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piggledy-higgledy · 14 days

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Sorting Hat Chats - Nimona

@sevilemar got me to watch the wonderful new movie Nimona. I'm very excited about it, and I thought I'd try my hand at sorting the main characters, since I haven't seen that done yet. Here are the basic of the system I'm using.

Spoilers below the cut:

This is a very Snake Primary movie overall, so I'm going to start with our most obvious Snake Primaries and work from there.

The titular Nimona is a Snake primary. In her flashback, we see her seeking connection with all the different animals, but it only works when she finds Gloreth. And then Gloreth is her PERSON, they're in love, it's adorable, and then, the most heartbreaking thing that's ever happened to her, Gloreth betrays her. And thus her Snake primary burns. She doesn't connect with anyone else (we might assume) for the next thousand years, and tho she's self-confident and self-sufficient, she admits that the hatred from others makes it hard for her to value herself. Then she hears about Ballister, and she gets very excited, because here's, finally, a potential kindred spirit. She takes Ballister to be the classic burnt Snake/Bird villain archetype, wanting to take revenge on the world that rejected him, and is disappointed when that's not quite him (I'll elaborate when I get to sorting Ballister). Nimona herself is angry with the Kingdom and its rejection of her, but she seems to keep her anger to graffiti and fantasies of revolution, but Ballister, if her new person wants to overthrow the government, she's all on board and will help him however she can. Even when he's not what she expected and doesn't fully accept her yet, sticking with him and helping him is so much better than being alone, and she'll stand by him until he completely rejects and fears her.

Nimona's obstacle to the acceptance she craves is wrapped up in her secondary: She's a Lion. I read once that a shapeshifter Lion secondary would have a distinguishing trait that would be constant through all their forms, and that's obviously Nimona. Her animal forms are consistent over a thousand years, her impression of Ballister has a red streak in his hair and acts like her, and when she properly acts (a bit of a Bird model), as the Demon Baby and Ambrosius, she loses patience and lets herself through pretty quickly, terrifying the Squire and making Ambrosius' death a bit over the top. And her consistent difference from everyone around her is her struggle, she can look similar to all the animals but not so similar that they accept her. Gloreth, miraculously, accepts her human form and her shapeshifting abilities as well... until she doesn't. So she's careful, opening up to Ballister again. She's Nimona, she's defiantly herself, and not defined by any group, but she's reluctant to explain. She does enjoy lying to Ballister, but only as a momentary joke. (And maybe jabbing at his gullibility is related to her burnt tendency to trust people at face value?) She gradually reveals herself, until she's unmasked as Gloreth's monster, and Ballister leaves her.

And now she's broken, she burns entirely, I think, primary and secondary. She takes a form without any of her usual red, and she's not playing a role, she's become the monster they all think she is. And she loses her weakened sense of self-preservation entirely. She is only drawn to the statue of the woman she loved and who betrayed her.

Until Ballister stops her. "I'm sorry. I see you, Nimona. And you're not alone." Ballister knows all her secrets and still sees her true self, her Person finally accepts all of her authenticity... and she returns to herself and falls into his arms.

In light of all this, I was at first confused by her final sacrifice, but then I noticed, first she looks at the screaming crowds, and looks upset, but only after she looks back at Ballister, and sees his horror, does her face turn to resolve. She's always empathized with the people of the Kingdom, especially children (as they feel like her, similarity is a good way for Snakes to connect), but I don't think she's ever really taken them as her problem. But when Ballister fully accepts her, she fully accepts him, which includes, as Snakes tend to, adopting his values. She takes his duty to defend the people as her own. He's a hero, and she's his sidekick.

(Damn, I want to cry again.)

Ambrosius Goldenloin's Snake primary is very clear from his imagined monologue to the Director, so I'll quote it at length here: "I've lost my mind. I've lost everything. The man I love, my best friend." He just says his everything is his Person. Followed by a note of jealousy: "Although now he's got a new best friend. What's that about?" His distrust of Ballister, here and elsewhere, is distinctly framed as "What else is he hiding? Who is the real him?" because if he never knew Ballister, then their connection wasn't real, and his loyalty to him isn't owed. But he isn't sure he's wrong about Bal, and so he keeps trying to make sense of his confusion, and find out if he should still be loyal to him. And he's built Ballister into his sense of self so much that he then asks: "Who am I? A direct descendant of Gloreth? I never asked for that." This man's not a Lion primary, he doesn't find his destiny or heritage meaningful in defining himself. And finally: "Now everyone expects me to arrest Ballister. And if I don't, I'm a traitor to you. And if I do, I'm a traitor to him!" He frames his choice as a binary one between two personal loyalties: to the Director, and to Ballister. They are his People, deciding between them is the only thing that matters. Gloreth, the Institute, the ideals he was taught, they don't even register for him. And Ambrosius deciding which of the two to trust is much of his arc.

His secondary is less explicit, but I think the clearest moment of him problem-solving is trying to catch Ballister on the subway. Todd, a stereotypical Lion secondary, sees an obvious clue and immediately wants to move. But Ambrosius waits, and watches. And his first clue is "He hates freestyle jazz." His skill in this investigation, as he argued before, is that he knows Ballister the best, so he'll have the best chance of catching him. He's invested in Ballister, so he has power around him. And once Ambrosius has thoroughly watched the full clip (and asked a tech where the train is going), only then does he decide where to go. The thoroughness and humility here, coupled with his intro scene giving Ballister such care and support, make me think Ambrosius is a Badger secondary. A Lover archetype for our hero/villain's boyfriend, but a variation who's very conflicted with a whole lot of agency. I love it. (And his sorting matches mine.)

Ballister Boldheart/Blackheart is a wonderful Bird primary, with an arc of transforming his belief system over the course of the movie, who models Snake for the two important Snake primaries in his life.

He starts out with a dream, "I'm here to slay monsters and protect our kingdom." But it's never about his specialness, I think he just absorbed the cultural narrative, and so just did what seemed like the obvious right thing. (Flashbacks to my Bird primary model) By the time he graduates the Institute, they've "brainwashed [him] good", as Nimona says. The Institutional Badgery values of protecting the Kingdom from monsters has become entirely his. And the public's doubt in him gets to him, he has trouble not absorbing their input.

And when it all falls apart, he's immediately concerned with the Truth. He's innocent, this isn't right, he just needs to give the right people the right information and it'll all be fine. He's not the burnt Snake primary villain Nimona expects, his values are still pretty intact despite everyone turning on him. It takes time for them to break down. The plot challenges him one piece at a time. When he sees the video, he edits his system enough to say that "the Institute's not the problem, the Director is." He gradually accepts more and more of Nimona. When Ambrosius rejects him, he decides it's ok to embrace the villain role a bit and have fun.

He definitively turns on Nimona not because of his loyalty to her or to Ambrosius, but because of a piece of paper (so Bird pri) and a deep part of his system: "Gloreth's monster is the embodiment of evil and what the Kingdom needs protection from." Only when he sees Nimona again, understands her, and lets go of this belief can he fully accept her. His early system, "I'm here to slay monsters and protect our kingdom" is half transformed. He's no longer here to slay monsters, he's still here to protect the Kingdom - but by accepting the Monster.

I think he's also a Bird secondary. He builds his own arm in a derelict tower. He makes an innocence wall to connect the dots. He likes making plans and he's initially uncomfortable with Nimona's improvisation when things inevitably go south. There's a particular way he's supposed to do this, honestly, quietly, carefully. But then, when Ambrosius rejects him, he takes up a bit of an Actor mask of the villain role, and he and Nimona start to sync and have fun together. He trusts his training and he's better at swordplay than any of the other knights, because, as Ambrosius said, he worked harder than any of them. And he learns to plan with Nimona, using her shapeshifting as a tool to get the confession from the Director. And him leaving his sword behind, "I don't fight for her anymore", the tools he uses are an important part of his identity.

The Director is definitely an Idealist. Her values are Badgery, about protecting the community from the outgroup, but her final decision to turn the cannon on the city shows that this ideal is inflexible when it comes to protecting actual people. Since we don't see her change, it's hard to tell which Idealist primary she is, but I think she's a Lion. She tells Ambrosius!Nimona that she had a dream as a child, and simply states that Ballister's knighthood would be the first crack in the wall. She has a monologue, but it's not an explanation. And when everyone around her turns on her, she doesn't update, she doesn't change like Ballister does, her convictions are internal and she carries them to the terrible end. And I think she's a Bird secondary. Lasers are her distinctive tools, to kill the Queen, to knock down Ambrosius, and to (try to) kill Nimona. She plots and lies, easily but carefully, on her own, no improvisation and no support from others. Her monologue is just her dropping her mask and speaking her Liony conviction.

Todd (Thoddeus) Sureblade strikes me as a pretty stereotypical Double Lion. He's impulsive, ready to rush off to catch Ballister at the first clue of where he went. He's a Glory Hound, competing with Ambrosius to lead the knights. And he never questions that he's in the right and better than those around him, until the very end. We only see his sad expression, but reading into that, I think the way the final battle ended shook him, and he's done some emotional soul-searching.

And while my sortings for the antagonist characters are more tentative, I enjoy the concept that this story, that's so much about inverting classical tropes, would invert the character archetypes such that Snake and Bird primaries are the heroes and Lion primaries (with Badgery and Glory Hound values) are the villains.

(These are the 5 characters I think we know enough about to sort decently. The Queen, the Squire, and Gloreth don't get much screen time.)

To sum up:

Nimona - Snake/Lion (Bird sec model)

Ambrosius - Snake/Badger

Ballister - Double Bird (Snake pri model)

The Director - Lion/Bird

Todd (Thoddeus) Sureblade - Double Lion

(If anyone else has sorted these characters, or has disagreements, I'd love to hear about it. I'm trying to get better at this.)

#sortinghatchats #nimona #I love this

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