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I LOVE Priest and their music has changed my fucking life so it makes me happy to see their songs anywhere. I was grinning at my screen!! But then I realized how fucking PERFECT that song is for this film

Breaking the Law wasn't written about sexuality; moreso, the Thatcher government at the time. But having this song, by Judas Priest, whose lead singer is a gay man, appear in this film, about Nimona and her refusal to make anyone comfortable, how she doesn't hide who she really is, is pretty damn special.

Rob Halford wrote this in his autobiography...

When you live life in the closet, when you live a lie, you are so pent-up and repressed every single day of your existence that, when you finally emerge, you have an explosion of openness and candidness. You don't want to hold anything back.

... and I think about this a lot because it really does sum up how a lot of people feel about coming out. There's no more hiding. No more denial. Why not be loud and proud? And that's what Nimona does. She is exactly who she is even if everyone else thinks it's easier for her to be a girl. It doesn't matter if it makes people uncomfortable, it sure as hell isn't stopping her

And even beyond that, Judas Priest being in this movie is still perfect. They've always been very in-your-face, raw heavy metal. They're Judas fucking Priest! Wearing leather and studs onstage and Rob Halford riding in on a MOTORCYCLE to perform Hell Bent for Leather (Priest will not perform at a venue if the venue won't let Halford use the motorcycle!). And you gotta watch the music video for Breaking the Law if you still don't believe its inclusion in this movie was absolutely perfect. You'll see what I mean

- The scene where the Director pulled out that thousand year old scroll to justify her murderous intent towards Nimona. And the way my first thought was "wait is this like the Bible or the Constitution?" because damn bigots have a habit of using centuries-outdated documents to persecute people

- The flashback with Gloreth and Nimona. Oh my god bro. I think there's a lot of ways you can see that scene but I saw it the lesbian way. And if you're lesbian you get what I'm saying. When you love a girl so much and you're like two peas in a pod with each other but then realize they never saw you the same way and you were never more than just a friend...

- The way Nimona never transformed into the monster depicted in all that art. The way that the village burned not because of her but the villagers surrounding her with torches. And this same thing happens later during Nimona's attempt; almost none of the damage to the city was caused by her but by everyone hurting her and destroying everything just to destroy her. Fuck bro

- Speaking of the attempt sequence, Nimona's shadowy form sounding completely and utterly human got me. How all the knights kept shooting at her is beyond me. Because you wouldn't expect to strike a giant shadow "monster" and its scream to be a little girl's scream. Her final scream in that scene right as she was at the sword's tip made me burst into tears

- There's a lot of things I like about Ballister but I need to make the joke about his big brown eyes real quick... great addition. Can't imagine looking at him and seeing queen-murdering thoughts behind those eyes

- The way Ballister was ready to pack it up and go the moment Nimona admitted how scared she was of the kingdom hurting her. The way he was ready to leave everything he ever knew behind just to protect this girl. Oh my god

- Ambrosius immediately deducing that the Ballister on the cameras was an imposter because he knows Bal hates freestyle jazz. Choked on my own spit

- Fucking RUPAUL voicing one of the commentators of the knighting ceremony

- Nimona herself being incredibly trans in every way possible is already made clear but I ADORE how she doesn't bend to make anyone comfortable. There's a real message here about cis queer people trying to be "the good ones" by putting down trans people who "make the community look bad", when at the end of the day, they hate us all and it doesn't stop at trans people. The way Nimona makes it clear that the kingdom doesn't hate her any more than they hate Ballister. Bal's desperate "be discreet" attitude eventually developing into "let's break stuff". No point in trying to appeal to bigots and he learned that lesson. A lot of y'all could learn from his development all I'm saying

- I really love all of Nimona's different forms but the ostrich made me laugh when I first saw it because I remembered the WikiHow article on how to survive an ostrich encounter and one of the strategies is just "dive into a thorn bush". I can't draw like that but artists if you need a silly prompt that's mine

- The propaganda. Oh my god the propaganda. Already kinda talked about this with Gloreth but Nimona's short monologue about how impressionable little kids think they're righteous for wiping out anyone "other" was chilling. Because she's right

- In the scene where Ballister and Nimona check their upload of the Director's confession, it's brief but you can see a comment that questions if it's some sort of deepfake. Now I know this movie was in development quite some years ago (hence the dancing shark scene) but that's a little too accurate to how common deepfakes have become since the rise of AI recently. Made me wonder how common deepfakes must be in this kingdom and who exactly utilizes them (definitely not the Institute for their propaganda...)

- The queen. She was cool and all for the 5 minutes she was alive onscreen and was genuinely trying to make progress but she just reminds me of real lawmakers. The "good ones" never stick around for long, unfortunately, and the ones who you think are on your side will ditch you if they need votes. How it's all a problem with the system itself, and one good person inside the system isn't going to change anything

- When Nimona said "metallllll" and she threw up the horns I got so happy. I'm a huge metalhead so anytime I see the horns done right I get happy. Remember it's WITHOUT the thumb sticking out!!!

- There's a certain song inclusion that really tugged at my metal heartstrings... but I wanna make a full post on that. Gonna do that right after I post this

- Lastly, this movie is BOLD. It's unflinching. Like its titular character, it doesn't CARE to make you comfortable. You WILL see these queer men express their love for each other in the opening scene. You WILL watch them kiss. You WILL watch Nimona act loud and defiant no matter how much stealth (pun NOT intended) a mission calls for. Truly some amazing stuff

You know how some colleges and universities have campus support dogs, taken care of and trained by the campus nurse? Essentially, students can sign up to take these dogs on walks, play with them, etc. Now imagine if the Academy in these games had a system like this for Rockruff, which, when trained well, is an ideal friendly puppy Pokemon; it's pretty much the perfect all-rounder support dog available

Well my dad has 3 younger brothers and so the second oldest, my uncle Dennis, had the same teacher the year after my dad did. So he's taking English with Dave Grohl's mom in his senior year and one day the man himself pays a visit during lunch or something, just his mom and my uncle Dennis in the room. And he asked Dave to sign his forehead. Like for real he got the actual Dave Grohl to sign his forehead that day