#chiriping wren

[violetren]

CAN WE HAVE  A POST INFINITY WAR SHURI MOVIE?!

I got bored at work somehow my mind got stuck on this one moment in Black Panther and an idea spawned.

The moment was when M’baku challenges T’challa for the throne, and talks about Shuri being a child who shouldn’t be in charge of Wakanda’s technological development or whatever and the Dora Milaje get in a ready stance, but look like they’re holding Shuri back rather than M’baku, while she’s standing there staring him dead on.

The idea is QUEEN SHURI.

So Wakanda is ravaged yeah? A lot of people died, a lot of things go destroyed, and then The Snap happened. Those left over need something, SOMEONE to rally around and bring them togther.

Okoye the Lawful Good Paladin Traditionalist that she is turns to Shuri like “You’re it. You got this. The Dora Milaje are at your service.”

And because tradition is important, even during, or especially during times of hardship to help connect people the call goes out to pull everyone together for the chance to challenge Shuri in single combat, to prove she’s worthy of being the new Black Panther, and their queen.

M’baku is not fucking happy. He learned to acknowledge that she was worthy of being the leader of technology and research, but she’s still kid and and just ‘cause she’s good with tech doesn’t mean she’d be a good leader for the nation. He’s issued his challenge before they’ve even sent out the invites because he was there when Okoye told Shuri she needed to step up.

Shuri is... Kind of fucking devastated. Something 70% of her people are dead. Her brother is dead. There is a huge amount of destruction. M’baku isn’t exactly wrong that she’s just a kid. She feels like she failed ‘cause she couldn’t get the stone out fast enough to get destroyed (not that she should but guilt rarely cares about that).

But Shuri is also fucking strong. Fuck iron, she’s got a vibranium will. And she’s smart. She knows somewhere deep down she’s capable of what Okoye says she is. She got a lot, if not all, of the same training as her brother about being a leader, and she’s got a good heart.

So she steps up. She’s smart enough that she can pull her country together and set about trying to find a way to reverse what has been done. Especially if she delegates properly, and listens to Okoye, and Nakia, and even M’baku once she gets him in line.

Fastforward to coronation day. The tension in the air is at least as thick as it was when Killmonger challenged T’challa, and the mood 10x as somber.

M’baku called out his challenge first and the remainders of the other tribes let him. A lot of their warriors were killed and they can’t guarantee who they have left can take Shuri. They all know she’s had training but none are 100% sure as to what extent and how good she is. Only rumours. In the current climate a lot of them agree that such a young woman taking control could be back, M’baku is well known as a warrior, and he‘s has years of experience leading the Jabari.

Now M’baku might think she’s too young but he’s not stupid enough to completely underestimate her. Not again.

He’s learned a bit about her work since he challenged T’challa, he’s seen the fire in her eyes when she came to his mountain with her mother to request his aide, he’s heard of how she went 1v1 with Killmonger briefly during the battle for Wakanda, even if rumours of how it turned out were inconclusive. His biggest concern is that she’ll be brash, easily led, and childishly self absorbed rather than focused on helping Wakanda recover.

So the fight starts, and instead of just charging her, he taunts her, tries to bait her. They circle one another, and he mostly talks. Sometimes makes a few false swings trying to make her flinch. Normally he’s more actions than words in a situation like this but that’s not what he’s testing here.

All the while Shuri is giving him that same dead eye stare she gave him the day he challenged her brother. 

In the crowd or maybe in the circle of spear holders we see a couple of Dora Milaje women share a “He’s done fucked up” kind of look. Let’s say they’re Ayo and Aneka.

The Dora Milaje close in with the spears. Once, maybe twice. EVERYONE is getting ansty over the lack of blows. Realising he’s running out of room to move M’baku takes a second to evaluate if he can afford to keep taunting her. A literal second where his eyes leave her to evaluate their surroundings.

When it was a wide space he had the advantage of being about to make wide heavy swings, but that time has passed. When it gets smaller he’ll have the size advantage to grapple with her, but that’s a dangerous move when she’s so small and they’re near a cliff, one stroke or luck for Shuri or misfortune for him and that could end badly.

Before he’s coming to the conclusion that the current amount of space is probably when Shuri will have the best chance. Not enough for him to do massive swings, but just enough that her smaller frame can dodge and weave out of a grapple attempt Shuri has already closed in with a precision attack.

M’baku might get a hit or two in, but by the time he has the damage has been done, Shuri’s got the advantage and she’s fucking using it. She decimates him, and because they both know Wakanda will need all the inside help it can get to get put back together, he is forced to concede.

All except for the people who were really close to Shuri are standing there looking fucking shell shocked, because she did that.

No one else challenges.

So then she’s doing good leader things. Appointing positions to help rebuild, organising shit, settling disputes that come up during disasters, that kind of shit. And all the while she’s putting resources into researching the infinity stones and the gauntlet and shit so she can if not reverse it at least prevent it from ever happening again. 

And because people can be awful and opportunistic she also has to be literally fighting off colonisation attempts. I’m gonna go ahead and cast America as the biggest fucking source of potential invader issues. Ross is walking a thin fucking line if he even still exists. 

There’s your overarching conflict type stuff.

On a more personal level for Shuri though the girl is trying to find a way to make all this shit easier because she’s barely got her head above water. Her most immediate issue is getting the invaders of her back, because she’s got the tribe leaders to back her up on keeping people organised for the rebuilding, but she doesn’t have an army to back her if these invaders get past Wakanda’s weakened border.

So far she’s been getting by, by designing better and better gadgets to back up her new physical abilities (’cause you know someone scavanged some sacred flowers before Killmonger could get them all burned) but she doesn’t like how doing that can take time and resources away from the rebuilding so she just needs something really special to get the message across that Wakanda isn’t to be fucked with, without triggering like a nuclear war or some shit.

Shuri knows and respects her traditions but normally when she has problems she looks forward for how she can solve them. She’ll turn to traditions of the past for inspiration when just looking forward doesn’t work. It would be a lie to say she doesn’t keep traditions in mind, but when under stress—and she is under a lot—she looks forward first, and with everything she has to be getting done following tradition feels a little suffocating.

Shuri’s personal jouney for the film is her working through her emotional stress and finding a way to center herself with her culture again and the way I suggest this journey be visually and symbolically conveyed is by doing a twist on how Shuri gains her shapeshifting abilities in the comics.

Instead of having her die, maybe have her learn about an ancestor or something that found a way to connect with the Djalia (a spiritual plane consisting of the entire memories of Wakanda) and learn from/get imbued with power by a griot spirit, and decide that maybe its the hail mary she needs.

I’m gonna say she stumbled across it early as part of the research into how to deal with the stones. Looking into spiritual practices as part of figuring out how to deal with the spirit stone or something. That said it could just as easily be that she wasn’t getting fast enough results trying to make something new to save Wakanda so she decided to see if there was anything old that she could use or repurpose.

I like the “she found it early on” idea better because I like the idea of her doing the first part of the ritual in the story, not because she really thinks it would work but because she’s had a long day and willing to try anything. When she doesn’t immediately feel anything and theres no dramatic light effects or anything she just sighs and goes to bed to get what tiny amount of sleep she can. 

Then she has the weirdest fucking dream. And she keeps having them every night after that but they’re always so hazy when she wakes up.

The next couple of days weird shit happens too. Like theres an accident in the lab when she gets two minutes to herself to visit it, and she should have got cut by glass but she didn’t even though her suit wasn’t active. And she wakes up with black feathers on her pillow or one gets caught in the shower drain when she’s washing off after a fight near the plains where there weren’t any blackbirds. And then she’s in a fight and runs to shield someone not expecting to make it even with her enhanced agility, but then somehow she does, because of an inexplicable burst of superspeed.

She begins to think that maybe the old ceremony thing worked after all, and starts getting more involved in some more traditional practices trying to figure it out.

By the end of the movie Shuri is officially aware that she’s under the tutelage of a spirit and though she hasn’t mastered anything yet she’s able to turn the penultimate battle against the invaders around by working in tandem with the griot spirit to raise a bunch of the Wakandan warriors who had fallen during the fight, just long enough to gain the advantage. You know in some classic warrior looks aound realising they might genuinely lose and so goes kinda beserk. I’m thinking not so much in a rage way, but in a tears of grief kind of way.

Important note: Neither Ayo or Aneka can be part of the fallen warriors. They just can’t be.

In doing so she wins the battle, and scares the fuck out of everyone trying to invade buying Wakanda the time it needs to rebuild in relative peace.

Later if they bring T’challa back in a future movie I think Shuri might hand the throne back so that she can spend more time exploring her strengthening connection to the Djalia.

So yeah. That’s my idea. Can we please have a Shuri movie?