#also i've been told that there are 26 works in erik/t'challa so HELL YEAH i'm about to check that out

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Erik & T’Challa thoughts below the cut that I word vomited last night in a Pillowfort comment (I meant to write the first paragraph only, but then all subsequent paragraphs just fell out). I just have so many feelings dear god when will I be able to talk about this movie with people.

Obviously, Black Panther spoilers! So many spoilers! Don’t read if you haven’t seen the movie!!

I feel like, if you could discount fandom racism, we’d get about a million fix-it fics where Erik (/N'Jadaka?) is saved/rehabilitated/whatever (and probably this happens through kissing T'Challa…. Obviously.) I don’t know if this will HAPPEN, because we obviously can’t discount fandom racism? So I’m definitely wondering how many people will write BP-centric fic. (I think T'Challa will probably get thrown into AUs, but will people write him as a main character, or as a side character? I think that will be telling.)

But ANYWAY - I was SO heartbroken through the whole ending fight scene and Erik’s death because I KNEW, OF COURSE, that he couldn’t succeed, and that T'Challa was going to win, because the narrative had been set up in such a way that I couldn’t see a way out of it. (And GOD, I loved that that was actually REFERENCED in the text of the movie?? Like T'Challa doesn’t want it to be the way it is, and he starts to say maybe they can heal Erik and work something out, and Erik just comes back with… So you can lock me up? Because he’s killed Zuri, he nearly started a civil war between W'kabi’s tribe and the Dora Milaje, HE TRIED TO OVERTHROW T'CHALLA HIMSELF. Like, a king can do a lot, but he can’t pardon the guy who overthrew him?)

BUT I REALLY WISHED HE COULD. And Chadwick Boseman was so good in that moment, and I could just feel how much T'Challa wished things could be different. But they weren’t. And then you get Erik’s last line and my HEART BROKE because… of course that’s how he felt, how else could he have felt?? He’d stopped thinking of his own life as valuable years ago; he’d made himself a tool to accomplish what he knew was right, and once he’d failed… well. He failed. He’d built his whole life around this dichotomy that he could either free himself in one specific way (a glorious revolution – where he could finally hurt all of the people who had hurt him, free himself from the pain he grew up with, and stop it from happening to anyone else ever again), or… he’d fail, nothing would change, the world would stay exactly the same, and he’d be trapped with his pain and failure forever. Of course he couldn’t live with that scenario.

It was just. So good. Because the whole movie I’m like, of course Erik believed what he did, and did what he did. And T'Challa’s journey through the movie is really coming around to see the validity of Erik’s arguments. (Not his tactics, obviously.) But T'Challa begins the movie so sure that his father was right and Wakanda needs to stay isolated from the rest of the world, that that’s the best solution – he argues with Nakia about it!!  And then by the end of the movie he’s having the press conference. It’s because of his interactions with Erik that he changes his mind (not his conversations with Nakia!! Though of course I’m sure her arguments have an impact on him. Also–side note–Nakia’s arc is so interesting too sdlkjsd but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation and I think I need to watch the movie a second time to really evaluate it coherently).

But anyway. T'Challa’s arc. That third spirit world sequence. Where he tells his father he was wrong to abandon Erik as a child, that he was wrong to keep the truth about his brother a secret just because he didn’t want to risk losing everything if it all came to light. Just like he was wrong to keep Wakanda a secret… because he didn’t want to risk losing everything if it all came to light. AHH. THESE PARALLELS. I just. *yells* And I felt so VINDICATED for Erik when T'Challa had that moment! But of course… Erik never gets to really experience that moment? Like, he doesn’t know how profoundly he’s impacted T'Challa’s perspective, and he doesn’t know that maybe things CAN change (in a different way than he imagined). Like, Erik thinks this really bloody revolution where he’ll “finally be on top” will fix things, but of course he’s just trying to institute a new hierarchy where he isn’t powerless anymore (and like. Yeah. Of course he has that fantasy. It’s completely relatable.) But there’s no room within the movie for Erik to see that change can happen in other ways. And like of course one outreach center in Oakland isn’t going to fix the entire world, it’s not like Erik’s dreams have been realized by the end of the movie, but that outreach center is something, and I think the movie definitely posits that it’s a really meaningful/hopeful outcome… a kind of first step toward accomplishing some of the goals Erik died for (regardless of any real-world arguments about what someone would actually have to do to accomplish meaningful global change.)

But anyway. This is a really long ramble but my MAIN POINT IS, I understand why Erik’s arc played out exactly the way it did in the movie, and I loved it, and it broke my heart, and I would not change a thing. HOWEVER. IF I WERE TO WRITE A FANFICTION. I would fix it and let Erik live a long and happy life. Obviously. (Like, I just keep thinking… what if he could somehow come around to believing in different methods to achieve his goals…? What if T'Challa could time travel and FORCE HIS DAD NOT TO LEAVE ERIK THERE…?? What if instead of T'Challa getting thrown off the waterfall, Erik and T'Challa both fell off TOGETHER and then had to talk it out while they hiked back to civilization and maybe they fall in love along the way, who knows? What if what if what if.)

edit: two additional thoughts for those two aus:

Time Travel au: T’Challa comes back after making his dad go back for Erik, and it’s the first scene of the movie with Shuri and his mom before the coronation, except he and Erik have apparently been LIFE-LONG BEST FRIENDS, because Erik is THERE, sMILING, SAYING HOW PROUD OF HE IS, and T’Challa is like, “Erik????”  to which Erik replies, “…Who’s Erik?” (Because of course in this situation he’d go by N'Jadaka AHHHh). Also, it’s apparent that N’Jadaka doesn’t know the truth about this father–he thinks his father was killed by police in Oakland, and he’s grown up believing that T’Chaka RESCUED HIM. His politics are similar (but not as extreme) in the face of these changes to his background… and T’Challa has to wrestle with telling him the truth without ruining everything and having it all turn out exactly like before. I think N’Jadaka would still challenge T’Challa during the coronation (motivated by his grief and pain and his belief that T’Challa knew the truth for YEARS without saying anything–because T’Chaka is dead, and Zuri swears to N’Jadaka that he never told T’Challa the truth, so the only reasonable answer is T’Chaka confided in T’Challa while he was still alive. Augh!)

And my idea for the water fall au is just that they’re both pretty injured when they hit the bottom, but T’Challa breaks his leg. And Erik is going to kill him, but it feels too gross and weird to kill someone who’s incapacitated like T’Challa is, so then Erik is like, “WELL I’LL JUST LEAVE HIM TO FREEZE TO DEATH.” And he almost does. And he gets like 30 minutes away and then he yells into the icy tundra and turns around and stomps back and puts T’Challa on a sling and starts dragging him back to safety. Once they’re back and T’Challa’s leg is healed, he’s GOING to kill him and take the thrown, okay? He is. But if he just leaves T’Challa there, maybe people will question if he’s really dead? And if T’Challa dies along the way, fine, Erik will show everyone the body and then he’ll be made king. Win-win. (Maybe this is more believable if Erik is the one who is incapacitated and T’Challa saves him? But I also feel like if you want to rehabilitate murderer-of-many-people-Erik-Killmonger he needs to decide not to murder T’Challa at some point, lol.)

eta: just forget they’re cousins lmao -___- anyway that’s a movie!verse change and not comics canon so i’m ignoring it GOODBYE