Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24901923-20141018140231/@comment-24.61.230.178-20141018200137

"It's not about overpowering an enemy. It's about taking away what power they have. And we will, in time." -- Cinder in Extracurricular

I've compared Cinder to Loki elsewhere. Loki sought to begin Ragnarok (end of the world) by tricking Hod, the blind twin, to kill his brother Balder using a dart made of mistletoe. (The needle Cinder holds up?)

The death of Balder forces the gods to realize they cannot escape fate. The world of men descends in meaningless wars. Balder was the god of joy and beauty. When the gods went to retrieve Balder from Hel, she agreed on one condition:  all creation must mourn Balder. All creation did except for one:  Loki. In a world without joy or beauty, there was also no happiness, only jealousy and malaise. So brother fought brother, father fought son. Mankind began destroying itself.

Cinder's quote has a bit of a double meaning. The group was talking about Pyrrha, whose ability is to alter fate. In other words, Pyrrha doesn't overpower her enemies. She takes away her enemy's power by altering her own fate. Much like the Norse gods did when Frigg gained an oath from all nature and creation never to harm Balder. However, Frigg had discounted mistletoe, thinking it too small to be of harm. So Loki tricked Frigg into telling him about the mistletoe.

So if Cinder plans to kill anyone, it will be indirectly through manipulation, possibly by manipulating Pyrrha. Balder was the weakest of the gods. Jaune is the weakest of the students at Beacon. Pyrrha loves Jaune, and it's obvious to everyone. But what would happen if Cinder somehow manipulated Pyrrha into unknowingly killing Jaune? How would such an incident affect the students at Beacon? How would it affect the instructors?

Negative emotions rob people of their power. They also tend to attract Grimm. And if the people who are meant to protect humans are the ones attracting the Grimm, then mass panic will ensue....attracting even greater numbers.

In effect, I think Cinder is trying to bring about Ragnarok, and the needle was the clue that somebody key will need to die at the hands of someone close to them.

Now consider that Nora is supposedly based on Thor, and that she is part of the same team as Pyrrha and Jaune. Consider that Jaune is inspired by Joan of Arc, and that Joan died, betrayed by the very religion she fought for. She eventually became a martyr.

So Team JNPR contains 3 potential catalysts for the plot when following the Loki motif. That seems rather significant.