Fanfic / Craving the Sky

Craving the Sky by najio is a RWBY fan fic in which Weiss Schnee is — to the surprise of both her parents — born with a pair of wings. Forbidden from removing her wings until her 18th birthday — first by a promise her parents made to her grandfather, then later by blackmail by her sister — Weiss has had to keep her wings bound and her status as a faunus secret her entire life.

Beginning in a similar place to canon RWBY, this story features a much lonelier and more self-loathing Weiss who nevertheless initially behaves superficially like her canon counterpart. Keeping her wings bound all her life has left them malformed, unhealthy, and in nearly constant pain, while growing up with Jacques for a father has left Weiss with a whole host of deep emotional scars, as well as some very warped ideas about how the world works.

It even has a few fanfics of its own which build on some of the concepts established in this story.

It also has a much darker companion story showing what would have happened if Winter never stepped in when Weiss was ten. Word of God is that it was born out of frustration at having to write Jacques one too many times.

Contains unmarked spoilers for RWBY

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Craving the Sky contains examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Seemingly the case with Mercury and Emerald, who are attending Beacon as reformed criminals rather than as Cinder's henchmen.
• Allegorical Character: Many of Weiss's issues and insecurities parallel those of trans people. Weiss's struggles to come to terms with her identity as a faunus are likened someone coming to terms with their gender identity, while the operation to get her wings removed is compared (somewhat paradoxically) to getting gender reassignment surgery.
• All Psychology Is Freudian: Deconstructed. While looking for books about wing care, Weiss stumbles upon a textbook claiming that any faunus who dates a human has a Power Dynamics Kink, and is usually either submissive or Aggressive Submissive. Blake explains that the author is just a racist quack whose most famous study got debunked when someone redid it with a human control group, and the only reason he got published is because other racists like to hear about how Faunus secretly like to be treated terribly.
  Blake: He essentially spent five thousand lien in grants proving that faunus get periods. I don't understand how he isn't a complete laughing stock.
• Alternate Universe Fic:
  • In addition to Weiss being a faunus here, Salem is completely absent from the story.
  • Faunus don't all have night vision in this story. Instead, the enhanced senses a faunus has seem to vary to match what sort of animal trait they have.
• Apologises a Lot: While she's normally The Unapologetic, when under emotional stress Weiss has a tendency to do this. Jacques also forces her to apologize a lot at home, and is likely the reason why she does so under stress.
• Archnemesis Dad: While Jacques Schnee was already pretty abusive in canon, here he's the closest thing the story has to a Big Bad. As a subject of his Fantastic Racism, he treats Weiss like little more than a trained animal, and almost all of his interactions with her seem calculated to inflict as much cruelty on her as possible while still keeping her psychologically vulnerable for further abuse.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Weiss gets a lot of these when subjects related to her many, many issues come up while talking to people who aren’t aware of them.
  • When talking to Blake about how it feels when people say hateful things about faunus without realizing that she is one.
    Blake: I know you think they're just words, but...when you hear this stuff over and over again, it gets under your skin. You start taking all that poison inside yourself. Eventually, they don't even need to tell you those things anymore, because you're already saying them to yourself.
• Aura Vision: One of the enhanced senses that Weiss gets from her faunus heritage is the ability to see magnetism in the form of auroras coalescing around highly magnetic things.
• Bastard Angst: Weiss is firmly convinced that her birth destroyed her parents' marriage, and she's spent most of her life trying to prove to her father that she's worthy of inheriting the SDC.
• Berserk Button: Once she starts to embrace the fact that she's a faunus, Weiss rapidly develops a very short temper for people who are openly, unapologetically racist against them.
• Big Damn Heroes: As in the original, Raven shows up out of nowhere to save Yang's life. This time however it's from Adam during the attack on Amity rather than from Neo during the breach of Vale, since the latter doesn't occur in this timeline.
• Bigot with a Badge: Team RWBY gets harassed by a couple of racist cops when they stay out a bit too late one night trying to track down the person who infiltrated the CCT. They blatantly ignore the team's protests that they haven't done anything wrong and look for any excuse they can find to arrest them, especially Blake. They only back off when Blake points out that they'll have to explain why they thought arresting Weiss Schnee was a good idea.
• Big Sister Instinct: While she may not be the best at telling Weiss what she needs to hear, when she knows she's needed Winter will be there for her. When Ruby calls her during Weiss's Heroic BSoD, there's barely enough time for a few lines of dialogue to be exchanged after they finish the call before she's on the scene.
• Blackmail: Winter threatens to publicly reveal Weiss's status as a faunus if Jacques dares to break his word to Nicholas and remove Weiss's wings before she turns eighteen. Penny later takes inspiration from this in order to convince General Ironwood to let her attend Beacon by threatening to expose her own status as an android to the general public.
• Blessed with Suck: Weiss feels this way about her sense of smell. While it has come in handy several times, she doesn't really enjoy being able to smell someone's breath from across the room.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Oobleck takes this approach to his tracking course. He encourages students with abilities that make certain aspects of his class easier to specialize in those aspects so that they can use what he teaches them to be even more effective.
• Broken Angel: Weiss initially intends to cut her wings off at the start of the story. It takes a lot of work on Blake's part to convince her that this is a terrible idea that will only make her feel worse once she's done it.
• Buffy Speak: After observing that Weiss is "obviously going through some stuff", Nora starts using "stuff" as a shorthand for people's emotional baggage.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Yang gets a chance to do this with Raven after Qrow helps arrange a meet-up with her.
  • While trying to meet with Robyn Hill, Weiss gets interviewed by one of the reporters covering Robyn's campaign, and takes the opportunity to publicly call out Jacques on what a horrible father he is, as well as explain why he'd be an even worse council member.
  • When Weiss meets with her mother to ask for public support about Jacques abuse only for Willow to make excuses, Weiss ends up chewing her mother out for being an enabler and choosing to support her husband over her children.
• Character Focus: If it wasn't obvious already from how frequently she's been mentioned on this page, Weiss is the main character of this story.
• Child of Two Worlds: As both a faunus and a Schnee, Weiss is left feeling like she doesn't belong in either.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Weiss initially sees her father's treatment of her as normal, if mildly unfair, because that's all she's ever known.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: When Ruby and Penny bake a cake for Weiss's 18th birthday, it comes out lumpy, dry, and tasting vaguely of onions. Justified, as they didn't have an actual cake tin to bake it in and had to make do with a skillet. She still appreciates the thought.
• Crappy Homemade Gift: Averted. Despite Ruby and Penny's birthday cake coming out terribly and tasting awful, Weiss is still nearly moved to tears by the gesture.
• Creepy Physical: When Weiss calls in her doctor to treat an infected wound, he spends far more time focusing on her wings as opposed to the problem she actually called him in for. While he does eventually treat her wound, he’s very condescending and presumptuous throughout the whole visit, and leaves in a huff after Weiss slaps him for assuming she's a bastard that her father decided to take in.
• Cruel to Be Kind: This is ultimately what Winter was doing in blackmailing her father into not cutting off Weiss's wings. Weiss spends years hating her for it and wishing she had left well enough alone, but over the course of the story she ends up making full use of the choice Winter allowed her to make.
• Cry into Chest: The maternal variety. After Weiss comes out as a faunus to Blake's parents and receives nothing but a hug from Kali and a Declaration of Protection from Ghira in response, the genuine love and support from them plus the rest of her team becomes too much for her and she just breaks down in Kali's arms.
• Daddy DNA Test: Jacques has had several done with Weiss, but they keep coming out inconclusive.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Weiss again, as it's not something she's ever gotten much of in the Schnee household. This is made more complicated by the fact that she Hates Being Touched, and so she often has conflicted feelings about receiving affection that tend to change in the moment.
• Dirty Coward: Jacques is willing to bribe his daughter into abandoning their family just to save his own skin slightly sooner.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: Winter's Promotion to Parent didn't work out so well in this continuity. She did her best, but couldn't provide the support that Weiss needed growing up. That combined with her blackmail about her wings, has left Weiss incredibly bitter and refusing to talk to her. Ultimately, Weiss comes to realize that this isn't Winter's fault, as she could never provide things she had never known herself.
• Dissimile: The sensation of vertigo that Weiss gets when she feels that Hope Is Scary is frequently compared to the sensation that she doesn't get when she's around cliffs and deadly drops.
• Doesn't Know Their Own Child: Willow calls Weiss on her 18th birthday to tell her that despite her falling out with her father, she can still undergo the surgery to have her wings removed. At this point however Weiss has started to actively take care of her wings and no longer has any interest in having them removed. It's justified however considering she's had almost no contact with her since she started going through the character growth that led to this change.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When the rest of Team RWBY first learns that Weiss is a faunus and see the horrible state her wings are in from years of tight binding, Weiss insists that she's fine and that her wings' condition is her own doing.
• Dropping the Bombshell: Every time Weiss reveals her wings to someone who doesn't already know she's a faunus, it counts as this.
• Ear Worm: Yang's headphones have a tendency to bleed a bit when she's listening to the Achieve Men, and one of their songs ends up stuck in Weiss's head despite her distaste for their music.
• Engineered Public Confession: To try to sabotage Jacques' election campaign, she visits him in his office while wearing a Hidden Wire. After years of learning how to avoid making him angry, she finds it almost too easy to bring the worst out of him.
• Epiphanic Prison: The majority of Weiss's issues come from trying to heal the rift in her family and earn her father's love. Once she accepts that Jacques will always hate her, she decides to publicly reveal her wings.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: For various reasons, neither Cinder nor Adam can understand why Weiss would care about her family after all she's been through, and both conclude that she must be brainwashed to come back and protect her family.
• Evil Counterpart: Adam is this to Weiss, to the point that it actually causes some friction in Weiss and Blake's relationship due to how much she reminds her of him. To wit, both are Faunus who have suffered abuse and disfigurement of their left eyes as a result of Jacques' actions, and this has left both of them with a great deal of bitterness and anger. The difference is that Adam let his anger consume him while Weiss is able to control and direct hers.
• Evil Is Petty: As retaliation for Yang being a bit cold to him, Jacques takes Weiss to a surprise press conference during Yang and Pyrrha's Vytal Tournament match so that Weiss won't be there to watch her match.
• Foil: Cinder serves as one to Weiss. Though both were abused as The Unfavorite among three siblings, the difference is that while Cinder was adopted and her much-better-treated stepsiblings took part in the abuse, Weiss is a bastard at most, her siblings weren't treated particularly well either and actually cared about her.
• For Want Of A Nail: Between Salem's absence in this story and her presence in the sister story Griffon, whose only stated difference is that Weiss's wings were cut off at age ten, it carries the implication that Winter stepping in to prevent the operation created a butterfly effect which led to the defeat of Salem. Somehow.
• Freakiness Shame: At the start of the story, Weiss is deeply ashamed of her wings and eagerly looking forward to the day when she can have them removed. This isn't helped by the fact that due to binding them for most of her life, her wings are malformed, numb with nerve damage due to poor circulation, and have no range of motion from disuse.
• Gaslighting: This is implied to be a major part of Jacques' relationship with Weiss. Several of her more distorted beliefs^note such as believing that she's somehow at fault for things outside of her control can only be the result of this. Indeed, when Jacques makes his first in-person appearance in the story in chapter 39, he's pretending to be a concerned and supportive father in order to make Weiss doubt herself and make her friends think he's not as bad as she says he is. Then he ambushes her with an interview where he does this on national television.
• Get Out!: Willow, already furious at Jacques and demanding a divorce for hitting Weiss and trying to leave Whitley to die, devolves into this after she gets him to admit the real reason he married her.
• Gilligan Cut: Willow, upon deciding to end her marriage with Jacques, decides that however she goes about it, she'll do it calmly. Cut to her slamming open the door to her husband's office in a rage and furiously demanding a divorce, having just heard the recording of Jacques trying to bribe Weiss into leaving their son for dead.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Part of Weiss's initial apparent prejudice towards faunus is borne out of jealousy over them having traits that aren't mangled the way her wings are. At first this manifests in hating seeing faunus who openly expose their traits, flaunting them in a way she never could. After learning that Blake is one as well and has been hiding her ears underneath her bow, her opinion shifts towards hating faunus who can easily hide their traits, due to her jealousy over how difficult and painful it is to keep her own trait hidden.
  • Subverted in the case of Yang's feelings about Weiss dating Blake. She misinterpreted her own feelings as jealousy.
• Guilt Complex: Between Jacques' abuse growing up and her belief that she destroyed her parents' marriage, Weiss tends to assume that any interpersonal drama that's in any way connected to her is her fault.
• Handing Over the Crap Sack: According to Ghira, this was the intent behind gifting Menagerie to the Faunus. The governments who drafted the treaty after the Great War didn't expect the Faunus settlers to survive, and weren't too pleased when the people they'd sent to die started building a city instead.
• Hates Being Touched: Weiss. It's heavily implied that it stems from a fear of someone discovering her wings, though it's since taken on a life of its own and also been made worse by the aforementioned Creepy Physical.
• Heroic BSoD: Weiss has one when she thinks she's caused Blake and Yang to break up. It takes a pep talk from Winter and reassurances from Blake and Yang to break her out of it.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Unsurprisingly, being raised by a man who hates her and berates her for the smallest things — many of which aren't even her fault — has left Weiss with extremely low self-esteem. She almost always expects anger and reprimands whenever she opens herself up to others, and she's always surprised when she receives sympathy instead.
• Hidden Wire: Weiss wears a microphone salvaged from a surveilance drone in order to get a recording of how Jacques really treats her in an attempt to sabotage his election campaign. She gets even more than she was hoping for when Adam and Cinder attack, and he tries to sell out his family just to save himself.
• Hide Your Otherness: Weiss has spent most of her life since early childhood keeping her wings tightly bound in order to hide the fact that she is a faunus from the general public. This has left them horribly weak and unhealthy due to not being allowed to grow properly.
• Hurt/Comfort Fic: A large part of the plot is helping Weiss get through her veritable mountain of issues.
• I Can Still Fight!: When Weiss discovers that her wound from the CCT infiltration is infected while on her team's end of year combat mission with Goodwitch, she decides to keep it a secret in order to avoid having to end the mission early or let more people learn about her faunus heritage. Naturally this backfires horribly as her condition worsens, and nearly gets her and Blake killed.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Defied. When Ghira takes Yang aside to speak to her in private, she assumes he's about to give her the shovel talk, but he points out that attacking someone who hurt his daughter doesn't do her any good.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: As Weiss explains to Winter, the reason she wanted to cut off her wings is because she thought nobody would love her if she didn't.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Weiss has spent her entire childhood weathering her father's abuse in the slim hopes of earning his affection and staying heir to the Schnee Dust Company. In later chapters she even admits that it's inevitable that she'll be disinherited in favor of her brother Whitley.
• In Spite of a Nail: Even though Salem isn't present in this story and Cinder hasn't infiltrated Beacon, someone still infiltrates the CCT during the dance. This time though, it's Ilia who's responsible, and she's doing it under the White Fang's orders instead of Salem's.
• Internalized Categorism: Growing up with Jacques Schnee for a father, Weiss is deeply self-loathing at the beginning of the story and holds numerous harmful beliefs about faunus, and by extension herself. She's regularly haunted by things her father has said to put her down, and even after she starts to accept herself her teammates still need to explain to her that some of the things she believes about her kind aren't true.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Inverted. As Weiss explains to Winter, "the best choices I've ever made all sounded awful on paper."
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Weiss feels this way about Yang and Blake, and thus despite her feelings for the other two tries to suppress them so as not to come between them. Yang, who knows her girlfriend is attracted to Weiss, encourages Blake to pursue her feelings despite their own relationship because she'd rather see them happy together.
• Jerkass Realization: Inverted. Comparing Blake's father to her own finally gets Weiss to realize that her miserable childhood was her father's fault rather than her own.
  She hadn't been petulant, all those years. He'd been cruel.
• Kangaroo Court: Adam's trial for the bombing of Amity Colosseum is less a matter of guilt or innocence and more a matter of whether or not his lawyers can get him out of the death penalty. Both the prosecution and the defense are more interested in using the case to make a statement to the public at large than the actual outcome of the case.
• Living Emotional Crutch: The rest of Team RWBY are this for Weiss. This is most explicit after she develops her Berserk Button, and she starts relying on them to keep her from going too far and to help her vent her frustrations in a safer, healthier way.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Whitley is the only member of the Schnee household who doesn't know that Weiss is a faunus.
• Love Epiphany: Weiss has hers about both Blake and Yang while they're on either side of her stretching and massaging her wings.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: Yang doesn't realize that she and Weiss are attracted to each other until Weiss grabs her by the collar and pulls her down into a Big Damn Kiss.
• Love Triangle: Yang and Blake get together around the time of the dance. Shortly thereafter Weiss develops an attraction to both of them but doesn't want to get between them. After spending a few weeks alone with Weiss while Yang and Ruby go back to Patch, Blake develops an attraction to Weiss but feels guilty about not being exclusively attracted to Yang. Finally, as Blake's feelings for Weiss grow, Yang also begins developing feelings for Weiss but mistakes them for jealousy.
• Mama Bear: It takes a lot to bring it out of her, but when she finds out Jacques hit Weiss and tried to leave Whitley to die, it's enough to send Willow into a rage. The fact that Jacques also tried to abandon her doesn't even cross her mind.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Most people who know that Weiss is a faunus assume she's a bastard, especially Jacques himself, even though Willow insists she didn't cheat. It doesn't help that the paternity tests keep coming out inconclusive.
• Meaningful Rename: While giving an interview at one of the Schnee dust mines, Weiss deliberately refers to Jacques by his maiden name Gelé, implicitly disowning him.
• Mighty Glacier: Exaggerated. One of the things Blake shows her friends during their stay on Menagerie is an absolutely huge, ancient, and Nigh-Invulnerable Grimm called Grandpa Grump. Despite being capable of leveling settlements singlehandedly, the thing has such thick and heavy armor that it can barely move more than a few inches at a time even when actively trying to attack. Kids on the island like to throw rocks at it for fun.
• Mistaken for Racist: When Team JNPR overhears Weiss and Blake arguing, with the former leaving Team RWBY's dorm in a rage, they assume that Weiss was kicked out for saying something racist to her.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Willow has this realization in light of the attack on the Schnee family manor, in which she's made to realize that Jacques' abuse isn't something she can work through, that trying is hurting her kids and pushing away Weiss, and especially that two of her children would be dead if Weiss had cut off her wings like she and Jacques wanted.
• The Navigator: Weiss's strong sensitivity to magnetism means she never gets lost, no matter how much wandering she does. This is best exemplified when she takes Oobleck's tracking course, and she's able to outperform everyone despite being given more difficult training.
  She had to admit, there was something rather satisfying about knowing blindfolded what the professor needed a GPS to see.
• Nightmare Fuel: Weiss's unhealthy and malformed wings are this in-universe for Blake, who after seeing them for the first time has a nightmare where her ears are in the same condition.
• The Nose Knows: One of Weiss's enhanced senses is a heightened sense of smell. While she sometimes complains about it allowing her to smell things she'd rather not, it has come in handy several times allowing her to be a Scarily Competent Tracker.
• Obviously Not Fine: Several characters display this, most notably Weiss, who is in such deep denial that it takes her several chapters to admit that there's actually anything wrong. Yang also exhibits this in chapter 23, and Weiss makes a note to herself to get suspicious whenever Yang uses the word "fine" from then on.
• Oh, Crap!: Jacques has an absolutely priceless one when he finds out Weiss was recording their meeting during the attack on the Schnee family manor.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: A majority of the conversations Weiss has about faunus-related subjects with people who aren't aware she is one turn out this way, as her self-loathing and Internalized Categorism are misinterpreted as overt racism and prejudice.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Before learning about her wings, the rest of Team RWBY are able to cotton on that something is wrong with Weiss by the inconsistent way she responds to topics regarding faunus. At times, she comes off as just as racist as her father, while at others she's unexpectedly respectful, such as when she avoids asking to see Blake's ears despite her own curiosity.
• Overly Long Hug: Blake and Weiss have several of these before they finally get together. Once they do, Weiss switches over to having them with Yang.
• Paparazzi: Weiss gets swarmed by a group of reporters when she and Blake go out for coffee the day after she reveals her wings on national television.
• Papa Wolf: The first thing Ghira Belladonna does upon learning of Weiss's heritage and seeing the state of her wings is to tell her she's never going back under Jacques Schnee's roof again.
• Parental Substitute: Blake's parents almost instantly pick up that there's something wrong with Weiss's home life, and are quick to start making up for all the good parenting she never got with the Schnees. Ghira in particular reaches out to her several times despite his bad first impression of her even before he learns her full circumstances. By the end of Weiss's stay on Menagerie, the Belladonnas have all but adopted her.
  • Kali takes it a step further by also filling this role for Yang, dropping everything to talk to her after the latter's disappointing encounter with her actual mother.
• Perverted Sniffing: Defied. After each taking a turn kissing Blake, Weiss and Yang opt to hug each other since they aren't dating. After catching a whiff of Yang's scent, she actively tells herself not to do this.
  Do not sniff your girlfriend's girlfriend, she ordered herself sternly. And definitely do not kiss her.
• Phrase Catcher: Weiss frequently gets told some variant of "I don't understand you."
• Psychological Projection: Both Adam and Cinder project their own issues onto Weiss when they confront her during their assult on the Schnee family manor. Adam projects his bitterness towards Jacques Schnee and humanity in general, as well as his rejection issues with Blake. Cinder on the other hand assumes Weiss's relationship with her siblings must have been as negative as her own, and as such can't understand why she'd want to protect Whitley.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Glynda Goodwitch is surprisingly sympathetic to Weiss's situation. When Weiss nearly gets Blake and herself killed due to hiding an injury during a Grimm hunt, she's initially furious but softens considerably once Weiss comes clean about her reasons, and despite canceling the mission still gives the team a passing grade. Later, when Weiss's father cuts her off so that she can't pay Beacon's tuition, Goodwitch merely expresses disappointment at Jacques failing to meet her lowest expectations before agreeing to speaking to Ozpin about granting Weiss financial aid. She also isn't fooled for a second when Jacques pretends to be a loving and supportive father on the news.
  • Ghira Belladonna is one as well. Despite Weiss being a Schnee and making a bad first impression, he's willing to look past that because he can tell that she's hurting, and because there had to be some reason that his daughter put up with her.
• Riddle for the Ages: It's never explained where exactly Weiss's Faunus traits came from.
• Robosexual: Ruby and Penny quietly form a relationship in the background of the Blake/Weiss/Yang love triangle drama.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Weiss's enhanced sense of smell is used to track down Ilia after her infiltration of the CCT, and again during the attack on Amity Colosseum. It's used a third time to track down Blake after she runs away during Adam's trial.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In a story Blake tells of Menagerie's early years, Atlas and Mistral sent an army to take over the island only to find Grandpa Grump (see Mighty Glacier above) waiting for them on the beach. Not knowing that the huge Grimm could barely move, they promptly turned around and left.
• Self-Harm: When Weiss is going through her Heroic BSoD, she unconsciously summons a Boarbatusk to attack herself and doesn't even realize it until Ruby shoves her out of harm's way.
• Sentenced to Down Under: This is what gifting Menagerie to the faunus was really meant to be. Any faunus that had been convicted of a crime (such as rebelling against their enslavers and turning the tide of the Great War, for example) were forced to settle on the untamed, Grimm-infested island where they were not expected to survive.
• Shipper on Deck: After being the first to realize that everyone in their love triangle are all mutually attracted to each other, Blake happily starts helping Weiss and Yang to acknowledge their feelings for each other so that they can form a trinogamous relationship.
• Silent Treatment: Weiss has spent several years refusing to speak to Winter due to her bitterness over her sister's blackmail.
• Sleep Cute: In chapter 45, an offer from Yang to preen Weiss's feathers for her so the latter can get some rest leads to both of them falling asleep while hugging each other.
• So Proud of You: The team actually has to ration out how often they say this to Weiss, as while she's done a lot to be proud of, the poor girl is so starved of positive feedback that saying it at the wrong time or in the wrong way is enough to overwhelm her.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Weiss is this when she first starts attending Beacon, and she doesn't even realize it. She hates seeing other faunus with their traits out in the open and doesn't understand why, and she relishes in the hatred she receives from people who don't know she's different.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Thanks to Salem not being present in this story, the various deaths and disasters that occur in the series as a result of her machinations never happen. Most notably, Penny isn't destroyed in the Vytal Tournament, Beacon doesn't fall, and thus Pyrrha doesn't die.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Completely unarmed, aura broken, and with her back against the wall, Weiss manages to talk Ilia down from bombing Amity Colosseum's engines by using her knowledge of their similar circumstances to make her realize that they're not so different, then urging her not to let her anger use her.
• Too Unhappy to Be Hungry: After Blake tells the team that she's a faunus, the revelation hits Weiss hard enough that she starts to let her grades slip and starts missing meals.
• Training from Hell: Enforced and discussed. Oobleck tailors his tracking course to the abilities of each student in order to hone their skills as much as possible. Should a student have abilities that make part of the course easier for them, he'll up the difficulty even if it means asking them to do things he himself is incapable of. In Weiss's case, this means dumping her out in the woods and asking her to find her way back to Beacon blindfolded.
  Oobleck: I'm well aware that the entire student body despises this class. Frankly? If you were the exception, it would mean that I failed you as a teacher.
• Tranquil Fury: Weiss settles into "an icy calm" when Jacques repeatedly tries to bribe her into leaving the rest of their family to die.
• The Unapologetic: Weiss hates apologies, and struggles to give them even when she knows she's in the wrong. This is because she thinks the purpose of an apology is to be humiliating. Interestingly, this also means that she tends to dislike receiving apologies from people she actually cares about.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Played completely straight here unlike the source material. In this continuity, Weiss's birth and the subsequent accusations of cheating are what drove Willow to alcoholism rather than Jacques explicitly telling her he married her for her money. As a result, she's deluded herself into thinking that if Weiss can just get Jacques to accept her as his daughter that it will somehow fix their relationship. Subverted when Willow realizes her relationship with Jacques is irreperable and decides to divorce him.
• Walk, Don't Swim: When Team RWBY and Penny go cliff diving during their stay on Menagerie, the Team are briefly worried when Penny doesn't surface after her cannonball. When they dive down to check on her, she's casually walking along the seafloor, none the worse for wear.
• Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child: Yang worries that this is the reason Raven didn't stick around after saving her life from Adam.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Weiss initially has this attitude towards her father, and struggles with the cognitive dissonance as her own values become more and more opposed to the things that will earn his approval.
• Wham Line: Weiss drops one which casts her status as The Unapologetic under a completely different light.
  Nora: I know we accidentally tripped over some... stuff. We all have stuff, though. You weren't trying to hurt us, but we weren't trying to hurt you, either.
  Weiss: Good. Then I see no reason why we have to humiliate each other to illustrate the point.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Briefly discussed. Sienna Khan describes faunus like Fiona as having "cute privilege". The latter acknowledges the point, but finds her wording distasteful.
• When She Smiles: While spending some time alone with Weiss while Ruby and Yang are away, Blake finds she takes great pleasure in coaxing smiles out of Weiss. Not long after, she realizes that she's starting to develop feelings for her.
• Winged Humanoid: Weiss was born with wings in this story.
• Working Out Their Emotions: Yang spends half the night in the gym beating up a punching bag after Blake runs away from Adam's trial.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: One of the ways Jacques tries to manipulate Weiss is by telling her that he raised her better than other faunus.
  • Weiss unintentionally pulls this with Blake early on after the team's encounter with a pair of dirty cops. When Blake points out that the cops were probably called because of her, Weiss complains how it should have been obvious that Blake was okay since she was with them, and thus "one of the good ones".
• You Are Not Alone: Tragically subverted in Weiss's phone call with her mother on her 18th birthday. Willow tries to invoke this, but unfortunately she is unaware of all the character development Weiss has gone through over the previous few months, and her attempt to help and reach out to her daughter ends up pushing her even further away.
• You Can't Go Home Again: After her outburst at Adam's trial, Weiss has a falling out with her father in which he cuts her off, at which point she declares she's never going home again.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: The more Weiss starts to accept herself and shake off the toxic beliefs and mindset that her father instilled in her, the more ashamed she feels whenever he expresses his approval of something he believes she's done.
• You Remind Me of X: Weiss's angry outbursts and accidental summonings whenever someone presses her Berserk Button remind Blake uncomfortably of Adam. It puts a strain on their relationship until they're able to talk it over and come to an agreement on how to handle these outbursts.