Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized black panther, dead fictional mothers club, erik killmonger, erik's mother 0 Comments

grison-in-space:

thunder-the-wolf:

grison-in-space:

sarah531:

(Still on Black Panther, sorry…)

I can’t stop thinking about what might’ve happened if Erik had lived.

Fuck I know, right? Goddamn.

My mom thinks he’s still alive and I kind of agree. Why? They traveled from South Korea to Wakanda and Shuri took a bullet out of a man’s spine. He was up and about two days later, to his eternal surprise. Why would Erik be dead in a country this advanced? Especially when he had a fair claim in their eyes?

No lie, I saw T’Challa leading him up to watch the sunset and knew that T’Challa was deliberately choosing to let him die and got very very angry with him. And at the same time, that was Erik’s specific request–T’Challa asked–and I was angry again because now is when you listen? Not when Erik demanded to be acknowledged, not at any other point–you listen only when your enemy requests something you personally would find convenient?

(I actually have a lot of places where I want to yell at T’Challa for his mistakes despite holding him in high esteem as a character and a leader–because this story is T’Challa making political mistake after mistake when the chips come down, even though he does do right in the end and is trying his absolute best. But. He ought to have listened to Nakia more, and he should have pause to think about what Nakia and others might say as he chooses to make decisions. Or, hell, pause and ask Okoye, even–and they would often disagree, but their points would have clarified a lot of the unspoken assumptions and ideas that underlie T’Challa’s thinking and decisions.)

And I was angry a third time, because this could all have been prevented with a touch of compassion from a ruler at so many points: compassion from T’Chaka when he met his brother and listening to his plea; compassion from T’Chaka meeting his brother by doing literally anything nonlethal to defuse the situation when his brother found out he wasn’t the only Wakandan; compassion from T’Chaka at least bringing his brother’s wife and child home, to atone for murdering him.

Compassion from T’Challa: when Erik strode in and approached, acknowledging him immediately and explaining he’d only just now found out himself would have undercut an awful lot of Erik’s righteous fury. Honesty and compassion about his failure to capture the Claw, compassion for the feelings of the Rhino Clan. (He doesn’t frame his decision to go after the Claw that way, by the way; did you notice? He frames it as a display of Wakanda’s strength against its enemies.) God, even some follow-up with the Gorilla Clan would have gone a long fucking way. A clan comes out of obscurity it’s lurked in for generations to challenge your rule, and you don’t even comment?

Compassion when he found out what Erik’s arguments were. Listening. Asking Erik to prepare a speech, perhaps a speech to the people of Wakanda introducing himself: allowing the people to have a say in Wakanda’s future before acting, and giving things time to cool down and giving Wakandans some time to respond to Erik. (And buying Erik off with the promise of a platform to share what had happened to him, with all the potential blame for that going straight onto dead T’Chaka, leaving T’Challa to wash his hands of his father’s mistakes and do better going forward.)

No. It’s all “not listening not listening not listening OKAY TIME TO FIGHT.” For fuck’s sake, man! He didn’t have to die! You didn’t have to play right into his setup, right into his preconceived notions of how his visit to Wakanda would go! You didn’t have to be so predictably unprepared! You are supposed to be a scholar, T’Challa; how have you missed this history and political training in all your education? Take control of the narrative and shape it! You have power, man; don’t stay paralyzed, but learn to shoulder the mantle and use the weight of that power and its history to lead to justice!

at least bringing his brother’s wife and child home

This might need its own thread eventually, but this thought threw something into sharp relief for me – where is Erik’s mother, anyway? She’s nowhere to be found. I Googled “erik killmonger’s mother” to see if she showed up or was named in the comics but I don’t think she is. Does the Black Panther script even outright say she’s dead? I can’t remember.

But who was she? Did Erik love her? Did she know about Wakanda? Did she tell Erik different stories? Would he have liked to see her one more time too? Was she where he got the name “Stevens” from? (I really like to think that’s the case, to be honest.)  I just have, gaaaah, so many questions.