👫for four muse's dynamic hc suggestions | killmonger & t'challa. @falsedk1ng
001: ideological dissonance: nationhood vs revolution (malcolm vs fanon).
author note: years ago, at a conference in korea, chadwick boseman suggested TC & KM were more akin to malcolm & fanon than the former & MLK. i respect it. without going long-winded about it, we'll simplify it:
"The influence of Malcolm X’s thinking is clear. Frantz Fanon … also influenced Black Panther Party doctrine. These two men are much more the spiritual fathers of the Panthers than Marx, Mao Tse Tung or Lenin.” — Black Panther Party Harlem Branch files at the Schomburg Center archives in Harlem
killmonger wanted to be the "fanon knife" at the throat of colonialism.
most fans read his praxis as white colonization with a black face—but that’s a misfire. killmonger is not an imperialist. his vision isn't powered by Western conquest models—it’s powered by the blood-ink of black radical theory: Garvey’s transnationalism, fpsychic rupture, the panther party’s armed decolonialism. this isn’t an inversion of white empire. It’s a revolt against the very structure of being imposed by it.
you can’t understand killmonger without understanding fanon’s claim that colonization disfigures the black psyche, creating “an alien other lodged inside the [Black] self,” leading to internalized negation. killmonger's pain—his detachment from wakanda's isolationist traditions, his hunger for revolutionary violence—is the lived consequence of existing in fanon’s “zone of nonbeing.” a place where the Black subject becomes unmoored from recognition, haunted by a fracture in self-worth, and told through systems and symbols that his life is expendable.
fanon's diagnosis is clinical:
“the black body is presented as a site of diseased symptoms… but it holds the promise of decolonized revolutionary existence.”
killmonger embodies this rupture and the cure. he doesn't want recognition from the colonizer—he wants reciprocity from history. and when denied, fanon says the colonized must turn to “struggle to the death against the master.” killmonger listens. this isn’t ideology—it’s anatomy. he doesn’t view liberation through petitions or reconciliation. he sees it in the blood-vessel logic of fanon's reminder:
“colonialism is not a thinking machine… it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”
and so, he becomes the blade. The violence greater than. the storm in fanon's words:
“the reaction is becoming progressively more absolute.”
but t'challa is the counterpoint. not the antithesis—but a restraint. a son of malcolm—not the early firebrand caricature, but the later strategist, the one who walked through mecca and came back speaking of sovereign dignity, not universal vengeance. wakanda’s isolationism mirrors malcolm’s “separation, not segregation”—a nation that protects its people by refusing assimilation. t’challa believes liberation must outlast war. that revolution without vision becomes a collapse. that power should be inherited with accountability, not trauma.
killmonger sees time as a deadline. t'challa sees time as a seed.
their difference isn’t emotion vs logic—it’s rupture vs stewardship.
killmonger wants to burn the master’s house down and salt the earth.
t'challa wants to seal the door forever—then teach the world how to build their own. in this, their dynamic is not hero vs villain, but two black men haunted by the same history and pulled toward different solutions.
002: healer vs executioner
as i noted several times throughout my blog, t'challa has black-american ancestry himself. from his relationship he made personally with the diaspora (e.g., luke cage, sam wilson, monica lynne, ororo, his harlem students, etc.), and the organizations he created/funded to aid in the betterment of his people outside of wakanda, t'challa recognizes the psychological impact colonialism left in n'jadaka—the same one wakanda escaped only by its ultimate seclusion. although t'challa believes in fighting back against your oppressors, he also believe in healing.
his methods are intergenerational: slow-burning, legacy-based, requiring inner repair (shadow work).
n'jadaka believes healing is a lie without enacting vengeance upon those who continuously threaten their right to exist after 400+ years. he demands material justice, regardless of spiritual cost.
this is the inward vs outward war—t’challa fights to hold the soul of his people; killmonger fights to destroy their chains, even if it means burning the body.
003: tactical co-commanders.
t'challa accepts that n'jadaka fury has strategic use. he is a breathing war machine. t'challa is walking law. they can operate as generals—one shadow, one sun—where t’challa handles diplomacy, and n'jadaka handles battlefield deterrence. there is a deep tactical respect—they need each other. this is loosely inspired by the toussaint louverture x dessalines dynamic during the haitian revolution.
t’challa is willing to pursue diplomatic strategies to maintain stability, both within earth’s political web and across interstellar alliances. but should any empire renege on its promises or treaties, n’jadaka—like dessalines—will not hesitate to take brutal, decisive action. when toussaint was captured and deported to france, it was dessalines who rose to leadership, crushed the french forces, and ordered the 1804 massacre of remaining french settlers. between 3,000 to 7,000 people were killed—including women and children—in an act he viewed as a necessary safeguard for haiti’s future.
just as dessalines declared the massacre an act of national authority—a final measure against the reimposition of enslavement—n’jadaka, the impassioned general, has no qualms with total annihilation if a threat endangers his people’s autonomy. where t’challa still negotiates with the world, n’jadaka ensures they never forget what happens if they break their word.
004: cultural synthesis & soft rivalry.
this is where it’s just t’challa and erik—nerds, somewhere in their hearts—allowing themselves to share in a rare laugh. argue. and, occasionally, bond. they don't agree on politics, but they agree on struggle.
it’s quite clear that t’challa watches anime. in his training program, he’d mirrored goku’s stance. one of his hologram simulations had captain america moving like vegeta.
& n'jadaka's armor? unmistakably saiyan-coded. the breastplate taper, the compression mesh, the shoulder plates built to carry extraordinary weight (reference: here). not to mention in marvel what if, he built mechas and blatantly said he watches anime.
n'jadaka admires vegeta—his pride, his brutal journey from villain to reluctant hero. t’challa likes goku’s optimism, but he never saw himself in it. too pure. too simple. but vegeta? the rage, the trauma, he channeled it do good in the galaxy. the man who built love on ashes. who protects not to be praised, but because there’s no one else left to do it. he sees why erik would cling to him.
t’challa teases him for it, side-eyes him when he monologues about “honor” and “redeeming your lineage,” or even when n'jadaka calls him "clown" but when he builds his armor, the shoulder plates taper like saiyan pauldrons. the chest support compresses like weighted training gear. it’s unmistakable. technology invested in an arc through evolution.
they don’t agree on politics, but they agree on the struggle. erik sees the saiyans not as fantasy, but as metaphor. a warrior race destroyed, scattered across galaxies, feared for their power. and yet, still evolving. still coming back. it isn’t a show—it’s prophecy in motion.
author note: as a psych nerd, the last bullet point edges into magical thinking—projecting personal destiny into story. but it also reminds me of that scene in juice, when tupac’s character, bishop, watches white heat. he laughs as cody jarrett, played by cagney, dies in flames shouting “i made it, ma—top of the world!” and declared that's how he wants to die. it’s delusional and tragic. but in that moment, it’s also power. for kids—especially black children—who felt invisible and or powerless, watching someone choose their ending—no matter how doomed—felt like reclaiming narrative control. erik's connection to anime is that same psychological transference. he’s not just watching vegeta. he’s rewriting his own origin story in real time.
