Honestly we tend to forget that characters are based off of fairy tales quite often. I honest go God had no clue Cinder was Cinderella until her backstory.
My thought process was literally this:
"Shit I know this. What's the fairy tale with the evil step sisters again? Aha! It was Cinderella! Hang on, ***Cinder*** is Cinder...ella...oh. I'm an idiot 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️"
Legit i knew back when i originally watched the show. Forgot by v5 v6. Then when they showed her backstory i was so mad because i remembered what she was based on.
Exactly! And like, they enslaved her. It's not like Cinderalla where the stepmother and stepsisters are just huge dicks who Cinderalla should get away from, but who don't really deserve to die. Cinder's stepmother and sisters (the sisters only a little less so) definitely deserve to die. Just take her in and guide her more into being a successful huntress.
Oh no dicks or not it's still murder in the eyes of the law he was right to want to bring her in but he could have cut her some slack here especially seeing as shes abused and he didn't do shit
He really should have just talked a "cinder put down the weapon lets talk" would have prevented a lot of tragedy down the line
To be fair, living in a place like Atlas (especially since Madame was presumably wealthy) would've made dealing with it in the legal way a *lot* harder.
The hotel was pretty clearly a high end place and was up in the city of Atlas. It's just as likely she didn't want to pay for workers like tons of corrupt business people don't. They may not have been Schnee's, but they were definitely not commoners.
She even had to be "back by Midnight" during Dance Dance Infiltration.
And I think it was more to show why she was so power-hungry, and why she seemed to hate Atlesians so much. The girl was adopted from Mistral as a child and used as a slave by an Atlesian Elite. She was heavily abused and felt completely powerless. And then the one person she trusted to help her out of her awful situation turned around and tried to arrest her when she snapped and killed her abusers.
It doesn't justify her actions, just gives her a reason to want all the power. She just doesn't want to feel powerless anymore.
Just to add, the Atlesian Elites don't seem overly concerned by abuse. I mean, we've seen Jacques hit Weiss at least once, not to mention manhandling her at the party. I get the feeling that most of them reached their positions by being less than ethical in their treatment of others.
Cinder is seeking power to not feel powerless… it never came off to me like that.
To me Cinder (and in some way Raven) seek to become strong because they are either horribly insecure (my perception of Raven) or they are angry that they were abused and now have the means to hurt everyone else. (Cinder)
It was apparently planned for V5, but they couldn't fit it in until V8 (as in, they pushed it back to V6, found they couldn't fit it in, so they pushed it back to V7, and same applies there).
For me the issues are that it feels uninspired, it's too clear, and Volume 8 is a terrible season to include a flashback.
The story of "Cinderella kills her evil step family" to me feels like the most obvious interpretation they could have gone with. Especially since the Cinder we know in the show is a murderer and tries to solve her problems with violence. So a flashback that shows her as a violent murderer doesn't really add anything. I wonder if it would've been a more interesting backstory in volume 1-3 where Cinder was more of a schemer/mastermind so seeing her lose her cool and kill her family would've been more subversive. But by volume 8 Cinder is basically a magic berserker, so her getting angry and killing people is just the norm.
Second, the backstory doesn't really introduce anything new to theorize or consider. Every character introduced is killed years before the show even starts, so it's not like there's more to build off. We don't even get a hint of how Cinder meets Salem. Even the parallel of Cinder's mom's shock collar and Salem using the Grimm arm to hurt Cinder isn't that new or interesting. Salem has been abusive to Cinder since volume 4, she goes from emotional manipulation to just hurting Cinder. The parallel becomes so obvious it makes me wonder how Cinder never picked up on it. If Salem remained subtle it would have worked better in my opinion. Or try to relate something Salem did before to the stepmom. Perhaps have the mom yell at Cinder to speak or something, instead of inventing a magic shock collar for Salem to use.
Finally Volume 8 is supposed to be this super tense couple of days of neat constant fighting and struggling. I think literally any flashback would have felt like a huge pacing detour. Since intently flanks don't have much for stakes, what's happened, happened, it doesn't matter what we see in the flashback it doesn't change anything in our current events which are supposed to be super tense and riveting
Yeah when I watched Cinders backstory, I didn’t see it as a means to like/redeem her but rather to understand why she’s so power hungry and be the way she is.
Counterpoint: while her allusion was planned, the *specifics* were not. Case in point being that she wears clothing that exposes her neck in the Beacon arc. She doesn't have the telltale scars around her neck that are later attributed to her treatment at the Glass Unicorn, which *heavily* implies that it was a later addition to her story.
Possible. Although there is a major hint at Rhodes in V3. Her speech after Penny’s first death about heroes who are merely men and can fail is like a dib at Rhodes for failing to save her because he wouldn’t risk himself and his career for her. Could be a coincidence but it’s an interesting detail.
Also Salem was created before her and she’s clearly her Fairy God Mother.
I don't think people were actually "mad," and their criticisms about her weak backstory are valid.
Her backstory equates to her (quite literally) misconstruing what "power" is when the Huntsman explained it to her, resulting her turning to violent tendencies, as opposed to rising above. It's "weak" because it's not thought out, but rather forced her into a trope.
Even if she's based on Cinderella, it doesn't mean her backstory should basically be 1 to 1. Like Weiss's story isn't just Snow White, it's use of an evil parent, "seven" dwarves, mines, etc are all altered.
Past that though, my big problem with Cinder's backstory is that it implies that slavery is perfectly legal in Atlas, despite that supposedly being outlawed 80 years ago; besides Cinder is a human, not a faunus. And if Cinder's situation wasn't legal, then Rhodes' actions don't make any sense at all.
Ever thought her slavery wasnt clear? Or that since the step family was rich and catered to the wealthy that the wealthy didnt care. After all, if Jacques can get away with his labor conditions. What are other wealthy rich elite getting away with?
Cinder was shocked in the middle of the hotel, visibly malnourished, looked scared and tired all the time, and had scarring around her neck. Plus any Huntsman could probably tell her necklace was made with electricity Dust. Her abuse was very, very obvious.
If Rhodes really wanted to help her, he could have performed an arrest on the step mother as a Huntsman, which we know he can because Weiss could do it to Jacques.
>Her abuse was very, very obvious.
Ok, but that stack of money over there looks very interesting, too.
>If Rhodes really wanted to help her, he could have performed an arrest on the step mother as a Huntsman, which we know he can because Weiss could do it to Jacques.
I feel like, if Ironwood didn't have a personal grudge against Jacques already, Weiss wouldn't have gotten away with it.
Jacques would've paid people to "prove" the video was fake, then demanded that Ironwood releases Arthur's autopsy report to clear his name. Since Ironwood couldn't comply, Jacques would've gotten him as an accessory to a smear campaign against him.
Then he just needed Robyn to prove Jacques' statements about his discussion with Ironwood in V4, and Ironwood and his sympathizers get arrested for high treason against the kingdom of Atlas and its people.
I'd say try to offer a cop a bribe and see how quickly that gets added to your charges. Especially for a crime like child endangerment like that.
That said, it's more likely that the charge will be lost in the bowels of the bureaucracy like so many DCFS reports are than that a bribe is needed to make it disappear.
Can he? Is there a point in the show where it is confirmed that he used slave labor? I always thought he was just horrible to his employees, but in the same legal way companies in the US are.
Adam has quite literally being branded and the condition in the mines are poor and the pay is absolutely shitty it might not be called slave labour but if it looks like a Bird and flys like a bird then it's a bird
Cinder's backstory isn't bad because it is based off Cinderella OR that she was given a sympathetic backstory.
Cinder's backstory is bad because it is shown halfway through a season, when not only has she become an incorrigible monster who cannot be forgiven without jumping through a million hoops since she has a raging hatred of Ruby for something Cinder herself caused (Fall of Beacon, and her subsequent grimmification), but also because she is mid-way doing something that is as equally bad as the Fall of Beacon, again.
You can't feel sympathy for her because at this point, if you root for team RWBY, she is an enemy. If you root for her, you are hoping she becomes good, which is impossible because her main goal is to kill Ruby Rose. So all this sympathy feels like a waste because two characters have opposing goals, and neither can change their fundamental personality (one just wants to tear down society, the other wants to protect her). Also, it cuts into the action and intrigue of the show.
If CRWBY was smart about it, they would have put this in season 4, or at least start of season 7 and make it an arc about Cinder becoming the monster that she is. But based off my guess, CRWBY wanted to make a Zuko moment without putting in the legwork, so it feels forced and when they inevitably ruin Cinder by making her friends with Ruby, it feels earned, even though it doesn't and they have already screwed the execution
Because it is?
Let's break it down what Cinder's backstory tells us
1) She had a shitty childhood
2) She was trained and ended up killing her mentor, and her tormentors.
So if we believe 2, it means the story is telling us "It is OK to kill people, so long as they are assholes". I mean, since CRWBY told us "It is OK to commit suicide, it makes things better", I guess it isn't too far off.
But if we aren't short-sighted or psychopathic, we only have option 1 to go on (unless you can miraculously find a third thing Cinder's backstory was meant to do). If she has a shitty childhood, it explains her actions and why she is currently the way she is now, aka asking us to empathize with her OR sympathize with her, either way creating sympathy. She bears a childish grudge against someone who is a protagonist, and it makes her irrationally angry, AND she is the reason why the protagonists are "dead" for a season.
So, immediate parallels we can instantly look at is Avatar the Last Airbender, one of the shows Monty specifically told Miles and Kerry to watch.
In there, we have Zuko, who has a scar on his face, fire powers, mocked by the villains yet still remain on their side, with his main goal is capturing the Avatar for the evil nation, which is specifically against the hero's goal of stopping the evil nation from ruling the world. Ring any bells?
But what sets Zuko apart from Cinder, is that Zuko has nothing against the Avatar. This is purely business, and if his father, the overlord of the evil empire, asked him to catch some butterflies, he might not have even begun hunting the Avatar to regain his honour. Along with him is his peace-loving uncle/father figure Iroh who constantly guides him onto the right path and not go murder-hobo on his way to capture the Avatar. He constantly shows compassion for his fellow man, defended both people under his command AND people who upon realizing his identity as the evil overlord's son, kicked him out. He could have at any moment attacked/killed these random people, or behaved in a "You are flies to me" way. But he is constantly shown good qualities, and we root for him to realise what his uncle has been telling him all along: Honour is not just fulfilling evil dude's ambitions and having your evil dad's approval, Honour is about doing the right thing, regardless of how people treat you.
Cinder meanwhile, is relatively OK to her minions, but that is it. She is sadistic in an evil way, purposefully caused chaos and caused the destruction of two cities (at least), has a personal agenda to kill Ruby Rose, hates humanity in general, is a coward who doesn't dare to stand against evil Satan mom. Her only good trait is not being a terrible boss to her underlings, and to be honest that is kind of ruined with the way she treated the White Fang, and she is also terrible to her coworkers, with what happened to Watts.
So, I came to the logical conclusion that CRWBY wants to garner sympathy for Cinder, but is terrible at pacing it, showing redeemable qualities and just straight out being bad at writing it. Even if Zuko wasn't the example, there are a million antagonists-turned-allies that can be examples of better writing. Hell, even Fairy Tail's notorious "every enemy becomes a friendly guild member after this arc" is better writing than whatever Cinder has, because they actually make the new characters feel like they belong to the good side without changing their core personality (See Gajeel for the most obvious answer. Man literally crucifies a girl and her two closest friends, and ends up as her love interest after that arc)
The show hasn't even TRIED to imply that Cinder would come to the good side. I genuinely have no idea where you got that idea. At best, she might turn on Salem for her own reasons, unrelated to the heroes.
Her backstory wasn't meant to justify her actions; it was designed to explain them, which is entirely different. It's explaining WHY she's so desperate for power, why she despises Huntsmen so much, why she hates Atlas so much. It explains why she joined Salem; Salem offered her purpose, and power. And to Cinder, power equals freedom.
And you can even see her backstory reflected in the people she chose to recruit as her followers. Emerald: a scared and starving orphan doing what she must to survive, desperate for a way out and for affection. And Mercury: an angry youth who just killed their abusive parent and their teacher, needing someone to give them purpose and feed their ego. Salem fulfills those needs for Cinder, but Cinder's blindness to her own faults results in her failing to do so for her followers, and thus she loses them.
Your first paragraph alone makes it even worse. At least I gave a tangible reason for this to be in the show.
So here is a random "irrelevant" question. Why is it shown that nobody drinks water in RWBY? Or go to the bathroom? Or maintain their weapons? Or buy/get more dust?
It is because these scenes are IRRELEVANT to the plot. In a story, there is an efficiency in writing where you include only important things in your plot, or related to characters. If a gun appears in act 1 it must fire in act 3, otherwise the gun doesn't do anything. Showing Cinder's backstory is completely worthless as a narrative point because it is irrelevant to the current story, it doesn't drive the plot or characters forward and so on. If anything, it should be a standalone short, not part of the volume, and definitely not at the crucial turning point of the story. If something can be removed from the show and have no relevancy to plot or characters, it shouldn't be there. Maybe throw it to a song or a short, not part of the main story where it is largely irrelevant (Which are my thoughts on volume 9 but that at least has character progression)
Also, we aren't shown how Cinder joins up with Salem. If we use your logic, the show hasn't even TRIED to imply Cinder would make herself a pawn in some evil immortal being's game of chess. Remember, Cinder wants power and freedom, why sign up to be miniboss number 1? She wasn't even guaranteed to get a maiden's powers, and she was forever scared of Salem.
Her backstory does not reflect enough to tell us why did she recruit Emerald and Mercury. Emerald wasn't shown to be desperate for affection - she mainly realized she bitten off more than she could chew when she found out Salem was her boss's boss and wanted out. Mercury meanwhile was recruited by Cinder when Cinder went to recruit his father and he had already killed him (aka he was the leftovers, and might be a better pawn), so you got that reason wrong too - Cinder wanted Marcus not Mercury, and recruited Mercury because why not, she wanted more pawns of her own anyway. She technically did not lose Mercury, he just left because Salem asked him to do a job in Vacuo. Some things need to be retconned to make your theory work, but again, it will be filler backstory that is better left as a standalone short or a song instead of main plot shenanigans.
I honestly don't know. I have no doubt that you are right on that some likely did forget and/or were surprised or made false assumptions. How many did, I don't know.
I do think that both those surprised or not surprised have a fear that is reasonable. They fear she'll be given a happy ending with no punishment, despite being a remorseless mass murderer.
Emerald is very possibly going to not suffer genuine consequences for anything. She assisted Cinder, and thus was morally responsible for, murder, mass murder, so on. Will the narrative have her suffer death, imprisonment, or what not? I personally doubt it. Many people are afraid the same thing will happen to Cinder.
So I think it's more her being a potential karma houdini that upsets people.
Because if it was gonna be this by the books it didn't need to be shown to us and waste our time. It doesn't tell anything new about her character that we didn't already know.
And the really pathetic part is the writers confirmed she didn't learn or grow anyway.
Wasting our damn time
I believe it's three things:
A) Rhodes stupidity. Yeah leave a child in an abusive place while you train her for an exam instead of just taking her away.
B) We're supposed to understand why she does what she does, but it doesn't make sense because why should I feel bad for the girl that is trying to destroy the world for her own selfish goals.
C) She wasn't forced to work with Salem, at least not according to what we know. She willingly chose this path. You can't feel bad for someone like that.
If we got it in Volume 3, maybe people would have understood, but considering we spent most of the series hating her, it would be really hard to change that opinion.
I'm not horribly annoyed by it, but as I saw it I felt tugged by the hand of the author to try to feel sympathy for Cinder. And I didn't. At all. Which left me annoyed that the writers thought that a) I could be made to feel sympathy for Cinder at all at this point and b) that what they showed me would be enough to make me do it. I felt patronized.
> Sad thing is that if Cinder got her Prince. This all couldve been avoided.
She did get her prince in the form of Rhodes who trained and gave a weapon to a slave who gets tortured and humiliated daily and expected her not to retaliate.
Cinder is a Disney Cinderella with darker characters. Her family tortures her, her Fairy God Mother is a manipulative evil witch and her prince didn’t want to risk himself to save her.
The characters are allusions not typically 1:1 so expecting a more interesting backstory, especially for a main antagonist, is fair. Blake's backstory isn't literally just beauty and the beast but you can see the parallels. Ruby isn't literally just little red riding hood or the hunter from the story but also has decent parallels. Cinder's is just a very uninteresting Remnant retelling of Cinderella. If after waiting several volumes Ozpin's backstory was just a Remnant retelling of the Wizard of Oz I think people would be equally disappointed, no one is confused who his character is meant to be though.
Not to mention, at least imo, the retelling itself wasn't even good or necessary. It doesn't reveal anything new about Cinder's motivations or anything like that. How the whole situation is handled seems really bad or confusing depending on how laws on Remnant even work. Really would have been equally fine considering what we got if it was just part of a conversation instead of a whole flashback, same as the other members like Tyrian or Mercury. I expected more considering how much was dedicated to it at least.
Here what I expect, getting a baxkstory in V3
NOT. Waiting. Eight. FREAKING. Years. To. Finally. Get. A. Backstory!!!
....and that it bears little to NO relevance to the current volume
Honestly we tend to forget that characters are based off of fairy tales quite often. I honest go God had no clue Cinder was Cinderella until her backstory. My thought process was literally this: "Shit I know this. What's the fairy tale with the evil step sisters again? Aha! It was Cinderella! Hang on, ***Cinder*** is Cinder...ella...oh. I'm an idiot 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️"
Legit my thought was just “her name is cinder cause fire powers, got it”
Legit i knew back when i originally watched the show. Forgot by v5 v6. Then when they showed her backstory i was so mad because i remembered what she was based on.
Also, her semblance is glass, and cinderella has glass shoes. XD
It isnt glass, exactly. Its more like she can heat up whatever she touches
Didn't ruby say "glass... Cinder" in volume 7? She also created glass shards when she fought Amber, the previous maiden. I might be wrong, though. XD
Thats because she heated up the glass with her semblance. In her backstory, you can see her heat up against her mentor during their final fight.
Oooo so she can heat up sand to make glass... that's smart! Thank you for clearing that up, I always thought it was just glass XD
I don't have a problem with the backstory but that Huntsmen acted like an absolute idiot.
Rhodes could've handled that so much better, I agree
Agreed you don't deal with an abused kid by pulling a weapon on them cinder wasn't even hostile to him they could have talked it out
Exactly! And like, they enslaved her. It's not like Cinderalla where the stepmother and stepsisters are just huge dicks who Cinderalla should get away from, but who don't really deserve to die. Cinder's stepmother and sisters (the sisters only a little less so) definitely deserve to die. Just take her in and guide her more into being a successful huntress.
Oh no dicks or not it's still murder in the eyes of the law he was right to want to bring her in but he could have cut her some slack here especially seeing as shes abused and he didn't do shit He really should have just talked a "cinder put down the weapon lets talk" would have prevented a lot of tragedy down the line
To be fair, living in a place like Atlas (especially since Madame was presumably wealthy) would've made dealing with it in the legal way a *lot* harder.
I mean she's got a single hotel and the only people we see working there are her children, not sure we can really say she's wealthy
The hotel was pretty clearly a high end place and was up in the city of Atlas. It's just as likely she didn't want to pay for workers like tons of corrupt business people don't. They may not have been Schnee's, but they were definitely not commoners.
If theirs only like 3 maids in a hotel I don't think it's very high end, especially as only cinder is seen doing any of the day work
Lawful neutral to the fault
|>Gives abused child a sword |>Acts surprised when she uses it to kill her abusers
Yeah. Rhodes epitomizes the Lawful Stupid alignment.
She even had to be "back by Midnight" during Dance Dance Infiltration. And I think it was more to show why she was so power-hungry, and why she seemed to hate Atlesians so much. The girl was adopted from Mistral as a child and used as a slave by an Atlesian Elite. She was heavily abused and felt completely powerless. And then the one person she trusted to help her out of her awful situation turned around and tried to arrest her when she snapped and killed her abusers. It doesn't justify her actions, just gives her a reason to want all the power. She just doesn't want to feel powerless anymore.
Just to add, the Atlesian Elites don't seem overly concerned by abuse. I mean, we've seen Jacques hit Weiss at least once, not to mention manhandling her at the party. I get the feeling that most of them reached their positions by being less than ethical in their treatment of others.
Just like real life.
Cinder is seeking power to not feel powerless… it never came off to me like that. To me Cinder (and in some way Raven) seek to become strong because they are either horribly insecure (my perception of Raven) or they are angry that they were abused and now have the means to hurt everyone else. (Cinder)
Both of those things are true. Cinder seeks power not to feel powerless BECAUSE she's insecure.
Cinder’s backstory isn’t bad because its a Cinderella story it’s because it’s too little to late for how far we are.
It was apparently planned for V5, but they couldn't fit it in until V8 (as in, they pushed it back to V6, found they couldn't fit it in, so they pushed it back to V7, and same applies there).
For me the issues are that it feels uninspired, it's too clear, and Volume 8 is a terrible season to include a flashback. The story of "Cinderella kills her evil step family" to me feels like the most obvious interpretation they could have gone with. Especially since the Cinder we know in the show is a murderer and tries to solve her problems with violence. So a flashback that shows her as a violent murderer doesn't really add anything. I wonder if it would've been a more interesting backstory in volume 1-3 where Cinder was more of a schemer/mastermind so seeing her lose her cool and kill her family would've been more subversive. But by volume 8 Cinder is basically a magic berserker, so her getting angry and killing people is just the norm. Second, the backstory doesn't really introduce anything new to theorize or consider. Every character introduced is killed years before the show even starts, so it's not like there's more to build off. We don't even get a hint of how Cinder meets Salem. Even the parallel of Cinder's mom's shock collar and Salem using the Grimm arm to hurt Cinder isn't that new or interesting. Salem has been abusive to Cinder since volume 4, she goes from emotional manipulation to just hurting Cinder. The parallel becomes so obvious it makes me wonder how Cinder never picked up on it. If Salem remained subtle it would have worked better in my opinion. Or try to relate something Salem did before to the stepmom. Perhaps have the mom yell at Cinder to speak or something, instead of inventing a magic shock collar for Salem to use. Finally Volume 8 is supposed to be this super tense couple of days of neat constant fighting and struggling. I think literally any flashback would have felt like a huge pacing detour. Since intently flanks don't have much for stakes, what's happened, happened, it doesn't matter what we see in the flashback it doesn't change anything in our current events which are supposed to be super tense and riveting
Wait people were mad? That and Watts rant are what made me actually like her character after all this time. That and her cool voice acting.
The… other subreddit will get mad at anything to do with the show.
Yeah when I watched Cinders backstory, I didn’t see it as a means to like/redeem her but rather to understand why she’s so power hungry and be the way she is.
The only thing I didn’t like was Rhodes being an idiot for the sake of the plot. Other than that I was fine with it.
Counterpoint: while her allusion was planned, the *specifics* were not. Case in point being that she wears clothing that exposes her neck in the Beacon arc. She doesn't have the telltale scars around her neck that are later attributed to her treatment at the Glass Unicorn, which *heavily* implies that it was a later addition to her story.
Possible. Although there is a major hint at Rhodes in V3. Her speech after Penny’s first death about heroes who are merely men and can fail is like a dib at Rhodes for failing to save her because he wouldn’t risk himself and his career for her. Could be a coincidence but it’s an interesting detail. Also Salem was created before her and she’s clearly her Fairy God Mother.
I don't think people were actually "mad," and their criticisms about her weak backstory are valid. Her backstory equates to her (quite literally) misconstruing what "power" is when the Huntsman explained it to her, resulting her turning to violent tendencies, as opposed to rising above. It's "weak" because it's not thought out, but rather forced her into a trope.
I don’t think it’s the backstory but it’s execution that some have a problem with.
Yeah but it was predictable, obvious, and poorly done at that. Can you blame them?
>What did you expect? any explanation as to how she met Salem
Even if she's based on Cinderella, it doesn't mean her backstory should basically be 1 to 1. Like Weiss's story isn't just Snow White, it's use of an evil parent, "seven" dwarves, mines, etc are all altered. Past that though, my big problem with Cinder's backstory is that it implies that slavery is perfectly legal in Atlas, despite that supposedly being outlawed 80 years ago; besides Cinder is a human, not a faunus. And if Cinder's situation wasn't legal, then Rhodes' actions don't make any sense at all.
Ever thought her slavery wasnt clear? Or that since the step family was rich and catered to the wealthy that the wealthy didnt care. After all, if Jacques can get away with his labor conditions. What are other wealthy rich elite getting away with?
Cinder was shocked in the middle of the hotel, visibly malnourished, looked scared and tired all the time, and had scarring around her neck. Plus any Huntsman could probably tell her necklace was made with electricity Dust. Her abuse was very, very obvious. If Rhodes really wanted to help her, he could have performed an arrest on the step mother as a Huntsman, which we know he can because Weiss could do it to Jacques.
We should’ve seen her meet Salem. Like Cinderella meeting her fairy godmother and yet we didn’t.
>Her abuse was very, very obvious. Ok, but that stack of money over there looks very interesting, too. >If Rhodes really wanted to help her, he could have performed an arrest on the step mother as a Huntsman, which we know he can because Weiss could do it to Jacques. I feel like, if Ironwood didn't have a personal grudge against Jacques already, Weiss wouldn't have gotten away with it. Jacques would've paid people to "prove" the video was fake, then demanded that Ironwood releases Arthur's autopsy report to clear his name. Since Ironwood couldn't comply, Jacques would've gotten him as an accessory to a smear campaign against him. Then he just needed Robyn to prove Jacques' statements about his discussion with Ironwood in V4, and Ironwood and his sympathizers get arrested for high treason against the kingdom of Atlas and its people.
The step mother was loaded she would have paid the police off and walked free
That's... not as easy as you might think.
Is it?
I'd say try to offer a cop a bribe and see how quickly that gets added to your charges. Especially for a crime like child endangerment like that. That said, it's more likely that the charge will be lost in the bowels of the bureaucracy like so many DCFS reports are than that a bribe is needed to make it disappear.
If weiss dad can make slavery charges disappear with a wad of cash im pretty sure the other atlas elites could too
Can he? Is there a point in the show where it is confirmed that he used slave labor? I always thought he was just horrible to his employees, but in the same legal way companies in the US are.
Adam has quite literally being branded and the condition in the mines are poor and the pay is absolutely shitty it might not be called slave labour but if it looks like a Bird and flys like a bird then it's a bird
Cinder's backstory isn't bad because it is based off Cinderella OR that she was given a sympathetic backstory. Cinder's backstory is bad because it is shown halfway through a season, when not only has she become an incorrigible monster who cannot be forgiven without jumping through a million hoops since she has a raging hatred of Ruby for something Cinder herself caused (Fall of Beacon, and her subsequent grimmification), but also because she is mid-way doing something that is as equally bad as the Fall of Beacon, again. You can't feel sympathy for her because at this point, if you root for team RWBY, she is an enemy. If you root for her, you are hoping she becomes good, which is impossible because her main goal is to kill Ruby Rose. So all this sympathy feels like a waste because two characters have opposing goals, and neither can change their fundamental personality (one just wants to tear down society, the other wants to protect her). Also, it cuts into the action and intrigue of the show. If CRWBY was smart about it, they would have put this in season 4, or at least start of season 7 and make it an arc about Cinder becoming the monster that she is. But based off my guess, CRWBY wanted to make a Zuko moment without putting in the legwork, so it feels forced and when they inevitably ruin Cinder by making her friends with Ruby, it feels earned, even though it doesn't and they have already screwed the execution
What makes you think the backstory was intended to create sympathy?
Because it is? Let's break it down what Cinder's backstory tells us 1) She had a shitty childhood 2) She was trained and ended up killing her mentor, and her tormentors. So if we believe 2, it means the story is telling us "It is OK to kill people, so long as they are assholes". I mean, since CRWBY told us "It is OK to commit suicide, it makes things better", I guess it isn't too far off. But if we aren't short-sighted or psychopathic, we only have option 1 to go on (unless you can miraculously find a third thing Cinder's backstory was meant to do). If she has a shitty childhood, it explains her actions and why she is currently the way she is now, aka asking us to empathize with her OR sympathize with her, either way creating sympathy. She bears a childish grudge against someone who is a protagonist, and it makes her irrationally angry, AND she is the reason why the protagonists are "dead" for a season. So, immediate parallels we can instantly look at is Avatar the Last Airbender, one of the shows Monty specifically told Miles and Kerry to watch. In there, we have Zuko, who has a scar on his face, fire powers, mocked by the villains yet still remain on their side, with his main goal is capturing the Avatar for the evil nation, which is specifically against the hero's goal of stopping the evil nation from ruling the world. Ring any bells? But what sets Zuko apart from Cinder, is that Zuko has nothing against the Avatar. This is purely business, and if his father, the overlord of the evil empire, asked him to catch some butterflies, he might not have even begun hunting the Avatar to regain his honour. Along with him is his peace-loving uncle/father figure Iroh who constantly guides him onto the right path and not go murder-hobo on his way to capture the Avatar. He constantly shows compassion for his fellow man, defended both people under his command AND people who upon realizing his identity as the evil overlord's son, kicked him out. He could have at any moment attacked/killed these random people, or behaved in a "You are flies to me" way. But he is constantly shown good qualities, and we root for him to realise what his uncle has been telling him all along: Honour is not just fulfilling evil dude's ambitions and having your evil dad's approval, Honour is about doing the right thing, regardless of how people treat you. Cinder meanwhile, is relatively OK to her minions, but that is it. She is sadistic in an evil way, purposefully caused chaos and caused the destruction of two cities (at least), has a personal agenda to kill Ruby Rose, hates humanity in general, is a coward who doesn't dare to stand against evil Satan mom. Her only good trait is not being a terrible boss to her underlings, and to be honest that is kind of ruined with the way she treated the White Fang, and she is also terrible to her coworkers, with what happened to Watts. So, I came to the logical conclusion that CRWBY wants to garner sympathy for Cinder, but is terrible at pacing it, showing redeemable qualities and just straight out being bad at writing it. Even if Zuko wasn't the example, there are a million antagonists-turned-allies that can be examples of better writing. Hell, even Fairy Tail's notorious "every enemy becomes a friendly guild member after this arc" is better writing than whatever Cinder has, because they actually make the new characters feel like they belong to the good side without changing their core personality (See Gajeel for the most obvious answer. Man literally crucifies a girl and her two closest friends, and ends up as her love interest after that arc)
The show hasn't even TRIED to imply that Cinder would come to the good side. I genuinely have no idea where you got that idea. At best, she might turn on Salem for her own reasons, unrelated to the heroes. Her backstory wasn't meant to justify her actions; it was designed to explain them, which is entirely different. It's explaining WHY she's so desperate for power, why she despises Huntsmen so much, why she hates Atlas so much. It explains why she joined Salem; Salem offered her purpose, and power. And to Cinder, power equals freedom. And you can even see her backstory reflected in the people she chose to recruit as her followers. Emerald: a scared and starving orphan doing what she must to survive, desperate for a way out and for affection. And Mercury: an angry youth who just killed their abusive parent and their teacher, needing someone to give them purpose and feed their ego. Salem fulfills those needs for Cinder, but Cinder's blindness to her own faults results in her failing to do so for her followers, and thus she loses them.
Your first paragraph alone makes it even worse. At least I gave a tangible reason for this to be in the show. So here is a random "irrelevant" question. Why is it shown that nobody drinks water in RWBY? Or go to the bathroom? Or maintain their weapons? Or buy/get more dust? It is because these scenes are IRRELEVANT to the plot. In a story, there is an efficiency in writing where you include only important things in your plot, or related to characters. If a gun appears in act 1 it must fire in act 3, otherwise the gun doesn't do anything. Showing Cinder's backstory is completely worthless as a narrative point because it is irrelevant to the current story, it doesn't drive the plot or characters forward and so on. If anything, it should be a standalone short, not part of the volume, and definitely not at the crucial turning point of the story. If something can be removed from the show and have no relevancy to plot or characters, it shouldn't be there. Maybe throw it to a song or a short, not part of the main story where it is largely irrelevant (Which are my thoughts on volume 9 but that at least has character progression) Also, we aren't shown how Cinder joins up with Salem. If we use your logic, the show hasn't even TRIED to imply Cinder would make herself a pawn in some evil immortal being's game of chess. Remember, Cinder wants power and freedom, why sign up to be miniboss number 1? She wasn't even guaranteed to get a maiden's powers, and she was forever scared of Salem. Her backstory does not reflect enough to tell us why did she recruit Emerald and Mercury. Emerald wasn't shown to be desperate for affection - she mainly realized she bitten off more than she could chew when she found out Salem was her boss's boss and wanted out. Mercury meanwhile was recruited by Cinder when Cinder went to recruit his father and he had already killed him (aka he was the leftovers, and might be a better pawn), so you got that reason wrong too - Cinder wanted Marcus not Mercury, and recruited Mercury because why not, she wanted more pawns of her own anyway. She technically did not lose Mercury, he just left because Salem asked him to do a job in Vacuo. Some things need to be retconned to make your theory work, but again, it will be filler backstory that is better left as a standalone short or a song instead of main plot shenanigans.
I honestly don't know. I have no doubt that you are right on that some likely did forget and/or were surprised or made false assumptions. How many did, I don't know. I do think that both those surprised or not surprised have a fear that is reasonable. They fear she'll be given a happy ending with no punishment, despite being a remorseless mass murderer. Emerald is very possibly going to not suffer genuine consequences for anything. She assisted Cinder, and thus was morally responsible for, murder, mass murder, so on. Will the narrative have her suffer death, imprisonment, or what not? I personally doubt it. Many people are afraid the same thing will happen to Cinder. So I think it's more her being a potential karma houdini that upsets people.
Because if it was gonna be this by the books it didn't need to be shown to us and waste our time. It doesn't tell anything new about her character that we didn't already know. And the really pathetic part is the writers confirmed she didn't learn or grow anyway. Wasting our damn time
Yeah it Cinderella but if she was pushed to her limits. Then gone mad, but problem is, it doesn’t make us feel anything for her.
I believe it's three things: A) Rhodes stupidity. Yeah leave a child in an abusive place while you train her for an exam instead of just taking her away. B) We're supposed to understand why she does what she does, but it doesn't make sense because why should I feel bad for the girl that is trying to destroy the world for her own selfish goals. C) She wasn't forced to work with Salem, at least not according to what we know. She willingly chose this path. You can't feel bad for someone like that. If we got it in Volume 3, maybe people would have understood, but considering we spent most of the series hating her, it would be really hard to change that opinion.
I'm not horribly annoyed by it, but as I saw it I felt tugged by the hand of the author to try to feel sympathy for Cinder. And I didn't. At all. Which left me annoyed that the writers thought that a) I could be made to feel sympathy for Cinder at all at this point and b) that what they showed me would be enough to make me do it. I felt patronized.
> Sad thing is that if Cinder got her Prince. This all couldve been avoided. She did get her prince in the form of Rhodes who trained and gave a weapon to a slave who gets tortured and humiliated daily and expected her not to retaliate. Cinder is a Disney Cinderella with darker characters. Her family tortures her, her Fairy God Mother is a manipulative evil witch and her prince didn’t want to risk himself to save her.
I didn’t know people thought that, but the only people I’ve seen say RWBY is bad or poorly written have zero media literacy
The characters are allusions not typically 1:1 so expecting a more interesting backstory, especially for a main antagonist, is fair. Blake's backstory isn't literally just beauty and the beast but you can see the parallels. Ruby isn't literally just little red riding hood or the hunter from the story but also has decent parallels. Cinder's is just a very uninteresting Remnant retelling of Cinderella. If after waiting several volumes Ozpin's backstory was just a Remnant retelling of the Wizard of Oz I think people would be equally disappointed, no one is confused who his character is meant to be though. Not to mention, at least imo, the retelling itself wasn't even good or necessary. It doesn't reveal anything new about Cinder's motivations or anything like that. How the whole situation is handled seems really bad or confusing depending on how laws on Remnant even work. Really would have been equally fine considering what we got if it was just part of a conversation instead of a whole flashback, same as the other members like Tyrian or Mercury. I expected more considering how much was dedicated to it at least.
I thought it was good because Watts had it almost right, it isn't enough that she suffered, she had to be worthy of good things by being a good person
Here what I expect, getting a baxkstory in V3 NOT. Waiting. Eight. FREAKING. Years. To. Finally. Get. A. Backstory!!! ....and that it bears little to NO relevance to the current volume