You may be right, but I don't think Shianni's as simple a character as this. I don't think she would blindly get into a physical fight with Vaughn and his cronies that she knows she can't win, despite what she says to the others.Estelindis wrote...
Really? Shianni? When you play female city elf and wake up after the kidnapping, both Valora and the unnamed elven bridesmaid (not Nola) recommend giving Vaughan what he wants on the grounds that it'll be worse if they resist. To which Shianni responds: "It'll be worse if we don't!" She never advocates just going with the flow, and it's not because she's selfish and isn't thinking of those families and loved ones you mentioned. She truly doesn't believe cooperation is in the best interests of her people. She makes this very clear when you come back to the alienage and some people attack you for causing trouble by resisting - Shianni defends you very strongly at this point.
Shianni is definitely a fighter. She believes her people are equal to the humans, and should not be treated as slaves or as an inferior race. She will fight for what's best for her people at all costs. However, when she instructs the others to fight and says "It will be worse if we don't!", it's because she knows that if the other elves are willing to simply give in without any sort of fight (which they already admitted to) , then the humans will just keep treating the elves poorly. She says that line to encourage the others to have the same strength she does to stand up for what's right.
But she's also a very smart character. She's not the type of character that will willfully throw her life away in a pointless fight where she has no chance of winning. She will not do like the other elf does and attack a gang of armed guards, only to be quickly slaughtered. She will fight, she will resist in her own way. But at a certain point, I think she is the type of character that would sacrifice herself to protect the others instead of making a valiant, though ultimately meaningless stand. By sacrificing herself and bearing the pain so that the others don't have to, by giving the other elves strength and a reason to fight, she is still fighting the humans, though not in a purely physical way.
I can picture her struggling all the way to the back room with Vaughn. I can picture her doing what she can to make it difficult for him. But I don't picture her taking unecessary risks, or starting a physical fight that she has no hope of winning. If she dies, then who will continue to fight for elven rights? I picture her resisting in her own way, shutting out what is happening to her while she looks for the opportunity kill Vaughn or to gain a real advantage. An opportunity that, sadly, never came.
That's what I took away from it anyway. I must admit that it has been a while since I played through the Female City Elf origin though, and perhaps I'm not remembering the details of the story as clearly as you are.
And I think this is why the way BioWare presented the scene works so well. We each have different interpretations of what events transpired between the time that Shianni was taken away and the time she was rescued, and both of our interpretations can fit into the game.Obviously, when it comes to rape, it's not a simple case of bad girls don't fight and good girls do. It's a question of fear, number one, and of what you believe the consequences will be, number two. And I don't think there's a simple formula for either of those things.
In art, it's often the things that are left unsaid, the stories left untold, that can have the biggest impact on the viewer, because it leaves us free to imagine the best (or worst) story that has the most meaning to us personally. In many ways, by not showing us more visual clues as to what happened, BioWare has made the story that much more powerful.
Modifié par LadySeryn, 14 janvier 2010 - 09:19 .
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