akwartone

[its-a-branwen-thing]

Cinder’s a Good Character

I have favorites! Let it be known! Qrow! Raven! Penny! Ironwood! Neptune! Yang! And the travesty that is Cinder!

We first meet Cinder in V1E1. She’s our longest running antagonist (outside of Roman up until...V3 and Adam...until V6) and the one with arguably the most focus. Salem we meet officially in V3 and we have her larger than life backstory dropped on us in V6. But Cinder, this character we’ve had since V1, who has thwarted our heroes time and time again, who has failed and succeeded in her plans, who is absolutely hilarious in RWBY Chibi, has about as much history as most of our supporting cast’s supporting cast. I feel like we know more about almost everyone else. We know about Neo, mostly from the exposition-heavy “One Thing”, although she’s still mysterious enough, Mercury we get a good deal of knowledge about and with Emerald, although we don’t get as much, we see at least how she’s inducted into the Salem army.

So what gives with Cinder?

V3 was, like, the height of her coolness factor until V7. She manipulated everyone perfectly. She was intimidating. She killed Ozpin. She killed Pyrrha. And then Ruby one-shot her. YEET

When we see Cinder again in V4 she’s injured, can’t speak, and can’t fight. She struggles with the aftermath of Beacon. We see how it’s hobbled her and how angry that makes her. We see how she overcomes it and shows her commitment to Salem’s cause. And then we see her flub all of that at Haven. We watch Raven defeat her in maidenbowl 2k18. And back then maybe we thought she died. But she re-emerges in V6, kills a woman, steals her clothes for a disguise, and immediately goes to the city’s underbelly to attempt to find team RWBY. In doing so she encounters Neo and the two team up, get a bomb-ass glow up, and make their way to Atlas. When we meet Cinder in V7, she’s the same slick and sneaky villain. Her placing a chess piece on Ironwood’s desk seems, somehow, classic Cinder (even though I don’t think I have the expertise to dub anything she does as classic). But then we get to her fight with Winter and Penny. And we see her go positively buck wild. I thought this was a new side of her but...honestly, she’s done this before.

Her shock at seeing Ruby use the silver eyes is the first real glimpse we have of her being this desperate woman with untamed anger. She thought she had it in the bag. But Ruby ruins it all. V4 muted her, but it’s always been there.

When her fight with Winter and Penny becomes desperate, and her loss palpable, we hear and see this side of Cinder emerge once again. Her cool, calm facade broken in front of this potential failure. (Also Jessica Nigiri owned it this season). And yet Cinder fails again. She gets a relic, but not the maiden powers. She returns from her tantrum in the sky and grabs the relic from Neo, portraying little of her frustration to her (reluctant, to put it kindly) partner. We assume she’s taking it to Salem. But we don’t really know.

Because throughout all of this we still don’t know a single thing about her character’s backstory.

We know she’s based off of Cinderella, glass slippers and all that, but not why she wants what she wants. Why she’s loyal to Salem, how she even got caught up in that fight. And I think that’s fascinating.

Cinder gets a bad rap for being a flat character which I totally understand, and this is definitely just my opinion on her, but I think the reason I love her and, by effect, Raven, is because they’re both women who unabashedly seek power. Who prioritize it over family, over friends, over everything else, albeit for different reasons and with varying degrees of guilt. It’s why, as much as I think she’s wrong, I find it absolutely crazy that Raven is painted as this complicated character who left her family in order to lead her tribe. Because we see her regret at the end of V5, and we come to understand her more. My love for Raven’s character knows very few bounds and these few points fail to encapsulate my feelings on her.

We can fill in Cinder’s backstory with whatever we’d like, but I think what’s so great about having this character without motivations that we can see fueling her is that it appears, for right now, that she’s literally just hungry for power. It’s a phrase repeated again and again with her character. In V3 we got her describing the missing half of the maiden powers as a hunger she enjoyed. But then, in V7, she says something that prompted everyone to pry a little more at what her backstory could be:

“You Atlas elites are all the same. You think hoarding power means you’ll have it forever. But it just makes the rest of us hungrier. And I refuse to starve.”

This gives us a small glimpse that maybe Cinder, aside from being from Atlas with potentially personal stakes in these “Atlas elites”, has always resented those with power because once she had none. Which would make sense with her inspiration. But even though Cinderella faced a tough time but didn’t become a power hungry villain. There are a lot of characters in our main cast who suffer and don’t let it create vengeance in them or hatred. But Cinder’s desire is absolute. She let it get in the way of Salem’s plan. She lets it get in the way of everything. It drives her. And as much as I want to know why, I’m also just fascinated by that drive itself.

It’s characters like Cinder and Raven that make me realize female villains, when given proper nuance, vibe with me, yah feel? Especially when the story doesn’t rely on them being sexual beings to get what they want. I understand and respect that trope when done right but I’m tired of the burden being on woman to tell those stories, especially in speculative fiction where historical rules can be bent.

Because having power after you’ve felt powerless for so long must be intoxicating. And it makes Cinder feel...well, kind of human.

We’ll probably definitely learn more about her character in future seasons, we have to. Whether she’s going to have a redemption arc, a descent into further darkness, or whatever else have you, we need to find out more about her. But I think the drive for power right now is meaty enough. At least for me. And I’m excited to see where they take her character in V8.

So this is, conclusively, why I think Cinder’s a good character.