Weiss Schnee/Blake Belladonna
| Pairing | |
|---|---|
| Pairing: | Weiss Schnee/Blake Belladonna |
| Alternative name(s): | Monochrome, Checkmating, Checkmate |
| Gender category: | femslash |
| Fandom: | RWBY |
| Canonical?: | No |
| Prevalence: | common |
| Archives: | |
| Other: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Weiss/Blake, also known as Monochrome or Checkmate, is a RWBY femslash pairing involving Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna.
Canon
Weiss is the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, the largest producer of Dust (the primary fuel source in the setting) in the world. The company has a history of exploiting the faunus, a humanoid race with animal features. Blake is a faunus and an ex-member of the White Fang, a faunus organization which started as a civil rights movement. Under recent leadership, the White Fang started using violent methods such as killing; at this point, Blake left the group.
Weiss and Blake first met at Beacon Academy, where they were both attending. They started off on rocky terms, Blake pointing out the unethical business practices of the Schnee Dust Company and Weiss getting defensive. They were assigned to the same team. Later, tensions between them came to a head as Weiss showed prejudice against faunus and a hatred of the White Fang, revealing that the White Fang's attacks affected her father's temperament, making for "a very difficult childhood." Blake inadvertently reveals her connection to the White Fang and runs off in a panic. Once the team finds Blake again, Weiss, having had time to think about everything, declares that she doesn't care about Blake's ex-allegiance with the White Fang and makes Blake promise to come to her teammates if something comes up in the future.
The two are on much better terms after this. Weiss notices when Blake is avoiding everyone and confronts her, citing Blake's past promise and getting her to open up about her worries. They are shown working together on various occasions.
Fandom
Weiss/Blake was uncommon at first. It got a boost in popularity with the events of the Volume 1 finale, which focuses on their conflict and its resolution.
"Monochrome" was the first widely used name for the pairing. Later, "Checkmating" was adopted on Tumblr for ease of tagging/searching. Later still, the name "Checkmate" was used in the show for their combo move, and subsequently adopted as another pairing name. Some also use "checkmating" specifically to tag explicit Weiss/Blake content.
The fanartist Dashingicecream is considered a particularly influential BNF for Monochrome due to the amount of content she produced between Volume 2 and 5.
Challenges
Example Fanworks
Fanfiction
Fanart
- Runaway bride by dashingicecream, Archived version
- :) by vvisti, Archived version
- monos by delkatts, Archived version
- well…there is hope for this generation by 2013ann, Archived version
- rwby!rock by dashingicecream, Archived version
- c: by dashingicecream, Archived version
Links & Resources
- Blake Belladonna/Weiss Schnee tag at Archive of Our Own
- Blake/Weiss search at fanfiction.net
- fyeahweissblake tumblr
References
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