Something that popped up to my head. What are all of your thoughts on Cinder's
backstory? Is it just me or was it done rather poorly? I guess it's supposed to make her sympathetic and excuse her actions, but, and I'm sorry if I am being reductive (I don't think I am), but her backstory boils down to, "cartoonishly evil relatives are cartoonishly evil for no reason, that turns the character evil, and powerhungry to make sure this never happens again" with a sprinkle of "
the law enforcement knew everything about the abuse, sympathized with the abused, and did fuck all for no decirnable reason, and then got shocked when the abused murdered the abusers". Unironically, her teacher is the most evil character in all of this. Fuck that guy.
But, like, what narrative purpose does this serve? This does nothing to her character (bar have two scenes of her clenching her fingers at Salem). This has never before, or never after been relevant or did anything to her character. Take for example, Raven and Qrow's backstory. It's very simplistic (and lacking detail) but what is there works really well. Both had bad childhoods (and teenage years) being essentially forced to (in the sense that there likely wasn't much of an alternative) do evil shit like killing and robbing, but when they got the taste of a better life, that's when their true characters were revealed.
Qrow wanted to make sure that nobody has to go through that (as a victim or the offender) and wanted to make the world a better place. He grew as a person and the guilt he learned along the way helped condition him into being the perfect loyal soldier of Ozpin. That's extremely important to understanding his character and his devoted relationship (pre-vol 6) with Ozpin. The relationships he formed were lifelong, and made him extremely loyal. Even to Raven who he frequently addressed as "
not family".
Raven also grew as a person learning emotions like love,
and even got convinced to settle down and start a family, despite her not thinking she's the mother material. But then she
finished learning everything about Ozpin and Salem, got disillusioned by Qrow's and Summer's loyalty to a (in her thoughts) dying cause (or alternatively Ozpin manipulating them all to die in a battle they could not win), and went back to the
family she left behind, her tribe. There's still lots missing about her, but the important pieces are there. And it's not like her character got reset to before she joined Beacon (unlike what Qrow claims). Despite her supposedly only helping family members once (
rule Qrow says Raven supposedly follows), she helped Yang more than that (once against Neo, once for the relic, once as a help to find her sister (and allowing Yang to take
Weiss with her who Raven planned to sell off)),
she kept Qrow informed of dangers to Beacon (despite her not liking his life choices), etc. This shows how much she has progressed from the point Qrow remembers her at.
All of this with less than an episode of screentime explaining it, just bits and pieces dropped where relevant, trusting that you'd be able to piece them together. Neither one of these characters are "they had bad childhood, therefore bad" or "they had bad childhood but like Naruto didn't let that affect them one bit". While I'm not a fan of what they did with Qrow Vol 6 and beyond (him stuck in permadepressionn and "i never had friends" is unlike his character in previous volumes, and while certainly revelations about Ozpin were bound to depress him, 3 volumes of depression is a bit too much), Qrow still remains a nuanced character, and so is Raven.
I'm curious to see what others think, or if I'm wrong about something. I might be wrong about the guilt part, as I can't find a source for it, but I thought he mentioned something like that somewhere between Vol 6 and 8
