#who knows maybe cinder and winter will have 'bring your green coded adoptive morality pet to work' day

[theseerasures]

obviously the oceanic gulf of material and social privilege separating Winter and Cinder’s respective backstories cannot and should not be overlooked, but the other, just as important (if not more so, from a narrative and affective standpoint) factor that made their paths diverge is that, well.

Winter didn’t have stepsisters. she had Weiss and Whitley instead.

and that IS crucial, because it shifts and deepens the moral arc of what the show is trying to say: it’s not JUST the kindness you receive that shapes you into the person you are. it’s also about the opportunities you get to BE kind in turn.

i’ve bolded and italicized “opportunities you get” above to empathize that i’m not talking about some victim-blaming “ohhhhh but did Cinder try being NICE” bullshit. she didn’t need to turn the other cheek to her abusers, but she DID need someone to show her what being kind to other, similarly vulnerable people looked like before she could be kind herself. and that’s not what Rhodes, who blithely waltzed in and out of a no-Faunus establishment on a regular basis, did for her. what Rhodes taught her instead was how to be the exception--that if you’re lucky enough, special enough, if you claw your way through enough “competition,” then maybe you’ll have earned the right to be chosen by the distant, powerful figure who asks for nothing in return except your absolute service. not because they need it, mind. they don’t need you. it’s just the debt you have to repay.

(it’s not an accident that Rhodes’ Semblance made him untouchable, invulnerable--that is to say, unreachable on any level that would convey intimacy. and it’s not an accident that the moment he dropped his shield was the moment Cinder killed him; by that point, it was too late, and he was just another thing to claw through.)

Winter is horribly, painfully flawed, both in ways that echo Cinder and in ways that are diametrically opposite to Cinder, but it’s hard to deny that she’s in many ways “better” off than Cinder, and more poised to become a healthier person. that began with Weiss and Whitley: no matter how faltering and imperfect her attempts to protect her siblings actually were, no matter the toll it took on her and on them, she formed bonds with them that can’t be reduced to bondage. even now there’s a part of Winter that’s left open and vulnerable, which lets others take care of her, and lets her take care of others--just look at the way she’s tied herself inexorably to Penny. Winter understands that service can stem from love, not just debt, and that is simultaneously what is fucking her up in the present and what is going to save her in the end. Cinder, on the other hand, never learned this; not as a child brutalized by her wicked stepfamily, and not as an adult brutalizing Emerald, the closest thing to family she has.

if Cinder had gotten siblings who required protection of them, rather than protection against them, would she have protected them and become a kinder person in the present? i think a show like RWBY, which so steadfastly insists on the inherent generosity of people, on actively making the world better, would demand that we say “yes,” just as it would, as a corollary, demand that it is not too late--that given the right opportunities, the right environment, Cinder can still learn how to be kind.