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aspoonofsugar · 5 months

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Weiss's Design

Here comes an appreciation post of our Snowhite's beautiful design! This is also the third installment of my RWBY design series, after Yang and Blake's analyses. As per usual, it uses ideas shared in other Weiss's metas. Enjoy!

A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE

Monty Oum's early sketch depicts Weiss as a living snowflake:

This is because Weiss's design plays with the idea of "a special snowflake" in two different ways:

"snowflake" is a derogatory term for a person, who is entitled, oversensitive and easily offended; it also holds some political implications linked to white privilege

snowflakes are famous for having unique structures, so each one is different from the others

Weiss is initially a stubborn and pampered heiress, who feels superior because of her name. Still, she is deep down frail and needs to build her own distinctive identity.

These two sides of our Snowhite are conveyed by the Schnees' semblance:

Glyhps are snowflake-shaped and they represent:

the family privilege, as they are inherited by all the Schnees - they are a magical projection of the family crest

the potential of each Schnee to grow into their own person - they gain more complex and individual designs with time

In short, Weiss is a special snowflake, for better or worse. She can give in to her father's mentality and be defined by her name. Or she can step into the world and discover who she is outside her family:

Winter: It sounds to me like you have two choices in front of you. You can either call Father, beg for his money back, and explain once more why you would want to study at Beacon over Atlas, or you could continue to explore Remnant, discovering more about the world and honestly, more about yourself.

Let's see what Weiss's design says about her choice.

SNOW PRINCESS

Let's consider Weiss's concept art:

And let's compare it to Winter's:

The two sisters appear similar:

their color schemes are the same

they look like royalty

they share glyphs as their semblance

they fight with swords

They are designed this way to show that Weiss looks up to Winter and tries to emulate her. This is clear if one considers Weiss and Winter's allusions: Weiss alludes to Snowhite, while Winter alludes to the Snow Queen. And yet, when one looks at Weiss's concept art, it is easier to see the Snow Queen's inspiration, rather than Snowhite's:

She looks like a snowflake

She is the color of ice and snow

She wears a crown, like a queen

Glyphs resemble the Snow Queen's power to turn snowflakes into animals

It is as if Weiss's true self (Snowhite) is hidden behind a mask (the Snow Queen). This conveys Weiss's insecurity, as she is caught between the weight of the family crest (a snowflake) and her idolisation of Winter (the Snow Queen). She is a Snow Princess, who needs to decide which kind of Queen she'll be. Either an Evil Queen like Jacques or an Ice Queen like Winter.

Still, Weiss is her own person and this comes to the surface in her final design:

The main differences with the first version are:

Her bangs and pony-tail do not part in two sides

She has a scar on her left eye instead than a beauty mark

Her necklace is an apple instead of a tear-drop

She has no tear-drops dangling from her sleeves

The golden circles on her bolero become silver and she gains silver decorations on her boots

Weiss loses her tear-drop motif and her color-scheme gets simplified. This gives her more Snowhite-like details:

The apple on the necklace alludes to the poisoned apple

The scar on the eye alludes to the magical mirror cracking

The final design only has black, white (silver) and red, which are Snowhite's defining colors

Moreover, Weiss's appearence grows more asymmetric. Her hair is not perfectly parted, but worn in a side pony-tail. This symbolizes Weiss's struggle against Jacques's expectations. Similarly, the elegant beauty mark is changed with a scar. This gives Weiss more personality and shows that behind the princess there is a fighter.

In short, Weiss's Vale design shows glimpses of our girl's true self. However, they are hidden by the cold ice covering Weiss's soul. Luckily, the Spring Arc comes and the ice melts.

MELTING ICE

In Mistral, Weiss leaves her white dress behind and wears a blue outfit:

This happens because our snowflake is slowly melting into water (white > blue), so that she can become herself. In order to do so, though, she has to first lose all the superficial things that define her identity:

Jacques: You are no longer the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company.

Weiss sees herself as the SDC heiress, so the story takes away her title.

Vernal: Your sister isn't in Mistral anymore. No one is coming to rescue you.

Weiss sees herself as Winter's little sister, so the story has her separated from Winter.

Thanks to this, Weiss faces herself and discovers who "just Weiss" is:

Vernal: Let's see what the Schnee name really means. Weiss: I'm more than a name.

This transformation is mirrored by Weiss's design. She loses all the superficial references to Snowhite:

she wears no apple anymore

she has no black-white-red color pattern

Still, her fairy tale emerges strongly in her glyphs, as she learns to summon:

Weiss's avatars are Snowhite's characters:

The Boarbatusk is the Hunter, who is famous for killing a boar

The Knight is the Prince, who saves Snowhite from the glass coffin

The Queen Lancer is both the Evil Queen and the New Queen Snowhite becomes at the end

Weiss loses all she has to be reborn anew. Similarly, her design is stripped of all the Snowhite's allusions, only for them to be expressed more clealry and in a deeper way by the evolution of her semblance. Weiss's magical snowflakes aquire unique patterns that refer to her personal story.

This process of refinement climaxes in volume 5. Here, Weiss dies, is resurrected and crowns herself queen by summoning the Queen Lancer. This Grimm represents who Weiss truly is. She is neither the Evil Queen, nor the Snow Queen, but a Royal (a queen), who is also a Knight (a lancer). She is a Queen Knight.

After this metaphorical coronation, Weiss starts showing her interiority outside. This is why she gains back her two missing colors in her journey to Atlas:

she wears a red scarf

she wears black thights

She is back to look like Snowhite (black + white + red)!

Interestingly, both the scarf and the thights are items worn to stay warm. In short, the closer Weiss gets to her Icy Kingdom (Atlas), the more she shows her true warm self (Snowhite).

QUEEN SNOWHITE

Weiss's Atlas design has three layers to it:

it is queen-like

it is Snowhite-like

it has all the colors of the previous outfits

1- Weiss gains a silver tiara with red gems. It is bigger and more refined than the old one because Weiss has grown. She isn't a princess anymore. She is a queen.

2- Weiss wears Snowhite's three colors: a white dress, black gloves and red jewels. interestingly, black and red are not covered by white. The ice is melted and Weiss's different shades are now out in the open. What is more, Weiss's outfit is similar to her Disney's counterpart:

Disney-Snowhite wears a dress with blue puffed sleeves, which are present in Weiss's Atlas design. There is no risk to confuse our girl with the Snow Queen anymore:

Weiss is not Winter's imitation, but her own person. She is 100% Snowhite.

3 - Weiss's clothes are white, black, red and light blue. These are all the colors worn by her throughout the story. In addition, there is a warmer shade of blue, which shows the cold is gone once and for all. These palette symbolizes Weiss's different parts coming together into a more beautiful and stronger person.

This fits Weiss's new summon:

The Nevermore combines all the other glyphs. It is the final form of Weiss's inner snowflake and the culmination of her growth. Aesthetically, it gives Weiss an angelic look, which brings to mind the final inspiration of her design.

MAGICAL SNOW ANGEL

Oh look! Weiss looks like Sailor Moon! This isn't by chance, as Weiss is inspired by the magical girl genre. Magical girls are heroines, who:

transform into ideal versons of themselves

fight metaphors of human emotions in the form of monsters

purify people's hearts

Weiss is the same, but the first heart she needs to cleanse is her own:

Mirror, tell me something, Tell me who's the loneliest of all? Fear of what's inside of me; Tell me can a heart be turned to stone?

Yes, it can:

Pure Heart Crystal (Sailor Moon)

Soul Gem (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

A gem standing for one's heart is a pretty common trope in magical girls' stories. Not only that, but the corruption and healing of these stones come up often. Well, Weiss's heart is a snow-crystal, which needs to be melted and rebuilt into a unique structure.

Weiss purifies it by fighting her inner demons in the form of Grimms. As a matter of fact these monsters symbolize humanity's darkness, so they are the perfect enemy for a magical girl. Weiss defeats them and makes them white like snow. She integrates them and the struggles they represent into herself. Through this process, she slowly changes into her ideal self. She doesn't need a spectacular transformation sequence because her evolution happens inside. It is slow, but deep and here to last. After all, the heart is irreplaceable:

Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metrics or forms of measure. And all of it… irreplaceable.

Hearts are like snowflakes because there are no two, which are the same. Weiss learns this lesson and starts teaching it to others. This is how she heals hearts. Empathy is her superpower. Thanks to it, she is ready to save her family legacy:

Weiss: I will not be defined by my name because I will be the one to define it.

Weiss's first step is to define herself outside the Schnee name. Her second step is to give the Schnee name a new meaning. She first refines her heart. Then she cleanses her surname. From her inner snowflake to the family crest. That is the kind of magical girl she is.

In a sense, she is stepping into Nicholas's footsteps. He purifies minerals into Dust. She purifies stones into souls. From Saint Nicholas to Snow Angel.

MAGICAL QUEEN SNOWHITE

In conclusion, Weiss's design describes her evolution in three ways:

She goes from being a snowflake (derogatory) to being a snowflake (unique)

She grows from a princess into a queen

She leaves the Snow Queen behind and becomes Snowhite

This refinement process is nothing, but her magical girl transformation.

#rwby #weiss schnee #rwby meta #my meta #winter schnee #character design #once upon an allusion #semblance of the soul #santa's granddaughter #it is her season!#greenlight volume 10 #greenlightvolume10

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