Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-71.84.15.225-20150807131522/@comment-25801533-20150913031712

There seems to be a couple things people are forgetting, not reading, or reading too much into about this.

1. Nowhere is it stated that Summer Rose IS dead. The only thing said about it is that she went on a mission and never came back. This does not say dead. This says never came back. Euphamism or not there is no explicit statement that she died on the mission.

2. Nextly as for the "characters mom is dead but then shes actually alive" motif, that doesnt exist. Many say that about Yangs mom, but this again was never said, nor was anything of that topic given the impression she was dead. "She left me with him when I was born" is just that yangs mom ran away, nothing about dying.

3. There is no grave marker. I cannot stress this enough. The stone that says "Summer Rose Thus Kindly I Scatter" is not a grave marker, grave stone, head stone, or tombstone. This is a cliffside ALTAR, just like any other memorial marker and so does not denote the place of burial since there was NO BODY. She never came back means the body of Summer never came back dead or alive.

4. There are other types of missions. Its not just missions about killing Grimm. Summer left on a mission, yes, but it never says what kind, Its possible that she didnt even know the full scope of the mission and still had to be briefed on it.

5. In the song "Red Like Roses Part 2", given that it is Ruby and Summer singing to the other, the only one who says that Summer is dead is Ruby. If no body was returned and Summer was presumed dead then thats what Ruby would have been told. Whether she saw a bloody piece of clothing or not she would still associate death to blood, and thus her statements about red filling her dreams still denotes Ruby's interpretation of the situation. Summer's lines in the never say she died. She says that she knows Rubys feels that she left Ruby in a world of madness, she wishes she could talk to Ruby to make Ruby understand the reasons why she did it, She tried to protect Ruby but failed to, she didnt have a choice and did what she had to do, she made a sacrifice but forced a bigger sacrifice on Ruby, and that she doesnt want Ruby to waste her life in vain like she did. Nothing here says that Summer died. I concede that a couple lines could be interpreted that way, but I refuse to believe that is the only possible explanation.

6. Jeff Williams at the RTX 2014 RWBY panel does make statements regard this but they are very open ended. such as "If her mom dies theres gonna be some amount of time that shes gonna be down about it and if she feels like ... that her mom, its not that she died like voluntarily, but if she ... if there was some way that her mom could have not ... left her and stayed with her then shes gonna think about that, ya know." During this statement he seems to double back on himself and try not to say too much but still give the audience something. This is especially apparent with the pause just before saying "left her and stayed with her" as though hes trying to find the right words to not give away too much information.

I dont see it being unreasonable to believe that there is a chance Summer is alive. My theory as to how shes alive is that she had to go into hiding for some reason or another at Ozpin's order to convince someone of her death. She didnt know this until the briefing, and wasn't allowed to tell her family as they need to believe her dead in order for anyone watching them to believe the facade. She sacrifices her future with her family and the rest of her life so that Ozpin can pull this off. But maybe what Ozpin was after he didnt get and so Summer basically "wastes her life in vain".