cassandrarose

[cassandrarose]

Like for Cinder, Reblog for Salem (or just comment in the reply section): Who would you rather see redeemed, Cinder or Salem?

Saw this discussion elsewhere and wanted to see people's thoughts here. I personally would rather see the trafficked and abused orphan girl who cried after her first kills redeemed than see the girl who started out as a princess, had everything, and is one of that girl's abusers get redeemed. Salem being Cinder's abuser in a position of power would make it kind of toxic to redeem her without redeeming Cinder. I don't want to see Cinder go down as the writers' brutal sacrifice to the audience just so they can save her abuser. I think that's exactly what's going to happen though . I would rather see them both end up better than see only Salem get better. But that's just my opinion. Which character would you prefer to see redeemed?

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My au RWBY: The Princess Trial is up on Fanfiction.net! Youtube video series coming in early 2025, probably February!

RWBY: The Princess Trial is an AU where Cinder isn't truly evil (despite working for Salem) she's troubled, and she's being framed for most of the crimes she committed in canon. Somebody wants her to be tortured to death in The Hunt, a sadistic execution show held in Mistral normally reserved for faunus criminals. After the attack on Vale, people are calling for Cinder's death in the cruelest of ways, and the atrocities that seem to have been committed by her are piling up across Remnant. Can Ruby and her friands save Cinder and save the world from Salem at the same time? Who is framing her, and why? How long can Cinder rely on her mother figure, Salem, to protect her from those who seek to harm her? Why did Ozpin lose his fight against Cinder? A shocking secret will come to light. This story explores misogyny and racism on Remnant, and lightly takes aim at the brutality that's wanted by some for Cinder Fall.

Chapters 1-4 are up now, and I will work on the story every week. In early 2025 I'll be doing a series of youtube videos on the au, which will basically be the fanfiction being read with visuals. I've tweaked character ages so all ships can be age-appropriate.

Here's a link to the fanfiction: RWBY: The Princess Trial Chapter 1 Cassandra, a rwby fanfic | FanFiction

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They made her the only trafficked AND abused girl in the whole series, and yet they've stripped her of all redeeming qualities just so they can get the audience to cheer for whatever brutal, sick, sadistic female horror movie character ending they probably have planned for her. It's not good, and it only makes me like and feel bad for Cinder as a character concept. It has also inspired me to make an au that sort of takes a swing at the way Cinder is this abused girl written by men to be demonized and brutalized. In it, she's being framed for most of the crimes she committed in canon.

cool stuff

yeah, she is a victim and she is in a cycle of abuse but also you can judge her and she's a bitch and she needs to be punished because she lashed out against her abusers in the "wrong way"

there's so much stuff from the commentaries and ocasionally from the show itself that just makes me go guys... what did girls do to you?

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Is CRWBY going to sacrifice Cinder to save Salem?

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RWBY's representation of abused slaves is BAD. Is CRWBY offering Cinder up as a sacrifice so Salem can get redeemed?

When asked which one of the RWBY characters was the hardest to write, one of the writers once said it was Cinder. He didn't elaborate on why Cinder is the hardest character to write. I do know that Cinder's backstory bothered some people because it was seen as a sudden attempt to make the audience feel bad for a character CRWBY has put years of effort into getting us to hate, while it made others (myself included) feel increasingly uncomfortable with that effort. Although it could have been worse, why did a woman who was abused on this level have to be used for this role in particular?

RWBY is a very entertaining and inspiring show with diverse characters, but one thing that's uncomfortable about the show is the way abused child slaves are presented. Now, I'm not saying the writers are bad people- totally good, normal people sometimes want to tell dark, provocative stories about certain things.  But the *only* representation abused slaves get in RWBY is as criminals who have done horrible things. Cinder, a young woman who was trafficked from another country as a child and abused, is a hopeless hatesink- deliberately written, according to one of the writers, for the audience to want her to get "what's coming to her". She spends her life going from being in one abusive situation to another abusive situation, all while being made to be ridiculously evil by the writing. Her eventual death seems to have been dangled before the audience like a carrot since volume 5.

 The fandom is known to go to extremes with Cinder, demanding that she not only be killed but tortured and abused in horrific ways at times. RWBY is an anime-inspired show, and there has been criticism over the years of how some forms of entertainment exploit female pain for shock value and titillation. RWBY hasn't done this *so far*, and hopefully it stays that way. I sincerely hope that Cinder doesn't exist for that purpose, and that CRWBY won't pander to that part of the fandom. RWBY, according to the voice actress for Pyrrha, is supposed to be a show about letting go, and pandering to those fantasies wouldn't really fit with that theme. Plus Cinder's being a survivor of human trafficking and abuse on top of her being a woman would make it extra questionable to offer her up in that way. 

When it comes to fandom discourse and the optics (not intent) of how Cinder and Adam were written, it seems the pendulum has swung from one extreme to another. In trying so hard to hammer home this message that being an abused woman or minority does not make it ok to abuse and kill others, some of the fandom fears being humane, embraces sadism, feels that justice isn't enough, and doesn't even question being offered not one, but  two characters who are evil *because of*  their experiences as an abused woman/ minority as punching (actually, stabbing and cutting) bags. The problem with Cinder being written the way she is is made worse by the fact that Adam, another poc-coded abused child slave, was already written in a similar way. He was a hatesink whom the heroes were forced to put down. Why is it that the representation young abused victims of modern day slavery get in RWBY is as spiteful hatesinks who have to be slain for the greater good? Why couldn't there be any positive or nuanced, non-criminal representation for them?

I've seen some fans deflect criticism of the way Cinder and Adam are written with Weiss. They say, "Weiss was abused, and she's good!" While it's true that Weiss was abused, she was not a slave. The level of dehumanization and danger involved in being a trafficked girl or boy- both in a fictional setting and in the real world-is very different from what Weiss experienced.

Also, let's get one thing out of the way: I'm not saying the writers have cruel intentions. With Cinder I think they just wanted to write a dark, edgy Cinderella as a villainess and give her a dark, edgy backstory. But sometimes writers attach deep, dark issues like human trafficking and abuse to characters without carefully considering how isolating those experiences can really be, and without stopping to think of whether or not those stories really fit well with the role that's been given to the character. 

Speaking of Weiss, let's talk about Salem- the other problem with how Cinder is written. Salem is, among many other faults, Cinder's abuser. She's a White princess who became a queen and has more power than anyone else on Remnant. One of the writers has said that they want us to have sympathy for Salem. Some Salem fans have even expressed hope that Cinder will be sacrificed- as in killed off horribly- in exchange for giving Salem a redemption arc and, in some cases, even a second chance at life. I think this is a terrible idea. This article,Writing Abused Characters Respectfully and Authentically, highlights two of the reasons why. One of the points it touches on is characters being subjected to abuse so a character more privileged than them can be the hero. Cinder being tortured and or killed just for Salem to be the one to get redemption and peace would be an awful lot like that. Another point it touches on is redemption of an abuser. It basically says that it can be done, but not at their victim's expense- that it's not a victim's job to save their abuser. Offering Cinder up as a sacrifice to satisfy audience bloodlust so her white royal abuser Salem can get redeemed would be exactly that. Gross messaging all around. It would only reinforce Cinder's us vs. them mentality that's on display whenever she encounters the Schnees, proving that she's actually right to have that worldview. So far, Salem has done nothing to be worthy of being shown more sympathy than her abuse victim. Things could have gone differently. What if Salem didn't abuse Cinder, and even actually cared about her? What if we saw Salem actually struggling against her grimm corruption, trying but failing to be good?

I think the writers wanted Cinder to serve too many purposes that don't work well together in 2024. They wanted a female character who had a sad, serious, and disturbing backstory, but they also wanted a sexy hate sink whose suffering the audience would look forward to. They wanted a slave being abused by a powerful White queen who has had a worse total impact on the world than her, but they also wanted  to make sure the queen gets the audience's sympathy rather than her abused slave. Perhaps things would have went more smoothly if they had been willing to give just one of those things up. I actually don't think sympathy for Salem and sympathy for Cinder had to be an either/or thing- we could have had both, whether these characters were to survive the story or not.

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Salem forced Cinder to spend Halloween parading herself around as SEXY ZOMBIE PENNY, and had Jax Asturias and Mercury follow her around dressed as broken pieces of Atlas

Salem has to keep the people of Remnant + the people watching RWBY hangry for Cinder's pain and death, so she did this to stir up more public outrage toward Cinder Fall during RWBY's hiatus. After all, this is the true reason why Salem keeps Cinder around: to offer her up as a sacrifice to a bloodthirsty audience. If Salem does this right, the brother gods of CRWBY will give Salem a loophole out of her curse in volume 10, with a redemption arc to boot. It's the true reason why Cinder is made to act the way she does, and why she was made to take Penny and Pyrrha from us.

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Towards the dark clouds from which there is no turning back.

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Miles’s thoughts on Jaune and Cinder’s characters, as well as their relationship : r/RWBY

Given that Cinder is an abused and trafficked girl character whom the writers went out of their way to make evil and Salem is an evil white queen character abusing her, how would you feel if the writers used Cinder to satisfy the audience's toxic fantasies but gave her abuser Salem a redemption arc and a happily ever after? Saw this commentary by Miles on Cinder and Salem and have a bad feeling about how RWBY will end. Honestly, I don't think the story of Cinder and Salem was a good way to write a story about a trafficked and abused girl. 

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Miles’s thoughts on Jaune and Cinder’s characters, as well as their relationship : r/RWBY

Given that Cinder is an abused and trafficked girl character whom the writers went out of their way to make evil and Salem is an evil white queen character abusing her, how would you feel if the writers used Cinder to satisfy the audience's toxic fantasies but gave her abuser Salem a redemption arc and a happily ever after? Saw this commentary by Miles on Cinder and Salem and have a bad feeling about how RWBY will end. Honestly, I don't think the story of Cinder and Salem was a good way to write a story about a trafficked and abused girl. 

[cassandrarose]

Choosing the Bad White Queen over her victim, the Asian-coded Bad Trafficked & Abused girl? Uncle Ruckus just might get his dream ending for RWBY.

[cassandrarose]

The fact that so many people in the fndm don't understand that Cinder's backstory was a blatant depiction of human trafficking, or modern slavery, is extremely problematic. Traffickers target orphanages and socially vulnerable children, then bring them to countries where they don't have social protection and force them into labor and sexual slavery. This is a severe problem that impacts millions, but people dont know about it.

I’m REALLY hoping that one anon from before is just one guy. I REALLY don’t want that to be a common thinking process.

Like… 100% Cinder would have either been hunted down or replaced by another orphan. Or both. Why people (or even Rhodes) think that she should have just run away is beyond me, but whatever.

Screw it. I’m going to go read some “Team STRQ Adopts Cinder” fics. Those have exploded a bit.

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You know what sucks about their choice to give Cinder an abused and trafficked girl backstory? The fact that at the same time, they've been drawing out her death for some end-of-series spectacle, baiting the audience into craving her pain, (and it definitely works- some of the demands for what happens to Cinder and the sense of entitlement people have to not just her death, but her pain, is downright nasty), and asking the audience to reserve their empathy for the White queen (Salem) abusing her instead. Miles admitted that they wrote Cinder to be hated because they want the audience to want her to get "everything that's coming to her" (his words), and that they want us to have empathy for Salem. So on top of running into the problem anime created by men sometimes has of turning female pain into an exploitative spectacle to be salivated over to sell their story- and using a trafficked/abused woman who is sexualized to sell that female pain to boot- they're trying to get the audience to care more about the tears of a powerful White woman than the Asian-coded human trafficking victim she's abusing. The optics aren't great.

#RWBY #RWDE

As someone who became properly aware of RWBY in like late V7 and thus having never had any longstanding headcanons about any of the characters before that... It's the problematic elements that bother me. It's the fact that characters have problematic shit tacked onto them, with some of them being pretty much made of problematic shit hello "we decided to make one of the most-hated characters in the show into an ex-child slave turned child soldier who literally got branded on his face by his oppressors and lost an eye from it and never addressed how a racist and uncaring society played a significant roll in turning him into a monster, he's just spite and the humans and the system they built aren't to blame at all". And then they made Cinder, the other widely-hated and abusive character, into an ex-child slave too. Like I'm sorry. That character concept will never fail to gross me out.

I watched the trailers and up to the end of V3, then I didn’t watch RWBY (or even think about it really) until a bit into volume 7, when YouTube recommended the red trailer and I rewatched it to feel something again. So, same; I also never really had headcanons or a deep investment in certain versions of the characters. And yeah, that kind of character is gross, and I’m about to spend far too much time angrily explaining why I’m frustrated with it and with the writers’/fandom’s seeming indifference to (or even support of!) it.

Basically, the “cool motive, still murder” idea (as succinctly stated by Brooklyn 99) has done irreparable damage to fandom’s ability to critically engage with fundamental character- and world-building flaws.

RWBY, when it deigns to engage with the systemic issues it chose to include in its setting, often reduces those issues to one-dimensional representations packaged in individuals that can be dealt with relatively quickly/simply and thus considered "over.” The real kicker of this strategy is that those individuals are always villains or evil in a way that “cancels out” (/s) their tragic backstory. Adam is the most egregious example of this, but all of the White Fang, Cinder, Salem, and apparently even fucking Neo these days suffer from it to varying degrees.

RWBY isn’t the first piece of media to use the tragic backstory trope or even use it on villains. I’m going to go with Marvel here (sorry) just because it’s pretty widely known. So, in Black Panther, the villain Killmonger grew up in a poor neighborhood. His father was murdered. He struggled as a Black orphan in America, then grew into a man with few moral boundaries and a singular drive to empower his people, which he chooses to do by using the technology offered by the hero’s country. Killmonger is eventually defeated, but the movie makes a point that the hero, T’Challa, has to change. It dedicates an entire scene to T’Challa telling his ancestors explicitly that they were wrong for ignoring people like Killmonger and the movie ends on T’Challa taking concrete steps to address the problems that Killmonger’s actions brought to light. Killmonger’s tragic backstory served a purpose. It wasn’t just there to make him a sympathetic villain; it was there to force the hero to confront an aspect of his society, of his world, that he had not needed to consider before. It wasn’t just “Cool motive, still murder”; it was “Cool motive, still murder, but here’s how we’ll address the root cause so this doesn’t happen again.” In my eyes, Black Panther serves as an example of a tragic villain backstory (when the backstory ties into systemic issues) done well.

RWBY does not do it well.

What blows my mind is that when writers insert a badly done tragic backstory (read: justification) for their villains, they usually do it for cheap sympathy points. But for Adam, they couldn’t even manage that. Or maybe they didn’t care about sympathy; he was, as you point out, anon, hated. So it’s possible that the writers didn’t even consider that maybe, maybe, revealing the branded child slave backstory in the way they did to make Adam look like more of a manipulative asshole was a bad decision. It’s not a subversion of the trope; it’s a badly done rendition, a joke that wants to be taken seriously. As the linked article above warns, “much writerly skill is generally needed to pull this off and make it poignant rather than pathetic.” Adam’s iteration very much falls into the pathetic category, never mind the implications when you take into account what minority group the faunus very closely mirror.

Basically, the bar was on the floor and they dug a new basement to avoid it. Why introduce a tragic backstory for a villain that highlights the injustices of their world if you’re not doing it for sympathy or to identify a problem the protagonists must confront? Why? What does that communicate to the audience? “Oh, Adam suffered,” the writers say, “but don’t worry, you can ignore the implications of child slavery in our world and withhold your sympathy because he’s an asshole.”

Now they’re seemingly trying to play the trope straight with Cinder, which makes me feel like I’m going mad. “Oh, Cinder is an asshole,” the writers say, “but please still ignore the systemic issues implied by her backstory while sympathizing with her because she was a slave who suffered.”

(For those of you who love to interpret things in bad faith: when I say “the writers say,” I don’t mean that they spoke/wrote those exact words. I mean that those words are uncomfortably easy to infer from what they’ve written, which yes, is a responsibility of the writer.)

When you build a story, the pieces should serve a purpose proportionate to their weight and implications. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks that a piece of trivia concerning character’s favorite ice-cream flavor demands more than a throwaway line. On the other hand, something like resorting to extreme actions for civil rights because of a history of child slavery is not on the same level as killing a dude for love and shouldn’t be dismissed just as quickly.

I am on my hands and knees begging the people who blindly love the show to understand that this is not good writing. There are such good stories out there that genuinely improve the craft or iterate on it in fascinating ways, stories that have rewarding setup and payoff, stories with intricate worldbuilding you could spend weeks teasing apart. Please, please engage critically with other media, particularly well-known media. I don’t mean well-known as in popular; I mean pieces of media that are widely regarded as seminal works or masterclasses in their fields. Read analyses of them. Read reviews. Understand why they work, and then understand why RWBY, the vast majority of the time, doesn’t.

If you’ve read this far, then please, enjoy this blurry photo of my cat when he was a kitten:

[cassandrarose]

A cup of Salem's tears: Salem's grimm corruption= depression and is no more of an excuse for her bad behavior than Cinder's trauma is for hers

Someone once speculated that Salem's grimm corruption is supposed to represent a mental illness like depression. I agree with this theory. I'm bringing this up because within the fandom, I've seen some of the same people who argue that Cinder's being a victim of human trafficking and abuse don't excuse her, make her worthy of redemption, or even worthy of sympathy turn around and argue that Salem, another one of Cinder's abusers, is worthy of some or all of those things because of her grief and grimm corruption (read: depression). I've seen people literally argue that Cinder acting out because of trauma makes her a worse person than Salem because Salem is acting out due to this magical form of depression. This....is not a good take, and hopefully not a message CRWBY will send by brutalizing Cinder while giving Salem a happily ever after. If trauma from being abused all one's life doesn't justify abusing and killing others for maybe a decade, then suffering from depression doesn't justify abusing and killing others for centuries either. Being depressed and wanting your suffering to end is not a better excuse for violent behavior than being a traumatized abuse victim who wants to make sure nobody can ever hurt them again. Make it make sense. Especially when the depressed person started out a princess while the abused person started out a slave.

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If I wasn't already uncertain whether Cinder Fall was Asian-coded, Episode 6 removes all doubt. Watching her adoption into a white family... A LOT TO UNPACK

[cassandrarose]

That's another reason why I really hope CRWBY doesn't decide to brutalize Cinder while redeeming or at least being kinder to her White abuser, Salem.

Did you think Cinder's backstory feel racialized? I'm not even talking about human and faunus but like ACTUAL race. It just felt wierd how Cinder was extra asian coded than usual and she's a slave to these very european coded characters who bought her from another country and she's the only person in the hotel that's mistreated.

considering that many people pointed it out when the episode first aired, i would say yes, it definitely felt like it, and i doubt it was a coincidence from crwby’s part.

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Salem: *abuses cinder*

Some people in fandom: haha wouldn’t it be funny if Salem hurt or killed Cinder for defying her

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"Salem isnt cinder's abuser" and "Salem isnt an abuser at all" is like.... The worst take I've ever seen come from a rwby critic ever in my life. imma have to head out.