Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-14138255-20161204170804/@comment-14909251-20161207001252

Arkantos95 wrote: I don't know that I'd call the Xiao Longs successful. They're upper middle-class at best.

Upper middle-class is still living better than the vast majority of people. That is typically defined as being the top 15% of society.

73.Anon.52 wrote:

1. If you ask a student living in dorms IRL what do you think they call "home"? It does not matter if they personally set foot in it, it's usually where their parents live that they refer to as such(unless they have an apartment and are self-sustaining).

I don't buy that for an instant. That might be a feel-good definition of home, but most people in conversation use home to refer to a physical place where they lived. When talking about a specific building it means a house they lived in for some time. Unless Blake's activities in the White Fang were more limited and she did not live long periods away from home, it stands to reason she lived there for a while.

2. That is 5 years since her father stepped down, but what exactly did the WF do before their violent new leadership? Diplomacy and advocacy... where do you think her parents did that? It certainly wasn't in Menagerie, so they at best would have had a "summer home" there, not a residence, unless it predates the Faunus war and the Belladonna's were living there before said war, they likely did not possess this house long before he retired from the WF.

Blake refers to Menagerie itself as home, so I think it is safe to say she was born there or spent most of her early life in the country. She even sort of deceitfully confirmed this to Ozpin in Volume 2 by saying she was "raised outside the kingdoms" and that was technically true albeit part of a broader lie. What we know about the White Fang is simply that it was a group that emerged in the wake of the Faunus War that initially was about "peace and unity" between humans and Faunus before becoming an activist group and finally a militant organization.

3. Except they are a head of state household... They need space to entertain guests, Tai doesn't, he only needs living space.

If it was their house before that then this wasn't the reason for its size and would still suggest wealth.

Blake likely rarely visited Menagerie while serving under Adam.

That says to me the house is their house unless we take her service under Adam as only covering a portion of the White Fang's violent turn.

MetallicArcher wrote: Also, going by the location of the house in regards of the rest of the town (away from the sea and backed by mountains, the main road converges to it), the fact it looks like a way more solid construction than the other houses and how it has large spacious but mostly empty spaces...

It gives me more the impression of a Town Centre from Age of Empires than a family house. I wouldn't be surprised if the place fulfils other functions besides being a residence.

To be fair, if we allow that this is the home of the leader of an intercontinental Faunus organization, you would still expect most of those things to be true. Based on what was in World of Remnant, Menagerie was a forced relocation just eighty years prior to the events of the series. It also involved a period of conflict some time between.

Provided Blake's father was the original leader, her description of the group's history makes it seem that way, then it stands to reason the Faunus War was a relatively recent occurrence, happening either early in Blake's life or right before she was born. That would mean Blake's father would be someone with the resources to set up such an organization.

It could be the case that the White Fang was originally more of a humanitarian organization set up to help rebuild in Menagerie, presuming parts of the war took place in the country. As the whole country was a relatively new settlement, only around 60 years old at the time the White Fang would have started, it would make sense if that big building was a recent construction by people involved in rebuilding the entire area, perhaps due to profiting immensely from reconstruction.