasts. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, if you can leave reviews. I don't know why things are dumb, and you can't always leave reviews, but whatever. Is that it? Oh, and also support us on Patreon. We're almost done paying off the podcast. It's been two years. We're almost done. We're almost done. been August. So...

James: 39:30

Yeah, we have time if we can get caught up by August, which is a little after two years, I think I'm happy with that. I don't need to make money off of this podcast. Every cent we make from Patreon goes back into the podcast like we don't make money from this at all.

Camille: 39:47

Yeah.

James: 39:48

Oh, yeah! If you're at JordanCo-Wait, does this come out before after JordanCon?

Camille: 39:55

After during, oh, let me check. Let me check. Right before! The Monday before.

James: 40:01

Perfect! So if you're at JordanCon, please come see us for stickers. That would be absolutely amazing. Just mention that you're a fan of the podcast, and one of us will have stickers on us. We are all four going to be there. We also plan on doing a live episode there, somehow. We're still figuring that out. That'll be fun, but we got this.

Camille: 40:21

Yes, I still have bookmarks...

James: 40:23

Okay, sweet!

Camille: 40:24

...from two years ago that I'll bring, so there's also that.

James: 40:27

Sweet!

Camille: 40:28

Okay. Bye.

James: 40:29

Awesome. Bye.

Camille: 40:32

Thank you all for listening. This was Queers of Time, a Wheel of Time Podcast. The music is Dance of the Witches by Julius H.