Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-75.17.119.137-20140612190919/@comment-24994749-20140619192816

DiegoAnime3000 wrote:

Also, Blake did it for a noble reason, yet, the White Fang became violent five years prior Volume 1 and what was Blake doing during all that time? She said "I no longer wanted to use my skills to aid them in their violence" which means she has done terrible things in the past.

Like I said, we can't tell for sure but it's most likely that all the things she said about how the White Fang works: setting fire to stores, stealing cargos and participating in organized attacks, was her old life. She even called herself a criminal and Jaune only did because he was desperate to live up to his surname. Of course Blake's case is a lot more hard and important but people don't talk about it, I believe most of them haven't even realized this fact. About Jaune, my general reaction when he confessed  how he got into Beacon and why was: "Lol, what a brat/idiot." It might be that I'm 19 so I had classmates who were 17 not that long ago so I still have it fresh in my mind how boys that age can act because they feel the need to be "macho". And basically I was ready to forgive him when he apologised to Pyrrha.

As for Blake, 5 years before the main storyline, when the White Fang went violent, she was like 12? She was basically still a child. So, wherever her parents died and she was taken in by White Fang members or her parents were members of the White Fang, she grew up in there and was at every protest they did since she had memory. Then at age 12, the leader "steps down" and a new leader encourages violent measures against those who mistreat faunus.

If her parents were dead, considering that faunus reclaiming "equal civil rights" was shown to be still a thing during the current storyline (5 years after this) abandoning the White Fang wasn't really an option. If her parents were alive and chose to stay and support the new politics, same thing applies. Also, at age 12, she would have still been easy to emotionally manipulate plus the addition of all those years of pacific attempts to stop discrimination failing in her mind.

Thing is, she eventually hit that age at which teens stop seeing their parental figures as unquestionable authorities and started to question if the things she was trained to do were actually correct and wonder if she didn't prefer it when they were pacific and maybe started to see that they weren't gaining respect from humans but fear and questioned herself if that was she really wanted. And that eventually led to her abandoning Adam during that mission in the Black Trailer.

Another thing that might make fans more prone to forgive Blake is that she didn't solely abandon the White Fang and started a life as a run away, but went looking for redemption in the shape of fighting for actual good things for the sake of everyone, both faunus and humans alike.