#bc like. why else parallel ironwood to rhodes in relation to winter??

[bestworstcase]

*Jiggles mental Piggy Bank for question/comment to hear more thoughts on Cinder - Winter parallels and contrasts*

Another point for Winter not reacting as Cinder would expect to the Rhodes/Glass Unicorn. Winter tells Jacque to not thank her, as it was Weiss's idea to not leave him behind as I recall.

Though Winter <-> Cinder is fun in general to think about because between Penny's death and Weiss's presumed at time and that musical sting which has been named the "Such Arrogance" motif by the community because the buildup is there for an additional round.

But admittedly I just find the Maidens as a character grouping just intriguing in how they're used. Supporting characters with their own arcs that are fairly decent supporting pillars for the themes of the story that with the final faces (Cinder, Winter and Raven) known to the audience for a majority of the runtime of the show. They aren't new characters (until Summer) the audience is asked to care about. Might be a word for this but I don't know it if so.

yeah it’s . always been a little (quirks eyebrow) to me that winter goes out of her way to inform jacques that if not for weiss she would have stone cold left him to die when atlas fell. taken on its own it’s an interesting character moment for winter – prior she makes a fairly convincing show of just taking pains to avoid him and having an emotional outburst when she’s forced to sit in his presence, but the truth is that she actively wishes him dead, and by implication she not only deferred to her younger sister’s judgment but has also been keeping that desire to herself for weiss’ sake. i get the impression – admittedly just on vibes – that it’s weiss who raised the issue of “what do we do with father? he’ll die if we leave him here” and winter simply kept her mouth shut about feeling that would be okay.

taken as a piece in the foil structure between winter and cinder, i think it rhymes with what rhodes asks cinder to do – turn the other cheek to protect the madame and her "sisters" from herself, versus winter deciding of her own volition once she is out of the abusive home that her desire for jacques to die is something she will privately acknowledge but keep to herself, because her sister doesn’t want that. the situations are quite different in that winter isn’t coerced into making this choice and isn’t materially harmed by doing so – whereas cinder is compelled to become a willing participant in her own abuse – BUT,

it is also of a piece with winter’s self-sacrificing inclination (“my life doesn’t matter,” and such) and her complete lack of self-worth. of course she can’t and shouldn’t and wouldn’t just murder jacques in cold blood – in self-defense or defense of another family member, certainly i don’t think winter would hesitate to cut him down if she felt it necessary, but to act on her desire for him to die by going out of her way to kill him? she would never.

however, by restraining herself to such a degree that no one really knows how deep the wounds and how intensely just being in his presence enrages her, she a) denies herself the opportunity to release these feelings and begin to heal, and b) puts herself in a position [per arrowfell] of being the atlas military’s point of contact with the SDC, which she could probably remove herself from by confiding in ironwood about the extent of her distress.

and i don’t think there is any real reason for winter not to be more direct about how she feels with weiss; it harms weiss not at all to hear that winter is so angry at their father that she struggles to be civil around him, for example, and in earlier volumes it might well have helped weiss to receive an overt reassurance that what jacques is doing to her is unacceptable vs the oblique encouragement winter gave her.

so to an extent – winter makes the right choices (keeping her temper in check, avoiding jacques, being mindful of her sister’s feelings) but takes it to a detrimental extreme because the combination of jacques’ abuse and atlesian military conditioning resulted in her sense that her feelings do not matter to anyone but herself and must be hidden if not outright suppressed.

and there is the additional factor that a) rhodes promised cinder admission into atlas academy as her escape route, and b) winter enrolled in atlas academy and later joined the military to escape her abusive home, and how did that turn out for her? well…

…funny how that works.

in potential, at least, winter is in a ?WEIRD? spot in relation to cinder of not just being able to understand where cinder is coming from and why she did what she did, but also sort of literally embodying the counterfactual – if cinder continued to turn the other cheek for a few more years and then enrolled in atlas as rhodes planned, what would have happened? would it have saved her? who would she be? is the cinder fall who followed that path to the bitter end a good person? is she free? is she safe? – winter is the one person in this story who can answer that honestly, because she is that cinder fall.

and the answer is no! the answer is that atlas academy would have continued the work of systematically stripping away cinder’s humanity until she either became an obedient cog in the machine or or stepped out of line and faced violent retaliation. winter was ironwood’s second in command and that did not protect her from being thrown under the bus when she followed her conscience with regard to YORJ, nor from ironwood doing to her the exact same thing rhodes did to cinder when she disobeyed him.

so if winter, through whatever series of events might lead to it, learned about cinder’s past – yes she understands the impulse to free oneself from an abuser by killing them, and certainly she will empathize with cinder’s actions given the circumstances (frankly i think winter would empathize even with premeditated murder, but what did happen is such a clear-cut act of self-defense that i don’t think winter would even blink). but that’s true to some extent for most of the heroic cast – no one has any concerns whatsoever about blake and yang killing adam, as a point of comparison.

but what makes winter’s perspective unique is that a) she can also understand, and empathize with, the "quietly endure abuse until you’re old enough to apply to atlas without your guardian’s permission" dimension of cinder’s trauma, and b) she lived the "what if?" scenario and still, in the end, faced violent retaliation from her trusted mentor just as cinder did, and her outrage at his injustices is no less potent than cinder’s.

as it is now, winter knows that cinder sees herself as someone who has been deprived and is fighting back – “you atlas elites are all the same! you think that having power means you’ll have it forever, but it just makes the rest of us hungrier! …and i refuse to starve.” one presumes that she also heard the speech cinder broadcast over the CCTS – “huntsmen and huntresses should conduct themselves with honor and mercy, yet i have witnessed neither.” and “the leaders of our kingdoms conduct their business with iron gloves.” cinder orchestrated this horrifying spectacle, but the problems she speaks to are very real.

and then, “i think father may have provided the spark that’s going to set this kingdom on fire” and “you can’t just buy trust like everything else; you have to earn it!” and “no, you have sacrificed everyone else! – you closed the borders – you squeezed mantle until it broke–” and winter would have left jacques to die if not for weiss, and did leave ironwood to die.

cinder isn’t – i keep saying this – cinder won’t be receptive to any kind of moral appeal or appeal to mercy from the heroes, because all she will hear is rhodes. oh, they’ll give her a chance if she behaves? been there done that, she knows this song. winter specifically has the potential to surprise her with: “no, you were right. you’re right. and if you’d made it to atlas academy, you would have either been crushed or warped into the very thing you hate most.”

and that’s really interesting to me – with or without a possible romantic eventuation – because… what then? winter isn’t about to join salem, but i think she would be equally averse to trying to persuade cinder to leave salem once she understood cinder’s reasons. and she’s also an introspective character deeply concerned with the morality of her choices yet also pragmatic yet also the one who, even at the last possible moment, cracks open the door one last time for ironwood to change his mind. the sort of advice she offers weiss in v3 is exactly what cinder needs to hear; and if she can find it in herself to feel sympathy to cinder fall of all people then surely she can also forgive herself, or at least inch in that direction.

where does that leave them? cinder walks away with a lot to think about – atlas is gone, so what does she want now? – and winter has in one sense a new crisis of conscience to deal with (how could she choose to let salem’s most dangerous lieutenant go?) that is also an emotional challenge to herself (she chose it because it felt like the right thing to do, and if it’s right to afford mercy to someone like cinder, why is she merciless to herself?). and in the midst of that sits the dilemma of cinder’s righteous anger – it is a moral imperative to protect the innocent, but if the enemy is a victim of the system you are fighting to uphold in the name of the innocent, that complicates things.

winter kept her head down for most of v8 because she made the determination that she could do the most good – mitigate the most harm – by remaining at ironwood’s side. and that paid off:

she was able to put YRJ in a position to rescue oscar.

she insured all of them evaded ironwood’s custody by refusing to search for them after the whale blew up.

indirectly, this means that winter is the reason penny wasn’t overwhelmed by the virus, because jaune made it to the manor, and she played an indirect role in emerald joining the heroes instead of just bouncing

she gave cover to marrow’s questioning when his other colleagues would have thrown him under the bus for it.

and she was ready and able to save his life and get both of them out safely when he broke with ironwood.

had winter left with her sister, or at the top of v8, harriet seems to be the next highest-ranking special operative and she is the one who would have been making the judgment calls each time winter had an opportunity to act. the cumulative effect of winter’s choices, most of them small decisions within the margins for interpretation and best judgment while following orders, is to carve out a really significant advantage for the heroes by the time ironwood crosses the red line.

so winter is precisely the kind of character i would expect to, upon being confronted with something like cinder’s history, be very practical about what is the best way to reduce or stop the harm? if cinder fall is on this path because she intends to destroy a horrifically unjust system that wronged her in grievous, irreparable ways, is treating her like an evil monster effective? will it do more good to acknowledge that her anger is justified and show her that we’re willing to work with her – which crucially isn’t the same as asking her to join us because our decision to address these problems cannot be contingent on her leaving salem? is there a way to de-escalate without endangering ourselves and the people were fighting for? what can we do to lower the temperature?

it folds into the momentum toward ceasefire with salem very tidily. cinder is in many ways an easier nut to crack, if only because she’s already told winter (in abstract terms) what she wants and why and winter is demonstrably a character capable of connecting these dots, once she surmounts the immediate obstacle of her oath of vengeance. which is less difficult than it might seem on its face, because winter blames herself with equal intensity and is generally – as we’ve seen – very willing to wrestle with and re-examine her feelings as circumstances change.