I am now rotating the idea of indigenous Leela because of you, it really is such an interesting way of looking at her character, especially with the themes of displacement and being an outsider and her continuing to call herself a warrior of the sevateem even long after she’s left home, even when she’s been living on gallifrey (which is a colonial power in spacetime) for longer than she had lived on her home planet. There really is so much depth that can be added to her character with this (not that she isn’t already a complex character) and I wish big finish would have thought to actually properly do that
it really does add a *lot* of depth to her, I think that's also why it's so important to me as a concept, not only that but having one of the earlier companions be a racialized minority. I also have thoughts and feelings about Leela identifying as a Warrior specifically, and how through a Two Spirit lens, that would map her closely to the Anishinaabe Okitcitakwe or woman-assigned-warrior Ininiikaazo.
I think a lot about this with my feelings towards Joan of Arc (relates to this I PROMISE) with the concept of The Knight as an archetype in the fairy tradition. The Knight is a role that, once taken up, overwrites the gender the world assigned. La Pucelle or the Maid, is not "girl" but "unmarried warrior virgin," a category that does not map to modern gender terms at all.
I associate these, as well as the mapping of Leela being Indigenous and Two Spirit heavily, if we look at Leela, we can see that by going by Warrior of the Sevateem that she is also taking up a similar mantle of archetype-as-gender and having a sort of spiritual leader role within her community. This also relates to her Jewelry Maker story as an Elder teaching her the ways of pathworking (a concept in shamanic traditions that involves a sort of movement through wisdom as a lived experience).
I was reading some of the tags on the essay, because this topic means a LOT to me - and I agree that Big Finish really missed a chance at hiring an Indigenous writer to write a character story on Leela, with respect and honour to her name. Do you know how much that would fucking mean when she comes from the era of Talons? Talk about making reparations right?? do you see how fucking groundbreaking that would be in the science fiction genre???
OOOOOOOOUGH I'm gonna have to write a whole thing on gender and joan of arc and faeries now
romaincrisis
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