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kukulkahn · 10 months

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Musings on Talokan & the Evolution of Mayan Religion

What must the first peoples of Talokan have thought and felt about the changes in their physiology and what it meant for their religious practice?

The necessity of living at depth in the ocean must have, at first, felt a bit like living in Xibalba. Cold, dark, alien in so many ways to their lives before that moment. Perhaps they even felt they were working their way through Xibalba’s nine realms to find a more divine paradise that ensured their survival?

All of the gods of land that they previously worshipped, whether to reflect nature/seasons/elements or for animals/plants solely existing in the surface world (especially the god of maize, god of the sun) would have suddenly become inaccessible to them, no longer as integral to their survival as they once were. The ceremony once used to show respect and gratitude could not be performed at depth, or perhaps even in water. How to respond to this change? Did they give up those rituals and ceremonies? Did they evolve them into a familiar-yet-foreign version?

Did Namor grow up learning about these ceremonies as something lost, even as he participated in new ceremonies tailored for the gods of water and tides and fish migration?

Each person’s wayob (their personal guide) would have been impacted, as many would have taken form as land-dwelling creatures or elements - would they still dream of them as they had??

We know that the deity K’uk’ulkan plays a strong role both within Talokanil society and as a part of Namor’s personal character journey.

I am reminded that there are both ancient and modern interpretations of the Plumed Serpent Diety:

He has been a War Serpent, a Vision Serpent, the God of a cult that facilitated peaceful trade and intertribal communication across indigenous communities.

But he has also been just a boy who was born a snake, who was loved by his sister, and who – when he grew too large – flew into the sea, the cause of underwater earthquakes.

And then there is the story of K’uk’ulkan the winged serpent that flew to the sun and tried to speak to it. But the sun, in its pride, burnt his tongue. …. Sound familiar?

#Origins: Talokan #Face: Earth199999 #Talokan #talokanil #reference: headcanon #Origins: Mesoamerica #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 10 months

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TENOCH HUERTA

by AGUSTÍN CUEVAS at the BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER red carpet in MEXICO CITY (November 2022)

#tenoch huerta #Gallery: Images #Face: Earth199999 #my boyyy #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 10 months

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Early on rough drafts for Namor (+ anatomical breakdowns):

#Face: Earth199999 #reference #Gallery: images #concept art

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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i love you fish man

#Gallery: Fanart #Face: Earth199999 #lookit that pretty face #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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In love with him after watching Wakanda Forever ❤️

#Gallery: Fanart #Face: Earth199999 #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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#tenoch huerta #tw racism #tw intergenerational trauma #Face: Earth199999 #speak that truth bby #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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Spent close to a year working on Black Panther - Wakanda Forever. I worked with Ruth Carter designing characters/costumes. Here’s an early pass on Namor with focus on the headdress.

MCU Namor concept art by Karl Lindberg

#Face: Earth199999 #Gallery: Images #Origins: Talokan #concept art #hell yea #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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BLACK PANTHER (2018) dir. Ryan Coogler

#Namor over here nodding like #Killmonger gotta POINT #Gallery: gifs #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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I wanna talk about the prehispanic and mesoamerican representation of music in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

The music was my main motivation to go see the film (alongside with the introducing of Tenoch, one of my favorite people inthe world).

The day of the Mexican premiere, my facebook feed was full of photos of musicians (whom I follow for their prehispanic instrumental and amazing work thru the years in the band TRIBU and colabs with musicians Arturo Meza, Jorge Reyes and Rastrillos) attending the premiere and revealing that they participated in the making of the music for the film!

The news clearly moved me to inexplicable levels because those musicians: Ramiro Ramirez Duarte and Alejandro Mendez Rojas, have spent decades working and promoting research, practice and recognition of prehispanic instruments and how mesoamerican music might have sounded.

In addition, these musicians (one with degree in ethnomusicology and anthropological research and the other as a member of the Otomi indigenous community in the north of the territory where I was born and live), have been and are part of projects and musical groups that have given original music and prehispanic instruments the place they deserve in the broad definition of Mexican music.

In an interview with La Silla Rota Guanajuato They explain that "Prehispanic music no longer exists, from that past only the instruments remain, their melodies".

Alejandro Méndez Rojas commented that is unknown how the music of that time was; everything was destroyed in the 16th century because the Spanish prohibited prehispanic musicians and everything that had to do with ancient culture, they stopped making the instruments, there were no longer any manufacturers.

Did you get chills when the Talokani first came out and hypnotized the ship's crew with their voices? This is what you hear:

Did you feel the love and pain through Namor's origin story? This was what accompanied that feeling:

The pieces Namor, Lost in the depths, Yucatán, Namor's Throne, Imperius Rex and Sink the ship also have remarkable elements from prehispanic instruments and voices.

Hearing the distinctive sounds of snails, flutes, rattles, drums, and canes at epic and emotional moments in the film made my heart race and pride prickle my skin.

About "Árboles bajo el mar", Alejandro Mendez Rojas explain in their social media:

"In this piece I composed all the sounds made with prehispanic instruments. I used a Tepehuano bow, tortoise shells percussed by Huave deer antlers, Mayan double-diaphragm whistle, Mayan trumpets, Tezcatlipoca flute, Mayan tunkul among other instruments made by me.

Thank you for allowing me to promote Mesoamerican musical instruments through their sounds in this film and thanks to all the people who collaborated on this piece."

With their work and passion for the music, they become heroes too:

“One way to ensure that instruments are not lost is to build them again, to execute them, to carry out work so that they last, so that they remain alive.

I think that the instruments of prehispanic Mexico deserve that boost, that promotion to enter a world where there is musical diffusion, the instruments deserve that stage to be better know, we have worked with them for many years, have cost us diffusion"

Because it is another form of representation, it is another way of saying "we are here", but on a large scale, it is an opportunity to continue preserving our culture, our roots and to allow it not to go out.

"Mexico has a wonderful ancestral legacy, worthy of being recovered and put into circulation again, the instruments will come to life in every human being who listens to them"

Gracias señores Ramiro y Alejandro por ser tan chingones y seguir trabajando por darle a nuestra herencia y a nuestras raíces la dignidad que merecen. Felicidades por este trabajo tan hermoso y emotivo. Y muchas gracias por ser parte de mi formación y herencia musical. Me siento orgullosa y feliz por todo eso 🫀

Please, listen all the music from the original soundtrack and give them a lot of love. Thank you Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Goransson for let it be this wonderful dignity manifesto that is Wakanda Forever.

🖤🤎

#this is so amazing #prehispanic music #prehispanico #music #reference #Origins: Mesoamerica #ooc #behind the scenes #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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His lil wings go flutter flutter

#Gallery: Fanart #Face: Earth199999 #SO CUUTE #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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Could watch him fly around all day tbh

#Wakanda Forever Spoilers #tw spoilers #hummingbird ankle wings we LOVE IT #Face: Earth199999 #Gallery: gifs #reference #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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@knowseverythingaboutyou sent: "You sound like an artist" Daredevil Sentence Starters | Accepting

By design, it is late in the day when Namor enters the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Talokanil planned it as such, to better avoid any lingering second glances from overworked security guards or harried museum curators. He's here specifically to see the museum's latest exhibit on Maya Art and Divinity, which features some rare artifacts predating even his mother's people. The stelae and artwork tells the stories of who K'uk'ulkan would become -- both the God and the Man.

Namor loathes that such connections to his Peoples' spiritual origins are kept in colonizer institutions, but he has learned to play the long game, regarding certain... reparations.

K'uk'ulkan is immersed in his thoughts, peripherally aware of the people still milling around him, most of which are utterly unaware of his presence in the way only truly distracted surface-dwellers can manage. The Heavy boots hiding his ankles and knit beanie covering his pointed ears are both stifling, while the absences of his nose and ear adornments leaves the leader feeling strangely naked. He murmurs translations to himself as he scans the hieroglyphs carved into massive stone monuments, but falls silent at the words spoken from his left.

Turning, Namor regards the woman, his expression shuttered. There is something about her that makes a current of awareness pass beneath the Talokanil's skin.

"...Do I?" He asks at last, mouth tilting ruefully. "Is it because I appreciate the mastery of Maya Artists? Or because I am muttering to myself in an art museum?"

#knowseverythingaboutyou #knowseverythingaboutyou :: 001 :: Maria #IC: threads #Closed Thread :: Do Not Reblog Unless Tagged #Verse :: Surface Sojourn #Deep Queue Sea

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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HEADCANON FRAGMENTS :: Revolution

Namor has always kept abreast of any civil unrest taking place on the surface in Mesoamerica (particularly in the Yucatán Peninsula) and how it most impacts Indigenous Communities of any relation to his own Peoples. So it stands to reason he was well aware of a young Emiliano Zapata and the work of his Liberation Army of the South. Namor would not have participated in the Mexican Revolution (not his Peoples’ problem), but he would have regularly ventured surface-side to do recon on the Maderista rebellion and the civil war that followed. Zapata would have appealed to the Talokanil leader because of his belief that peasants and laborers (largely of Indigenous communities) deserved the right to live and work their own land (and the water flowing through it!) without being preyed upon by those in power.

Fast Forward to the 90s, Namor would have kept eyes on the Chiapas conflict and the Zapatista uprising as well. Once again Indigenous subsistence farmers were being exploited and mistreated, suffering under colonization that restricted their access to basic necessities. This war also did not impact the Talokanil or their anonymity, but for once K’uk’ulkan could not help but get involved. He provided unseen assistance to the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolab’al, and Ch’ol Maya Peoples that participated in the capturing of towns across southern Mexico, and secretly aided their survival when they were forced to hide in the Lacandon Jungle. But that was as far as he was willing to risk exposure, and so returned to Talokan while the San Andrés Accords were negotiated. The ongoing retaliation efforts from the Mexican government, both to forcibly displace Indigenous Peoples and to dissolve the EZLN, has only made Namor more frustrated with the colonization of the surface world, and distrustful of anyone who claims to seek ‘peace’ or ‘justice.’

#Reference: headcanon #MCU Namor #Origins: Mesoamerica #I'm just pondering where Namor was (and what he was doing) during certain points of Mexican history

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kukulkahn · 1 year

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