Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-28171999-20190208002539/@comment-14909251-20190227013448

MobiusEternal1 wrote: Yeah, I have to agree with the others. I sense possible bias against Blake and in favor of Adam here.

Maybe it is rather that you have a bias and are projecting. Just because I want something unfavorable to happen to a character doesn't mean I want that character punished out of dislike. Good stories always involve conflict, obstacles, and the best involve morally ambiguous situations. A villain you can sympathize with or a hero you can doubt adds a lot more to a story. Blake is the only character in the bunch who has an established criminal history, not counting Jaune lying his way into Beacon, which is pretty minor. We have only, up to this point, explored what she saw others doing as opposed to what she herself did. Outside of her just explaining things again, the easiest way to address that is to have her actually face real consequences for her past.

Arrest her for what exactly? The most they have is stealing an Atlesian ship, except they don’t even know about the events back in Argus. What proof do they have that it was stolen? And why would Ironwood, the commander of Atlesian forces let his allies get detained? That makes zero sense. And don’t give me the excuse that he doesn’t think Manta 5-1’s arrival is irrelevant to him, or he’s not going to initially be involved. They know Weiss Schnee is coming. Ironwood would most likely want to greet her personally.

I explained most of this in the response to Blizzard you clearly saw, but it isn't hard to imagine that they would know it was stolen. After all, Weiss threw her official escorts out of the plane and they're gonna find it mighty curious that there isn't any kind of official Atlesian representation. This is assuming it isn't electronically marked as stolen somehow or that Cordo didn't send a message ahead either when Weiss arranged to head home or when she showed up with the others asking for an escort to Atlas.

You say that Blake has committed crimes on behalf of the WF, and you claim that Atlas somehow knows about this. How? How do they know? If Blake was such a high profile individual/criminal, then how come she was not arrested much earlier in the story? In fact, how come NO ONE, namely Weiss, Ozpin, and/or Ironwood recognized this so called high profile person that is fighting in the International Vytal Festival live throughout the WORLD. Being daughter of a Chieftain or former WF leader doesn’t automatically make her a public figure, nor does it mean that she has no reason to not actively pursue equal rights (Looking at the people claiming she’s spoiled). Again, a lot of this I explained in the post you clearly saw, but I think there is some misconstruing of things. While I do think she should get recognized for various reasons, the main people I think should be recognizing her are people in government, especially those in Atlas. Given the White Fang has a long history of attacking Atlesian facilities and Atlesian companies, it is fair to say they have files on various figures from high-level to low-level. The former head of the White Fang is someone they should have a file on detailing his associations and family, especially if those family are also part of the White Fang.

Unless Atlesian facilities have absolutely no security cameras or they could never recover footage from either security cameras in or around the facilities and were unable to recover memory from any of the security bots she would fight, it is not outlandish to suggest they would have footage of Blake at or near the scenes of White Fang attacks. Even if she wore some kind of disguise, her build and her bow would be dead giveaways.

The fact she was on a global television broadcast means if they didn't know who she was before, they would know now and it wouldn't be hard to figure out that Blake Belladonna is related to Ghira Belladonna. Hell, there is even more reason for people to be watching it when Blake was there because a major Atlesian celebrity was on her team. Her appearance, her weapon, her Semblance, were all on full display along with her name. Anyone who happens to have seen a bow-wearing, black-haired, shadow clone jutsu-using girl associated with the White Fang who wields a gun-katana combo weapon that she swings around with a ribbon is gonna have an easy time figuring out who it was even if her face wasn't visible.

It would be really weird if there was not some Atlesian government official compiling a file on this girl with the same last name as the former founder of the White Fang who was on the same team as the then-heiress to the Schnee Dust Company. Were any eyewitness descriptions or security footage taken from any of the various attacks she was engaged in then it would not take a genius to figure out it was likely the same person. Shit, forget the police, what about Jacques? Do you think he doesn't use his substantial resources to get files on basically anyone who is associated with Weiss? He may know all about Blake and use it to punish Weiss further.

Vale is not a target of the WF? Dust robberies, train hijacking, stealing military hardware, Grimm attacks, and the FALL OF BEACON all say otherwise. And Blake was involved at with WF activity in Vale courtesy of the Black Trailer. I did not say Vale wasn't a target, but that it was not as targeted. My point with that is the Vale authorities don't have as much invested in knowing about the White Fang and they don't have the same resources it is fair to say. After all, the train hijacking you are talking about was an SDC train and most of those Dust robberies are taking SDC dust. The military hardware being stolen was Atlesian tech. We also have Weiss way back when talking about murders and disappearances apparently carried out by the White Fang, all targeting SDC, an Atlesian company.

Fair to say that Atlas, far more than any other Kingdom, is very deeply invested in figuring out everything they need to know about the White Fang in the present and past. They also have a large resourceful government that would have the means to gather all the necessary evidence to identify any attackers or saboteurs. No way is the name "Belladonna" insignificant to them. Maybe the bow kept her from being too strongly suspected by people who may not know everything, but showing up in Atlas with her kitty ears proudly displayed is gonna remove any doubts.

As for no evidence: Most of that evidence you list illustrates the problem I am talking about. Either it is stuff that has long since been fixed or it is contextually insignificant. It isn't enough to establish that Faunus have been mistreated. We need a reason why Blake would be willing to overlook actually killing people to address these problems for any period of time. Presuming she didn't personally experience mistreatment that didn't involve attempts to crack down on protests, which we can't even say the latter occurred with her, then it seems her part in this struggle was mostly out of sympathy for the cause. For her to go along with it so long in spite of everything despite having a very safe place to go, there should be something more serious in the current period of RWBY than anything we have seen and we need to see it.

And I highly doubt Ironwood cares about political optics in protecting Blake. Why? Sends fleet to Vale’s doorstep. Jacques commented that it was unusual that his rank was not stripped. Dust Embargo in spite of the obvious backlash, same for closing borders. The guy is the CiC of the military and has two seats on the Atlesian council (“I AM the council.”). He’s not going to care. Unless it is a three-seat council he isn't all powerful politically. There is also a fair difference between taking economically unpopular decisions in the interests of national security and personally intervening in a criminal case against someone accused of various crimes against Atlas. When he is doing everything in the name of protecting Atlas then he can weather the criticism, but this would be a very different thing and may well hurt his standing with the very people who care enough about security to support his previous moves.

And no, it was not snatched away. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean we won’t see more. We have other ways of exploring that, such as flashbacks. And truth be told, if you thought Adam had any potential relevance to the plot besides Yang and Blake by that point, then I’m honestly not sure where that’s coming from. We don’t absolutely need him to show Faunus discrimination. GROAN. You obviously don't get it. No one wants a flashback or exposition. At this point simply showing some rando affected badly by Faunus discrimination isn't gonna be enough either. What we really need is to see a character we already have some connection with going through something horrible on account of being a Faunus. Since Ilia and Sun are off somewhere else and Adam is apparently sleeping with the fishies, all we're left with is Blake.