User blog comment:Zolnir/Dust: The Ultimate Theory (For Now)/@comment-15108745-20130814135616/@comment-11188061-20130814145128

Okay,

1) That works as well. For this part it doesn't really matter as long as we know that 'Dust mining activity' would eventually undermine the human's chances to fight against the Grim.

I actually forgot to put in Roman Torchwick's plans in my above theory, but right now I'm a bit lazy to edit it. Roman's stealing Dusts because one, they're essentially powerful weapons and whoever owns the most becomes the victor. I do not believe that he actually wants to destroy the world or surrender it to darkness or something, because he's too smart for that and looks to enjoy living a lot (even though part of that thrill is blowing up kids).

2) From the world itself. When mankind born, some of them are blessed with natural-born powers. It's that simple.

3) Hard to say. Going by my theory, all faunas are the original beings that have inherent nature's powers, and hence all faunas are superhumans. In the past however, people do not bother discriminate because they're fighting a horrible war, and the faunas were their only hope for survival.

4) Regardless of what we say, all the powers we have seen so far are based on nature, that is the world's power. You can easily combine 1 and 2, and since nature's strength = world's strength and thus the people name the power 'Dust' in reference to the world itself.

Although I have to admit that something's a bit strange here. Normally people would give separate namings since the world itself and nature are basically two different things. Like now, some of us are confusing the hell out of each other because we basically calling both 'the world' and 'the world's strength/power' the same name, 'Dust'. Maybe our assumption's wrong in the first place... Ah screw it.

5) Okay. The narrator said that there would be no victory in strength, hinting that mankind could no longer brute force the Grim away like last time through Dust and superhumans. This is because mankind right now are being split in two and they are not united, whereas the Grim has been working subtly to undermine the production of Dust (you can see that Roman's hoarding of Dust may somehow translate to that, even if he didn't mean it). No amount of metal guardians or steel puppets or technology is going to save them from Grim, and once Dust production was completely cut off everyone would die.

But.

Ozpin (voice over): "But perhaps victory is in the simpler things that you've long forgotten - things that require a smaller, more honest soul."

Ozpin reminds the Grim (I'm assuming that this ominous female narrator is Grim) that she was not bested because mankind fought back with their newly found power of Dust. It was the actions and doings of a few people (very much like our protagonists now), who sincerely wished for peace and to save their world, and through various hardships and sacrifices did the impossible (of discovering Dust, of persuading the superhuman to go through with the plan and basically give out their power to normal people, of uniting the split mankind faction etc) and ultimately triumph over evil.

This is basically where you throw all that friendship, unity, love and any other sappy things you can think about. However, I'll have to agree with his belief wholeheartedly. More often than not it was the actions of one person, that sudden spur of heroism (that Grim scorned at) that had saved so many lives from certain doom or disasters. Our own history are filled with such little tales that might seem trivial, but ultimately played a huge factor in terrible conflicts such as war. That little goodness in people's heart and the willingness to carry them out can change the tide of even the most impossible situations.

Grim herself had said it, 'Even the smallest hope can ignite change'. It could be seen however, that she was too proud to admit that her failure was due to the actions of a couple of 'insignificant people', and blame it on the creation/discovery of Dust.

Aaaand finally. Despite all the stuff that I've theorized above, I do believe that the common belief (that is mankind discovered Dust... somehow) is most likely to be correct, if only because it's easier to be simple than convoluted. However, my theory is formulated in a way that you can tie in to both beliefs (just fit them in yourself, there are just too many possibilities for me to state them all...), so have fun at the new food for thought. =D