#the real urgency I feel to finish Skimming Eye is because I'm honestly so pessimistic about V9

[onewomancitadel]

Do you think canon Jaune still currently hates cinder like he did in V4 or do you think he simply sees her as someone who needs to be stopped?

That's an interesting question. I appreciate you asking me lol. (For the record, there’s an upsetting screencap from V8 of Penny’s death below).

Well, he knows it's her.

His first priority is to secure the civilians, so he's past his death wish.

(Kind of off-topic, sort of: it’s actually ridiculous how romantic I find this shot of Cinder revealing herself to Jaune with her obsidian projectiles. Hi, honey)!

I think that he's past the hatred, yes. At this point he's really just dismissive of her. Both aggression and dismissal of the anima are not the final answer... idk I have some thoughts on it as it stands in canon but also I'm trying to protect my heart and not get too attached. Sure I am content to hypothesise about whether the Indecisive King structure holds true but also in terms of immediate canon I'm like please don't hurt me lol.

Of course, now they're tied together through Penny's death, just like Cinder killed Pyrrha, and there's all sorts of fucked up/wonderful potential there (and as a shipper pre-V8, I lost my mind when this happened - so tragic).

I really like them both riding each other's shields but it's important to remember here he's specifically keeping her from Penny. There's both the framing of Jaune being 'the thing immediately in front of her' as well as her immediate obstacle to reconcile... remember he's her animus too. He's 'protecting' Penny at the same time as diametrically having hurt her... there's so much going on here.

Because there are two ways it could go. Cinder's stopped and that's the simple and clean answer, you gut her cleanly and get it over with. That, or the more complicated one, which is integrating anima and animus (like Salem and Ozma didn't). That could be platonic. Or not.

I think Jaune has also accepted his role as healer/more supportive (or classically 'feminine') characteristics in respect to their V5 confrontation but he's not done yet. Cinder's story is also really picking up momentum, so it could go any way now, virtually.

Also for fuck's sake, Jaune's new outfit and hair in V7/V8 is so laughable to look at. It's the one thing I sincerely cannot get behind in the new volumes. I prefer the more casual longer hair and I also haaaaaate the dudebro haircut. I can't tell if it's actually trying to do something thematically or if it's just stupid.

Not really the point of your ask but I can't really predict what will come next. I lean towards the pessimistic side because I don’t want to be hurt. I sort of took Jaune's redesign (more a modern idea of masculinity) as a cue WK is more likely because that's also more of a... very feminine/very masculine pairing, whereas Cinder embodies a lot of masculine and feminine characteristics (and I'm using these in a descriptive sense here, not trying to say people ought to be one way or another) which I find to be pleasingly balancing with Jaune-the-healer-and-pretty-boy lol.

In summary: I don't think he hates her, and I think that's actually still a problem, because when he was angry, he confronted her and challenged her.

This is specifically why I ship it. One of many, anyway.

So if there's not more conflict between them at some point, there's an issue - at the very least there has to be a reprisal from anger -> dismissal/rejection -> confrontation/acceptance.

That, or it's removed from her and the others offer him support for having to kill Penny. In that case, then I’m very, very wrong about story direction, or at least the importance of anima/animus (which seems to be a big deal, but who nose - the character arcs are not all treading the same ground, and it could just be that once he’s past Cinder he’s past Cinder, but again, she’s also very important as villainess protagonist, and and and... so much riding on this lol).

I also want to put a disclaimer if this post gets out of hand (I doubt it does), when I refer to Jungian psychoanalysis it’s explicitly within a story structure and the way the story uses to communicate ideas, and conceptions of self in a poetic manner. I don’t literally think people are composite parts, but I think the symbolic/iconographic method of storytelling is interesting because it’s all rich and intentional.

It’s a way to explore ideas of the self etc. and the kinds of personal and moral decisions you have to make about the world, not literally trying to be prescriptive about human psychology. I do think as a broad disclaimer the hero’s journey is limiting and absolutely not universal, but it is a major part of the language of Western storytelling, the same as Jung.

I also really like anima/animus, light and dark, equals/opposites, the things that define a thing as that-which-it-is-not is also what gives it meaning, that type of philosophy (sorrow is half of joy). So that’s the angle I come from. That’s why I think it’s important Jaune doesn’t run from it and dismiss it, and the same for Cinder.