Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-17760348-20131021233145/@comment-82.12.156.248-20140319195747

1) My point was that she seems far too in control of her own psychology and emotions from a romantic standpoint to end up crushing on Adam to such an extent, what we can assume of her psychology is that she has demons in her past, and she does have at least some issues with outwardly expressing her emotions, however she seems to (as of now, what she was like 2 or 3 years ago is of no consequence when speaking of a present-day Adam/Blake ship) understand her emotional responses even if she may deny them a voice or is actually unable to display them before other people. This to me sounds more likely she would either let it out in the heat of the moment or would develop a normal relationship albeit at a slower pace than can be considered "normal". Nothing about Blake, that we know of so far suggests she would crush on other people.

2) Actually I am going by actual, empirical and objective evidence that we can say is true. You are making a bold claim that Adam may be nervous and little silly around Blake. I was just pointing out that the only interaction we have seen between them has not had such traits being presents. Also considering that he was openly joking and seemingly not taking the heist as seriously as he perhaps should have (until the Spider Droid) he seems relatively cool, calm and collected and again, he just doesn't strike me from what little we know as the sort to have such an issue with communication and performance simply at the presence of a girl he likes. Off the clock he COULD be like that, but from what little we've seen your characterisation is stretching.

3) Faunus are, by definition of having a significantly different physiology and therefore geneology to humans, a different race. They are not the African-Xs of RWBY, they are an entirely different thing. They are not human, they are very similar to human in almost every psychological aspect from what we've seen, and from what we can gather have a human's physical appearance BUT a human does NOT have a Faunus's physical appearance. This means that there is likely at least as many subcultures of Faunus as there are subcultures of humans. To that end its asanine to generalise a single tradition to the entirety of the Faunus populous since there may be subcultures that do not, just like how Americans do not practise Arranged Marriage neither may a select group of Faunus.

Also you are underestimating the effects of cultural influence. Faunus integration into society or at the very least forced proximity to other Faunus cultures would lead to either the ideals of the human culture Blake grew up discriminated by, or the ideals of other Faunus cultures clashing with the ideals of the culture Adam or Blake may or may not have been a part of. Even if Blake's family practised arranged marriage there is no saying that Blake herself would after being in contact with cultures that believe in the love at first sight paradigm.

Finally, with regards to collectivist cultures being less accepting of promiscuity and behaviour in a romantic relationship being considered disrespectful and often being frowned upon: there is in fact quite a large amount of evidence. Firstly, since most of those cultures are family first, they expect their son or daughter to devote themselves solely to their partner (in this case they expect Blake to be Adam's and only Adam's). Blake reading smut or fluff novels (particularly one's that glorify the love at first sight paradigm when she is a believer of love developing after marriage, if she wasn't then why would she marry Adam?),

Also there have been actual studies in which it has been found that a significant portion of visitors to porn sites, dating sites and other adult sites that promote self-indulgence are in fact individualist cultures (America, Britain, Canada, Germany etc) which do not (save for certain migrants that have managed to retain their traditions) practise arranged marriagse. Meanwhile the collectivist cultures (like India for example) are far less open about any liking of the romance genre or of adult content. That's not to say that Blake WOULDN'T read smut or fluff novels, just that her culture would, if admittedly biased reseaerch is any indication of, frown upon such acts. She's MEANT to be devoted to Adam, if she is happy as she claims she is then why is she reading stories of love, action and individualist relationships? Oh and before I forget, promiscuous behaviour is far more common in individualist cultures where the male or female is a lot more free and is far more concerned with their own happiness and place in life rather than his/her family's happiness and place in life.