Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-27397283-20160214182542/@comment-27404453-20160220052207

Evnyofdeath wrote: Korrde wrote: Can someone explain why its poor from a literary perspective to have Ruby be a Maiden? Because I keep seeing that as an explanation here as to why she can't be one, but no one is actually saying how it detracts from the story to make Ruby a Maiden. Is it because it would be cliche?

And I agree with the people saying that she might have obtained the powers at a young age. If she got them young enough or was never taught how to use them, then it stands to reason she doesn't know how to use the. Additionally for all we know the powers were sealed by Qrow or Ozpin or something like that. Because she probably had the Silver Eyes from a very young age, but I don't remember seeing any Grimm fearing her until after Pyrrha was killed.

So to say she would "know" how to use Maiden powers because she might have had them from a young age is like saying she should have "known" how to use Silver Eyes powers from a young age because she grew up with them. As we saw, she didn't know how to use the Silver Eyes powers and in fact didn't remember using them at all.

I'd say the idea that Ruby is a Maiden is no less strong then it was when the theory was first introduced. Now is it separate from the Silver Eyes powers? Maybe. Are the Silver Eyes the sign of a Maiden? Again maybe. Is it possible she's not a Maiden? Also possible. To discount any of these at the moment is making a statement no one but those at RT can legitimately make. As a budding writer the thought of someone with so much more experience than me creating such a tangled web of powers makes me cringe. If Ruby had both the power of her Silver Eyes and those of a Maiden she would become a walking Deus ex Machina. There would be no tension in the story. Tension is what makes a story and plot interesting.

Following the Law of Conservation of Detail we can make the safe assumption that Qrow was not lying. You do NOT bring up a significant detail like the story of the Silver Eyed Warriors and have it amount to nothing. Therefor we can say with near perfect certanty that Ruby is a Silver Eyed Warrior.

As previously stated Ruby being both a SEW and a Maiden is convoluted and destroys tension in the story. However if you want me to go indepth I can.

We have seen two individuals use Maiden powers. Amber and Cinder. In the hands of Amber the Fall Maiden power consisted of elemental manipulation. She could control wind, fire, lightning, and ice. This tells us that the Maiden's aren't "locked" into an element that corrosponds with their season.

When Cinder gained the Fall Maiden powers she almsot exclusively used fire, however in her fight with Ozpin you can see her throw ice crystals when she's knocked back. Assuming the weird fire pillar vortex explosions are her Semblance that means those ice crystals were created by her powers.

When either of them use the power their eyes light up and flames appear around them.

Compare that to what Ruby does. When Ruby activates her powers wings of light emerge from her eyes. Visually and stylistically these wings look nothing like the energy that appears from Cinder or Amber. As for what Ruby's powers do, she "freezes" the Dragon, and presumbably defeats Cinder. Now, I have seen many, MANY people take the word "frozen" at face value and say she encased the Dragon in Ice and is thus the Winter Maiden. On the surface level this is faulty, since I've already explained how the Maiden's have ALL the elements, not just one symbolic of their season. However if we dig a bit further, and watch a but more of the episode, during Salem's speech we get a glimps of the Dragon perched on Ozpin's tower. We very distinctly and clearly see it's silhouette. If the Dragon was encased in Ice we would not be able to see it's outline so clearly and distinctly. Therefor the Dragon is not frozen in ice. What else can "frozen" mean? Well there are two possibilities.

The first is that the word was used entirely symbolically. Ruby wounded the Dragon so severely that it had to go into hibernation to survive. Recall how it was apparently sleeping underneat the mountain for who knows how long. The other option is that it was frozen in time. This would mean Ruby's powers are Spacial/Temporal and not Elemental. And as previously stated, the powers of a Maiden are elemental in nature.

Does that answer your question?

Not really seeing as how it is based solely on your own supposition of what makes a good story and not necessarily what RT is going for in this story. You say tension is what makes a good story, and I agree to a certain extent, but I don't feel like we've gotten enough detail as to what stories are true, the full extent of a Maiden's powers, the powers of the SE warriors, and a lot of other stuff to make the argument that giving both to Ruby somehow removes the tension from the story.

Also as you said, we've only seen the Fall Maiden's power. We have no idea how it presents in Summer, Spring, or Winter; so to make the argument based on just one Maiden's power is premature.

Another meaning for frozen outside of the freezing of time is that she could be the Winter Maiden and completely frozen it, down to the last cell. That would keep it elemental in nature. And if its frozen in a manner in which the ice is kept internal to the dragon and only a light layer on the surface then it would appear to merely be frozen as it was.

But as I said previously, we can merely conjecture here. Trying to refute the possibility of Ruby being a Maiden at this point is like claiming that Raven's a Maiden or that Summer Rose was a Maiden. We have no evidence one way or the other. This entire debate is pointless as no one here knows where RT is going with the storyline beyond the fact that Ruby has gone with the remnants of JNPR and that RWBY has been split apart. As to who the Maidens are, no one knows anymore. Even Cinder's status as one is questionable as we don't know if she's even still alive.