I agree with some aspects but not others, I felt Blake started out strong during her initial paranoia and sadness and her interactions with her parents were great but yeah otherwise kind of a flawed arc. As to Sun though I don't feel he was out of character at all in this, but the portrayal of his actions as positives does grate on me. As to the slapping though, context matters, Jac has full power over Weiss, he is manipulative, domineering and blatantly abusive (Especially in the manga) and he slapped her for mouthing off to him, nothing more. Blake's slaps were delivered in high emotional state situations where Sun had been scaring her and invading her privacy and putting her and others in danger by playing around or breaking stuff in her house. Context matters.
I think that the very beginning of Blake's arc was okay, but it immediately decayed as soon as Sun was on screen. They almost immediately started arguing and fighting when people's lives were at risk. The only instance where that's happened before is when Weiss and Ruby initially became partners. The difference is that's shown immediately to be dysfunctional and not the way to create a true partnership, Weiss had to put aside her own arrogance and then lose the chip on her shoulder before she could work with Ruby.
I also agree that Sun isn't out of character, per say, but his presence does reveal an underlying weakness in RWBY's narrative that's been present for a while. I've elaborated on it
here, but TL;DR, RT mixes a lot of funny moments in with violence and deadly serious situations. Combined with liberal use of Deus Ex Machina in earlier volumes and that's what ended up causing people to feel so betrayed once volume 3 rolls around. The difference, is that all of those instances of mixing comedy with violence or ignoring the consequences have stopped occurring
except for Sun and Blake. No one else laughs or jokes, or succumbs to infighting when they're dealing with danger. It's the exception that proves the rule, the lesson RT almost learned.
As for Blake slapping Sun, I will never be comfortable with someone hitting a romantic partner being treated as comedy. If I
had to say whether Jacques hitting Weiss or Blake hitting Sun was worse, then I would be forced to go with the former. That still doesn't make Blake's behaviour all right or humerous. The complaint is more about the themes and cultural memes being conveyed here. On a meta level, it's more egregious to me because it's not treated as a problem in-setting. Think about the message it's sending. As for Sun's stalking Blake, similar situation. It's the same
kind of complaint as the ones leveled against Twilight, just not as insanely unhealthy and co-dependent. If Blake had talked to Sun instead of throwing him to the ground and slapping him after the Grimm dragon fight, I'd support her narrative a lot more. Sun is creepy and this isn't the first time he's stalked Blake, he was hanging outside her window in Vol 2. Wow, that happened in Twilight too, didn't it? As it sits, it just looks like a massively dysfunctional relationship. Everything that I see bad in the relationships that teenagers get themselves into is rewritten here a hundredfold.
I've always thought that reducing potentially abusive behaviours to comedy has poisoned people's attitudes. Not only does it make people more likely to be victimized, but it results in the normalization of abusive behaviour as not that big of a deal, potentially even desirable in a partner. To be honest, I see this
most, but not exclusively, among teens. They learn so many stupid ideas from media glamourizing relationships and behaviours they really shouldn't. If RT was making a point about how toxic media influences how people develop in relationships, something that pointed out things weren't okay, I'd be happy. The problem is, we're not going to get that. Instead, we'll get another normalized comedic interpretation of abuse and dysfunctional relationships. We're going to get another Twilight-lite where stalking isn't presented as a problem. We're going to get another narrative that send another nasty message and drips more poison into people's ears.
Not working in social services I only have people I know to act as a frame of reference (Along with some personal research) and I felt he worked fairly well. The idea you suggest is a solid one, though I also feel it would, A, place more fault on Weiss for something out of her control and B, would be misunderstood by fans given Jac has so many defenders. Plus I felt the slap worked because he did it so obviously because she refuted him, and was so calm about it, this is something he's done before and will do again if given the chance.
I went back and rewatched all of the Jacques scenes. Part of what was throwing me off was that, at times, especially in his first scene, Jacques seemed to know
exactly what buttons to push on Weiss. At other times, especially later on, he seemed to ignore that and double down on coercion. The positive reinforcement causing gaslighting is a key component of abuse because it makes the victim doubt the veracity and severity of when their abuser doubles down on an emotional attack.
The main disconnect I'm seeing is that Jacques never uses the carrot with Weiss after she meets him again for the first time. In that meeting he's willing to tolerate her questioning and even subtly snubbing him, but in ever single instance after that, he has to be in control 100% of the time. Weiss goes from being able to question him,
to roll her eyes to his face, to being able to do absolutely nothing without his express approval beforehand. I feel that RT went too far in the other direction after the first scene.
In large part, I bet that's because they noticed that Jacques had defenders as soon as they started scripting out the earlier parts of the script and running it by other people as the first step of idiot proofreading. Kerry and Miles very understandably didn't want to write any story where a child abuser could in any way be deemed as sympathetic, so they removed all instances of positive reinforcement after Jacques introductory scene to confirm he's a bad guy. The problem is twofold, for me. First, it really weakens their narrative. Second, it creates a disconnect between early Jacques and later Jacques.
Abuse is bad. This really doesn't bear repeating, but it is very important to note since it greatly alters the perception of people when the subject comes up. Therefore, the common social conception is that someone who uses abuse is a bad person. Unfortunately, society takes this to mean that abusers are
all bad, especially child abusers. What could be worse than someone abusing a helpless child? The problem is, this, very paradoxically, makes people likely to minimize child abuse. Given the immense power parents wield over their children, only people who've been involved with the parents, who have some type of relationship with them is going to notice it. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbours, friends, those are the type of people who have the most opportunity to notice abuse. They're the ones that meet up with the abuser, come into their home, see the kids, etc.
Yet, teachers and doctors report to CAS far more often than close family members do.
Why? The difference is, aside from any training, teachers and doctors are totally willing to accept that a parent can be a bad person since they rarely actually meet them. Family and friends do not. They'll minimize or gloss over what they see because they
don't see a bad person when they look at the abuser. They'll see that fantastic baseball player, the person who makes wonderful brownies, the handy mechanic, etc, etc.
I think that giving Jacques defenders among the fandom isn't actually a problem and could serve a more compelling point when RT does pull the carpet out from under them and flat out say that Jacques is actually Jackass, the abusive dick. This is what goes on, right now in real life. I think one of the biggest hurdles any social worker would bring up is the perception that abusers are bad, irredeemable monsters. They deserve time in prison, yes, but society currently pictures them like faceless flesh eating monsters instead of the person that comes with a smile, a flower in hand and poison in the other.
