User blog:The Devil's Advocate WP/The Troubled Soul of Blake Belladonna

Continuing on from previous posts detailing my thoughts on the character of Weiss, I decided to try working up a post on Blake's character given recent developments. As opposed to my impression of Weiss as the nicest and most innocent member of Team RWBY, Blake appears to me to be the meanest and least innocent member. The latter is not that hard to grasp, partly because she is a Faunus and moreso because she was a member of the White Fang. Her meanness would largely extend from those experiences and are more a mark of her lack of innocence than any inherent character flaws. She grew up in a constant environment of violence and hostility directed at her enemies and those of her people. That this extends to her life after leaving the group is of little surprise.

It isn't too hard to pin down instances where this meanness pops up in the story. Right from the outset she is needling Weiss about her company's more unsavory activities and her initial attitude towards Ruby and Yang is cold and dismissive. She is almost eager to rib people about their faults, like when she is mocking Cardin's ignorance out of her distaste for him as contrasted with Pyrrha more directly calling out his bigotry. In The Stray, Blake does not directly say to Weiss that she has ulterior motives for wanting to see the students from Vecchia, but just blithely notes this to the others loud enough for her to hear. Her upbringing has made her a bit rough with people even when they do not actually give her a reason. I think this masks a somewhat deeper hardship, though not necessarily one of tragedy thrust upon her as much as tragedy chosen.

At first I had considered the possibility that Blake truly chose to be part of a violent political organization, either out of frustration with discrimination or because she was out for revenge over some event in her life. The Volume 1 finale nixed that possibility, however, as her association with them apparently began before the group had become militant. Yet her description of her involvement with them still makes it seem like she was not forced or influenced into it by anyone. Her own description of the organization's history makes it sound as if the group had been founded relatively recently saying "back then", meaning when she joined, the White Fang was formed "in the ashes of war" as a peaceful organization. My speculation is that perhaps the Faunus War happened early in the lives of the students or not long before they were born. Blake became acquainted with them out of some humanitarian circumstance during the early aftermath, either being in a refugee camp or orphaned due to the war, and joined their protests out of a sense of gratitude and obligation towards them as much as any concern for her people.

Were she born into circumstances such as being orphaned or a refugee then it is quite possible she was a bit of a delinquent herself, out of necessity more than anything since she would be living in squalor. Perhaps this was the real reason for her annoyance with Weiss suggesting Sun would end up joining the White Fang. Blake herself had been a bit of a criminal before joining the group. Growing up in such hardship would contribute to her later negative attitudes in life, such as her remarks about life not being like a fairy tale and her generally rude demeanor. It also left her primed for the White Fang both as a peaceful organization and later as a violent organization. To this effect we also have to consider Sun's quip about the White Fang being a "cult" when Blake chastises him for his petty theft. Although it could have been hyperbole, it could have been meant seriously and point to the White Fang, from its inception, having had religious or spiritual undertones or strict indoctrination akin to certain fascist and communist organizations. A disadvantaged youth such as Blake would have been fodder for the group in that case. Blake could have easily chosen not to join the group, but upon choosing to join it would be harder for her to leave the longer she stayed.

Even then it is likely she continued with them out of choice after their descent into violence due to her experiences. Protests of any kind tend to run into trouble with the authorities and when one looks at the history of race-related protests it can get particularly brutal. Violent crackdowns by the police are common as are protests descending into violent riots. Faced with continued discrimination and suppression by the authorities, it seems likely that Blake was initially supportive of the turn towards a more, shall we say, aggressive approach. Together with some hefty indoctrination by the new leadership, it is safe to say Blake was a happy participant in the violent turn of the White Fang for a time.

Her explanation of the group's actions and her reasons for leaving it suggest something to the contrary, that she was not fond of their violent means and left because she tired of it. This is where I have to suggest Blake was not being entirely forthright, perhaps even lying, about the group and her involvement with it. For one, she only describes acts of arson and hijackings, yet Weiss indicates that the White Fang also killed people associated with her family and their company. Seems unusual for Blake to neglect to mention that, especially since we see in the Black Trailer that she saw her own mentor was willing to kill innocent civilians as part of their campaign against the Schnee Dust Company. Hard to imagine the whole "killing people" thing slipped her mind when explaining why she could not be with the group any longer. That Blake's response to Weiss calling the White Fang a bunch of "liars, thieves, and murderers" was her quip that "maybe we were tired" of being mistreated suggests knowledge of this fact as well as an attempt to justify it.

The last point leads me to my most bold suggestion and probably the one that will be the most contentious. I believe Blake has killed people. Not just cut down a few Grimm or sliced up a few robots, but actually taken the lives of living, breathing people. My feelings on this were to some extent prompted by her description of the White Fang lacking consistency with what Weiss said, but the real moment when I thought of this as a real possibility was her reaction to Roman. We may see Blake dispense with an Ursa using brutal and seamless efficiency and tear apart automatons like it was nothing, but that is a far cry from killing a human being. Yet the lack of hesitation and uncertainty Blake showed in running up behind Roman and putting a blade to his throat is not suggestive of someone who has merely killed a few soulless monsters and machines. Indeed, her comment about "ending their little operation" had all the connotations of a death threat on which she fully intended to follow through. Were she someone only versed in arson, robbery, and animal-slaying, you would expect her to tremble and show a little weakness at the thought of slitting a man's threat, criminal though he may be, and yet she is steady as a rock.

Personally, I had only considered her as possibly knowing of and at best assisting in some of the more lethal operations of the White Fang, but it is hard to square that with her evasiveness on the question of them killing people together with her own demonstrated lethality. One can see her last name itself as suggesting a more brutal past, belladonna being well-known as a plant with a lethal poison. It is not too hard to imagine how she could have wound up killing people. Arson is a fairly dangerous crime with all sorts of potential for hazard and it is not a stretch to suggest that Blake was involved in them. Perhaps it starts out with her setting fire to a shop and the racist shop owner winds up dead as a result. It was not intended to go down that way, at least as far as she knew, but it is justified and rationalized as an accident and the owner being a deserving victim. Then it gets down to a few normal acts of self-defense or resistance. Some security guard or police officer tries to interfere with an operation and, in order to avoid being harmed herself, Blake kills him. Again, she is reassured and her actions rationalized as necessary.

Here is where I think we get to the real reason for her leaving the group. Her killing efficiency demonstrated, she gets looped in to the more brutal operations. She would begin taking part in assassinations, kidnappings, and extrajudicial executions of powerful humans who are responsible for Faunus oppression. It would be easy enough to rationalize and justify killing bad people, yet it would begin having an effect. Gradually, she would become better and less hesitant about taking lives and this would get her some favor with the organization. Perhaps it is during this time that Adam takes her under his wing, helping her become a more capable killer. He hardens her further to the point where she begins to lose recognition of herself. By the time of the Black Trailer, she has begun to seriously consider leaving as much for her own sake as it is out of a desire to stop contributing to the violence. I can imagine her somber look sitting on that rock being her reflecting on more than the violence of the group, but the blood on her own hands.

Blake participating in the train operation is itself an indicator of her having engaged in more lethal actions. Taking someone who had been non-violent and bringing her right into an operation where she would be responsible for killing random train workers is not the sort of thing that would be rational. It makes more sense that she was chosen out of a belief that she was "ready" to engage in such an operation. However, taking innocent life happened to be the one thing she simply could not have on her hands and thus she decides then and there to break off from the White Fang. She may have even seen her future self in the White Fang reflect in Adam's callous disregard for innocents. In this context, her hesitance to discuss the more brutal actions of the group and justifying those acts when pressed is as much about her discomfort with her own involvement in those actions.

Now, I do not want people to think any of this would make her a bad character. As noted at the beginning, even though I believe her involvement in the group and its later violence was still a choice, it is not a sign of an inherently bad character. In addition to the more sympathetic circumstances of her initially joining the group and the influence they gained over her, the most important thing to remember is that Blake is a teenage girl. Most kids her age would be painting their nails, trying on clothes, and talking about cute boys, not taking part in assassinations and train robberies. She was, to put it bluntly, a child soldier and most people recognize that child soldiers are a much more sympathetic bunch than regular soldiers. That she decided herself to leave the organization is really an indication of a certain moral strength.

For Blake leaving them would not be enough to minimize the guilt she would have over her actions, though. Becoming a huntress may even be about saving lives in an effort to atone for those she has taken or just about finding a way to put her sins behind her as though they never happened. The latter is somewhat more consistent with her overall charade at Beacon. Concealing her past involvement with the White Fang is one thing, but Blake made a point of concealing her Faunus heritage from everyone, including her team, for months and that would not be an easy thing to manage. We can say it was about protecting her identity, but I would suggest it was a deception out of a desire to feel like a normal care-free human. A deception motivated by her own guilt and shame and her yearning to have lived a regular life. The life of a child soldier is a story of innocence being snuffed out in its prime, never having the opportunity to exhaust itself naturally. Her charade with the bow was Blake aspiring to recover some of her lost childhood in some small way.

This sort of detail of Blake having killed people as part of the White Fang would be important for her to hold back. Part of it would be a desire to put it out of her mind and another part of it would be to avoid the inevitable reaction it would bring. Having been part of the White Fang would be bad enough, but one can only imagine how the team would react if it were revealed that she actually killed people. I cannot see her admitting to that sort of thing on her own, either. One way to have it come out would be Adam's inevitable introduction into the series. He would taunt Blake about her friends not really knowing her and especially pointing out Weiss as someone who might want to know with whom she is living such a carefree school life. For a bit of added drama Blake could turn out to have killed someone very important to Weiss, a family member or close family friend who was like family. Such a revelation in the story would probably not be resolved quickly either like it was with them finding out she was in the White Fang. I can even see it being used as the basis for a short-term "I was a fool to believe I belonged with you guys anyway" Face-Heel Turn by Blake, a long-term departure from the team, or both.

In summation, I do not think we have even come close to delving into the depths of Blake's background and that she has held back some of her worst deeds out of shame and fear. At the same time, I do not believe this makes her a less sympathetic character, but instead would make her story tragically sympathetic. She would be as much a victim of the White Fang as a victim of any human.