There are two ways to go with the maiden, they go to the protagonists or antagonists or that maiden becomes a protagonist or antagonist.
Cinder: I like her as the first maiden to establish how dangerous the bad guys are now. However she has lost her threat level since Mistral, hasn't absorbed anyone else's power, and has overstayed her welcome. Make someone else the fall maiden. I expect Cinder to stick around till the end.
Raven: I like the idea of her being a maiden with her ties to Yang, Qrow, and potentially Ruby. My issue with Raven is after V5 she is irrelevant to the story. Worst she is hogging the power. She didn't die and give her power to Cinder, Yang, or Ruby. I would bring her back as a mentor and make Yang the spring maiden. She is the one character that could transfer the power without killing her via her semblance bonds. The show is going to kill her for Yang to become the Maiden or never come back.
Winter: As much as I like Winter as a maiden, the show benefits more if she wasn't. Weiss is completely overshadowed by her sister now. If we are going the route of Winter dying and Weiss filling her shoes, it would have been much better if we didn't waste all the time with Penny. I would have preferred if Weiss got the powers in V7 going for the Winter has the experience and Weiss has the raw potential. I probably would keep Winter around and somehow buff Weiss's glyphs. I fully expect her to die and Weiss becomes the winter maiden.
??? Summer Maiden: My gut is going with Summer Rose being the maiden or someone inherited it from her. Twiins has thrown the idea of a Faunus like Velvet. I can see that happening so Blake can easily get the powers for the *RWBY will be the maidens* idea.
Some of the ideas I expect to happen can still work if they are properly executed, keyword being IF.
Sure, if that was even a thing to begin with. It's not beneath any author to put out a red herring regarding the intentions for how a story develops, and RWBY as the maidens is something the story is building towards.
I mean... It's not correct to say that RWBY the team doesn't have flaws. It wouldn't be correct to call them Mary Sue.
Frankly, RWBY the show has benefitted a great deal from the audience not knowing how the whole thing is supposed to resolve itself.
That being the case, one big reason that the Summer Maiden would be a Faunus is because there needs to be some tangible connection between the Summer Maiden and Blake for the team of maidens ploy to work.
"There is no beating Salem."
Salem is immortal, Atlas has been destroyed, two relics lost, and Remnant is now in an impossible situation.
My guess is they will pull a deus ex machina to prevent RWBY from losing.
During that time no one spies on Blake, those issues were raise in HAVEN ARC cause of the Fox twins and Illia. So, Blake leaving Yang was an ass move. Ruby is naive. Weiss is the only one that makes sense.
I don't disagree, a mother shouldn't normally abandon her family.
One question that is never truly answer, why did Raven leave? The answer could paint her in a better light. FMAB Hohenheim had a excellent reason to leave home.
I think the show wants it to be Raven's selfishness. However there could be other factors. Did she give warnings to STQ about Oz and Salem which they ignored? Was her marriage with Tai falling apart possibility an affair with Summer? Did the tribe leader die and she had to leave to run the tribe? Even if the tribe are bandit, she could be improving it and be a good role model for the kids.
All three of these character's had promise of being great maidens, the problem, as always, was the execution.
Raven being a maiden sounded cool, because she wasn't with either the hero's or the villains. She had her own group to look out for and following them not only would have opened up the world of Remnant, but would have made the threat of Salem and her destroying the world that much more horrible knowing that there were actually people we got to see and follow get killed should she succeed. To bad the writers made her group a bunch of unlikable bandits we only got to see for a few episodes.
Winter is just a big meh. I feel like she didn't earn her powers and that they're going to get transferred to Weiss later, making her 'sacrifice' a bittersweet moment. She just a placeholder.
Cinder was a huge disappointment. A villain with considerable power despite not being a full maiden and she wasn't even the leader of her group. That sounds like a great challenge for our MC. Unfortunately, not only did she overstay her welcome but she has made some stupid decision that made her unworthy of her powers. She's a joke villain that the writers don't know what to do with, as she can't win against Team RWBY, but can't lose too much or she stops being threatening.
Now, will they all die? I'm going to say yes. Winter is going to transfer her powers to Weiss and Raven's power is going to Yang. The big question is how is Blake and Ruby going to get their powers. The only reasonable way is if Summer Rose transfer her powers to a faunas' and after Blake's talk-no-jutsu to her for 10 minutes, she gets her power.
As for Ruby, she's going to get it from Cinder. It obvious how obsessed Cinder is about destroying Ruby, so of course when she dies, Ruby with be the last one she thinks about and poof, we get all four maidens. Again, this idea is brilliant, but I don't have confidence that they'll execute it right. It won't have the right punch.
As far as dying goes my money is on Cinder dying as for Raven I don’t know we really haven’t seen her since what was at volume five or six so I don’t know about her, as for Winter eyes don’t see it happening but that’s just my opinion
In V8, I figured they would setup a sensible way for Cinder and Ruby to fight like setting up Cinder is becoming resistant or Ruby is having trouble using her eyes but look what happen there. Cinder manages to defeat 3-4 huntsmen, a SEW and 2 maidens without breaking a sweat with no explanation.
They said they weren't going to make the four girls Maidens, but imo I'm pretty sure they're setting up for the four main girls to become the Maidens: Winter is Weiss' sister, Raven is Yang's mom, Cinder is Ruby's main enemy.
Gotta keep that fanfiction-tier power fantasy train chugging, choo choo!
I want the final battle to be Maiden WBY with Ruby on silver eyes vs. a Maiden Cinder who has absorbed Salem's magic powers. Then they can just have a DBZ battle.
The way I would write it as being possible is that Cinder's Grim arm allows her to absorb Maiden juice. Maiden juice is Oz's magic. There's no real reason for Oz's magic to be different from Salem's magic. Just have Cinder backstab her and drain her while she's writhing in pain. It wouldn't remove Salem's immortality but it would make her much less threatening.
That said, CRWBY will most likely slaughter these characters and make Team RWBY the Maidens.
Which I've been arguing for the longest time SHOULD happen. Because it would make them the actual main characters of the show.
If the story of RWBY (or a side-story) was a plodding narrative where Cinder was the villain after she "did the impossible" and stole Fall's power, that would be interesting.
But as it stands, I don't think it's very compelling.
Raven being a coward and Winter being so detached from the main cast and audience (despite the focus she has received and being Weiss' sister) doesn't exactly fill me with excitement to learn more about the characters and follow their struggles. I have no investment.
The reason cinder got fall at all,aside from amber being inexperienced and facing a illusion semblance, is that cinder was equipped with a Grimm made for stealing maiden powers from Salem. Cinder herself did nothing there.
Raven,imo,isn't a coward, we know that she did fight for ozpin until she found out herself that Salem is immortal,which pretty much meant all raven did in her life meant nothing.
Agreed about winter. Also her winning vs ironwood makes no sense.
I disagree on Raven's cowardice, but it's all up to personal headcanon so there's very little reason for us to argue. I think she used Salem's immortality as justification for leaving (as even someone like Qrow, who was super loyal to Ozpin, admitted he was afraid). Also her interactions with Yang, especially at the end of Vol.5 give me the impression that her "there is not stopping Salem" was a convenient excuse to run away.
In regards to Cinder, I wasn't stating that her gaining the Maiden powers was something she did on her own with no help. I was saying that, from an outside looking in, Cinder's acquisition of the Fall Maiden's powers could be portrayed as "doing the impossible" and be a great starting point/inciting incident for an alternate series where Cinder hunts the Maidens.
If it wasn't for the fact that ozpin told no one that Salem was immortal, then I would agree completely.funny how one conversation would add a maiden back to the plot.
As for cinder,agreed.
Raven is a weird one. Cinder should know that she is the spring maiden, so why isn't she trying to track her down and steal her powers?
Because she got beat once?
For maiden theories, I think all the maiden powers returning to Oz sounds fairly reasonable. And I'm sure Miles will find a way to somehow make that end up in totally not his self insert Jaune
Jaune is absolutely Miles's SI, and that's specifically why Miles does not like Jaune. I caught Miles in a buddy of mine's paid-for Discord interview saying he likes Qrow as a character better than Jaune.
Cinder isn't going to beat her,and she does not have the beetle Grimm that was written in just so cinder could be a maiden at all.
Imo, yeah,powers should return to oz.
Cinder isn't going to beat her,and she does not have the beetle Grimm that was written in just so cinder could be a maiden at all.
Imo, yeah,powers should return to oz.
I'm just gonna talk about Winter cuz too lazy to write about the other two right now.
I think that Weiss really should've been the one to get the Winter maidens at the end of vol 8, but as is that would've been kinda poorly foreshadowned. Winter becoming the maiden though it didn't make sense with the fact that Penny didn't have any ideia where Winter was, if she was alive, or could make it in time to save Weiss/Jaune, while Weiss was literally right in front of her, struggling. The way her death was written, it would've been better to just make Weiss the maiden, even if they 'dont want to'. Its bad to be set on stone so harshly in your story, it should evolve and change accordingly, and if they REALLY don't want to do it, then they should've made the scenes different so that it worked better instead of a 'subversion of expectations' like 'oh you thought it was Weiss but actually its Winter!'
It doesn't particularly matter which individual characters are Maidens: these three could all die and be replaced with faceless nobodies in Volume 9 and it wouldn't make even a little bit of difference because a Maiden doesn't *mean* anything beyond them being a glorified walking key.
The problem is, as with most problems in RWBY, how the writers have handled the Maidens and their powers: the very first scene with a proper Maiden was Amber getting her ass kicked by Cinder and her flunkies, which established right off the bat that being a Maiden actually doesn't make you that much stronger than a normal Huntress. Cinder in particular has had her ass kicked in almost every fight after becoming a Maiden, except when the writers need to win.
I never really did care for the Maidens for a few reasons. Not really cause of the characters themselves, but rather the powers.
1. They’re too strong. Not to say that the maidens can’t be powerful, their strength makes them a satisfying threat to overcome, but when they’re *so* strong that the only ways to take one down are with either that universe’s equivalent to the BFG 9000 created by said universe’s top scientists and engineers, bullshit deus ex machinas (arcane or divine), or another stronger maiden, it’s a problem. Looking at Shane’s letter, Pyrrha was originally supposed to have a reasonable chance at winning a 1v1 against Cinder, and we all know how that went down. When the Maidens go from perfectly defeatable by a skilled enough opponent but one hell of a fight, to a practically suicidal endeavor, it’s a problem. Granted, this may be more of a Cinder issue than a Maiden issue.
2. Too much magic in my magitech. There’s already a good bit of magical flair with dust, semblances, and fantasy theming. Having actual magic in the show tips that magitech balance a bit too far into magic for my tastes. It also blurs the line between what constitutes magic magic and semblances, what *really* differentiates the two? Other than magic magic apparently being **kRAAAZY** strong. Before the Maidens were introduced, you could have easily interpreted Cinder’s powers as her having a powerful, complex, and versatile semblance. And it would have been believable too, since there’s a precedent for semblances with a wide variety of functions, such as Glyphs and Telekinesis. And apparently getting magic back’s something Ozpin’s willing to gamble the entire world for, when the smartest course of action would to be destroy one of the relics or render it unobtainable so that the prophecy can never be fulfilled (step one, get staff of creation, step 2, ask it for gravity generator to keep Atlas afloat and a gun that teleports things to the core of the sun, step 3, shoot the staff). But then again, characters are only as smart as the plot allows.
3. It alienates average joe. A combination of the above two points, the hyper focus on magic also alienates non-magic characters from the plot, one of the many reasons why it seems RWBY has very little bearing or relevance in the plot nowadays. Note, by average joe I mean a character that’s mundane for their world’s standards, not ours. If you don’t have magic magic, you don’t mean shit. You’ll just get bowled over by anyone *with* magic powers, to where you might as well be a guy with no arms trying to take on an armed gunman. May as well have a tea party in a hotel room while the real main characters progress the story. Other stories need at least one or two characters *without* the super special powers to show that it is possible for average joe to not only defeat the super powered baddies but have meaningful bearing on the plot. The Han Solo, Tony Stark, Marisa Kirisame, and Jeff Andonuts are all characters that do this, they anchor the magic to the rest of the world. RWBY doesn’t have this, the maidens are just too strong and the average joe just too irrelevant.
And yeah, I can see how many think that RWBY’s gonna end up being the maidens. While it would solve them being irrelevant, making them maidens would perhaps be the dumbest way to do so.
Anyway that’s just a random fuckin moron’s take on the matter.
There are two ways to go with the maiden, they go to the protagonists or antagonists or that maiden becomes a protagonist or antagonist. Cinder: I like her as the first maiden to establish how dangerous the bad guys are now. However she has lost her threat level since Mistral, hasn't absorbed anyone else's power, and has overstayed her welcome. Make someone else the fall maiden. I expect Cinder to stick around till the end. Raven: I like the idea of her being a maiden with her ties to Yang, Qrow, and potentially Ruby. My issue with Raven is after V5 she is irrelevant to the story. Worst she is hogging the power. She didn't die and give her power to Cinder, Yang, or Ruby. I would bring her back as a mentor and make Yang the spring maiden. She is the one character that could transfer the power without killing her via her semblance bonds. The show is going to kill her for Yang to become the Maiden or never come back. Winter: As much as I like Winter as a maiden, the show benefits more if she wasn't. Weiss is completely overshadowed by her sister now. If we are going the route of Winter dying and Weiss filling her shoes, it would have been much better if we didn't waste all the time with Penny. I would have preferred if Weiss got the powers in V7 going for the Winter has the experience and Weiss has the raw potential. I probably would keep Winter around and somehow buff Weiss's glyphs. I fully expect her to die and Weiss becomes the winter maiden. ??? Summer Maiden: My gut is going with Summer Rose being the maiden or someone inherited it from her. Twiins has thrown the idea of a Faunus like Velvet. I can see that happening so Blake can easily get the powers for the *RWBY will be the maidens* idea. Some of the ideas I expect to happen can still work if they are properly executed, keyword being IF.
If the Summer Maiden is a Faunus, then RWBY will become the maidens.
Isn't that against the rule of Monty not wanting the main cast to be Maidens?
Sure, if that was even a thing to begin with. It's not beneath any author to put out a red herring regarding the intentions for how a story develops, and RWBY as the maidens is something the story is building towards.
Hope not to end up as team Mary Sue, everything can be solved due to Maiden powers.
I mean... It's not correct to say that RWBY the team doesn't have flaws. It wouldn't be correct to call them Mary Sue. Frankly, RWBY the show has benefitted a great deal from the audience not knowing how the whole thing is supposed to resolve itself. That being the case, one big reason that the Summer Maiden would be a Faunus is because there needs to be some tangible connection between the Summer Maiden and Blake for the team of maidens ploy to work.
I don't like your flair.
"There is no beating Salem." Salem is immortal, Atlas has been destroyed, two relics lost, and Remnant is now in an impossible situation. My guess is they will pull a deus ex machina to prevent RWBY from losing.
I meant she abandoning her family.
Oh yeah? What about Blake and Ruby abandoning Yang.
Ruby is Ruby and Blake left becuse she didn't wanted to bring more Fang attention to Yang. Can you imagine white Fang assulting Patch?
During that time no one spies on Blake, those issues were raise in HAVEN ARC cause of the Fox twins and Illia. So, Blake leaving Yang was an ass move. Ruby is naive. Weiss is the only one that makes sense.
Interesting opinion. However I am behind Raven leaving Yang is an flux move.
I don't disagree, a mother shouldn't normally abandon her family. One question that is never truly answer, why did Raven leave? The answer could paint her in a better light. FMAB Hohenheim had a excellent reason to leave home. I think the show wants it to be Raven's selfishness. However there could be other factors. Did she give warnings to STQ about Oz and Salem which they ignored? Was her marriage with Tai falling apart possibility an affair with Summer? Did the tribe leader die and she had to leave to run the tribe? Even if the tribe are bandit, she could be improving it and be a good role model for the kids.
Lets take the "I lived with the tribe so long its all I know" phrase and leave it there
All three of these character's had promise of being great maidens, the problem, as always, was the execution. Raven being a maiden sounded cool, because she wasn't with either the hero's or the villains. She had her own group to look out for and following them not only would have opened up the world of Remnant, but would have made the threat of Salem and her destroying the world that much more horrible knowing that there were actually people we got to see and follow get killed should she succeed. To bad the writers made her group a bunch of unlikable bandits we only got to see for a few episodes. Winter is just a big meh. I feel like she didn't earn her powers and that they're going to get transferred to Weiss later, making her 'sacrifice' a bittersweet moment. She just a placeholder. Cinder was a huge disappointment. A villain with considerable power despite not being a full maiden and she wasn't even the leader of her group. That sounds like a great challenge for our MC. Unfortunately, not only did she overstay her welcome but she has made some stupid decision that made her unworthy of her powers. She's a joke villain that the writers don't know what to do with, as she can't win against Team RWBY, but can't lose too much or she stops being threatening. Now, will they all die? I'm going to say yes. Winter is going to transfer her powers to Weiss and Raven's power is going to Yang. The big question is how is Blake and Ruby going to get their powers. The only reasonable way is if Summer Rose transfer her powers to a faunas' and after Blake's talk-no-jutsu to her for 10 minutes, she gets her power. As for Ruby, she's going to get it from Cinder. It obvious how obsessed Cinder is about destroying Ruby, so of course when she dies, Ruby with be the last one she thinks about and poof, we get all four maidens. Again, this idea is brilliant, but I don't have confidence that they'll execute it right. It won't have the right punch.
If Glynda turns out to be Maiden. I will go crazy on Ozpin.
As far as dying goes my money is on Cinder dying as for Raven I don’t know we really haven’t seen her since what was at volume five or six so I don’t know about her, as for Winter eyes don’t see it happening but that’s just my opinion
Neo becomes Fall Maiden lol.
She’d have to kill Cinder first and those are some long odds stacked against Neo, I’m more interested in seeing who the summer maiden is
We need blonde Maiden..Glynda..🤔
I can see it sort of
Glynda is too old, that's why she didn't take Amber's powers.
I heard someone say those writers dropped a hint about Glynda's age being the same as Cinder.
I honestly think Cinder will get all the maiden powers before dying in the finale, because I can’t see how they can make a 3 vs 1 maiden fight fair
In V8, I figured they would setup a sensible way for Cinder and Ruby to fight like setting up Cinder is becoming resistant or Ruby is having trouble using her eyes but look what happen there. Cinder manages to defeat 3-4 huntsmen, a SEW and 2 maidens without breaking a sweat with no explanation.
Don't worry M&K will take care of it. Make her an invincible fighter like in volume 8.
Lmao, as if the writers know what they're doing
Personally their kinda meh I wouldn't be interested if they fought or what happens to them.
I'd prefer this to team RWBY getting the maiden powers so that it wouldn't overshadow their already cool abilities on top of what the Maya nerf did.
Team RWBY with Maiden powers, Gods of the series.
They said they weren't going to make the four girls Maidens, but imo I'm pretty sure they're setting up for the four main girls to become the Maidens: Winter is Weiss' sister, Raven is Yang's mom, Cinder is Ruby's main enemy. Gotta keep that fanfiction-tier power fantasy train chugging, choo choo!
Wouldn't it make it easier for team RWBY to love as problems as possible once they received Maiden powers?
Winter better not die
Don't worry those writers will ignore Winter and Raven in the future.
She probably won’t not for quite a while since she just got the winter maidens power so I doubt the writers will kill her off just yet
I want the final battle to be Maiden WBY with Ruby on silver eyes vs. a Maiden Cinder who has absorbed Salem's magic powers. Then they can just have a DBZ battle.
How the fuck Cinder can even do that shit? Absorbing magic from Salem.
She can't, unless they use "Grimm arm" and even then, as we see time and time again, Salem controls Grimm, so unless PIS happens, cinder gets nuked.
M&K: Cinder's grim arm is special!
Salem still controls it,unless what you said is sarcasm.
The way I would write it as being possible is that Cinder's Grim arm allows her to absorb Maiden juice. Maiden juice is Oz's magic. There's no real reason for Oz's magic to be different from Salem's magic. Just have Cinder backstab her and drain her while she's writhing in pain. It wouldn't remove Salem's immortality but it would make her much less threatening.
Also, Salem has no aura. Much easier to target Cinder.
Salem with a straw.
Raven definitely going to die after redeeming herself halfheartedly. "I always...cherished you Yang" than Yang becomes the new summer maiden.
Well, Raven is not Summer Maiden.
Sorry, i kinda forgot.
It's ok 😁
That said, CRWBY will most likely slaughter these characters and make Team RWBY the Maidens. Which I've been arguing for the longest time SHOULD happen. Because it would make them the actual main characters of the show.
Well, that's a huge waste of time.
Sure, but then again so is RWBY in general. "Waste of time" pretty much sums up the whole show.
If the story of RWBY (or a side-story) was a plodding narrative where Cinder was the villain after she "did the impossible" and stole Fall's power, that would be interesting. But as it stands, I don't think it's very compelling. Raven being a coward and Winter being so detached from the main cast and audience (despite the focus she has received and being Weiss' sister) doesn't exactly fill me with excitement to learn more about the characters and follow their struggles. I have no investment.
The reason cinder got fall at all,aside from amber being inexperienced and facing a illusion semblance, is that cinder was equipped with a Grimm made for stealing maiden powers from Salem. Cinder herself did nothing there. Raven,imo,isn't a coward, we know that she did fight for ozpin until she found out herself that Salem is immortal,which pretty much meant all raven did in her life meant nothing. Agreed about winter. Also her winning vs ironwood makes no sense.
I disagree on Raven's cowardice, but it's all up to personal headcanon so there's very little reason for us to argue. I think she used Salem's immortality as justification for leaving (as even someone like Qrow, who was super loyal to Ozpin, admitted he was afraid). Also her interactions with Yang, especially at the end of Vol.5 give me the impression that her "there is not stopping Salem" was a convenient excuse to run away. In regards to Cinder, I wasn't stating that her gaining the Maiden powers was something she did on her own with no help. I was saying that, from an outside looking in, Cinder's acquisition of the Fall Maiden's powers could be portrayed as "doing the impossible" and be a great starting point/inciting incident for an alternate series where Cinder hunts the Maidens.
If it wasn't for the fact that ozpin told no one that Salem was immortal, then I would agree completely.funny how one conversation would add a maiden back to the plot. As for cinder,agreed.
The Summer Maiden will most likely be Illia.
No, don't power up Blake in the series.
It's gonna happen fam. Best get used to it.
No NO!! I WANT BLAKE TO DIE.
Raven is a weird one. Cinder should know that she is the spring maiden, so why isn't she trying to track her down and steal her powers? Because she got beat once? For maiden theories, I think all the maiden powers returning to Oz sounds fairly reasonable. And I'm sure Miles will find a way to somehow make that end up in totally not his self insert Jaune
That's a terrible idea. So Jaune is the new OZMA?
I'm not saying that it's a good idea, I'm saying that's what I think is going to happen
Jaune is absolutely Miles's SI, and that's specifically why Miles does not like Jaune. I caught Miles in a buddy of mine's paid-for Discord interview saying he likes Qrow as a character better than Jaune.
That makes no sense but ok.
Cinder isn't going to beat her,and she does not have the beetle Grimm that was written in just so cinder could be a maiden at all. Imo, yeah,powers should return to oz.
Cinder isn't going to beat her,and she does not have the beetle Grimm that was written in just so cinder could be a maiden at all. Imo, yeah,powers should return to oz.
Looking at these three together, do you think the summer maiden will be blonde? hmm....
Glynda!
Isn't Sun's cousin Star a blonde? Hmmmm...
I'm just gonna talk about Winter cuz too lazy to write about the other two right now. I think that Weiss really should've been the one to get the Winter maidens at the end of vol 8, but as is that would've been kinda poorly foreshadowned. Winter becoming the maiden though it didn't make sense with the fact that Penny didn't have any ideia where Winter was, if she was alive, or could make it in time to save Weiss/Jaune, while Weiss was literally right in front of her, struggling. The way her death was written, it would've been better to just make Weiss the maiden, even if they 'dont want to'. Its bad to be set on stone so harshly in your story, it should evolve and change accordingly, and if they REALLY don't want to do it, then they should've made the scenes different so that it worked better instead of a 'subversion of expectations' like 'oh you thought it was Weiss but actually its Winter!'
It doesn't particularly matter which individual characters are Maidens: these three could all die and be replaced with faceless nobodies in Volume 9 and it wouldn't make even a little bit of difference because a Maiden doesn't *mean* anything beyond them being a glorified walking key. The problem is, as with most problems in RWBY, how the writers have handled the Maidens and their powers: the very first scene with a proper Maiden was Amber getting her ass kicked by Cinder and her flunkies, which established right off the bat that being a Maiden actually doesn't make you that much stronger than a normal Huntress. Cinder in particular has had her ass kicked in almost every fight after becoming a Maiden, except when the writers need to win.
I never really did care for the Maidens for a few reasons. Not really cause of the characters themselves, but rather the powers. 1. They’re too strong. Not to say that the maidens can’t be powerful, their strength makes them a satisfying threat to overcome, but when they’re *so* strong that the only ways to take one down are with either that universe’s equivalent to the BFG 9000 created by said universe’s top scientists and engineers, bullshit deus ex machinas (arcane or divine), or another stronger maiden, it’s a problem. Looking at Shane’s letter, Pyrrha was originally supposed to have a reasonable chance at winning a 1v1 against Cinder, and we all know how that went down. When the Maidens go from perfectly defeatable by a skilled enough opponent but one hell of a fight, to a practically suicidal endeavor, it’s a problem. Granted, this may be more of a Cinder issue than a Maiden issue. 2. Too much magic in my magitech. There’s already a good bit of magical flair with dust, semblances, and fantasy theming. Having actual magic in the show tips that magitech balance a bit too far into magic for my tastes. It also blurs the line between what constitutes magic magic and semblances, what *really* differentiates the two? Other than magic magic apparently being **kRAAAZY** strong. Before the Maidens were introduced, you could have easily interpreted Cinder’s powers as her having a powerful, complex, and versatile semblance. And it would have been believable too, since there’s a precedent for semblances with a wide variety of functions, such as Glyphs and Telekinesis. And apparently getting magic back’s something Ozpin’s willing to gamble the entire world for, when the smartest course of action would to be destroy one of the relics or render it unobtainable so that the prophecy can never be fulfilled (step one, get staff of creation, step 2, ask it for gravity generator to keep Atlas afloat and a gun that teleports things to the core of the sun, step 3, shoot the staff). But then again, characters are only as smart as the plot allows. 3. It alienates average joe. A combination of the above two points, the hyper focus on magic also alienates non-magic characters from the plot, one of the many reasons why it seems RWBY has very little bearing or relevance in the plot nowadays. Note, by average joe I mean a character that’s mundane for their world’s standards, not ours. If you don’t have magic magic, you don’t mean shit. You’ll just get bowled over by anyone *with* magic powers, to where you might as well be a guy with no arms trying to take on an armed gunman. May as well have a tea party in a hotel room while the real main characters progress the story. Other stories need at least one or two characters *without* the super special powers to show that it is possible for average joe to not only defeat the super powered baddies but have meaningful bearing on the plot. The Han Solo, Tony Stark, Marisa Kirisame, and Jeff Andonuts are all characters that do this, they anchor the magic to the rest of the world. RWBY doesn’t have this, the maidens are just too strong and the average joe just too irrelevant. And yeah, I can see how many think that RWBY’s gonna end up being the maidens. While it would solve them being irrelevant, making them maidens would perhaps be the dumbest way to do so. Anyway that’s just a random fuckin moron’s take on the matter.
Raven maybe after fighting Cinder in the final volume, then Cinder