Requested by: Me :) I've been seeing this ship floating around these past few weeks so I decided to rate it myself.

Origin: So this ship doesn't have an official name yet but I've seen several names being used such as Reading Rainbow because of Blake being an avid reader and Rainbow being what Ilia's last name translates to, Ninjas of Love because this is a book that Blake once read and Sun even refers to Ilia as "some kind of ninja", and my favorite RWBY Youtuber MurderofBirds calls this ship Bellatola combing the twos last names (also side not if you've never seen one of MurderofBirds's videos umm go watch them. Right now. They're spectacular.) I however call this ship calico because a calico is a cat (like Blake) with patches of different colored fur (like how Ilia can change colors).

Opinion: So obviously we all saw chapter 8 of volume 5 where Ilia confesses that she used to have a crush on Blake. I actually already had a feeling by the way based on how Ilia was looking at Blake during the flashback in the character short. I however ship this platonically more then romantically. I mean don't get me wrong it's cute but it's obviously one sided and since Blake hasn't shown any feelings for Ilia I can't really see them as a couple. Ok so this next section is gonna contain spoilers for chapter 10 so don't read if you don't want it

All good? Alright let's go. So in chapter 10 we got a lot of Blake and Ilia moments. Including Ilia's redemption which was done so well by the way. I'm so glad Blake was able to help her. However despite all that I still only ship them as friends. It's obvious that Ilia still likes Blake but I see it more as a "she looks up to her" thing more then a "She's in love with her" thing. Blake also seemed scared when it seemed like Sun was gonna kill her, but again I think it's because Ilia is her friend as opposed to her thinking of Ilia as something more. Also I love how Ilia was the first person to tell Blake that she would side with her against Adam.