Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-168.103.228.28-20150809162836/@comment-25555436-20150809171352

A few things:

-It's not so much because she's a mentor, and more because unlike the other characters she doesn't need anything. She doesn't need to become stronger, she has no future, superior goal in her life like Ruby wanting to become a Huntress or Weiss restoring the SDC's reputation, she has already reached a high level of skill and learned to dominate her Semblance so she doesn't need anymore training, and her only reason to exist in the show, Jaune, she already got him, at least close enough.

She has already fullfilled her role and doesn't need to achieve anything. Which is what makes her more susceptible to death/impairment.

-The problem with stealing or taking away Semblances is, that Semblance is just active use of Aura, IOW Semblance is Aura. So to take away someone's Semblance, or at least prevent them from using it, you would have to take away their Aura or at least bring it down to 0%, the point where it depletes and can't protect until it charges back. And the problem with taking away Aura is that it comes from the Soul, so you would have to take away their Soul.

And let's be honest, that is just overkill. Especially since the stronger you make a villain, the more stupid it can feel when they lose. If Cinder could take away your Soul, which would be insta-kill, how could she lose? If she lost, it would feel like Superman losing because of convenient kriptonite. At least to me, it makes more sense for them to just pwn Pyrrha and send her to the hospital, the point where she can no longer fight for a while, just recover.

"Taking away which power they have" can mean many things. Pyrrha is a great fighter, has an OP Semblance, and is obviously part of the good guys. So if she can't fight, you just took away from the good guys, a great deal of their overall power.

-Too Good for This Sinful Earth does not, and has not been attributed to Mary Sues. That trope just means a character is too nice and positive for the crapsack world they are in, usually kids, and as such they are killed. Like having a super optimistic kid that can't stop thinking positively, despite being in the Dead Space or Fallout universes, which are very full of negative shit.

Mary Sues are not necesarily nice nor positive, in fact there's something called Jerk Sue, which is a Mary Sue that instead of being overly nice, they are unnecesarily an asshole and still get the same "rewards" as Mary Sues do. But anyway, that trope has nothing to do with Mary Sues.

-Pyrrha isn't a Mary Sue. She's more of a deconstruction actually. She's near-perfect, yes, but because of that, like it's expected, she had about 0 friends, because all knew she was perfect, and no one likes perfect people.

-I personally would just be happy with them punching Pyrrha into the point she can't fight anymore for the rest of the volume(s). Not death, but still sends the same point across.