Fanfic / My Name Is Cinder

My name is Cinder Autumn Stark. I am fourteen years old. And I hate my mother.

My Name Is Cinder is a RWBY Fan Fic by Snarky_SilverHaired_Sociopath. It is about Cinder's upbringing and Start of Darkness. Her mother, Brigit Stark, married Cinder's father for his money. And after he commits suicide, Brigit decides to make Cinder's life torture while she grew up because she tried to expose her mother's intentions. It also details the time that she finally meets with Salem and becomes the villain we know her as in the series.

It is the first in the series The Makings of Team CRME. The next story in the series is An Emerald Unearthed.

All spoilers for this story are unmarked.

This fic provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Fitting with the Fairytale Motifs, Brigit is Cinder's controlling mother-figure. She is domineering of Cinder, beats her, and emotionally manipulates Sterling and Clementine into hating her.
• Adaptation Name Change: Based on the joke that Cinder's last name was all too convenient for a Fall Maiden, the story runs with this idea and her original name “Cinder Autumn Stark.”
• Affably Evil: Salem cares for Cinder and protects her from Watts' criticisms of her. However, she is still the same Omnicidal Maniac.
• Alliterative Name: Cinder’s brother, Sterling Stark.
• Ax-Crazy: Tyrian is called a lunatic and a madman. Laughing about Cinder stabbing her sister and burning her mother alive doesn't suggest a lot of mental soundness.
• Asshole Victim: It's safe to say that Brigit deserved to kick the bucket.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Brigit puts on the guise of a woman who cares about her husband and family, but the truth is that she couldn't care less about them and she abuses Cinder in private.
• Composite Character: The writer has admitted that Cinder's backstory does draw from both Emerald and Mercury's backstories. A sociopathic abusive parent that she killed from the latter, and living on her own and stealing to survive from the former.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Handcuffed to a banister and burned while the key to her release is barely outside her grasp. It's hard to say that Brigit didn’t deserve such an end, but it is still a sadistic and horrifying fate.
• Deadpan Snarker: Dr. Watts is as biting and sarcastic as ever.
• Destroy the Abusive Home/Let the Past Burn: Cinder burns down her former home with Brigit in it. She specifically states that there's nothing left for her there and that no amount of money would negate the horrors that were committed against her there.
• Dirty Coward: Brigit acts all tough and scary, but she takes it out on a child. When she's not in a position of power, she starts panicking. Cinder even calls her a coward in the narration.
• Dissonant Serenity: Cinder says she feels peace after murdering her sister, and continues this as she lets Brigit burn. She even has this as Ursas are attacking the bandit tribe and awaits her death.
• Ephebophile: Scarlet Grayson wants Cinder despite the latter being fifteen at the time.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted for Cinder. At first, it seems like her revenge is motivated by what Brigit did to her father and her brother. However, Cinder seems to have no problem killing Clementine (even though she reasoned it was a Mercy Kill) after the fact and completely dissociates herself from the Stark family after leaving. See Love Is a Weakness.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Cinder doesn't like hypocrisy as her mother was a massively two-faced hypocrite. It's one reason why she kills Scarlet.
  • Scarlet herself doesn't believe in harming children and believes in loyalty to the tribe.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Even after a Retcon finally gave Cinder's father a name, the name is only used once and he is mostly referred to as Brigit's husband or Cinder's (and the other kids') father.
• Evil Is Petty: Looking at Brigit’s plan to ruin Cinder’s life, it does seem extremely petty that she would do such a thing considering it’s because she tried to expose Brigit's heartless nature to her children.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Cinder lampshades it by describing Brigit as a demon wrapped in an angel's skin. She's absolutely gorgeous, but she's a selfish Gold Digger who beats Cinder and makes her life miserable in general.
• Fairytale Motifs: The Cinderella comparisons continue for Cinder in her family dynamic. She has an abusive mother-figure who only cares about money and two siblings that also mistreat her.
• Faux Affably Evil: When Brigit tucks Cinder in at night after she catches her complaining about having another child, she speaks affectionately towards her while clearly threatening her to keep the secret.
• For the Evulz: There is no conceivable reason why Brigit abuses Cinder after her father's death. She just does it to be cruel. There's also not much reason for killing Sterling either.
• Freudian Excuse: This story gives one to Cinder. And it goes by the name of "Brigit Stark."
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Well, the Stark family was rich, but they were not widely known outside of the elites. Cinder especially was treated like garbage by her mother. But the young girl in this story will be the same woman who brought Vale to its knees and orchestrated the Fall of Beacon while becoming the Fall Maiden.
• Gender-Concealing Writing: When the other bandits talk about Grayson, they leave out the fact that Grayson is a woman. Cinder expects a man and hopes to scare her off by threatening to tell her about what she did. Suffice to say, the plan had this as its fatal flaw when Scarlet Grayson introduces herself.
• Gold Digger: Brigit only married her husband for his money and planned on him killing himself so that she'd inherit his whole fortune before their children did.
• Hate Sink: Brigit Stark is thoroughly detestable and lacks any redeeming qualities. She's the only villain in the story designed to draw hatred from the readers.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Cinder mentions Brigit's cold blue eyes. And they fit her sociopathic personality.
• I Have No Son!: Cinder denounces Brigit as a mother in the second chapter and drops this on her as she leaves her for dead.
• It's All About Me: Brigit is a wholly selfish woman who only cares about her own wants and desires.
• Jerkass: Brigit Stark is a very unpleasant person. Underneath her mask is a cruel and dismissive woman who is impatient towards Cinder and extremely condescending.
• Kick the Dog: Everything Brigit does to Cinder, and dismissing her husband's suicide which is eventually revealed to be caused by her.
• Killed Offscreen: Sterling was said to have been poisoned between Chapters 1 and 2.
• Lack of Empathy: Brigit has absolutely none for her family. She dismisses her husband's depression, is glad when he kills himself, has tried to get rid of her pregnancies in the past while calling the children worthless parasites, and beats Cinder regularly without remorse. And Cinder starts picking that up as she grows older. She starts being very dismissive of other people's lives and to murdering others. She says she doesn't even feel guilty about killing her sister.
• Love Is a Weakness: Cinder continually states that she has no desire for love. She explicitly says it's a dangerous thing in Chapter 5.
• Mask of Sanity: Brigit Stark can put a good face on for the public, but she is an abusive sociopath in private.
• Matricide: Cinder ends up killing her mother Brigit. It's hard to blame her.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Cinder's middle name, "Autumn," will be the basis of her current surname in the series, "Fall," and her eventual status as the Fall Maiden.
  • Brigit's name comes from the Irish goddess Brigid, who was the goddess of fire. And as the writer implies, fire leaves behind cinders after it is gone.
  • Scarlet has red hair and eyes.
• Meaningful Rename: Apparently, the rename to "Fall" and its connection to her future status as the Fall Maiden was accidental on Cinder's part. She derived it from her middle name of "Autumn." But Salem, knowing what she'd become, saw it as perfect.
• Mercy Kill: Cinder reasons that she doesn't want her sister to burn to death or live without a mother. So, she makes her death much quicker.
  Unfortunately... it required me to have to kill Clementine as well. She didn't know any better. She was as much a victim of Brigit as I was. But leaving her alive without a mother would be too cruel. And I couldn't bring a girl as young as her where I was going. There was no getting around it, honestly. But I also couldn't subject her to the fate that I have for my mother.
• Ms. Fanservice: Cinder says that Brigit has a body that most women would kill for, even after having three kids. It's one reason her father fell for her. However, it is downplayed since this aspect is not exploited.
• Murder by Suicide: After getting tired of waiting for Anthony to kill himself, she simply told him of her true nature to finally make him hang himself from despair.
• Not Afraid to Die: When the Ursas attack Grayson's Bandit Clan, Cinder calmly walks out in the middle of it and accepts her presumed fate.
• Offing the Offspring: Brigit did this to Sterling before he turned eighteen. And she likely planned to do the same thing to Cinder.
• Precision F-Strike: The last sentence of Cinder's narration in the first chapter is "I fucking hate my mom." Since swearing is almost absent otherwise, it stands out.
• Right Through the Wall: Cinder implied that this was the case with her parents. Brigit tried cheering Mr. Stark up by having sex with him and Cinder says it was the cause of many sleepless nights. This is also the case when she brings in men to sleep with after his death.
• Sadist: Cinder says she picked it up from Brigit. She subjects Brigit to the worst death she can think of and leaves the key to her escape just out of her reach. It's one thing that helps calm her nightmares of Brigit's abuse after she's on her own.
• Sex for Solace: Invoked by Brigit for her husband, but ultimately defied because she wasn't trying to help him. She just wanted to look like she was.
• Shout-Out: Cinder's father was a rich man named Anthony Stark. I wonder if he used any of that fortune to develop some powered armor...
• Small Name, Big Ego: Even though Cinder was not a Maiden and still in training, she still let it get to her head. Watts decides to take her down a peg, but she still remains arrogant about her future power.
• The Sociopath:
  • Brigit Stark to a T. Consummate Liar? Check. She is described as having acting skills that would put movie stars to shame. Manipulative? Check. She wraps her other two children around her finger and makes them hate Cinder. Superficial charm? Check. She can appear nice and her good looks help with that. Lack of Empathy? Check. She feels no sorrow when her husband hangs herself and killed her son when he could no longer be a pawn to torment Cinder. Pathological selfishness? Big check! She only does things for her benefit. She married Cinder's father for his money and dislikes having children because they could potentially take away from her cut of the money if they inherit it. Lack of remorse? Check. Even as Cinder burns her alive. She only cares about not dying. Now we know where Cinder gets a lot of it from.
  • Cinder starts showing signs of this as well after killing her sister. She says it's more of a Mercy Kill, but she doesn't really feel guilty about it. Even when recounting the incident after Watts notes that the Stark family is dead. She says that she doesn't care about love when Scarlet asks her. And she very calmly kills the woman who has provided for her in a heartbeat. (Though, in all fairness, Scarlet was trying to hook up with a teenager.) Along with that, she intends to betray the bandit tribe that Scarlet ran. In the end, she says that she would even kill innocent people to get the power she wants.
• Starter Villain: Brigit. She is killed in the second chapter and is the first hurdle Cinder must go over to become who she is in the series.
• Start of Darkness: This story is this for Cinder. It began when she found out her mother was actually a gold-digging sociopath, and then her mother started abusing her. Things only got worse from there.
• Switching P.O.V.: There are short segments no longer than two paragraphs in the third to sixth chapters that introduce Salem's point of view, describing her grooming of Cinder.
• Title Drop:
  • The title is used as the beginning of the sentence that opens the chapter. The ending of that sentence changes every time.
  • The chapters downplay this. The titles are all phrases that are similar to a line that can be found in the chapter. The first chapter has the straightest example of this at the end. It would be a completely straight example if not for Cinder’s Precision F-Strike.
• The Unfettered:
  • Cinder admits this much in the final chapter. She will hurt and/or kill anyone, even innocent people, to gain the power she desires.
  • But she certainly inherited it from her mother, who was ready to off her entire family (and her many lovers) to get what she wants, whether it's pleasure or money.
• Villains Want Mercy: Brigit starts begging for Cinder to let her go as she leaves her to burn to death, despite never being willing to extend the same mercy to her daughter.
• Would Hurt a Child: Brigit outright strangles six-year-old Cinder when she finds out about her plan to make her father kill himself. And she abuses her for years by whipping her with belts and starving her. She also had poisoned her son before he turned eighteen.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Grayson makes a point of not harming children in raids. While some die if Grimm beasts get involved, none will be harmed by the hands of the tribe.
• You're Insane!:
  • Brigit calls Cinder a "psycho brat" for killing Clem. However, as Cinder states:
    "You killed Sterling. You killed your husband. You tortured me for years. You have no right to look at me and think of me as the demented one. I learned it from you."
  • Both Watts and Cinder (in her narration) call Tyrian a lunatic or a madman. In turn, Watts compares Cinder to Tyrian for stabbing her sister and burning her mother alive and Tyrian laughs about it.

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My name is Cinder Fall. I am twenty-one years old. And I know my place in this world.