#jacques: i can condone faunus slavery in my mines and faunus servents but i draw the line at orphan child slaves in my home!

[schnees-and-schnugs]

I would take Adam over Cinder any day.

Yes they both suck. But Cider-- anywho, Adam victim with horrible morals, Cinder victim with terrible morals but also a b

Adam had a backstory and a motivation that connected well with the over arching plots of RWBY (faunus oppression and the White Fang).

Cinder is just... Cinderella with a dark twist (as if that hadnt been done before). MKEK randomly decided to throw in human trafficking and (human orphan) child labor as an aspect of her backstory when uhh that's never been an major established part of their world or story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that those things couldnt exist in remnant, it's just not something that was ever concentrated on as a story element. It's leaves cinders backstory feeling out of place, like it's moreso trying to be a sUbVErSivE cinderella retelling than an actual part of the world building. And then add in Rhodes and it's like. Wtf? So... Don't child labor laws exist in atlas? CPS? We literally see Weiss pull her rank as a lisenced huntsman to arrest the richest and most influential man in remnant (Jacques) but Rhodes cant use the same to bring in police to investigate a restaurant owner for child abuse? Unless it's trying to make the commentary that (human) child slave labor is normalized in atlas... which is like, thanks for mentioning that once and never again I guess (hell we don't even know if faunus child slaves exists in atlas outside their Crater mines, if they even exist there). It doesn't help that the same volume we figure out all of this about atleasian society, atlas is donzo by the end of it.

I don't know, I just think that the motivation of your main villain, who the writers literally refuse to kill off because apparently she's just that important and iconic, should at least have a backstory that intertwines with established world building, other than Atlas Bad. Gives a sense of build up and pay off you know? Makes me think "wow there really is consequence to violent oppression" like with Adam not "oh this is just Cinderella except the writers had to figure out how to fit it into the general volume so now we have child orphan slaves and grown huntsmen with huntsmen licenses who apparently have no authority to do a thing about it because there are no enforced child slavery laws for him to fall back on and also if trafficked child slaves were just a normal thing to have in atlas then why don't we see a least two in the schnee manor scuttling around in the background instead of (adult) faunus (you know the ones who are the established underclass in the story). Oh it was probably just made up for cinders backstory. okay."

You could also "well it's realistic" and I'll say realism isn't the end all be all of storytelling. It's an art form. If understanding reality was the only skill you needed to be able to write a compelling story then butter me up and call me the next JRR Tolkien.