User blog:ChishioKunrin/My view on Dust (so far)

I don't have a proper opening statement in mind, so I'll just say, here's a blog about my speculation about dust because I feel like it.

Where does dust come from?
First of all, to get this out of the way, I have seen people continually ask before "Where does dust come from," when we were already told exactly where it comes from. In Volume 1 Episode 2, Weiss says "This is dust, mined and purified from the Schnee quarry!" From this, we can assume that dust is mined as crystals and can be ground into a powder form.

The difference between crystal and powder
We've seen that dust is available in two forms - crystal and powder. It has been shown that powder dust is more volatile than crystal dust. After all, you can throw a crystal several feet from a few feet in the air, and nothing will happen,(V1E1) but if you so much as sneeze on powder, it will explode.(V1E2)

There also seems to be a difference in how the two forms of dust are used. The use of powder dust has been displayed several times by Weiss. If you study the pictures that Monty has provided of Myrtenaster up close and from different angles, you can see that there is a "dust exhaust port," as he labeled it. This exhaust port ejects dust from one of the slots in the revolving chamber along the blade. I suppose that the action of disturbing powder dust is what activates it, resulting in a powerful burst of its elemental energy.

As for crystal dust, we haven't seen as much blatant use. The only obvious uses we have seen in Volume 1 have actually been small enough to go relatively unnoticed. Perhaps the most obvious one was during the opening narration of episode 1. When it shows men wielding dust to fight the grimm, you can see two of them each holding a crystal and shooting lightning from their hand. From this, we can assume that physical contact with a dust crystal can allow someone to channel the dust's energy for their own use.

To me, Roman Torchwick appeared to do just that in episode 1, but through his cane. The first time he shoots at Ruby, in episode 1, he has the red dust crystal in his possession, and the shot that is fired is large with a red tint. The second time, he throws the crystal at Ruby, and the shot that he fires is smaller and white. Since he wears gloves and didn't appear to be holding the crystal, we can assume that one doesn't need to have skin contact with the crystal or actually be holding it. Therefore, for all we know, Cinder really could be using dust. ==