#it’s not like she’s been going around grafting grimm bits onto people willy nilly

[bestworstcase]

That's some compelling meta WRT choice and 'hey, wait, does Cinder *really* need or want the arm gone (again)?' I'll admit to swallowing the 'it's eating her like Grimm mold and has to be Dealt With sometime' premise for a while, but even if Cinder does (try to) break with Salem that'll be some time coming yet. As for a big cup of Optic De-Grimmer solving anything about Salem herself...Summer Rose probably tried just that and got nowhere 'cause Salem's had *eons* to think about All This.

hdkfbd on the subject of summer rose my favorite theory on what went down between her and salem during that initial confrontation is basically: summer hit her with the silver glare, and salem—who may or may not have ever personally been glared before but is of course intimately and painfully familiar with what GOL’s magic feels like on account of it being what makes her immortal—promptly went “ohhh that’s not *his* power, i… need to reconsider some things.” and summer was like. what.

because, yanno, if salem made the same assumption that maria did, killing SEWs was most likely motivated by a desire to eradicate or at least diminish GOL’s influence in the world… and if, upon experiencing it herself, she realized that that assumption was incorrect, the obvious response is to put a moratorium on hunting them down at least until she figured out where that power actually originated from and, well, here’s a VERY CONVENIENT silver-eyed huntress who ozpin VERY CONVENIENTLY broke to the point of taking off on rogue suicide missions and oh you have children? i’m so very sorry would you like to join me so we can stop ozpin from doing to your girls what he’s done to you?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i have several theories on the grimm arm and why it’s growing; the main three i keep toggling between are:

1. “it can sense your trepidation; you must make it dread you” = the more afraid cinder feels of the grimm arm (and perhaps salem by extension), the less control she has over it, because after all it *is* a grimm, and the grimm feed on fear. hence why it starts to grow only after cinder disgraces herself and spends months with this worry in the back of her mind that she’s not going to be able to earn back her spot in the inner circle. if that’s the case, then cinder being on this trajectory of losing fear / getting bolder and more defiant is the best possible thing she could do for herself, because refusing to be cowed might measurably diminish the degree of control salem has over the arm and thus of her. (the symbolic appeal of this interpretation is…obvious gjdndjsk)

2. the growth and visual blending of grimm and human flesh coincides with cinder’s growing acclimatization to the grimm arm after the battle of haven. v4-5 establishes that cinder is having some trouble with the arm (apparently multiple sessions with salem trying to get it to take, the tremendous and exhausting effort of using it during training sessions, the habit she has of just letting it dangle stiffly at her side), and after her sleeve is ripped off at haven we see that the graft site is still very clean. after this point, cinder becomes gradually more at ease with the arm, hiding it less with every outfit change/adjustment, and her range of motion with it likewise becomes steadily more natural. by the time we see the growth up to her shoulder, the way cinder uses her grimm arm is indistinguishable from how she uses her human arm. thus: its growth might be a direct result of this physical and emotional integration; as cinder gets comfortable with it and masters it, it becomes more genuinely a part of her. (possibly this would explain why cinder seems so unconcerned, if she’s experiencing the growth as the arm feeling more and more natural, more like it *belongs* to her.)

3. …both…?