Thoughts on Black Panther

[beatrice_otter]

First of all, it is AWESOME.  Totally awesome, well worth the two hours in the car (there and back) it took to get to the movie theater.

• WTF, King T'Chaka?  WTF?  How could it POSSIBLY have exposed Wakanda to pick up his nephew Eric?  They're already leaving a body behind and having one grown man vanish into thin air!  One more person gone won't raise any more fuss.  Particularly not if they wait around for a few days and tell the neighbors that Uncle James is taking little Eric to family, now that his dad is dead, or something like that.  Or if they thought people might think James/Zuri killed N'Jobu, I'm sure there were other War Dogs they could have brought in to pose as family to pick Eric up.  I was expecting that somehow he just didn't KNOW about bb!Eric, but no.  I have seen a fic already where T'Chaka brought him back.
• Speaking of Eric AUs, I want one where instead of going into the military, he hitchhikes across Africa at age 18 and shows up on their doorstep, angry and one big ball of seething anger, but less hardened than he had become by the time of the movie, and everything comes out THEN.
• Eric's thing with his father after taking the Black Panther juice: that was HEARTBREAKING.  And N'Jabu's thing of "I should have brought you back home sooner."  aaaaaaaaaaaah.  I didn't need that heart, no, that's fine, you can just RIP IT FROM MY CHEST, right there.
• PRINCESS SHURI, your picture is in the dictionary under the word "awesome."  I want fic of her pranking her brother and recording it.
• Also, I want fic of her teaching at the center in Oakland.  I predict explosions (the good kind) and lots of shenanigans.
• Is it wrong of me to want Queen Ramonda/General Okoye fic dealing with both their issues about what happened?  They had to have some.  I mean, Queen Ramonda's husband died, and then she thought her son died, and Okoye served his killer/successor, even though she HATED it and came back to T'Challa's side when she had a chance.  And if one assumes that Okoye and W'Kabi are no longer together, and is grieving too ... that's a GOLD MINE of really angsty plotty fic, right there.
• Also, Okoye/W'Kabi fic dealing with what they both did and chose.
• And W'Kabi and T'Challa fic.  Treason trial for launching the ships once he knew the challenge was still in progress?  Or maybe not, given the ... ambiguous nature of things, I bet a good enough lawyer could get him off, or at least a reduced sentence.  But that, too, is a GOLD MINE of really angsty plotty fic.
• M'BAKU.  Please, please, please give me ALL THE FIC about him and his people, for lo, he is awesome.  Given his sense of humor, I think that under less fraught circumstances he and Shuri might get along really well, and scare T'Challa.  Also M'Baku and T'Challa fic about bringing their people together, or possibly worldbuilding fic about their cultural differences, and if their tribe was the one that DIDN'T join under the king, what would the consequences have been if he'd won the challenge and become king?
• Okay, WHERE IS WAKANDA?  The map at the beginning sort of implied that it was somewhere in South Sudan.  What do their neighbors know about them?  what sort of cross-border trading goes on?  What about the Wakandans who live outside that shield, the ones who are on display for their neighbors, what sort of lives do they lead?
• Please tell me there is fic of various War Dogs across the world and throughout history.  Among other things, N'Jobu cannot have been the only one to have a kid while outside in the world.  Do War Dogs ever bring home foreign spouses?
• Also.  Did T'Challa spend time as a War Dog?  Is that required for possible claimants to the throne, so that they know what they're protecting Wakanda from?  Because that's where my head went when learning that the king's brother was one.  Is that, like where he met Nakia?  (Is Nakia a War Dog?  Or are there TWO branches of spies?)
• Speaking of Nakia, we could have so many stories about her adventures fighting bad guys and helping people.
• I like Nakia/T'Challa, but I have no burning desire to fic them.  They were cute together, they had chemistry, but were possibly the least interesting part of the movie for me.  Though I am curious as to why they broke up in the first place.
• What about that flower?  Was ... was that really ALL of it that existed?  Please tell me they have seeds somewhere.  I was rooting for Nakia to rip a whole plant out from its root and save it to replant somewhere.  It makes sense that they would highly restrict it, and have gotten rid of any wild versions out there, but if they don't have more of it, then T'Challa's successor will not be Black Panther, and that would be a huge blow both to Wakanda's heritage and traditions, and also to their ability to keep themselves safe from the outside world now that they are revealing themselves.  Also, ONE THREAT and they follow his orders to destroy their sacred flower?  That didn't ring true to me.
• Perhaps I have read too much Rivers of London lately (is there any such thing?) but when M'Baku revealed that T'Challa had been found by fishermen in the river, I was like, well, SHYEAH, Killmonger said he'd been active in Africa, betcha SOMEWHERE he ran afoul of a River and whatever-that-river-is had heard about it, and decided she didn't like him and was going to tip the scale to keep T'Challa alive so that he might be able to oust Eric?

In conclusion, WAKANDA FOREVER.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I imagine if they don't have a seed vault they probably have its genome sequenced and their tech is good enough to recreate it. Unless that way you only get a regular plant not the magically glowing variants.

[beatrice_otter]

As someone else pointed out, they probably have enough seeds/seedlings in the compost heap to replant everything, not to mention whatever they might have in labs and places. Like, killing that many plants--even with fire--is hard.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

That's a good idea, because Erik wouldn't know much about botany of the heart shaped herb (I get now it's the fruit looks like an organ heart, not the leaves are suit heart ala the comics) so maybe that's why they went at it so fast with the fire.

"Yes, this is bad now, but our T'Challa is dead, and we will have to get the 'power stripper' into this King when the time is right. He'll be too distracted by fire to think too much."

[beatrice_otter]

LOL

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I think they broke up because she wanted to save girls and boys from trafficking/'forced marriage' and child soldiering on a larger scale and he wanted her around Wakanda more. Clearly, she's been to South Korea enough to have dug into at least one secret casino.

Think she's been finding all the ones the CIA knows?

I think Okoye and W'Kabi will be able to work things through. There may be a phase where she's just visiting the rhino.

I want to know which of the Dora Milaje Erik (slit her throat?) killed.

I'm awaiting what elegance White Wolf's new left arm will be. Since that's going to be a Shuri yes, I am amazing.

I really think not bringing nephew back was mostly not wanting to admit N'Jobu was dead (having him Lost is much harder with his son as evidence) Also, I'm assuming his mom is still alive at that point. So, you kill your brother, bring back his son and his Oakland bride It's the coverup that bites you in the end.

[beatrice_otter]

I kind of assumed that Eric's mom was either dead or gone, by then. Or at least fairly soon thereafter, given how little impression she seems to have made in Eric. It's possible she was just sort of a nebbish person, but I can't see a Wakandan man going for a bland just-barely-there sort of person, given what we see of Wakandan women. Not to mention the way Zuri told the story, it sounds like "falling in love" and "getting radicalized" were fairly closely related, in time if not in causality. If Erik's mom had a hand in that ... she would probably also be connected to the radicalization of her son, yes? And she's not there. One line, that's it. No feminine touches in the apartment, no mention of her by either Erik or his father, nothing.

If she was in the picture when N'Jobu was killed, that makes T'Chaka's actions less reprehensible. But then her absence later makes no sense.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I wonder. Because notice the way Erik phrases his wish to be buried in the ocean. The thing about ancestors, they have to live long enough to have the next generation. Kinsmen and kinswomen do not have that limitation.

But yes, N'Jobu presumably got into position as did Zuri (how did they manage that bit of deception?) and somehow N'Jobu met Erik's mom. Likely a formable woman; there are a lot of ways for such a woman to not still be around even a little later.

Might that be why Erik seems to take a bit of pleasure taunting the curator as her tainted coffee kills her? (I thought that "Bonnie" was more likely British or resident-British than American. Possibly a woman with a thing for bad boys. [I'd thought someone had caught a name, but apparently she was unnamed. Emblematic.]

[oracne]

I would like to read all of the stories you posit, please. *looks around hopefully*