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effervescentdragon · 13 days

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*holds out a mic like a reporter* what’s your opinion on the current state of the mcu?

my opinion is that it should have died a long time ago and that everything they do is just abusing the corpse of a frankensteined thing that should have been left and buried a long time ago.

now, i am not that much up to date. i have stopped engaging with mcu after endgame, with the exception of watching the forst season of loki and wakanda forever and i think the eternals, which is good if its taken out of the wider context. my opinion is that the mcu is empty and soulless and a perfect indoctrination into individualist capitalism, warmongering patriarchy and the greedy capital-driven urge of mega corporations and billionaires to replace any sort of humanity with artificially, computer made caricatures of something that once moght have been called art.

i remember that article that tom hiddleston wrote as a response to i believe scorcese sometime way back in 2012, defending superhero movies. i am too lazy to find any refetences so whoever reads this can do their own research and correct me if im wrong anywhere, but i do believe he gave sir christopher reeve as an example. he wrote about the thruths that superheroes explore, how there is not one, but many. how it is the mundanity and the pure humanity that gets amplified and therefore explored and understood through the characters of superheroes, and it all brings us closer to the human experience. that article has stuck with me through all the years ive spent watching these movies and believing in the message - we are all superheroes in our own way. we all make choices, no matter on how much of a micro scale, to do the right thing. to protect, to shield, to fight against injustice. art is, after all, inherently political.

there is none of that in the mcu. ive seen it being chipped away piece by piece over the years, seen the ethical and moral dilemmas we all face in day to day life brought on the big screen to make us understand that there is always a choice, no matter how tough that choice may be, and that every single one of us is capable of both the biggest heroism and the most depraved atrocities, because we are, in essence only human; i have seen all that be replaced with american capitalist war and conquering propaganda, girlboss empty feminism and whatever the fuck those shit "christians" are now pandering and paddling as "family values".

the only god disney worships is obscene amount of money. the only value they respect is how little they can pay and how much they can exploit to get highest monetary value for their shitty cgi-ed recycled propaganda movies. they have turned every character into a twisted version of themselves, assigned value to only those characters who help them propagate their imperialistic capitalist world order, and are fine to spit out dozens of same content (because by now, it is content, devoid of any artistic ideation) and stomp on all that superheroes used to stand for and all that they used to teach us. they also do it in a most insidious way, giving token "other" characters, be it by their race or faith or sexual orientation or gender, while counting on the systematic lowering of critical thinking skills in people to ensure people are dazzled by the shallow representation and never look further away from the rainbow cgi and explosions to understand that mcu has become just another cog in the us imperialist war machine.

i lied. i looked up tom hiddleston's article because i think a shakespearean actor classically trained who quotes tolstoy for fun might have written a better punchline than i could write, in my despondent, disappointed and despairing state of seeing something i've loved with my whole heart be ruined ny human grief. i was right.

"Maybe playing superheroes isn't such an ignoble undertaking after all. "I still believe in heroes," says Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury in Avengers Assemble. So do I, sir. So do I."

except. except i believe in real life superheroes. in the people protesting against the genocide in gaza. in the people on the ground risking their lives to tell us in the west, about sudan and palestine and uyghur muslims and armenia and congo, in a bid that we might turn our heads and watch the actual real life crises caused by the very imperialists who use these superhero movies to try and save their status quo of opression. i believe in a man who chose self-immolation over being party to the atrocity that is the us military. i believe in my friends in germany who go out every weekend and fight against the rising nazi regime. i believe in every person that has spoken out against the atrocities in the world, every person that has donated and educated and debated and wrote to the representatives and protested. and they still do it, and will continue to do it. these people are the real superheroes to me, and guess what? they are just humans. and those people comitting atrocities right now? they are just humans too.

this is what the superhero comics and movies that i used to watch taught me. that humans are those who have the capacity for the biggest heroism and most despicable atrocities both. we just have to choose. and that is not something that anyone will be able to learn from the mcu anymore.

#never forget to say: free palestine #i woke up angry and i saw this ask about mcu so here we go #this is my opinion on it #effervescentdragonrants #akira answers asks #i guess i truly am a fool. i dont lose hope. still

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guardianbee · 1 year

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RE: your post about nashuri being compared to re//ylo

you're so correct. i think people get caught up in the whole "quite popular ship about enemies who might have a romantic connection" thing and ignore the fact that the romance in rey//lo is completely fabricated and unsubstantiated while namor and shuri are shown as mirrors of each other since the very beginning and the story cannot go on as it does without the connection between the characters.

kyle doesn't care for rey whatsoever and has no qualms with hurting and torturing her even after he realised they were a force dyad (which was so half assed and obviously only done to fabricate a romance that just wasn't there); on the other hand namor sees himself in shuri since the first meeting and never intended to hurt her, not even after the perceived betrayal of her leaving with nakia. him killing ramonda was a response to ramonda's own actions and a fulfilment of a promise he made to her, he never did it because he intended to hurt shuri and knew that would be the surest way (we know from tenoch's interviews that he never really thought about how shuri would see his actions as an attack to her)

it vexxes me when i see fanfictions about "dark namor" where he acts like an unfeeling asshole who hurts shuri on purpose just because he can and he "breaks" her because that's kyle, not namor. he's a king and a man of his word, his actions against wakanda were a reasonable reaction to them invading his country and killing two handmaidens, and he had warned ramonda what would happen if they did so. his actions might have been morally wrong but not unjustified, and if he didn't stick to his word he would seem a weak leader.

anyway, sorry for the big ask. didn't want to add onto a reblog because people on this app don't know how not to be rude lmao

No worries about the long ask! I like getting asks every now and again, so this was a nice surprise.

Oh my gosh, the part about Ramonda's death being a fulfillment of Namor's promise to her.... I completely forgot about that part of the movie hjsdfgsdh. I only watched the movie once so I'm forgiving myself here, but yeah, this makes total sense! Namor is truly a man of his word - he binds himself to it, for better or worse. Also, I've said this before and N'jadaka confirms it, but ultimately, Ramonda did not have to die - she chose to sacrifice herself for Riri.

And yeah, it also makes sense he wasn't thinking about Shuri in that instance - he was thinking about what was best for his people, how to protect them and keep them safe. He made a tactical decision - by submerging the throne room, he assumed either Riri or Ramonda would die. And hey, if both did, even better. Obviously, that had some unintended consequences since Shuri was devastated by the loss of her mother and wanted vengeance, and Namor is the outlet to lash out both her wrath and the unprocessed grief she still carried for T'challa. That's why the ending of the movie is just... MAN, I cannot wait until February 1 to bawl my eyes out yet again!

Their story is eons different to how Kyle and Reyy interact with one another in the ST. For one, Kyle does not seem to resepct Reyy until the very end of EP9 (I never watched it so I'm just going off the synopsis). Man literally told her she was nothing and came from nothing. Juxtapose that with Namor clearly respecting Shuri as a leader of her nation as well as her intellect and empathy.

Then you just have the differences in character - Kyle is quite literally, until the end of EP9, a fascist that will do whatever it takes to control the galaxy and plunge it into darkness for... really vague reasons like emulating his grandfather? He kills because he wants to, because he likes it, all in a quest for absolute power and control. Meanwhile, Namor is an anti colonialist/anti imperialist who loves his people and will protect them however he can. As an anti hero, that means getting his hands dirty and killing those he sees as a threat to his people's safety, whether they were good people or not, whether they deserved it or not (the contrast between him killing US soldiers plundering his ocean for vibranium vs Ramonda and possibly tens of hundreds of Wakandan citizens). While they both kill, their motivations are fundamentally different and incompatible. Namor would see Kyle for what he is - another white man thinking of only his desires, trying to take what is not his and subjecting communities to unspeakable violence and misery.

Then you got Shuri and Reyy. Both are motivated by love and grief, but in different ways. Shuri is motivated by the deep love she has for her family and her people. Reyy, however, is motivated by the absence of love - she wants love, she wants community. She grieves what she's never had. That's why the scene between her and Finn before Kyle finds them in TFA is so memorable to me. She thought she found someone who could be hers, who could be a part of her community, and Finn seemingly walks away from it. Contrast that with Shuri, who is grieving what she's lost, who is slowly hardening herself to these losses, who is allowing the grief to control her, to slowly consume her, until it might be too late. Shuri and Reyy are fundamentally different characters that tell two different stories about the human experience and its eternal quest to be loved and find purpose within that love.

In fact, the ST and BPWF tell two incredibly, fundamentally different stories. And sorry not sorry, but BPWF is just more impactful, more insightful, and more in-tune with the human experience and nature than the ST ever could be. While BPWF is about grief and honoring loved ones, it's also about rejecting the ideals and methods of a white patriarchal society, about communities of color building and healing and joining forces to combat the erosion of their cultures, their resources, and their rights. It's why Namor and Shuri have an honest albeit complicated connection, while Kyle and Reyy have hastily shoved in forced conversations to get them to a place where it's possible (but definitely not probable) that they can be allies and more.

Now, about dark!namor... I haven't read any fics like that and I'm not going to if I can help it, but that shows a writer's lack of skills in writing complex characters. They're most likely projecting and just place Namor in that "bad boy" cookie cutter mold because that's what they've known and read all their life. This is similar to when I read zutara fics as a kid - there were a lot of people who just could not write Zuko without turning him into a bad boy, obsessed with Katara, and cornering her until she fell in love with him. A lot of complex anti-heroes/villains can easily get watered down in fanfics, especially by people who don't care so much for the characters but rather the tropes they seemingly represent. I like Namor and Shuri both as individuals and as a ship, so shoving them into tropes and situations they canonically would not subject themselves to (unless it's a straight up crackfic) is a no-go for me.

You can make Namor darker, a little more unhinged without going against the character's very nature. He doesn't hurt people just to hurt them - if he did, I doubt his people would love him so unabashedly, or there would be some active resistance against him and his leadership. At the end of the day, people can write whatever they want to write and ship whatever they want to ship and consume whatever they want to consume, but if they write Namor as an abuser (which is problematic for a whole host of reasons other than he would canonically never do that) and Shuri as some hapless victim who will fall in love with him anyway, they are doing a disservice to the characters and are perpetuating the violent ideals BPWF blatantly emphasizes we need to dismantle.

#i made my answer wayyy longer than your ask don't feel too bad now ksjdfhjkhsdf #namuri #anti reylo #seaprincess #naylor #asks on the run #wow who knew I could still analyze media in a meaningful way?#not me that's for damn sure #anyway kyle ain't shit he's never gonna be shit and namor would punch him in the face given the chance

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jackoshadows · 3 years

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A fascinating and educational twitter thread about how Prohibition helped Botswana become one of the most stable countries in Africa.

For decades since its independence in 1966, Botswana was an island of black sovereignty & stability between apartheid South Africa and white-supremacist Rhodesia. Some say it was the inspiration for #Wakanda in the movie #BlackPanther.

In southern Africa as the world over, the Brits and European colonists ran the EXACT SAME PLAYBOOK of alco-colonization.

Read more at the link

Step 1: Introduce hard liquors--industrial distillates--to native populations with no experience with drinks of such mind-bending potency. 4/ Step 2: Clutch their pearls, and recoil in horror at the drunkenness and violence that predictably occurs within the native community and against white colonizers and liquor purveyors. In Africa, they called it the “black peril.”

Step 3: Cite that drunkenness as evidence of natives’ inability to be “civilized,” thus justifying white political domination over them. Africa, Asia, North America, even Ireland--everywhere it was the same pattern. See also: opium in China.

Hard liquor (whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, schnapps, etc.) was the perfect tool of exploitation. Highly potent. Concentrated. Easy to transport. Highly addictive. Didn’t spoil like fermented brews. Easy to make. Incredibly lucrative.

European colonizers would share liquor as a gesture of goodwill, and then once the alcoholic stupor set in, get tribal leaders to scrawl an “X” and sign-away their land, resources, and even people. 8/ More importantly, promoting widespread addiction to liquor made indigenous populations reliant on the colonists, just as junkies rely on drug dealers. Again, see also: opium in China, and two Opium Wars resisting it.

What did natives have that colonists wanted? Ivory, food, furs, ivory, exotic ostrich feathers, rubber, ivory... the land and the minerals in it, and everything living on it. Also: ivory. And finally, the natives themselves were commodities: as labor or slaves.

If you’re a European trader & the locals trade ivory or furs for (say) your iron kettle, the entire village can use that for 20 years. Blankets might last 5 years before they need to trade with you again. There’s little demand for your wares. Or you. But if you can hook the community on booze that ONLY YOU supply, they’ll have to come back to you all. the. time. Now you’re indispensable. Addiction is self-renewing demand. Becoming the sole drug dealer to a community of addicts is ridiculously profitable. Need proof? Riddle me this: What was the first factory on the continent of Africa? Of course, Africa is rich in every resource imaginable: minerals, gems, ivory, rubber, oil, cocoa, fruit and timber that could be processed into goods.

Here it is. In 1881, the Dutch Transvaal government granted a monopoly on distilled brandy to the Hatherley Distillery near Pretoria. The company was called “De Eerste Fabriken”--the First Factory. It wasn't first because the white settlers drank it. They largely didn’t.

Instead, with the discovery of gold & diamonds, white mine-owners needed black labor. They lured workers to the mines with promises of liquor, knowing if they had large booze debts to pay back, tribesmen would have to work longer, rather than returning to their village.

(South African Breweries--today the world’s largest brewer--was founded soon thereafter to provide British-style beer to a white clientele, while the cheap liquor from Hatherley was reserved for indenturing black workers.)

Consequently, every native leader worth his salt was a prohibitionist--defending his people against the “white man’s wicked water.” King Moshoeshoe in Lesotho. Chief Waterboer in Griqualand. Tembu headman Mankai Renga & hundreds more. In Africa as around the globe, temperance and prohibitionism became the banner for subaltern sovereignty against the white colonial junkiemaker.

Which brings us back to Botswana. Or Bechuanaland, as it was then known. It had long been ruled by tribal chiefs, led by Bamangwato King Khama III ("the Great"), who’d allied with the British against the Dutch Boers.

Three months after ascending the throne in 1873, he informed all white traders on his territory that trading liquor w/ his people was now prohibited. “If, when you give one another a drink, you turn around and give it to my people also, I shall regard you as blameworthy.” Europeans scoffed & kept selling--until Khama expelled them all: “I am black and am chief of my own country. When you white men rule then you will do as you like. At present I rule, and I shall maintain my laws which you insult and despise.” Prohibition was sovereignty. “There are 3 things which distress me—war, selling people, and drink,” Khama wrote the British in 1876, asking the Queen’s protection. “All these I shall find in the Boers.”

By 1884, Bechuanaland was British protectorate, respecting Khama’s prohibition. Meanwhile the 1890s, Britain’s Cape Colony was dominated by the notorious Cecil Rhodes: founder of the De Beers diamond syndicate, quintessential imperialist and unapologetic white supremacist.

“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race,” Rhodes wrote. “Africa is still lying ready for us--it is our duty to take it.” In 1889, Rhodes organized his mining interests into the chartered British South Africa Company (BSAC), which had its own government and army. In 1890, he also became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. In the First Matabele War (1893-94), 750 BSAC “police” with machine guns killed over 10,000 Matabele spearmen, bringing Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) under Company control. Khama’s Tswana tribesmen served on the side of the Company.

According to BSAC shareholder reports, one of the first items of business wherever the Company set-up control was to farm-out the liquor trade to white settlers. Profits are profits, regardless of prohibition promises. Rhodes famously dreamed of building a trans-African railroad connecting Cape Town to Cairo... which meant taking Bechuanaland, even though Khama was regaled as a loyal British ally.

From 1892-95, the conniving Rhodes used every administrative trick possible to place Khama’s Bechuanaland Protectorate under the sovereignty of the Company, but was stymied either by Khama or the Colonial Office in London. By 1895, Khama had enough. Together w/ fellow chiefs Bathoen and Sebele, he voyaged to London to petition Queen Victoria’s government to keep Bechuanaland out of Rhodes’ grasp.

“The two points on which the natives seem to be apprehensive,” the Imperial Secretary in Cape Town telegraphed London, “are the questions of land and liquor.” The 3 kings arrived in September 1895, and were supposed to meet with Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain. But he--like the rest of the Queen’s government--had left for their annual vacations until November. “I have for years tried to abolish the use of strong liquors in my country, and prevent the importation of European drinks,” Khama told the London press, lamenting that his efforts “should be hampered by agitation in my country and outside it.” While awaiting for an audience with Chamberlain or Queen Victoria, Khama, Sebele and Bathoen toured the width and breadth of the British Isles, winning British public opinion to the side of their temperance and sovereignty.

The Review of Reviews reprinted Khama’s plea that “you, O British people, will not paralyse my efforts by compelling me to submit to the invasion of my country by the trader with his poisonous liquors.” If Britain were to ignore Khama’s calls for help, the papers editorialized, then the British people “should stand condemned as the most God-forsaken set of canting hypocrites on the whole round earth.” Following the kings‘ temperance visits, a flood of popular petitions inundated the Colonial Office from across the country, strenuously opposing giving Bechuanaland over to Rhodes‘ Company. Prior to the meeting, the kings plead their case to Chamberlain: “We fear the Company because we think they will take our land and sell it to others. We fear that they will fill our country with liquor shops, as they have Bulawayo.”

The kings offered concessions and the payment of additional poll taxes, if London would only delay the inevitable annexation by Rhodes’ Company by 10 years. “Do not let them bring liquor into our country to kill our people speedily.”

On Nov. 6, 1895, Chamberlain finally met with the chiefs to dictate terms. The chiefs would pay a hut tax and sacrifice a strip of land for Rhodes‘ railway in exchange for maintaining their sovereignty as a protectorate. “White man’s strong drink shall not be brought for sale into the country, and those who attempt to deal in it or give it away to black men will be punished. No new liquor license shall be issued, and no existing liquor license shall be renewed,” Chamberlain declared.

Weeks later, Chamberlain escorted the Chiefs to Windsor castle for an audience with “the Great White Queen” herself, Queen Victoria, who confirmed the arrangements that Chamberlain had made. “The sale of strong drink shall be prohibited in your country &those who attempt to supply it shall be severely punished,” the Queen declared. “I feel strongly in this matter, & am glad to see that the chiefs have determined to keep so great a curse from the people.” Pleased, though unaware of British protocols, Sebele told the press: “Her Majesty if a very charming old lady... But I had no idea that she was so short and stout... I shall go back home contented.” They did. Far less pleased was Cecil Rhodes, who telegraphed London: “I do object to being beaten by three canting natives especially on the score of temperance.”

And then: “IT IS HUMILIATING TO BE UTTERLY BEATEN BY THESE NI***RS.”

Bechuanaland’s stay of execution may have been short lived, were it not for what happened next. Upon returning to Bechuanaland, Khama met Sir Leander Starr Jameson, who was leading a BSAC military force. Jameson’s orders were to instigate an insurrection across the border in the Dutch Transvaal, whipping-up British sympathizers and lead to an all-out British invasion to topple the rival Dutch Boers. But in a crowning irony, Jameson’s Raid was doomed by liquor. To take the Dutch by surprise, the British would cut the telegraph lines so Boer outposts couldn’t sound the alarm of invasion. Instead of cutting the telegraph lines, a drunken British soldier instead cut a farmer’s wire fence. The Dutch anticipated and tracked the whole raid, ambushed and decimated the attackers & imprisoned Rhodes’ brother Frank.

London condemned Rhodes‘ reckless adventurism, forcing him to step down from the BSAC in disgrace. The imperial threat to Bechuanaland’s sovereignty and sobriety was over. The British honored Khama’s prohibition & sovereignty right through Botswana’s independence in 1966. Today the bronze Three Dikgosi Monument honoring Khama, Bathoen & Sebele is the most visited destination in the 🇧🇼 capital of Gaborone.

Were it not for their 1895 temperance mission to Britain, what is today Botswana would’ve long been absorbed into either Britain’s Cape Colony (now South Africa) or Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)--much to their people’s detriment--instead of becoming its own independent country. Without prohibition, there’d be no Botswana. And in honor of their Founding Fathers, Botswana emblazoned the picture of the chiefs‘ 1895 temperance mission to London on their 100 Pula note.

HEY! If you liked this liquor-politics thread, may I humbly suggest checking-out my new “Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition” book, which contains literally dozens of them.

#Botswana #Liquor #Prohibition #Colonization #History #alco-colonization

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dracosollicitus · 3 years

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Seeing a lot of discourse, and I just wanted to posit that it is possible for the idea of “Ayo, as a representative and protector of Wakanda, is absolutely allowed to deactivate the arm they gave Bucky when he jumps into a melee to defend a man who killed their king — and a man who represents imperialistic impulses — because that arm was a gift and also a deadly weapon” to coexist with the idea of “it can be disturbing to see a one-armed person’s prosthetic be taken away from them in such a way and if you flinched, that’s valid” and they can both exist with the ideas of “Bucky can be shaken by the action because he wasn’t aware it could happen, and it happened so quickly and Ayo left before he could talk to her about it (not that she owes him an explanation because Wow is this Zemo Storyline messy and hurtful, but Bucky doesn’t seem to process things very well so he’s probably flailing internally)”

When it comes down to it, Bucky betrayed Wakanda and Ayo — whom the episode’s narrative took pains to reveal is one of the people most aligned with Bucky’s healing and sense of calm/recovery — and removing his arm was not meant to be cruel on Ayo’s part at all (they were in a fight that, by proximity, involved the person who last successfully activated the Winter Soldier programming — more on that in a minute — and also, Ayo is trained to be the best possible fighter, of course she will take a less violent approach to shutting down a former friend who is also famous for fighting skills). Bucky helping to spring Zemo from prison and then globe trotting with him is hurtful because Bucky fully understands that it’s a decision that throws everything Wakanda did for him back in the faces of his friends from that time in his life. The tension in their brief fight is heartbreaking in a way that Tony and Steve’s fight in Civil War never really was for me — these two people actually care about each other, Bucky isn’t even convinced he’s right in what he’s doing, and Ayo, once she removes his arm, steps back and walks away from him with a clear dismissal that indicates she no longer views him as she once did.

If you ask me, I’d say Bucky’s face is one of dawning horror not because he’s horrified Ayo would do that. No, he doesn’t show any resentment towards her for the action (and certainly doesn’t petulantly voice his displeasure at being beaten like, say, John Walker). Bucky’s skills involve understanding weakness. Understanding ways to beat people through those weaknesses — and the fact that his vibranium arm has a pre-programmed weakness would sadly make some kind of sense to him. The horror is from his realization that if they (I’m assuming Shuri because she’s the tech genius!) programmed that fail safe in there, it’s because his allies in Wakanda assume/believe that he’s not fully deprogrammed from his brainwashing. And to someone already grappling with Zemo’s faux-control of him in ep03, and his snide comments that the Winter Soldier is still “in there” somewhere — yeah, his arm needing a way that it can be quickly and easily removed* would definitely frighten him.

(*insert essay on the heartbreaking way Bucky pumps his arm back into the socket the same way he used to re-align the arm Hydra gave him)

#tfatws #tfatws spoilers #Bucky Barnes #Ayo #I will not put up with any disrespect of Ayo so jot that down #and I’m not comfortable with any discourse that softens Bucky at the expense of making Ayo seem violent and or unreasonable #because she’s just NOT #long post

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ninjakittenarmy · 3 years

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I think the most irritating thing about the discourse about the MCU is that y’all took a perfectly valid point about villains in media being portrayed as cartoonishly evil to counter the fact that they want genuine change and then have the hero defend the status quo and fucked it up by picking the WORST possible example. I’m talking about Killmonger.

I’m half convinced none of you people actually saw the movie. Killmonger wasn’t some radical leftist who was taking a stand against racism, he was a fascist imperialist who had no respect for the culture he claimed to defend or stand for. He made some compelling points about isolationism, but his idea for stopping the exploitation of black people was to flip the script and exploit everyone else.

Killmonger wasn’t some straw man who just had evil stuff tacked on to make you ignore his points, there are very real people who believe the same stuff he did to the letter. Countless fascist from nations that have suffered under colonialism use the same rhetoric to promote racial and cultural supremacy. And somehow so many people are STUPID enough to buy it! “Oh they CAN’T be fascists because the group they oppose has a history of colonialism! Surely the fact that they’re saying to kill all members of a certain group including those who had nothing to do with the crimes they’re mad about has nothing to do with them being genocidal maniacs!”

You guys should know all this by now! How many times have you heard a fascist make the same complaints about capitalism and colonialism and worker exploitation only to blame minorities or foreigners? Having a legit point about a PROBLEM doesn’t mean the solution is a moral one.

And Killmonger didn’t have his genuine points ignored! That’s like the main issue with these villains! They have their genuine criticisms ignored! That didn’t happen! T’challa not only listened to him, but ended Wakanda’s isolationism! He got rid of it! And the first thing he did was start reaching out to disenfranchised black communities to try and help them without colonialism! Not adhering to your racist power fantasies about exploiting and destroying other countries for what they did to other countries is NOT anti-leftist propaganda!

#mcu #leftism #black panther

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dirhwangdaseul-archived · 5 years

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I like… would love for the MCU to try and sell a Muslim girl, amidst all the imperialism they support in their trash movies, like I would fucking love that... I understand every single decision they have taken so far, lightening Monica’s skin so they don’t have to be overt about their support of women of color, so that in the future she’s a lightskin superhero, erasing Sam Wilson’s backstory, values and morals too so that they can churn a soft political yet apolitical sidekick to Steve Rogers, whitewashing Wanda Maximoff so that any and all meanings of her race and jewishness not be touched upon lest it turns off white viewers, pushing Hela as the older sister, so that the future of the MCU shall never really want to take upon the story of Thor's actual comicbook sister, Angela Odinsdottir, a lesbian woman in love with a brown trans woman, Sera of Heven…

I see every single thing they have done, and I see the reasoning behind. I’m missing so many more examples, at every turn, even AoS (which is more connected to the other properties than any) they have taken steps to undermine characters of color and their stories, the introduction of Robbie Reyes in AoS was marred by his brother being played by a racefaker italian, and the show took steps to erase his canon disabilities and neurodivergence and chose to put him a wheelchair as the only memory of who he represented to comicbook readers.

The MCU has given us scraps, two directors of color still had to work through Marvel’s barriers, Ava Duvernay saw it transparently and said no, Ryan Coogler did his best, and that he did, but he knows that he could have been better, his vision of Wakanda seems even more advanced, society wise specifically, he wanted Ayo to be shown in love, she’s a black lesbian woman, she was supposed to have a Dora Milaje partner, but it got erased, because Disney hated it, Taika Waititi wanted Valkyrie to be her truest self, and her bisexuality was part of it, but the MCU killed it, they hate it, they want money, and they’ll do the most superficial bullshit to do it.

So yeah, I wanna see, everyone is so hopeful for her, but the reality is that if they do it, it’ll be years down the line, because just Kamala existing, her mere existence, is a threat to the current shape of the MCU, unabashedly racist, imperialist, militarist, and an enemy to brown and black people, only to use them as servants of white stories. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic is the least of the words we could use to talk about the MCU’s scraps of representation.

#mcu meta #captain marvel #kamala khan #thor ragnarok #black panther #el suco posts #ryan coogler #taika waititi #carol danvers #mcu cw

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grass-skirt · 6 years

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thanks for answering my fisk ask! i appreciate it. can you think of characters that are good examples for a well done sympathetic villain? aside from fma's scar

Your welcome! (And sorry to other folks who’ve sent asks that I haven’t answered yet, but sometimes it’s easier for me to think of how to answer some questions than others and again time and energy are very limited resources for me these days) (And here’s the link to the preceding ask on my thought for what constitutes a sympathetic villain, how Scar is one, and how Wilson Fisk is not)

And let’s see here. If I had to think of some more well-done examples of sympathetic villains…

Meruem from HxH: amazing example. As someone not human, born not just socially, but biologically, to be king with the massive power to back it up and no reference point for what it meant to care or have feelings for others. And yet, he met someone who could best him in one thing, one simple thing, and slowly fell in love with her and through her uncovered the humanity no one thought he had. (Not to mention, he was manipulated by Pouf who tried to stamp out the love he had learned to feel and set him back on the path of a heartless conqueror, so we can also feel sympathy for his character on that front as well)

Tetsuo Shima from Akira: this is possibly a more (lowkey) controversial choice. Because yeah, he’s a 15-year old asshole who got psychic powers and became an even bigger asshole. But I feel like he’s an incredibly understandable character precisely because of that. To me, he’s an exploration of the effects that insecurity, powerlessness, poverty, and environmental instability can have on kids. Take a kid who feels miserable and doubts himself and isn’t supported by the society around him who wants desperately to be respected and in control and give him power… He couldn’t control his powers well, they caused him massive pain and made him fear what they would do to his mind and body. He could control through fear but he couldn’t control himself and that pain and uncertainty and fear never left him. One of the elements of a good sympathetic villain to me is that their choices make sense. And Tetsuo is a character whose choices were almost all bad, but IMO make sense from the sad, angry perspective of the view he had and the world around him. (Long ago I made a cool graphic about him)

Jasper from SU: now here’s an actual potentially controversial choice. Steering clear of the whole Malachite discourse and just focusing more broadly on her character, she was a huge jerk who beat the snot out of people and seemed to relish in it. She was the biggest villain in SU for a good long while, and there was little reason to think of her as sympathetic. That is, until we found out that the reason she hated the Earth and the Crystal Gems and was so fixated on strength is because thousands of years ago the Crystal Gems murdered the person she most loved and adored and the person she was literally created to serve. Then we start being able to see how her villainous beliefs and actions were shaped by the culture and society of the Diamond Authority that doesn’t give it’s members much in the way of choice or freedom. And then we also find out that the person who Jasper’s very existence was for had faked her own death and everything Jasper believed for the past 5000 years was a lie. Again, she’s a villain whose horribleness can be seen as a result of the circumstances around her, and we can see that if she had been told the truth and given different opportunities she perhaps could have been someone good instead of eventually devolving into a literal monster.

Eric Killmonger from Black Panther: he was someone who fought for a cause he believed him, and that was righteous and justified in his eyes. He grew up in poverty, his father was murdered, and he lived his life on the outside of a great society of wealth and equality, always aware of what they had but wouldn’t share with him or others who were also suffering. He looked at the imperialist, racist, oppressive actions of the world and thought, “Wakanda’s neutrality is acceptance of injustice. If the nation of my birth has the ability to reshape the world, punish the injustice of nations and societies, and give power to our oppressed people, we should do it.” T'challa’s view was that you can’t hurt and kill innocent people in the name of justice. Killmonger’s view was that harm, death, and suffering were constantly happening anyway, and that T’challa’s stance was accepting and tacitly endorsing this injustice. Again, his villainy came from a place of understandable suffering and genuine belief that fighting fire with fire was better than standing on the sidelines and simply watching the fire burn.

And two final characters:

Donquixote Doflamingo from One Piece gets an honorable mention. He could have been an amazing sympathetic villain, but for some reason Oda took a character who was born into a culture of ignorance, corruption, and greed, who lost everything and was tortured by angry mobs who blamed him for sins he hadn’t committed, who was then raised by a group of older boys and men who again groomed him and lead him down a road of villainy…. and then said, “Hey, this guy? Doflamingo? He was just born evil. Yeah, that’s it. He was born evil. So don’t worry so much about all the environmental stuff, because he was born evil anyway. Even his brother said so.” (Again, here’s a graphic and analysis I did on the subject for those who have forgotten)

Lady Eboshi from Princess Mononoke. (I also wrote a big post about her and the overall movie and how great it is.) She isn’t a sympathetic villain. Not really. She is both ends of the moral spectrum simultaneously in every move she makes. She was a monster, a destroyer of gods, an environmentalist’s nightmare who burned nature in the name of industry. She was also a savior, a humanitarian, a veritable saint who took in the sick and the downtrodden of society and gave them respect, empowerment, and a home they were happy in. And all the while… we never actually know what she’s thinking. One could argue that she’s still a villain (rather than simply an antagonist), but the key point here is that she is not sympathetic. Does she help others because she cares, or because through helping them she ultimately benefits herself? We don’t know for sure. The story does not invite us into her internal world. She’s not a sympathetic villain because we’re never asked to sympathize with her. Instead, we’re asked to think of bigger ideas. We’re asked to take a look at the ways human society can benefit itself, advance equality, and lift up the powerless by using and destroying the natural world around us. Is it worth it? What are the unintended consequences of these actions? Can humans harm nature without inevitably also hurting ourselves? Lady Eboshi’s thoughts and feelings and true motivations don’t matter. We don’t know, and we can’t know, and at the end of the day does it matter either way? Even if she was calculated and selfish it wouldn’t change that she’s helping people, and even if she was motivated by love and compassion it also wouldn’t change the harm she’s done. She’s a representation of ideas, forces, and choices larger than herself. Those ideas are what’s important to the film, and they are explored without ever diving into the mind of Lady Eboshi herself because what the thinks and feels has no bearing on the consequences of her actions.

A villain is someone who hurts others who do not deserve to be hurt. A person is sympathetic when we feel for them. Villainy is external. That person harms others, so we hate them. Sympathy is internal. We feel another’s pain, and understand the reasons for their choices, which includes the possibility that they never even had a choice at all. Lady Eboshi is so interesting to me because she is completely external. We are tasked with viewing and judging her based entirely on the consequences of her actions without factoring in what she thinks, what she feels, and why she’s doing it. We don’t have sympathy for her, rather we have sympathy for the people she helps regardless of whether Lady Eboshi is doing it out of kindness or doing it to benefit herself.

It’s odd that I spent the most time in this ask about sympathetic villains talking about someone who I think isn’t one, but I think that it’s both helpful and interesting to dive into how a character can completely subvert and dodge the label of a sympathetic villain while still fully capturing their contradictory essence. We hate and condemn the actions of sympathetic villains while also understanding them, respecting the “why” behind what they do, and potentially even loving them. With Lady Eboshi, we’re not supposed to care about the why. We’re not supposed to care about her. While I do love her, that’s not the part that matters. Instead, that same contradictory dynamic takes the form of the audience loving who she she helps while also loving who/what she hurts in the process. The thing’s we’re supposed to care about are entirely outside her.

I think that sympathetic villains are so interesting because they prompt us to think about why a person hurts others and see that something more than just innate evil is often there–that there are reasons why evil exists in villains’ hearts and that there are things that we can and should do about that. Whether it’s a character like Meruem who was “born” evil but learned to love and ultimately chose to embrace it, or a character like Scar who started out a decent young man who became a serial killer because of the genocide his people suffered. Either way, through them we are given an exploration of evil that emphasizes heartfelt understanding–understanding the “why” of evil so that we can either heal it or address the circumstances of its creation in the first place. If a sympathetic villain is well written and well handled in their story, the audience should be able to learn about the sources of evil in the world and how it could be made a little better.

#gs thoughts #princess mononoke #lady eboshi #studio ghibli #DAMN this took me a long time to write whoops #time to go hole up in the library and work for 7 hours #Anonymous #villains

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indigenousandangry · 6 years

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So I absolutely loved Black Panther but there is one aspect of this film that rubbed me the wrong way.

Full disclosure, I’m not black, so any opinion I have on this matter isn’t important. That being said, I’d really like to hear from my black mutuals/followers if they agree or disagree or really have any opinion on this matter.

Throughout the film, Killmonger and his father have said things like, “There are people who look like us all over the world who are suffering and oppressed because they don’t have the weapons needed to defend and protect themselves. Where was Wakanda?” And that.... irks me.

Like we can talk all day about Wakanda having all of this power and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering of the rest of the world, but Wakanda wasn’t the one who colonized the entire continent of Africa. Wakanda wasn’t the one who invaded and conquered the United States and brutalized the people there. Wakanda wasn’t what caused the conflict in the Middle East.

The only time this is ever really addressed is in the museum scene in London and then they shift gears and make it all about how Wakanda has a responsibility to solve all of these problems, essentially, “black people need to step up and save themselves rather than hold the actual colonizers and imperialists responsible for centuries of oppression and pain.”

And that REALLY bothered me. And I know you could argue that “Killmonger has his own agenda for wanted to attack Wakanda after what happened to his father,” and you could probably even argue, “Wakanda turned a blind eye when the slave trade was happening, they ignored the rest of the world when they had the resources to send aid and assistance, their technology could’ve improved so many things on a global scale,” but at the same time it feels like that’s shifting the focus and the blame because they didn’t want to make the white folks in the audience feel like “the bad guys.”

And this especially falls short when, in the event where Wakanda DID open up their borders to the rest of the world, they were expected to die and have their homes invaded and destroyed in order to protect a fucking ANDROID.

Like I said, I really loved this movie. It’s probably the best comic book film in the last two decades, but this was the only thing that I wasn’t 100% on board with.

AND I WILL SAY THIS AGAIN: I’m not black, so I’d really like to hear from my black mutuals/followers if they agree or disagree or really have any opinion on this matter. Because I haven’t really seen it discussed before on here.

EDIT: I know this is tumblr and this is asking a lot but if you’re not black, don’t reblog this. Your opinions aren’t the ones I’m interested in hearing.

#black panther #killmonger #t'challa #wakanda #race #racism #colonialism

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venuspapi · 6 years

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Signs as characters from ‘Black Panther’(2018) [Spoilers!]

Aries: Erik “Killmonger” Stevens / N’Jadaka

Born half a world away from his home, Erik was caught between the regal heritage of Wakandan Royalty, and the more tragic history of his ancestors from the US. He is angry, and has always been angry, with both his father and his heritage being taken away from him. He travels to Wakanda to burn it all down to the ground and start over, better, stronger, powerful and unafraid. Not for the nation that he thinks callously stood by and watched, but for him, and people like him. He consistently goes too far; he refuses to listen to others, disrespects tradition, and all life around him. The burden he carries is his and his alone, and he wants to keep it that way, accepting no help or advice. An angry, righteous, wronged child, who became an angry, righteous man, one who went about life in all the wrong ways. Not only does he claim to be helping people, but in the process, he becomes the people he fights against. He sees the error of his ways only when he has no choice, faced with the severity of what he wanted to do.

We love villainizing black revolutionaries and portraying them as New Imperialists of Color™ even though we know that’s not what anyone thinks and is only a trope based on white fears of black liberation

Taurus: King M’Baku

The leader of the Jabari, a tribe isolated in the mountains, deeply respecting the land and the ecosystem of where they come from. They don’t even use the same technology; even though they are just as advanced as other Wakandans they don’t rely on Vibranium. They rely only on themselves and their lands, using Vibranium-infused woods to build and innovate. This reflects also in their cultural divide from the rest of Wakanda, preferring to watch on as they worship the Gorilla-god Hanuman, instead of the Panther goddess Bast. They are direct, and slow of action, but once it is undertaken they cannot be stopped. All that being said; they are not cold or unfeeling. There is warmth, and humor, and comfort to be found here too. M’Baku is a proud leader, a respectful one, and who gives people the respect he thinks they are due. Ultimately, it is this respect which compels him to come to the aid of King T’Challa. He has not forgotten his grievances, but he does not let them blind him to what must be done, for his people. He has the intuitive knowledge that though the Jabari and the other tribes of Wakanda are distinct, they are equal parts of a unified whole, a family deserving of security and comfort.

Gemini: Princess Shuri

The bubbly, mischievous Princess of Wakanda, with a brilliant mind that leaves others behind her. She supplies the Kingdom with the newest technological advancements possible, and is the spark that keeps everyone going when things seem too dark. She is, canonically, the smartest person on the planet; Her intelligence knows no bounds. She prevents those around her from being too stuck in their ways, simultaneously progressive while valuing the traditions of her country. As the youngest character in the film, she keeps everyone else on their toes with quick witted jokes. She later proves herself a formidable opponent in combat too, though. Her emotions are also kept under the surface quite well; you forget she is a young girl grieving her father until she grieves the possible loss of her older brother, and it’s a memorable moment for being one of the only times she doesn’t have something funny to say, or a smile on her face.

Cancer: Queen Ramonda

A regal presence, and one of the most important people in the film. She is a new feminine archetype, a queen mother composed. The way her son never hesitates to come to her for advice speaks to the way she has been there for him, as a mother should be for her child. She makes sure her royal children toe the line, encouraging them to change and adapt while keeping them realistically grounded in tradition and respect. The love she has for her husband, her son, her daughter, and her country is part of what drives the film forward. Her guidance is what has allowed King T’Chaka and King T’Challa to become the men they were and are, and what has allowed Shuri to shine the way she does, even if it’s not obvious. Her grief and her love are one of the most powerful forces in the film.

Leo: King T’Chaka

Though we saw more of him alive in Captain America: Civil War than we do in this film (as it starts shortly after his death), King T’Chaka’s legacy touches every aspect of the story. The decisions he makes earlier in his reign and he legacy of the country he ruled are his son’s to inherit. T’Challa feels eclipsed by him, haunted by him, and misses him all at once. Even in death, T’Chaka urges his son to not stray too far from the path he himself walked as king while urging him to fix his mistakes. It was his duty to punish those who betray the country of Wakanda, and though he pays a price, it is eventually his son who must pay a bigger one. The gravity he exerts is immense. He is an avatar for the past, the noble history of Wakanda and the entire Panther tribe who has come before T’Challa and before the current generation.

Virgo: Nakia

A Wakandan Spy, or ‘War Dog’, keeping intelligence on the goings-on of other countries, their governments, and their populations in the name of Wakanda’s. We first see her comforting and consoling a desperate group of kidnapped women, before her mission is interrupted and she is forced to finish it ahead of time. A paragon of efficiency, competency, and beauty, she is deeply analytical and yet compassionate; especially with regards to the outside world and Wakanda’s complicated relationship with it. She does not let romance or personal motivations cloud her judgement; she thinks only of making the world around her a better place for all people. She is deeply loyal and objective. Her vision of Wakanda never faltered and neither did her loyalty -- Erik Killmonger became King, and when she deemed him unfit to rule, she adapted quickly and forced Okoye to choose definitively. She is the subtle (and unsubtle) agent of change throughout the movie.

Libra: King T’Challa

T’Challa comes to the throne in politically challenged times; the Jabari grow restless, and directly challenge him for the throne; his father has died; the secrets of Wakanda must be hidden even as their proud legacy is upheld, and within all these contradictions, there is another secret; Erik Killmonger reveals himself to be N’Jadaka, son of N’Jobu, who was brother to T’Chaka. Even as T’Challa walks in the footsteps of his father, he refuses to commit the same mistakes. Though he asks for counsel from a few trusted others, he also trusts himself enough to do what is right by his country first and foremost. Throughout the film, he challenges his own perceptions and comes to conclusions based not only on emotion, not only on logic, not only on tradition, and not only on the motives and opinions of others, but on an acknowledgement of all these things.

Also, he still freezes when he sees his crush. It’s really cute LOL

Scorpio: W’Kabi

W’Kabi is... interesting to me. His role in the film is somewhat understated, but he is a prominent figure in the Border Tribe and a friend to T’Challa. He and his people serve as a powerful shell for the nation of Wakanda, not through force or violence but through illusion and the maintenance of it. His people are the first line of defense, the ones who greet the world playing the parts of the deprived shepherds, the impoverished populations. They know what the international community thinks of Wakanda (and of the images that persist in association to the continent of Africa and it’s people) and they maintain that facade deliberately, as they have for centuries. It’s not all lies with him either though... because he values that which is real. He asked T’Challa to return to him with the one who killed his parents, Ulysses Klaue, and where T’Challa failed him, Erik Killmonger didn’t. Fueled by a vengeance he didn’t even get to witness, against an enemy he never saw; Erik Killmonger and W’Kabi saw themselves in each other, and he put his trust in a man who fulfilled a promise his lifelong friend couldn’t. He tests his relationships, too, most overtly when he asked his wife General Okoye if she would kill him, and she said yes. He tests the boundaries of T’Challa’s forgiveness too, after everything is said and done.

Sagittarius: Ulysses Klaue

He lives a carefree life; he takes risks, and if they don’t pay off, they don’t, but if they do, he wins! He’s clearly a gambler. He knows the legacy he inherits as a white man plundering a wealthy African kingdom, and not only does he know it, he enjoys it. He revels in it. He gambles with his life trying to go back to Wakanda to steal from it, all because he wants to. He wanted to see its wealth for himself and chose to do so by any means he could. He considers himself an expert of sorts, happily preaching to CIA Agent Everett Ross about the wealth of Wakanda and the lie they tell the rest of the world. He travels the world in this manner, always seeking something more, experiences to have and objects to accumulate.

Capricorn: General Okoye

From the first moment we see her to the last glimpse of her on screen, she exudes nothing but confidence, loyalty, and competency. And yet... she’s complex and vulnerable in a way that doesn’t negate any of those qualities. She chides T’Challa as much as she defers to him, counsels him as much as she is counseled in turn. They aren’t just employee and employer, protector and protected, they are friends and protectors of each other. Her loyalty to her country is resolute, and as shaken as she is that Erik Killmonger sat on the throne she took it upon herself to protect him as the ruler of Wakanda, as was her duty. It’s important to realize that her not stopping Nakia, her inaction, was in itself an action. Her directing the Dora Milaje to fight against King Killmonger turned the tide, and at great personal cost to herself. She lost a friend in the battle, one under her charge, and she would’ve been trampled by her own rhino had it not recognized her! Her own husband tried to test her commitment to him and was faced with the reality that her loyalty is first and foremost to her people, her country, to tradition.

Aquarius: Prince N’Jobu

Prince N’Jobu wanted to help the world and paid a price for it. His pain was real; the suffering he saw was real, the suffering of his son who grew up without him was real. The help he wanted to offer to the diaspora was real. He felt it so deeply necessary he willingly allied himself with Ulysses Klaue and caused the deaths of several Wakandan citizens in order to arm people around the world. His son only followed in his father’s footsteps, more angry and personally than N’Jobu ever could’ve been. At the end of the day, that’s the difference; detachment and desire. N’Jobu was too compassionate and too extreme, his son too angry and too shortsighted.

also the opening is literally him telling his son about the Kingdom of Wakanda, explaining just how it came to be with a reverence and a detail that spoke of how much he wanted to change it for the better. and even though he never went back. Which fucking sucks

Pisces: Zuri

Zuri’s role is that of the Priest, the Shaman, the Human Voice through which the Gods speak. He bestows spiritual authority onto T’Challa and formally passes the crown on. He guides T’Challa to the ancestral plane to speak to T’Chaka once more. This is symbolic; the sign of Pisces has always been a transition, the last experience before we cross a boundary, whether that is to the afterlife, to a new one, or to the Whole. The weight he holds as a spiritual guide to the King and to the people of Wakanda is visible as soon as he is on screen, and it is because of him that many of the events of the film even happen. His presence is very “behind the scenes” at times, which I think fits the mold of this sign really well. He was shot at by N’Jobu, which caused T’Chaka to kill him, something that’s interesting. Without him, I don’t know how the film would’ve (or even could’ve) unfolded.

#black panther #bp #astrology #tsa #the signs as #all the signs #ats #mine

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dieverdediger · 5 years

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A Critical Analysis of Black Panther

It has been almost exactly a year since Black Panther released. I was optimistic to go see it. As this movie is strongly political and racial I’ll state it like this: I’m white, and I went to see it with three of my white best friends. The theater was packed with black people.

We enjoyed all of it, or rather, my friends enjoyed it. I did too, but the many racial and political connotations unnerved me. For South Africans this movie is even more relevant to our realities than for America or elsewhere.

The language the directors adopted for Wakanda is isiXhosa, the second most popular black language in South Africa. One of the two main villains, Klaw, has a clear Afrikaner accent and talks about “going back to Jo’burg” (that is, Johannesburg). The black man sitting to my right pointed out both these facts to his girlfriend. As an Afrikaner, the son of people who endorsed Apartheid, I didn’t feel quite so comfortable.

Afterwards I saw that my feelings were shared by many people online. Some gave technical critiques of the movie, such as plotholes or an overuse of CGI, while other focused on the political and economic message. I agreed with most of it.

However, I finally bought the movie today and gave it another watch with my mother. This time I believe the movie presents a way more nuanced message, one that critiques both radicalism and isolationism, in direct rebuke to those who love Killmonger or Wakanda’s system.

I’ll give this breakdown along two dimensions: authority and legitimacy in the political system of Wakanda, and the morality of isolationism vs radicalism.

On the former, Wakanda is a sovereign absolute monarchy. Power sharing is informal, with the Jabari tribe not submitting to Wakandan rule (or at least not without reservations), and the king dependent on the loyalty of the other tribes. I will not beat a dead horse for arguing in favour of democracy over a monarchy. I do believe it is better, but it’s not something I’ll argue here.

You have T’Challa, at the very beginning, challenged by the arch-conservative/traditionalist M’baku. He critiques T’Challa for being weak as leader and weak as warrior. He therefore uses tradition to challenge T’Challa for the throne. Failing, he yielded so he won’t leave his tribe leaderless.

Another aspect of authority and legitimacy comes with Killmonger’s arrival in Wakanda. He uses the tradition of the political system - ritual combat - to initiate a de-facto coup. He kills the king and subsequently ignores the rest of Wakandan tradition. Tradition was useful at the beginning, but like Erdogan today with democracy, Killmonger used tradition as a train only until he got to his destination. He exposed the inherent flaw of the Wakandan political system. This system, praised from the beginning for its uniqueness (recall W’Kabi’s words: “then Wakanda will be like everywhere else”), has the same weakness as most monarchies. Okoye, in love of Wakanda, believes the right thing is to hold to this political system and serve Killmonger as the rightful king - she equated the political system with the country, with the people itself. In her eyes, the state and the country is one.

Shuri, in turn, was in the beginning mocked by M’baku for spitting on Wakandan tradition. Yet, ironically, it was her love for Wakanda in spite of the political system and tradition and in love of the people rather than the state and its corrupt leader, who saw the moral necessity for coup. Keep in mind she wanted to pit M’baku against Killmonger before she knew T’Challa was alive. For her, Wakanda is - in Odin’s word - “a people, not a place”. Or rather, “a people in this place, not an abstract system of authority”. Wakanda is not just a set of traditions.

Both sides have a case to make: you cannot just support coups when you feel like it. A country needs stability. A leader needs loyalty. On the other hand, you should not just support dictators simply because they are in power. That’s a strong lesson for many African and other states. Your priority should be with the people and not the system. For Africans and elsewhere this means that if you really love your country, then you should critique and remove corrupt leaders. Don’t defend them. Your loyalty is with the people, not them. The same can be said of Venezuela. Many peope support Maduro. Why? Venezuelans suffer like they never have before. They have their own Killmonger. But you support him over the people.

The second dimension is isolationism vs radicalism. Early on Nakia tells T’Challa that Wakanda should help more. Later on Killmonger makes the powerful case that Wakanda ignored the pains and sufferings of people around the world. He obviously meant black people, but it’s worth noting that he wanted to help oppressed people in China too. At the end T’Challa actually agrees. ALL the previous kings were wrong for turning a blind eye. Tying in with the former dimension, he is willing to recognise the mistakes of the past to move forward. Don’t pretend that your ancestors were perfect. That your country is perfect. Be willing to improve. But, and T’Challa is wise enough to realise it, don’t move too far either. If you hate something, then going the complete opposite is not the answer.

As T’Challa tells Killmonger by the end, “You have become what you hated”. I believe if the movie’s case against Killmonger can be expressed in one sentence, that sentence would be it. In desiring the justice of his people, Killmonger killed innocents. He started a civil war. He burned down the tradition of his own country. He was willing to murder the oppressors in turn. He even, ironically, staged a coup in an African country and deposed its king! He became an imperialist who wanted to enforce his will on the world. He unironically quoted the British maxim, “The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire”. He adopted the same bigoted motivations of the West which sought to “civilize the world” by imposing its will on it. Instead of a “white man’s burden” he carried the “oppressed man’s burden”. He became what he hated. The most perfect cinematographic scene was after he defeated T’Challa: as he walks towards the throne the camera turns upside down, symbolising not just the political revolution, but the completion of the change of Killmonger into what he hated.

At the end of the day T’Challa is the great and wise king who was willing to break with the past without undermining Wakanda’s traditions. He was willing to accept Killmonger’s critiques without turning into what he hated: he opened up Wakanda to the world and decided to help people around the globe peacefully, morally.

People online say the movie supports isolationism. That’s false. Wakanda opened up. Others, in turn, like Killmonger. They are wrong. They are turning into what they hate.

As a lasting thought I’ll add this: T’Challa said that Killmonger is the product of the mistakes of Wakanda. Sometimes our indifference when we could have helped is what drives people to hate us.

youtube

#black panther #marvel #politics #social justice #mcu #Killmonger #equality #radical #radicalism #monarchy #political system #justice #morals #ethics #oppression #racism #racist

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sa-x · 5 years

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if you’re relatively interested in marvel movies but don’t wanna spend the time watching every single one, here’s a barebones breakdown of important mcu films (in chronological order per the cinematic universe)

1. captain america: the first avenger. very much in the style of classic cap, just kinda establishes steve as the odd one out with the other avengers. don’t know why hugo weaving and tommy lee jones were cast with a realistically smaller budget but they are wonderful additions to the film

2. iron man 2. fuck tony stark and fuck anyone who abets his pseudo-vigilante imperialist shtick, but crucial to understanding what an asshole he is. fucking amazing performances from mickey rourke and sam rockwell. potentially skippable but adds to his future conflict with steve (spoilers i guess lol)

3. the avengers. the campiest of all the films but some very cool moments, crucial plot building, and helps steve along from being stuck in the 40′s. if you wanna see a good performance from scarjo watch iron man 2 cause boy do she and jeremy renner suck in this

4. captain america: the winter soldier. again, very good plot building, not only for steve but for the universe as a whole. he goes from winning fights simply because he’s stronger in the first film, to absolutely bodying anyone who tries him. 3 words: elevator fight scene

5. guardians of the galaxy. yes i hate the 2 idiots spearheading this film but it’s great and gives the mcu a much more ridiculous while also more dangerous tone. again, don’t know how they got john c. reilly, glenn close, and benicio del toro on this. odd choices

6. gotg 2. ditto from the first breakdown. good establishment of peter’s powers though he literally never uses them after lmao. baby/teen groot is dumb but ya know. marketing

7. captain america: civil war. basically an avengers movie they just titled it as a cap film. arguably the most important marvel film. big takeaway is fuck tony stark. also? the introduction of t’challa is so sick

7.5. doctor strange. really only a necessity if you want to understand his role/choices in infinity war. otherwise skippable

8. thor: ragnarok. literally the only good thor film. sadly his new characterization is not utilized in infinity war but he’s still an indisputable powerhouse. absolutely strongest avenger. another random cast in jeff goldblum but a wonderful one as well. my man goes through some shit

9. black panther. if you didn’t see this already you’re absurd. just a real good movie in general. t’challa deals with past mistakes (that he didn’t even make) coming back to bite him directly. a wonderful look at the ways tradition can be challenged while also respected. tw martin freeman. ridiculous that wakanda is just used as a backdrop for the big fight in infinity war

#pbp

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writingwakanda · 6 years

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Why is Wakanda Exceptional? (Part Two: History)

Another exceptional characteristic of a Wakanda is its ancient uninterrupted history having retained its sovereignty over its geography and resources within it. This is very important because we note in our history, most african nations have not been able to retain their sovereignty or experienced uninterrupted history. So for Wakanda to manage that epic feat as well as cultivate a culture of meaningful symbiosis with their environment is incredible.

That knowledge is what helped them in part to ensure their continuing survival and success when faced with internal and external conflicts. The accumulation of such vast knowledge leading to more straightforward advancement based on what they already know; which according to canon, is a lot.

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Wakanda’s history is checkered with internal and external conflicts spanning most of known civilization. The unification of the country taking place somewhere around 4-6000 years ago. Issues of internal sovereignty include the role of the Black Panther within Wakandan society, changing dynasties of ruling families and the role of the tribes; externally conflicts would include establishing their borders and protecting Wakandan way of life as well as their resources.

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Their success in the preservation of history, knowledge and sovereignty is in part due to the egalitarian norms present within Wakanda society. Some of the most effective tactics used by colonizers and imperialists governments are ones that separate or divide people. Wakanda’s cultural basis in meeting basic needs, communal propriety and reproductive health made them almost impenetrable, when it really mattered. The strife that normally made a group of people vulnerable is not seen to be present in Wakanda.

Finally by negotiating standards of living and equal access Wakanda and its governance decided what was most important to them. That being the continued survival of the state and continued advancement.

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- Writing Wakanda

This post is continued in Part Three.

Link to Part One

#black panther #wakanda #wakanda history #afrofuturism #wakandan technology #black panther analysis #wakandan education #knowledge accumulation #wakandan resources #writingwakanda #meta #T'Challa #Udaku

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darthkorra · 6 years

Text

Black Panther was everything TLJ should have been:

Badass protagonist: T’Challa remains virtually the same from his previous appearances. Rey was NOT the same character from TFA

The secondary character gets his/her due: Shuri was just perfect. Her genius saved T’Challa.

Finn unfortunately was not used as he SHOULD have been. He was used as a side character, mischaracterized, as was Poe.

The comic relief isn’t too overdone: Martin Freeman’s character was the boring white guy but wasn’t too interjected. Chewie went from being the sidekick and co-pilot we all know and love to comic relief. What a joke.

Cousin vs Cousin: T’Challa vs N’Jadaka. N’Jadaka battles his cousin for the legacy of their family, country, himself because he wants to show the world who Wakanda REALLY is, in a terrible imperialistic way. T’Challa wants to remained sectioned off from the rest of the world because he doesn’t want vibranium used the wrong way and has his heart in the right place.

Rey should be the daughter of Luke Skywalker. This would partially explain her force powers but it would let her choose her own path. She would battle her cousin Kylo for the legacy of their family, and grandfather. Rey would represent Anakin, and Kylo, Vader. It would be the light of Anakin vs the dark of Anakin, only split into his grandchildren. IX would have the ultimate Skywalker faceoff where once again, the fate of the galaxy rests in the main Skywalker’s (Rey’s) hands. She’d have a purpose, more so than Kylo. Her uncle, aunt and father would be all gone, but she has her family in the Resistance now. This would be a perfect metaphor for Rey’s surname to not define her as who she is.

Brilliant characterization and development: T’Challa is a stubborn king who at the end realizes Wakanda needs to aid the rest of the world. Rey, Finn and Poe get virtually no development in the film.

An antagonist who’s point of view we can see, but still despise: N’Jadaka or Erik Killmonger, as we know was born to N’Jobu, brother of T’Chaka. He learns of his Wakandan heritage and seeks to destroy his cousin because his uncle took his father away from him. We understand his point of view, but we do not sympathize with him, as his intentions are evil; Kylo Ren in TFA is a evil little brat who we KNOW murdered people, as evidenced by his killings of Lor San Tekka and Han Solo. All of a sudden in TLJ, we’re supposed to sympathize with his Neo-Nazi ways?

#black panther #anti tlj #anti rian johnson #tlj hate

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

youtube

CARDI B - MONEY

[4.78]

In which it turns out that it IS all about the cha-ching cha-ching, ba-bling ba-bling...

Tobi Tella: Cardi B's incredible rise to superstardom was extremely quick, so it makes sense that it also didn't take long for her to start releasing throwaway singles. "Money" has a fine beat and a fun chorus, but it's hard to connect with because it feels like more of the same, which is troubling considering she only has one album. She can still make a questionable punchline work through pure charisma ("Bitch I will black on your ass/Wakanda Forever!") but to be honest, it's getting a little old. [5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This is exactly the kind of song I expected Cardi B to be making after "Bodak Yellow" broke big last year. I was wrong then, but the arc of the pop universe is long and bends towards lazy singles. [3]

Andy Hutchins: First: Producer J. White -- whose fuller J. White Did It name is an obvious rip of Mike Will Made It's full nom de boards -- might need some of the cheese Cardi craves for her egg to stave off the lawsuits from the folks who produced 2 Chainz's "Watch Out" and OG Maco's "U Guessed It," because only a skittering Lex Luger-era snare roll truly distinguishes it from those productions. But the greater failure of "Money" is that this is a Cardi doing more sneering than smirking rather than deftly balancing the two: The "WAKANDA FOREVER" punchline is a hilarious callback to the halcyon days of Black Panther being in theaters, but the jokes generally aren't as funny as her best material. "Money" is a competent but largely unnecessary song, and seems quite likely to be Atlantic's test balloon for re-saturating the airwaves with an artist who has already had five top-30 singles of her own in the last 18 months and has featured on five more top-15 songs in the same time. "Money" is already a top-15 hit in its own right, so, in a sense, Cardi can hold her own against titans of pop like Drake -- but if she has to sound this tired while doing it, I'm all for her standing apart from Drake by spending as much time with Kulture as she wants before hitting the booth again in earnest. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: Low, sinking bass drums drop, hop out the grave then swing as Cardi spars with it, ducking, wearing and stinging as the piano puts up her dukes, keeping her on her toes. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The production isn't striking enough to help Cardi exert the power of her imperialistic reign over the listener, so her rapping sounds strained and bored by the end of the third verse. While references to her daughter and Offset make "Money" more personal, her personality isn't what's really driving the song. Without that, the result is little more than generic bravado. [3]

Julian Axelrod: When your personality is as big as Cardi's, a complex beat or elaborate concept is just unnecessary baggage. So I appreciate the simplicity of this track: a few piano notes, some frantic hi-hats, a disembodied "Money, ho!" and a single-minded devotion to the bag. It gives Cardi ample space to spread out and talk her shit. Sometimes I forget how inventive a writer she can be; even on a straightforward cash anthem, she'll drop a line like "All my pajamas is leather." If this is the first taste of her new album, it's not paving any new ground. (This could easily be a bonus track on the inevitable Invasion of Privacy Deluxe reissue.) But if you ain't broke, don't fix it. [7]

Joshua Copperman: "Get Up 10" was Cardi doing "Dreams & Nightmares," "Thru Your Phone" was Cardi out-Nicki-ing Nicki's Roman persona, and this is Cardi's take on "Humble." She once again brings her personality, but compared to those other songs on Invasion of Privacy this isn't as fleshed out, which is exactly what made that album so good. "Money" is more in line with what doubters thought that album would sound like, which means: some neat ideas, but rushed and not nearly as quotable as her best songs can be. [5]

Juan F. Carruyo: Cardi's insistence of documenting in-song her obsession with a never-ending pursuit of wealth is a well worn trope by now, so much that it's conceptual but she never re-contextualizes the cliches she declaims or even offer some kind of introspection about how it feels to finally be on the other side. It's mere boasting, and she does boast well. But I get no pleasure from this. [2]

Alfred Soto: Like Cary Grant in Houseboat or Father Goose, Cardi in "Money" offers the pleasure of a born performer basking in the audience's pleasure in a well-honed star persona. No one remembers Father Goose either. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Cardi B #rap #hip hop #music #music review #writing

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honeylikewords · 6 years

Note

how about T'Challa for the kissing headcanons??

Sure! However, I do feel like it’s important to mention that I want my Black Panther and T’Challa content to be explicitly inclusive of black readers. A lot of fanfiction defers to whiteness as the “default” and “baseline”, but I think it’s important for Black Panther to be represented in fanfiction as what it is: a tribute to all the world’s wonderful, strong, under-represented black people who deserve their chance to shine as worthy heroes and victors.

It’s also important because of the general political sphere of Wakanda, and T’Challa’s role in a society untouched by colonialist, imperialist, and Eurocentric ideals. Wakanda values its diverse array of beautiful, capable, intelligent and amazing women, and I want my stories about Wakanda to reflect that.

I have a lot of worries about writing for T’Challa because I do really love and appreciate him, and I love Black Panther, but the movie and the character are highly politically charged, and altering any part of the story alters some aspect of the original, intended message. I want to tread very carefully and with utmost respect for the original content, especially because I’m white and I want to do right by the people who Black Panther is by and for.

Thank you all for understanding! Now, onto the smoochin’!

T’Challa is a man with a public and private persona. Public T’Challa is T’Challa Udaku, Son of T’Chaka, King of Wakanda, the most powerful and developed nation on earth. He is the Black Panther, the symbol and keeper of peace and prosperity, and he acts like it. He is elegant, put-together, calm and rational. In that way, T’Challa is not ever, ever gonna get handsy with his s/o in public.

Nope.

He has a responsibility to his nation and to himself to remain mature and adult, and mature adults don’t go around clinging to their partners and kissing them like schoolchildren in the hallways. He’ll only, very rarely, allow himself to peck her cheek or hand, or, if they’re walking somewhere together, put his hand on her lower back to guide her. That’s it.

No hand-holding, no mouth-kisses, no hugging. He keeps it all very professional and is very limited in his physicality, to the point of frustration for both parties.

But then there’s private T’Challa, the man, not the king.

And good lord, T’Challa is kinda clingy.

He’s a very affectionate and happy guy once out of the spotlight. He likes to joke and laugh, and he’s actually quite the romantic and a little easy to bowl over when it comes to how much he loves the woman he’s with. He loves her so much that it makes him feel weak and strong all at once, and so he tries to balance the scales with playfulness and by being more than a little hover-y.

He’s very private with his kisses and won’t kiss in front of his family (Shuri would take pictures and blackmail him so hard that he’d be under her thumb for the rest of his life), but when it’s just him and his love alone, he kisses his darling quite often and quite well.

He likes to lead with his nose, brushing it against her cheek, craning his neck and rubbing his face against her. It’s a little bit of a kitty-cat move: he wants to rub up against her and feel her skin against his, almost like he’s marking his territory and staking a claim in her. He likes to take his time, too, appreciating everything about the woman before him: the texture of her hair against his fingertips, her curls so beautifully dense; the way her lips look when she smiles; the shape of her nose, its prominence and softness all at once. He loves to admire her with his hands and his eyes before he even gets to the kissing, showing his appreciation for her in as many ways as he possibly can.

When he does get down to the actual kissing, he’s still painfully slow, almost teasingly so. He starts with little kisses against her cheeks and the corners of her mouth, murmuring her praises in a mixture of different languages; some words are in isiXhosa, some in English, but most in whatever language his love speaks most commonly.

He’s familiar with a wide variety of dialects and many of the languages spoken around his continent, from isiZulu to siSwati to isiBhaca. He likes to show off his intellect just a little bit, but also wants to show her that he makes a concerted effort to hear her, no matter how she speaks. If she grew up speaking Spanish, he’ll use Spanish affectionates. If she grew up speaking African French, he’ll bring that in, too. He can understand her no matter the language, and loves her in every tongue that can be spoken.

Once he’s done dancing around, he’ll brush his lips against hers so lightly that she could swear it was just a breeze passing by. He’s just so hell-bent on prolonging this for as long as he possibly can...

And then, once she’s off her guard and frustrated, he kisses her. He kisses her hard, moving his full lips against hers like he’s trying to steal her breath right out of her lungs. And he kinda does. When he pulls back, she’s spinning, breathless, giddy and blown away because it’s so easy to forget that under all that self-control and tactfulness there is a beating heart full of passion and desire. It’s so easy to forget that T’Challa is a man with wants and needs and not just the stoic king he has tried so hard to become.

After that initial whirlwind kiss, the rest comes naturally. The barrier that grows between them during their public-imposed separations breaks down and they’re two people in love; a love that needs to manifest itself, just like anyone else. They’re not royals, not figureheads, not heroes or warriors: just two human beings who are completely entranced by one another and need to just kiss, for god’s sake.

It’s also easy to forget that beneath all that calm demeanor and self-possession is a man with superhuman strength: T’Challa kisses hard and his lover is aware of how strong he is, how built and powerful, but how equally gentle he is. All of his movements are intense but measured, and it feels completely blissful to kiss him: he is the epitome of graceful strength, the balance of raw intensity and refined respect.

Everything melts together into the most pleasant of hazes after that first kiss, the following kisses ranging from languid and prolonged to hot and hasty, all of them charged with the intensity of a king’s love and a future queen’s admiration. They balance with one another and their kisses are immensely fulfilling, but also frustrating, as each wishes they could be like this all the time, and not have to go back to being composed, restrained public figures.

So, in short: T’Challa doesn’t get to kiss his beloved as often as he’d like, but when he does, he goes in with all his heart, and wow, does it show.

(Read About Other Kisses Here!)

#messages #black panther #marvel #t'challa #t'challa udaku #kisses #gif warning #Anonymous

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