Where Do You See Yourself In 5 Years?

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Look buddy, i’m just trying to make it to Friday.

"Blake Belladonna should have been an orphan". No, I didn't stutter

Rant incoming. If you feel the onset of symptoms like malding and seething, just click away and you'll make an immediate recovery.

You cannot tell me that Blake's parents weren't randomly created on the fly post-Volume 3.

By all evidence given onscreen, YES, technically Blake never mentions whether she had parents or not.

But she also doesn't say that she has an evil twin named Bleu Bougainvillea living on the broken moon. Doesn't mean it suddenly justifies her having one. There's equal importance in reading what Blake doesn't say.

RWBY and Team RWBY in particular are very focused on family, especially in Volume 2. Weiss mentions her father and family name. Yang talks about Raven and Summer, by extension including Ruby. Blake talks about Adam, i.e. the White Fang. Not her parents. Almost like we're supposed to think that Blake believed the White Fang was her family.

It's even weirder that Ghira and Kali actually love and support Blake, and she had no bad blood with them. For someone on good terms with her parents (just she wasn't willing to confront them), she really doesn't like, mention them at all. Not even longingly or wistfully, like a prodigal daughter wanting to return home.

But she has sketches of Adam in her notebook. Almost like maybe Adam was one of the few people on Remnant she was close to. But the world is never ready for the Adam conversation.

Honestly it's made all the more worse because Kali and Ghira are so well-liked in the fandom, because "Well, now we can't get rid of them. Look at how lovable and pleasant they are! And it's good that someone on Team RWBY has a happy home upbringing."

The latter is true - in a vacuum, but Blake is not the person to be having a happy home life, if she even has a home at all.

I'm not saying this to be mean (as if the catgirl pixels on my screen can take offense to me saying she shouldn't have her nonexistent parents), but Blake is very clearly portrayed to represent the dregs of Remnant's society - she's a Faunus, a non-citizen of the Kingdoms and likely displaced from any home she would have once known to join the White Fang. She is an underdog.

There's adding layers and nuance to a character, and there's adding just plain contradictory elements to them. I don't write "Blake is an outcast of Remnant's society, forced into an extremist group just to survive and feel heard" and then write "But also she was actually born onto the lap of privilege and led such a hard life not out of necessity but out of impulse". It's totally backwards.

Not to mention that she quite explicitly says "If you can't fight, you can't survive"... for an organization she joined and did crimes for of her own accord, when her cushy mansion, comfy bed with pre-fluffed pillows and her parents who run the place is a 20-minute walk away.

It reeks. It smells of "While you were painting your nails and drinking coconut water in your fantasy Australia/Malaysia/Polynesia frankenstein island, I studied the blade" energy when Blake says this and she isn't in any way someone who's had to suffer. Who's had no choice but to fight.

"But she's a Faunus! She's still marginalised in Remnant!" Wow, then good thing she was born and raised on the island where she's only surrounded by Faunus and probably never faced a single discriminatory act by any humans whatsoever, because the closest human around is probably 500 miles away across the ding-dang ocean.

Plus, the "we need someone in Team RWBY with normal parents" argument doesn't hold water as well, because had CRWBY committed to their writing and kept Blake an orphan or some no-name runaway, the same people would be praising Blake either way. "I'm so glad someone on Team RWBY doesn't have living parents, because 'found family' is just as important to show for Blake's arc - first for the White Fang, and now for Team RWBY". See how the reaction changes to match?

To say nothing of the fact it completely screws over the whole identity thing? Not only are you a former White Fang agent in our school, you're also the daughter of the former leader? No amount of "How many politicians' or civil rights leaders' daughters' names do you know" is going to sweep this under the rug - one shouldn't be bending over backwards this much to justify this.

The truth of the matter is the fandom would have eaten up whatever narrative CRWBY spun for Blake, and gone to any necessary lengths to justify it in hindsight as "what the show needed". It's the whole "planned from the beginning" nonsense this fandom falls victim to far too often, which is frankly embarrassing.

Had CRWBY never shown that Blake had living parents, we would have happily eaten it up, but at least they wouldn't have to change what they already said about Blake to do it. It's like saying Weiss is "the loneliest of all" and then later reveal she actually lived under the same roof with eight siblings, four uncles, five aunts, a godmother and three dogs.

"Oh, but that would have been even more effective! It would have been, like, *✧'You feel the loneliest when in a crowd' *✧, it's so deep."

Okay? And?? You've told me nothing besides "I actually would have been happy to bullshit any reason to enjoy these writers' poor-piss decisions, so might as well give me the worst version of what I would have been happy with anyway".

Please, I implore you to put aside your love for the "nice big loveable bear dad" trope and the Kali NSFW art and actually think about what this character's actually about.

This shit is not hard. Like it's hard to write and execute, sure - writing of any kind is a challenge, but you know what's not hard? Keeping the parents dead like you implied they were. Letting found family be Blake's arc.

Letting her look at the White Fang and at Team RWBY, and knowing she has to choose between two families she loves, instead of her running away to the convenient third family she had lying around as her golden parachute in case either one turns to violence or has their school blown up, basically wrapping her in a nice warm blanket so she doesn't have to grapple with any tough moral and emotional choices.

Blake was my favourite character in RWBY until this shit came around; I loved that her hardened nature and upbringing was tempered by a pure conviction and willingness to heal, even when everything she knows and grew with is broken beyond repair. Her conflict felt real and visceral.

Ruby's the daughter of a big Huntress and has silver eyes. Weiss is the daughter of one of the most prestigious families in the world who owns half the world's economy. Yang's the daughter of a bandit queen who's also a Maiden. Blake should have been the nobody. Someone with no greatness to her name, other than the greatness she sees in her new team, and the greatness she can strive towards with her own two hands.

She could have shown that you can come from the absolute bottom of society, hated and overlooked by everyone, and still be a hero, especially in a show where most of its villains (Cinder, Emerald, Adam, Roman, Neo, Mercury) are also outcasts, felons or nobodies in their own communities. Great message, CRWBY. Of course the company robbing their staff of their livelihoods and ousting them when they're no longer useful would demonise the poor people and rebels.

But oh look, now she's the daughter of the former leader of the entire freedom fighter movement and the chief of an entire fucking island nation. Isn't that so much cooler? Don't you look up to Blake so much more now?

Fucking. Yawn.

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cosmic-lattie

4 years ago