Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-35941743-20190304195312/@comment-26018514-20190318071157

The Devil&#039;s Advocate WP wrote:

I don't know why you are so arrogantly confident that somehow Cinder's character arc can only play out one way. None of these things you are mentioning mean she is irredeemably evil or that her character can only ever be a villain. We don't know why she is looking for power exactly, but, again, we can infer based off her inspiration that it probably isn't something she seeks for its own sake. There is no reason to believe she would be okay with some plan that involves killing off all of humanity, including herself.

Although Tyrian's motivations aren't too clear, the situations of Hazel and Watts clearly indicate that Salem has a habit of using people who are in some way desperate. Cinder isn't a sociopath and definitely at times has shown hint of desparation and that is really the root of her hostility to Ruby. She wanted to be powerful and was brimming with confidence that she finally had real power, only for Ruby to come along and undo all of it. Yet there is a clearly something deeper to all of that resentment.

Point is, Cinder has already had some shocks to her system. First humbled by Ruby, then humbled by Raven, and she is already going against Salem in pursuing her vendetta. Were she to realize that the person she was doing all of this for, who made all these promises of power and put her in this situation, was planning something that would likely mean the death of her and all of present humanity, she wouldn't be happy. It would make her question what she is doing even more. 1. We aren't talking about a character's "arc" we are talking about a character's "death" and how certain it is within the narrative, which is vastly easier to be certain about.

2. Salem's carrot is unimportant as she will also be dead by the end of the show, it's pretty clear none of these characters save Tyrian may want her endgame, but they're assuming it is also inevitable, and she is more than capable of fulfilling her devil's bargains, stop pretending otherwise.

3. Those weren't "shocks" they were full blown reinventions, Salem is far from Cinder's puppet master at this point, her every action is one of defiance for Salem's plans, but none of that matters, before or after Salem, the question is not WHEN she will die, it is IF.

4. We can be certain that she will die because she cannot change the fact that she led a terrorist attack against 2 of four nations, not Salem, Cinder herself, this means that even were RWBY to forgive her, humanity wouldn't.