Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20190119003858/@comment-14909251-20190131062622

BlizzardDragon wrote: You do remember Ilia is still a character right? People (Namely Adam Fans) like to say she stole Adam's character, which in itself seems a little dumb when he had so little character to begin with, but what you described you wanted to see seems to fit her character to a T.

Experienced Racism first hand due to living in Atlas.

Deluded herself into thinking the cause was righteous despite the horrific things they did.

Hated humanity for how they treated the Faunus and witnessing firsthand their treatment.

Offered hints to further racism plotlines with the knowledge of her parents working in the mines only for them to die.

Changed sides without necessarily dropping any of her past or beliefs, simply taking a less radical version and becoming an active member in the next gen FRM. Ilia's story is nothing compared to what we can just reasonably infer about Adam's from a single scar. None of that fits her character. Her parents died in an accident. They may have been deliberately put in unsafe conditions because they were Faunus and she may have seen people be racist in a general sense, but it is still very mild. It is also pure exposition. We can't see the results of it. All we got was Ilia explaining how she has experienced racism. You can sort of get why Ilia is involved with the White Fang, even as it turned more violent as she really had nothing else.

The thing about Adam is that his background is the only thing hinted that has even come close to making the violent turn of the White Fang seem like a sympathetic cause. Like I said, given his estimated age and the likelihood his scar predated his membership in the White Fang, his backstory is definitely the darkest and more interesting out of all the Faunus characters shown. Once they revealed his scar, Adam became the most complex character in the whole series. It also even sort of explained his abusive tendencies as products of his formative years. He essentially became the thing he hated.

Never really dealing with that or dealing with it through exposition is squandering a great deal of potential. To deal with it the way it can be dealt with best really requires that Adam be alive. Blake's story does not even seem remotely close to having anything even sort of tragic motivating her and Ilia's story, although tragic, still doesn't sell the sense of severe systemic oppression that would prompt the formation of a violent resistance on the scale of what Adam was doing.