Cinder Fall

They killed Adam and Cinder is still alive. A character with all the potiental in the world was killed and a character with almost no potential was left alive. Great job CRWBY!
Do the writers remember that you're supposed to make the characters formidable if they serve as obstacles to the heroes? This is the same problem I have with Hux and Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars movies, where they're in charge of the enemy forces and clearly dangerous, yet also used as the butt of jokes that range from being awkward to making them look like bumbling idiots. If Cinder is supposed to seem dangerous, whether as an extension of Salem or just in her own right, she kind of needs to demonstrate that the plot won't always force her to lose in some manner no matter what she does: twice she had what should have been major blows by killing Pyrrha and nearly killing Weiss, and both times they were undermined by Deus Ex Machina through Ruby's Silver Eyes and Jaune's sudden semblance, neither coming from characters with a logical connection to the victim and thus mostly serving as a way to make sure Cinder still loses the day, or at least is not given a complete victory despite her plan and abilities seemingly giving the upperhand.
Why is Emerald so DEVOTED to Cinder?
The implication is that Cinder "saved" Emerald from a life of misery. The problem is that, leaving aside for a moment the fact that it's not clear how much time has passed since they met, nothing suggests visually that Emerald was dying of starvation or anything of that sort: her clothes are simple but not ragged, she doesn't look dirty, she has nice weapons and a convenient Semblance. Child-Blake from Volume 1 looked way more like a street rat than Emerald ever did; there's a reason if people thought Blake was a poor orphan.
Was she given a purpose? I would argue that a career change from thief to mass-murderer is not that great and that if her new purpose is to give birth to the apocalypse, then having no purpose at all would have been better.
Then Volume 3 Chapter 7 showed us that Emerald grew attached to Cinder during the time they spent together before recruiting Mercury and yet Emerald looked exactly the same: she wore the same clothes, etc., so I wouldn't consider her loyalty a byproduct of a newly found financial stability.
Now that you tell me that theory, I think the way they should have written Cinder would be to oppose Ruby's innocence about fairy tales. After all, in most magical girl shows, the hero and the villain are two female archetypes. Ruby is the bright and innocent girl, whereas Cinder is the villaines seductionist type. To rewrite Cinder, leading off what you said. >Cinder was once like Ruby, where she believed her life would be like a fairy tale and she'd play out Cinderella. >Cinder had her big night at the dance but fate/destiny meant that she did not achieve her dreams. >Cinder turns bitter about the world - which is relatable, to a certain extent but still shows that she is evil for going down her, to be, dark path because she did not achieve her high dreams. Most people shrug off the bitterness of life and learn to "suck it up". >We sympathise with Cinder as much as someone who didn't win the lottery from one ticket. >Salem meets Cinder and acts as her "fairy god mother" and teaches Cinder all about the lore of the series and trains her, as her pupil. >Cinder is sent into Beacon, to bring it down from the inside but then meets Ruby, who reminds her of herself (at that age) but Ruby has Silver-eyes. >Cinder is jealous that the god of light or destiny or whatever "choose" Ruby to have such powers. >This gives Cinder motivation to hate Ruby. >Similar themes plays on with Cinder and Pyrrha. Cinder being basically jealous of anyone who has it or who will have it better off than her. Especially, Pyrrha, who is the top of her league for being a huntress. >This also leads into Emerald and Mercury who are both two people who are "down on their luck" given their street rat and Assassin origins. >Cinder doesn't hate anyone which is not either: A close ally which is helping her (Salem) or someone who she is better than because of life circumstances (Mercury or Emerald). >Anyway, the story goes as normal and her nefariousness deeds follows through in the fall of Beacon. >However, Jaune is the one the witness Pyrrha's death and is helpless to stop it. >Cinder now gains maiden powers and uses the pitiful Jaune as a ginnie-pig, by scorching and burning through his high defensive aura, as he screams in agony. >Ruby arrives on scene, like in the actual show but this time sees Jaune in peril and activates her Silver-Eyes. >Cinder escapes, weakened, like in the show and even more angry. Jaune and Ruby are saved but Jaune suffered severe burns which marks his chest and face - permanently. >See it sets up that: 1.) The maiden powers + Cinder's regular strength can break through even Jaune's high aura level, which shows that she is strong. 2.) Ruby has a reason activate her Silver-Eyes, in addition to Penny. 3.) Jaune is scarred both physically and mentally from Cinder killing Pyrrha and scorching him. 4.) Because of points 2 & 3, Jaune and Ruby have a "joint-personal-reason" to go after Cinder. 5.) Cinder has more of a reason to hate Ruby and her Silver-Eyes because of how it deus ex-machina'd her out of her moment of celebration. Overall, it reflects the themes of opposition between Ruby & Cinder, how the loose and suffering of Ruby & Jaune unites them further to fight together and demonstrates duality of how not getting your overly ideal and at all realistic life, can cause hatred and the like to stew and transform someone into a villain. It keeps Cinder as a villain because it doesn't make you overly sympathise with her, which is a flaw which (I personally see) alot of villains have. What do ya'll think?

Mental characteristics

Personal history

In canon, Cinder wanted to induce enough negative emotions to attract grimm, destroy Vale and to take advantage of chaos to kill Fall Maiden, right? Wasn't there any easier and less convoluted way to reach this goal? Like simultaneous terrorist attacks in different parts of Vale, setting some buildings on fire, creating mass hysteria or something like that. Would leg injury and death of a robot in a fighting tournament have greater emotional impact on people than a bunch of armed terrorist slaughtering citizens and generally causing well coordinated mayhem? Was infiltrating Beacon really necessary? Cinder or one of her lackeys could have been discovered very easily if someone who knew how they look like and what they're up to (Qrow, for example) showed up to visit Ozpin or just watched tournament on tv. Her plan was extremely risky and worked only because she apparently reads the script in advance. Even Torchwick's Secret Train Of Doom was better thought out and it would have had the same effect as Cinder's meddling if Coco didn't show up to ruin RWBY in volume 2 finale. And why did Cinder order Torchwick to steal dust? Did they use it for something or is my memory failing? Why was it so important to her plan? What was it for exactly? For building bombs and putting them on the train? Was TNT never invented in Remnant? That's kinda hard to believe, because they already have super advanced robots, computers and airships. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Cinder used dust for anything and she still managed to execute her evil plan flawlessly. So what was the point of volume 1 and 2 then? Cause stealing dust was like a big deal in previous seasons.
In canon for V3, Cinder says that she’s making an alteration to the plan when she sees Penny’s schematics but we don’t even know what the original plan was. Penny ended up being the central part of it so we don’t even know what she changed and it’s never explained. We don’t even know how she got this, the writers literally handed her a victory.
Another problem is that after Cinder broke into the CCT and uploaded the virus, none of the adults brought up the idea of investigating the computers or even entertained the notion of spyware being uploaded. I mean honestly, what did they think she was doing? Looking up silly cat pictures?
Cinder’s speech at the Fall of Beacon doesn’t make any sense. She talks about being against schools and Huntsman because they’re corrupt but we’re never shown said corruption, she says that the kingdoms are on the brink of war but that was never brought up before, she chastises Atlas for creating Penny as a child but they’ve never had problems sending flesh-and-blood children to fight before, she says that Headmasters have more power than most armies but we don’t know why, she says the Breach was Ozpin’s colossal failure but his students cleaned house, and she says that Atlas invaded Vale even though it is explicitly told and shown that Vale invited Atlas to its borders.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

I get the feeling Cinder was suppose to be a femme fatale and no one in crwby knew how to write a femme fatale and as a result she just came out terrible.
The problem is that she has no given motivation for stealing the Maiden powers. If a character wants something that they don't need, the there needs to be a motivation behind it. Catwoman is a kleptomaniac controlled by the impulsive need to steal things. Adam had Blake's love, and wants it back desperately. Cinder wants the Maiden powers because —MOTIVE NOT FOUND—. There is nothing said about why Cinder wants power, just that she does. It's a character flaw that exists, but has no given reason for her learning not to correct it after what happened to her in Volume 4. She's shown hating being left in a weakened state, but lets herself get manipulated into screwing up a plan upon hearing she could get hit with Silver Eyes in the process. It's just a complete failure to learn because she wasn't written with the capacity to learn and grow from what happened in Volume 3 and the end of 5 to the beginning of 6 seem to be repeating the same process again. Cinder gets messed up again, and still goes right after Ruby when she should be trying to stay as far away and letting Neo take care of everything. She's become a bad character because they never did anything with it at the first two chances to expand on her character to turn her into a good one, and just have her repeating the same mistakes without learning a damn thing from her experiences.
Cinder's problem is not that she is sexulized. There is a difference between a sexy character and a hyper-sexualized character. It's when Vol 4 and onward are where big problems occur.The reason characters like Lust works is that she is contain to her role as an antagonist and the writer doesn't try to make something that she isn't.Cinder went from femme fatale to trying to be Zuko. The writers don't have the talent write that kind of character arc.Bayonetta is greater example of a femme fatale. She is a fun character and that is able to have some depth with the character dynamics and relationships around her. I suggest watching the commentary of the game and the making of Bayonetta. It's very interesting.
Cinder's character is just all over the place from Vol 3 to 6. She was portrayed as a big bad and then gets torn down by Salem and other characters. When Lust was defeated, the other Homunculi didn't downgrade her. Even Envy became a bit cautious against Roy because he was the one that roasted her. In RWBY Cinder is consider not a threat due to the new villains coming in and lowing Cinder's importance as a villain.
Cinder is just not interesting enough to have a long going character arc. Her voice actor is also lacking and makes her seem like she's trying hard to be a villain. The confidence is lost when the VA lacks it in the role.
Why are people saying she is sexualized? In what way is she sexualized,l can't be her clothes, can't be her voice. She pretty tamed to me , she just as tamed as yang even when she has short shorts. I'm sorry I just don't see it, she has done nothing sexual in the show and the thing she did with roman does not count. How's lifted someone's chin sexy and as for lust in all the time she was on screen what did she do that was sexy. Lust doesn't always mean sex hungry if anything lust was blood lustful.
Zaheer is not really that good of an antagonist. His motivation makes absolutely no sense. He believes if he murders enough people, the world will unite in peace. The only reason why he is considered a good antagonist is because he is a serious thread and because he murders a characters specifically created for the audience to hate. Also I believe it is because Anarchism is loosely related to Marxism, which is becoming more popular lately.
Let's see... No Backstory. No known motivations No stated skills, specialties, or hobbies Her powers are never explained Her connection to the Grimm is never explained Overpowered before she became a maiden, massively overpowered after. Makes classic 'Stupid' villain mistakes repeatedly
Still wondering how Cinder is anything but a walking bad girl trope.
Also. I think they won't kill her off because Jessica Nigri brings people to their conventions and panels. That's where the sexualisation factor comes from, not from Cinder herself. It's from her voice actress.
Cinder’s sexualization has nothing to do with why I hate her- with the only exception being that people use ‘dude, she’s hot!’ as an excuse for her actions or to give her a redemption arc. Which I hate because I despise that sort of thinking. 
The only time I found Cinder even remotely interesting was during V4 when we got to see her struggle to overcome her weakened state and the set up for a revenge arc against Ruby...which was promptly forgotten in V5 and tried to be brought back in V6.
To me, Cinder is simply a boring character who should have stayed dead after V5 if not V3. As it would remove her from the story and force Emerald and Mercury to reconsider their choices and so on.
Still holding out for that epic team RWBY vs Cinder boss fight they've been literally teasing us with since volume 2, seriously that's all i'm asking for, I want it, I neeeeeed it, to say i'm desperate for some form of proper rivalry and climactic payoff fight between the main antagonist of the first season of the show and the four main protagonists is a massive understatement, it's like every time they have a chance to set something fun up with Cinder the just shove her back on the shelf and tell the people who DO enjoy her character to keep waiting, it's literal character writing procrastination and it actually sucks still being a fan of the show for it.
In Volume 2 Beacon would've been empty of students and staff due to their Huntsman Shadowing and the Breach in Vale. Cinder could've easily walked into the vault, gotten the relic, and then fucked off before anyone knew what was happening. And because Remmant is so stupid that one of the four Safe Havens in the world could fall and everyone goes on business as usual, sneaking off with a Relic would be no big deal
Then that makes Cinder's, and Salem's, plan even more convoluted than it needs to be. She could just take the Relics via espionage and have her goons take them all at once. Nobody knew about the Relics, so why didn't Cinder just take the Relic when Beacon was abandoned with no risk of anyone noticing? RWBY literally gave Cinder the perfect opportunity to get the Relic with ease and she didn't take it.
The reason I hate her is that she is little more than a Saturday morning cartoon villain. We have nothing but pointless speculation to go on regarding her origin and motivations for wanting power at all costs.

Likes & Dislikes

One of the few things Cinder enjoys in life is sewing. When she's stressed or angry, she just cleans everything. She's very meticulous about both. When she's not working on the Plan TM she spends all her time engaged in one of the two activities.

Social

Family Ties

Cinder has a Dark and Troubled Past. Her motif is centred around Cinderella, and everyone knows the girl covered in ashes went through a pretty soul-crushing ordeal. Considering Salem is the fairy godmother, it's possible that she's a version of Cinderella who killed her abusive family rather than escaped them.
Cinder is a Tyke Bomb raised by Salem. Bit iffy, but maybe Cinder's twisted nature and beliefs comes from having basically been raised that way by Salem. Until we learn more about her, her only real reason for fighting against Ozpin and the Kingdoms, and believing that she should be the Fall Maiden, seems to be "Because Salem told me it was true", like when she says to Ozpin "She was right about you" or tells Salem "I'll claim what's ours". It could also explain why she's such a good fighter, and already seems to know exactly how the Fall Maiden powers work before she gets them: she was put through Training from Hell her whole life. If Rooster Teeth really is planning to make her more sympathetic, this is definitely one way to go about it.
Adding to this, to keep with the Cinderella theme, perhaps Cinders' biological family was abusive and Cinder herself had a similar relationship with Salem when she was younger to Emeralds' relationship with her. So Salem's a kind of twisted Fairy Godmother, you might say? Exactly. Now that just raises the question of who the prince is...
"Having lost her parents at a young age, Cinder always held herself responsible for their deaths. The idealistic huntsmen couple gave everything they had to everyone except their lone daughter. The bandits who murdered her parents were always on her mind, but the young and weak Cinder stood no chance and she knew it. She resented the murderers, her parents, the huntsmen ideal, and above all herself. At that moment, she felt a helplessness that was all consuming. In the tough years that followed Cinder learned to rely on no one but herself. She honed her cunning in those rough early years. Lying, cheating, and stealing. She survived. Finally, she grew strong enough to confront the murderers. She caught them by surprise, it was hardly a fair fight. In their final moments, Cinder held their lives in her hands and she loved it. Now they were helpless and weak. She had brought on these men down and no one else. No police, no huntsmen. Just her." A bit cliche when you shrink it down but thought I'd give her a few basic motivations for hating Ruby and a few parallels. She hates Ruby because she clings to the huntsmen ideal, despite what happened to her mother. Deep down inside Cinder envies Ruby's strength to believe, but she can't reconcile that with her entire raison-d'etre. Also, this explains her disdain for Jaune. He is in the position she was, and she can't stand to see that either.