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The end begins.

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #au #alternate universe #cinder fall #cinder au #good cinder #team rwby #sisterhood #drama #no beta this is war

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One of my most looked forward to chapters. Cinder is offered the Fall Maiden powers.

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #cinder fall #cinder au #adopted cinder #good cinder #rwby yang #au #fanfic #no beta we die like men

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#rwby #cinder fall #fanfic #fanfiction #rwby fanfiction #alternate universe #cinder au #cinder adopted by Summer #ruby rose #rhodes rwby #oc

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I actually uploaded yesterday but here you have it now. Chapter 23 of Big Sis Cinder!

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #au #cinder fall #ruby rose #yang xiao long #yang x weiss #ruby x blake

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A small interlude inbetween Lostbelts for Shirou and the Valkyries.

#fate stay night #fate grand order #fanfiction #fate fanfic #shirou emiya #valkyrie #thrud #hildr #ortlinde #romance #understanding #interlude #no beta

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The best AU. Poor Summer tho...

Summer Rose and her spunky adopted daughter Cinder (who has been spending too much time with uncle Qrow)

#rwby #au #cinder fall #summer #adopted Cinder

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THE RETURN

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #cinder au #cinder fall #cinder fall au #cinwin #no beta #volume 3 #fanfiction #alternate universe

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Cinder finally meets with Rhodes after more than ten years.

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #cinder fall #cinder au #cinder fall au #good cinder #sisterhood #rwby rhodes #au #no beta

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Chapter 18: Cold Flame part 8 is up. Also available on AO3. This one I’m not sure how much of a good job I did. I’ll let the public decide.

#fate stay night #fate fanfic #fanfiction #au #romance #harem #story collection #shirou emiya #Valkyrie trio #valkyries #Thrud #hildr #Ortlinde #no beta this is war #fate grand order

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Somenone protecc this little brat.

adorkable Cinder 👌

Close enough? XD

#rwby #cinder fall #adorable #we must protecc

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Heart of Glass’ version of Volume 3 begins.

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #cinder fall #cinder fall au #good cinder #professor cinder #au #trust #no beta this is war

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Who needs canon we got Fall Bloom.

If you’re someone who’s into crack ships. The Cinder simps made a whole world off of that one character in Volume 6. Y’know, the one who Cinder stole the clothes from. Canon be damned we have her a cottagecore life. Neo and the waitress Qrow talked to Are there too. It’s wild.

That’s what Fall Bloom is.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30773288/chapters/75956960

#rwby #rwby au #cottagecore #Lila Laveau #rwby cinder #cinder fall #simps unite

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My view of Cinder is thus:

The Grimm are creatures of pure destruction. They destroy, because that’s what they are. You don’t call an avalanche evil when it crushes a town. Or a flood. Or a wildfire. The Grimm are a force of nature, they must be defended against, and they cause tragedy, but because of what they are, they cannot be called evil. They are simply… destruction. Not good, but also, not evil.

In RWBY lore, the gods of Light and Darkness specifically gave humanity the power of choice to choose between creation and destruction. And evil people have consistently chosen to destroy others. Arthur Watts came from a position of privilege and decided to hurt his colleagues out of petty jealousy? Evil. Adam Taurus being given the chance to fight for his people and leveraging his position to spite everyone that hurt him, up to attempting to murder his girlfriend? Evil. Jacques Schnee exploiting others, never creating anything but for himself, tearing down the emotions of his family even though he was already wealthy? Evil.

Roman Torchwick, abusing citizens and his own allies for profit without a care in the world for the pain he causes? Evil. Marcus Black, Madam of the Glass Unicorn, the Marigolds, tearing apart their children for daring to be anything other than what they demand? Evil. Tyrian Callows… Well, to be fair, it’s possible that whatever mental issue he has forces him to destroy, but he seems too cognizant and willful to not have some choice in the matter, so I’m willing to say by the context of the show’s cosmology he’s evil.

James Ironwood, despite doing a lot of good things, ultimately did them for himself, and when it came down to it he threatened to bomb a city and pointed a gun at anybody that tried to take away his power. He thought he was good, and maybe he was once. But in the end… he died a villain.

Two things are important here: Firstly, that to be evil, you have to consistently choose destruction–of others, of self, of the world–over creation. Consistently. Every step of the way. There are people who did a lot of evil, but turned away, and the show treats them as… redeemable. Not necessarily redeemed yet. But they’re no longer the bad guys. And then there are people who did one bad thing… and then another… and then another… and by the end of it, they were definitely villains.

The second thing, and the big thing for how I view Cinder, is that you have to have a choice between Creation and Destruction.

Cinder Fall has never had that choice.

Sure, she’s had a choice between destroying now and destroying later. Or destroying a little versus destroying a lot. Or destroying herself versus destroying others. But nobody has ever given her the chance to support, to create. Rhodes outright shut it down the one time she dared to hope. She has never been able to have that choice… or if she has, she hasn’t seen it. And having a choice you don’t know about counts as not having that choice.

I cannot call Cinder evil, because she has never had a chance to be good.

To be fair, I also can’t call her ‘good’, for the same reasons. She’s an antagonist, and a dangerous one, but I do not place her among the villains. By the RWBY cosmology, if she has not had Choice, then she can’t even be called completely human… yet. All she is, at the moment, is a well-trained and intelligent animal, on a leash made of Grimm essence and pain and hate and desperation.

What happens, then, when the leash is snapped?

What happens when the Fall Maiden finally confronts her duty?

What happens, I ask, when she at last can decide something for herself?

I do not call Cinder Evil, for she has never had a chance to be Good. I do not call her Good, for she has never had a choice but do Evil. But when, by chance, a choice comes…

Then, I shall observe who she is.

#rwby #cinder fall

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Badass Cinder is badass.

This took me so long bro

click for full resolution

#rwby #cinder fall #badass #cape #sword #sword of destruction

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The epilogue of the first arc. Enjoy.

#rwby #cinder fall #cinder fall au #good cinder #Cinwin #snowfall #rwby fanfiction #fanfiction

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Hope for Cinderdemption restored

I'd still love to hear your thoughts on Cinder not dying/defecting/feel-face-turning, regardless of rambling.

okay i'm trying to keep this as cohesive as possible but like. no promises. this might also get long because boi do i have some thoughts about cinder.

1. "and most importantly, it would be given the power to choose, to have free will to take everything it had learned and decide which path to follow – the path of light or the path of darkness."

now, as the fall maiden, choice is obviously a big part of cinder's character, and this quote perfectly encapsulates how the show treats choices – mainly by ensuring that knowledge is important when making one, and that characters can choose differently when they gain new knowledge.

this has already been seen in effect amongst the villains in volume 8; when they learned about salem's actual plan, hazel and emerald changed and chose the path of light, mercury is at crossroads but is definitely looking towards the light, and tyrian already knew the truth and stuck with the path of darkness.

however, if "the final word" is anything to go by, cinder doesn't yet know the truth. nothing has changed for her, thus she doesn't have new knowledge to rethink her position, and until that happens, throwing away the possibility that cinder can choose differently does disservice to the show.

(the rest is under read more because yeah. this got long.)

2. the lesson of fall in the story of seasons.

what i've seen a lot is that for cinder to change, she first needs to have everything she wants (in this case, the maiden powers), only to realize that it doesn't actually help her in a way that she wanted. and while i do see some merit to this, it doesn't fit with the lesson associated with fall in the fairy tale;

– "[...] however, i have lived in these woods alone for a long time, with no one to love and nothing to my name. [...]"

"but sir, do you not see? you have so much already."

the point isn't that the wizard wants something, gets it, and realizes it's not enough. it's that he already has something, he just needs to realize it.

and that's something cinder needs to realize too. while her hunt for the other maiden powers is fueled by her want for power, but also to eliminate other powerful threats – "it's not about overpowering the enemy. it's about taking away what power they have." – she doesn't actually need them to achieve what she truly wants; freedom, safety, a place to belong.

if this is a lesson cinder is intended to learn, then it doesn't exactly fit with her being and staying as a villain.

3. cinder's backstory.

after 8 or so years of waiting, we finally got cinder's backstory – or at least, the part of it that explains why cinder is the way she is.

but what it also established is that cinder has never had what the show highlights as very important for each character, so that they can heal and to allow them to make better choices; a good support system, whether it be friends or family or both.

(this is also what i believe to be the difference between team strq and team rwby and why rwby is successful in ways strq wasn't, but that's another discussion for another time.)

cinder didn't have anyone who would have taken her out of a bad situation. she didn't have anyone who would have understood why she did the things she did.

instead, she was basically deemed irredeemable by the one person she looked up to, and has since gone from one abusive situation to another.

now, cinder's actions are her own, and she holds full responsibility for them. this isn't "it's okay for cinder to act the way she does in the present", but when someone has had the odds stacked so against them, how can you say that they're not even allowed to try to be good anymore, that it's too late?

4. the grimm arm (and the silver eyes).

another thing "midnight" did, was to establish a connection between the grimm arm and the shock collar.

so, if the show intends to stick with it's "abuse victims get away from their abusers and live better lives afterwards", you can probably guess why the theories about salem killing cinder or fully turning her into a grimm don't quite... work.

more so, the writers have already planted seeds for the possibility that ruby is going to destroy the arm without killing cinder. i won't go into full details since i've and many others have talked about this particular theory before, but the talk between ruby and maria in v6, the existence of the hound and reactions to it, it's all building up a connection that is, hopefully, leading to something.

(additionally, the hound being a person is another thing that cinder doesn't know about.)

obviously, for ruby to remove the grimm from cinder, they would have to be on better terms than they are now. they don't need to be super-besties or anything, since by now i'm assuming everyone knows cinder uses the grimm arm to siphon maiden powers, plus in "the final word" weiss and jaune witnessed the connection between the arm and salem, so honestly? removing the grimm is in their best interest anyway.

"so why not just kill cinder?" someone might ask.

because she's still the fall maiden and that's risky as hell, not knowing where the powers might go. at least cinder is a known quantity, and if she's allowing to be targeted by silver eyes in the first place to remove the grimm, she probably isn't trying to be a threat anymore.

5. the parallels with raven.

this is one of the early reasons why i started to believe cinder would not work for salem for the entirety of the show. just like tyrian and qrow, cinder and raven serve the same "role" their respective groups and thus parallel quite a bit.

they're both maidens, "opposite" ones at that. they're professional projectors. i love them. they're the ones who will push the limits of the rules they've been given for their own personal gain.

the main difference is that salem is much better at manipulating people than oz, and knows how to keep tighter leash. we've already seen cinder nearly break away once – if anything, it's only a matter of time before it happens for good;

the most defining moment for raven is that she found the truth about salem, decided working for ozpin was not so great anymore, and she left.

– "leo did what any sane person would in his position - he looked at all the information he had in front of him, assessed the situation, and made a choice." - raven in v5c11.

this leads us back to the first point; cinder doesn't have all the information to make an actual informed choice.

this could also mean that if / when cinder does ditch salem – perhaps after finding out the truth about her plans, or the hound – she's not going to switch sides like emerald did (and mercury likely will), but rather she'll be on her own for a while.

6. carefully chosen words and parallels with ilia.

it's no secret that the writers choose their words carefully even in the show to avoid lying about plot points. this is seen with the spring maiden reveal by never actually saying vernal is the spring maiden (they actually talked about this in the 13th episode of rwby rewind [v5], if you have first still i recommend watching at least the q&a section of it, there's a lot of good stuff there) and likely with the mystery of summer as well, and how they've never said summer is dead, only that she went missing, or never came back, etc.

it's also something they did with ilia prior to her redemption:

– "do not concern yourself with past failures, ilia. focus on the future. we have an opportunity for redemption." - corsac in v5c5.

and something similar has also been done regarding cinder:

– "i want you to understand that failure. i want you to understand why cinder must be left to toil in her isolation until she redeems herself." - salem in v6c4.

in both of these cases, "redemption" is used as a way to affirm the path ilia and cinder are already on, rather than them turning a new leaf. yet that's exactly what ilia does, so why couldn't the same apply to cinder?

especially since ilia didn't know what else to do. she was on a path she wasn't completely comfortable with, but didn't have any alternatives herself, so she kept going until she was given one and an opportunity to choose differently.

it sounds eerily similar to cinder, who was set on one path when she was younger, told that's all she'll ever do, and that's exactly what she has been doing; because just like ilia did, cinder doesn't think there's anything else for her. it's this or nothing, until cinder herself or someone else gives her a reason to think otherwise.

–

i think that just about covers all the important points. this was fun to write but also. i've been at this for hours. i never gave this much focus to any school essays...

can you tell i love cinder very much?

#rwby #cinder fall #rant #long #awesome #explanation #cinderdemption

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The one chapter I've been waiting to write since I began this fic.

#rwby #rwby fanfiction #rwby au #Au #cinder fall #rwby cinder #Good Cinder #Cinder au #ruby rose #rwby yang #Sisters #Fluff #Angst #The chapter I've been waiting for #No beta #trauma #recovery