Okay strap in, y'all, because we need to talk about Blake Belladonna. Specifically, we need to talk about the disrespect some of you put on her name which I am sick and tired of seeing. Now, let's run down why Blake is a flawed (just like all of us) but incredible person.
#RWBY
#RWBY
First, this woman not only left behind her abuser and an increasingly toxic environment, which is extremely difficult all on its own, but she did it with no support system! And she even managed to save innocent lives in the process by cutting the rest of the train off. 
But I'm not here to focus on that, so let's move forward to after V3. Blake leaves the team to try and protect them, which is undeniably a very bad decision even if it's understandable in the circumstances. She's pretty much borderline suicidal at this point and hates herself.
Blake thinks she's to blame for everything bad that happens around her (thanks to Adam) and she's not just convinced that her family and friends will hate her and never forgive her for any of it, she actively WANTS them to despise her. She's at her absolute lowest point.
The easiest thing for her to do would have been to give up. To keep running away because surely everyone already hates her so why try to fix anything. But she doesn't! She comes back to face her mistake and deliberately chooses to stay!! And some people still say she isn't brave.
Blake verbally promises not to leave again multiple times, but her actions speak even louder than her words. When they find out that Salem can't be killed she doesn't once consider losing hope. Even when Adam tries one final time to ruin her life she refuses to run away again.
Blake took the infinitely more difficult path of standing her ground and making up for her missteps, and has stuck by the team through every struggle since they reunited. She said she wasn't leaving again and she's more than proven that she meant it. That takes immense courage.
The fact that parts of the fandom will seriously write her off as a bad person or claim she didn't deserve to be forgiven when she's a traumatised teenager doing the best she can with the shitty hand she was dealt just doesn't sit right with me. The lack of empathy is saddening.
Blake isn’t flawless by any means, and no one ever will be, but why can't she be allowed to grow? Why can't she make well-intentioned mistakes and learn from them? If we were all defined only by the worst choice we made then almost all of us would be terrible people.
I'm not even gonna get into the barely-disguised misogyny, homophobia, and victim blaming that often comes from those people. I'm just gonna finish by saying that you don't have to like Blake, but at least treat her with compassion and respect and acknowledge her many strengths.
This woman blamed herself so much for her mistakes PLUS everything Adam and the White Fang did that she flat out basically wanted to die because she thought she was just poison to everyone around her and STILL chose to try and make things better.
She ran away because she wrongly believed it was the only way to keep the people she loved safe and went back to them not only expecting zero forgiveness, but outright wishing that they'd hold it against her forever, and it's still not enough? What more do you want from her??
