Lafiel Abriel (SabrAather: Birch) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
prideofabh) wrote2012-07-14 01:06 pm
prideofabh) wrote2012-07-14 01:06 pm
Entry tags:
Lafiel in Crunch Situations
So, I alluded to this on Plurk, but didn't feel like doing it all in plurks, so I came here.
When we were chatting in #zeta, Elliot wondered if Lafiel was also in the 'noble idiot' category when they elected to not attack another team.
Short answer: it's not nobility, but pride. And it's why playing Lafiel in EC is very different than how she'd act ion an amnesia game like Sabra.
Lafiel framed her situation quickly on her arrival as 'I am a POW and GLaDOS is the camp superintendent, with the cores as other guards'. It meant that other prisoners started out as de facto allies, and any robot was a de facto enemy. Lafiel doesn't mind working with some of the robots to create dissension: as far as she's concerned, if Mary Sue and GLaDOS duke it out, that's better for the prisoners' escape odds. But she won't do things like let Mary Sue touch her wireless connection.
This also affects how Lafiel plays trauma games: she knows GLaDOS wants her and her fellow prisoners to suffer, and she surmises that GLaDOS also wants to foster division between them. Lafiel views it as a bad thing to do what an enemy wants and a bad thing to hurt someone who might be an ally (or at least Not an Enemy). And... well, Lafiel is military and royalty and places her pride and her honor (and that of all Abh, since she's the face of the Empire right now) above her life: basically, she wants to tell GLaDOS 'don't fuck with the Abh'. The only thing that makes her playable is that she's attached to Zeta enough that she will think before shows of defiance; even so, she's probably at risk of breaking if she keeps this up. Or breaking others; Lafiel can accept that she had no way of knowing which teams would need Zeta's defense and which wouldn't, so that people died is Not Her Problem beyond a 'next time, we should have a plan -- how do we get one without GLaDOS eavesdropping?'. What she doesn't get is why Elliot and Leo are taking it as a personal failing, when Lafiel sees it as adding to the utter hell she's going to inflict on GLaDOS when she gets a chance.
But, in Sabra, Lafiel wouldn't have been an officer and a princess of an empire that ruled half of known space and were known for being arrogant space elves. She still might want to stick it to the Judges (it wasn't a uncommon sentiment in Sabra, after all), but a team might have focused her pride around them and changed her ethics. Lafiel really doesn't have a problem with ruthlessness: she killed her first person (Baron Febdash) at 15 in a dogfight for trying to kidnap her while she was on an Important Mission for the Empire. It kind of scared Jinto that she was so bloodthirsty at such a young age, but she sees it as understandable revenge for treason and generally getting in her way and Baron Febdash was Abh enough to know what he was getting into. And also Abh enough to think he could get away with it -- the Abh do see pride as a virtue, even if they have little tolerance for fools.
So a Sabra!Lafiel probably would have had far less of a problem with killing in the games if she was thrown into a situation where she saw it as team versus team rather than teams versus NPCs. EC!Lafiel could still reach that point; she doesn't trust Alpha, even if they have a friend of Elliot and Leo's on their team. Other teams could reach the 'compromised' or 'selfish asshole' territory in her head.
(This means I probably should make Lafiel one of my SabrAather characters just for the fun of amensia!Abh. The main question would be what memory to give her.)
When we were chatting in #zeta, Elliot wondered if Lafiel was also in the 'noble idiot' category when they elected to not attack another team.
Short answer: it's not nobility, but pride. And it's why playing Lafiel in EC is very different than how she'd act ion an amnesia game like Sabra.
Lafiel framed her situation quickly on her arrival as 'I am a POW and GLaDOS is the camp superintendent, with the cores as other guards'. It meant that other prisoners started out as de facto allies, and any robot was a de facto enemy. Lafiel doesn't mind working with some of the robots to create dissension: as far as she's concerned, if Mary Sue and GLaDOS duke it out, that's better for the prisoners' escape odds. But she won't do things like let Mary Sue touch her wireless connection.
This also affects how Lafiel plays trauma games: she knows GLaDOS wants her and her fellow prisoners to suffer, and she surmises that GLaDOS also wants to foster division between them. Lafiel views it as a bad thing to do what an enemy wants and a bad thing to hurt someone who might be an ally (or at least Not an Enemy). And... well, Lafiel is military and royalty and places her pride and her honor (and that of all Abh, since she's the face of the Empire right now) above her life: basically, she wants to tell GLaDOS 'don't fuck with the Abh'. The only thing that makes her playable is that she's attached to Zeta enough that she will think before shows of defiance; even so, she's probably at risk of breaking if she keeps this up. Or breaking others; Lafiel can accept that she had no way of knowing which teams would need Zeta's defense and which wouldn't, so that people died is Not Her Problem beyond a 'next time, we should have a plan -- how do we get one without GLaDOS eavesdropping?'. What she doesn't get is why Elliot and Leo are taking it as a personal failing, when Lafiel sees it as adding to the utter hell she's going to inflict on GLaDOS when she gets a chance.
But, in Sabra, Lafiel wouldn't have been an officer and a princess of an empire that ruled half of known space and were known for being arrogant space elves. She still might want to stick it to the Judges (it wasn't a uncommon sentiment in Sabra, after all), but a team might have focused her pride around them and changed her ethics. Lafiel really doesn't have a problem with ruthlessness: she killed her first person (Baron Febdash) at 15 in a dogfight for trying to kidnap her while she was on an Important Mission for the Empire. It kind of scared Jinto that she was so bloodthirsty at such a young age, but she sees it as understandable revenge for treason and generally getting in her way and Baron Febdash was Abh enough to know what he was getting into. And also Abh enough to think he could get away with it -- the Abh do see pride as a virtue, even if they have little tolerance for fools.
So a Sabra!Lafiel probably would have had far less of a problem with killing in the games if she was thrown into a situation where she saw it as team versus team rather than teams versus NPCs. EC!Lafiel could still reach that point; she doesn't trust Alpha, even if they have a friend of Elliot and Leo's on their team. Other teams could reach the 'compromised' or 'selfish asshole' territory in her head.
(This means I probably should make Lafiel one of my SabrAather characters just for the fun of amensia!Abh. The main question would be what memory to give her.)
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(It occurs to me that normally Lafiel is pretty logical and might have considered attacking more* if her pride isn't in the way, but...)
* And probably dismissed it; currently they gain more in the long term by being altruistic than they would have gained in the short term by being assured of safety. The test might be one round, but there are other tests and this is a classic prisoner's dilemma.
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* And hell, her best friend in canon wasn't raised as an Abh noble, so even he sometimes confuses her.
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