Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-35941743-20190304195312/@comment-14909251-20190404231112

DrAgOnHiTmAn wrote:

I mean there's a few things that are more subtle that they did. It's clear that Cinder has an unreasonable amount of fear of Salem based upon their on-screen interactions, meaning Salem is either abusive to Cinder, or Cinder came from an abusive living situation, or both. (There's several incidents of this) Based upon the patterns they've consistently made of people drawing from their leading figures, Cinder's ideology and motivations are likely heavily drawn from and crafted by Salem.

Based upon her actions, Cinder seems to have an almost mindless craving for power, intensified by the parasitic Grimm maiden thing she has going on. She is a huge egomaniac, to the extent of consistently underestimating her opponents because she believes herself to be so much higher than them. She's very single-minded, as she ignores her established goals in order to pursue something spur of the moment (though some people debate that's just poor writing). She obviously craves to be in positions of power over other people and to manipulate other people, as she spends the majority of her time doing so. She covers up her Grimm parts and her injuries, indicating that she is somewhat ashamed of how far she's gone for power, knows her weaknesses but refuses to acknowledge them, and seems to consistently ignore her previous failures (tying into egomania). Using "Fall" as her last name ties into her egomania and belief in destiny--she deserves the power and is destined for it. She's likely been crafted by Salem to believe she's destined for power, too. And this is just off the top of my head.

We almost know more about her motivations than we do Salem. We got a whole episode of exposition about Salem but they really never explained why she's doing what she is. So apparently she's an angry Grimm lady? But we saw her as kind, caring, and loving even after jumping in the Grimm pool. She's mad at Ozma specifically? Then why is she going after all of humanity? Why is she killing him when she knows he's immortal? Her backstory really didn't explain her current actions. A lot of what you are doing here is speculating about her past and motivations based off how her character has acted. Salem got a long and detailed exploration of her background. People are more than capable of inferring a great deal of about her motivations and her character due to that without need for lots of speculation. We know essentially how Salem came to be who she is in the series. If you are struggling to understand her character in spite of that, then I'd say the issue falls more on you. Cinder is someone who we simply know who she is now, but we don't know how she came to be that way. Adam, however belatedly and unsatisfactorily, also had indications of how he became the person he was in the series.