Blake Belladonna

"“Everyone thinks they can help me, but they can't. You saw Ilia last night and she's not even the worst! No. No more. They're better off without me. I made my choices and I'll deal with the consequences because they belong to me.”" —Blake to Sun in Taking Control. Blake Belladonna is one of the protagonists of RWBY. She is a Huntress, having been trained at the now-defunct Beacon Academy.

Why She Rocks

 * 1) Despite her past of being discriminated for her race, she's a very righteous person, always respects others' lives, Faunus or not.
 * 2) She's incredibly badass and proficient in combat.
 * 3) Speaking of combat, her Semblance, Shadows, which allows her to create clones of herself foyr defense, are super trusty to have in battle.
 * 4) Her weapon, Gambol Shroud, is incredibly cool, as it functions as 3 different weapons all in one: a cleaver-like sword, a katana, and a gun.
 * 5) Despite looking up to Adam all her life, she didn't let it hold her back from leaving the White Fang upon realizing that they were a terrorist organization.
 * 6) While she normally has a stoic and no-nonsense personality, she has a humorous side, For example, when Ruby starts connecting with her over books, she seems to warm up a bit, even smiling and chuckling. And in the ninth episode, she goes along with Ruby and Yang when their team gets their own room. And as the series goes on, she becomes more cheerful and upbeat.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Despite her tragic past, she often tends to push others away when they try to comfort her, making her life worse.
 * 2) At the end of Volume 3, after being treated for her injuries and apologizing to Yang for dragging her into her battle with Adam, she ran away for undisclosed reasons, leaving her Team behind.

Trivia

 * Blake Belladonna alludes to Belle and The Beast in many ways:
 * Blake loves to read, much like Disney's version of Belle.
 * In the episode "The Shining Beacon, Pt.2", Blake is seen to own a candelabra, which references Lumière, the living candelabra from the Disney adaptation. According to Miles Luna, this was part of an attempt to surround her with lots of "Belle-related items".
 * Red Like Roses has the lyric "Black the Beast descends from shadows."
 * Like The Beast, Blake has animal traits and is ostracized for them
 * Gambol Shroud's asymmetrical dual wield form is inspired by her duality of being both Belle and The Beast.
 * In BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, Blake's two Distortion attacks are called Untouchable Beauty and Ferocious Beast.
 * When asked about her bow by a fan during the Blake Week AMA, Arryn answered that Blake has a closet full of bows all neatly aligned on the walls.
 * In the episode "Field Trip", Blake is shown to be uncomfortable around, or even scared of, dogs, most likely because she is a cat Faunus. This aspect is played up for comedy in episodes of RWBY Chibi.
 * On the first night at Beacon, Blake tells Ruby her book is about a man with two souls. The first line of the right-hand page of the book reads, "He raised the glass to his lips." - a direct quote from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
 * Blake, alongside Ruby, Nora Valkyrie and Jaune Arc, is one of the characters who owns an object sold in the Rooster Teeth store: her backpack.
 * It is possible that Blake's Shadow Semblance was inspired by C.T.'s hologram armor enhancement from Red vs. Blue which functioned and was used very similarly to Blake's Semblance.
 * Blake's Huntress license number is 63600-23412-56709.