Y’know, I like Yang and all, she’s my favorite character, and I like a lot of her story, but I really don’t like how she kinda is now just the person Blake chases after.
Don’t get me wrong, Blake’s heartbreak and rage at Yang falling into the void is really well-done, but it just reminds us that the writers don’r know what to do with Blake.
I used to enjoy Blake’s story in the early volumes. She was a no-nonsense person who could call out both sides of an argument. She’d look to a member of the White Fang and say “No. You’re not fighting for justice. You’re fighting because you’re just angry and want to take it out on someone.” and then she’d take a look at a racist and say “You just think that you’re better than a faunus because you’re a bigoted moron with no sense of self-reflection.” Then she just kinda became a pity-party.
And literally, all I wanted out of the whole thing with Yang was that she left a note. Like… Nobody calls Yang out on her selfishness on wanting Blake by her for emotional support, but by contrast, nobody really calls Blake out on the amount of emotional distress she put on Yang. She went home to be with her parents, but her logic with Yang was “If I’m not near her, then she won’t get hurt.”
Okay, someone please inform me as to why Adam couldn’t just walk to Patch, cut off Yang’s head, and then mail it to Blake? Like… Blake was being an idiot there. She wasn’t going back to zoo to warn her parents, she went there for comfort. Which, credit where it’s due, is a reasonable reaction to the trauma she faced. But so is Yang’s. Neither gets comforted or called out on their actions, which ultimately means that Yang’s reaction is viewed as much more selfish because we don’t get a chance to have her be called out for it, and for her to point out how much she suffered as well.
This show has honestly exhausted itself with Blake and Yang and is now just using them as ship bait. They’re probably not going to get together or acknowledge their feelings until the end of the series because the writers think that that’s how representation works. You do it at the end, because a bunch of other shows did that too.
Except those other shows did it at the end because of executive meddling.
The entire reason for Blake’s existence was to drive the racism subplot, but because the writers were so horrible at writing it, they finished it up, and now Blake has pretty much nothing left for her character to do except be Yang’s love interest. There could be more potential for her as a character, but the writers don’t know what to do since they dropped the racism arc.
And as much as I want Blake to have story relevance again, she’s not going to, because the writers followed some white karen’s blog on how minorities “should” act instead of actually picking up a history book. And I’d rather they not butcher the racism arc any further just to give Blake relevance again.
The hard part is trying to figure out how Blake can have relevance again. If anything, I would have liked for her to have been Emerald’s new source of comfort. They both have left abusive relationships, and I think that it would be a good idea for Blake to be a source of comfort for Emerald. Blake could have been the source of comfort for a lot of victims, but the writers chose to not do that because they don’t realize it.
Which is another issue with having vomit boy fall to the void island instead of Emerald. We don’t get the Emerald and Blake interactions that could have helped flesh out each character a bit more.
And Yang’s character is pretty much going in the direction of her getting the Spring Maiden powers by way of Raven sacrificing herself to save Yang. This show can’t have its villains grow and learn because the main characters also haven’t really grown as characters either. And if the villains grow and learn but the main characters don’t, then that spells the end of the main characters. But the writers don’t know how to make their main characters grow and learn unless their name rhymes with yawn bark, and this creates massive problems.
It also says a lot when Blake’s character has been so mangled that she doesn’t even fight as well as she should be. It’s telling when a three minute long fight of her fighting Mikasa (Using recycled voice clips, I might add) has her more in-character and using more of her abilities than the actual show. Remember that pathetic display of her fighting that centipede thing? She was busy begging an unconscious and near-auraless Ruby to save her. She barely did anything to save herself, and the writers did all of that just to try to elevate Ruby as a character.
Ruby doesn’t need other characters to tell her how much she’s grown, she should just show it. Instead of Ruby one-shotting that thing, it should have been a team attack. Imagine how much hype there would have been if Blake was actually holding her own, only to get cornered, and having to prepare a clone, only for Ruby to then declare “LADYBUG!” And the two do that awesome slash maneuver from Volume 2 and takes it down that way. Not only would that have saved Blake’s character, but it would have also served as a way to showcase Ruby’s skills as a fighter and as a leader. She calls out the attack, and not only does Blake not hesitate in going into formation, but it then actually works. It would have shown growth on both characters.
Like… These writers don’t really get a whole lot of how these characters should be characters.
This all started as a rant about Blake and Yang’s characters, and then ended up being a rant about how the writing has caused them to be cared about.
