it's a grimm mask. if its only purpose was to hide her identity as the spring maiden, any mask would do; maria is a proof of that.

"the masks are a symbol. humanity wanted to make monsters out of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters."

to wear a grimm mask is to wear a symbol; hiding of one's identity with one is almost a secondary function—and the question whether raven wore one to hide her identity as a spring maiden was considered too spoilery to answer after the reveal had already happened.

if that was the sole, even just a main purpose of her grimm mask, by all means the answer should have been a simple "yes".

so really the main question i have at this point is if the 'monster' aspect of it is internal—something raven thinks of herself—or external like with the white fang—something someone else said / thinks of her, and she took it to heart.

something about heroes and monsters. the silver eyes of legendary warriors, the burning red eyes of grimm. the power stories hold. death symbolism and axes; the judge, the jury, and the executioner.

just... raven doesn't have the mask during the flashback.

and she throws it away to reveal she is the spring maiden, as if that's not why it's grimm, that as far as its relation to being spring maiden is concerned, it's purely practical; it hides her identity.

I have like. So many emotions when it comes to Cinder. Because I like her don't get me wrong, I think she has some flaws but in the grand scheme of things she makes a good villain. But I just can't bring myself to see, or really want, Cinder to get redemption. I hate to sound like one of those people who wants to see her die a gorey death, I get it those kinds of critiques annoy me too, but I also don't want to be someone who excuses her actions bc she was abused.

But really, Cinder doesn't really deserve forgiveness. Especially not from team RWBY and co. They could tolerate Emerald, but Cinder? No. Cinder murdered Pyrrha, stabbed Weiss, had a hand in destroying their school, attempted to kill Winter, successfully killed Penny twice, and had zero hesitation in killing team RWBY and then mocking Weiss after she'd killed her entire team. Also yes I'm fully aware that they aren't actually dead, but Cinder believed she killed them, and everyone else believes they're dead so the point stands. And Yes, you can argue Emerald caused the illusion and Pyrrha finished the job, but come on Cinder intentionally planned for all that. And yes Jaune landed the blow the second time but only to prevent Cinder from finishing Penny first.

And that's just the stuff that affected RWBY and co personally! Not to mention she killed Vernal, killed watts, killed several unnamed service workers, killed her mentor, and it was satisfying to see the evil stepmom and stepsisters get killed but it doesn't mean it wasn't murder. Cinder has been proven time and time again to show absolutely no remorse for her actions. I think it is possible Cinder will eventually get dumped by Salem, almost certain actually, but that doesn't mean she can just go crawling to team RWBY and beg for forgiveness and they'll just let her join them like they did Emerald.

Frankly, it'd be stupid if they did, why the hell would they ever forgive her? They have pretty much no reason to. Cinder has caused nothing but problems and pain for them. I see a lot of people say Cinder will go off and just do her own thing, which I mean yeah maybe, but considering how Cinder is and how intent she was on killing Ruby and getting the winter maiden powers I see her getting dumped by Salem, and immediately going after Winter and even Ruby. Just even angrier now since Salem betrayed her, I could even see her trying to get the relics before Salem does.

So how should Cinder's story end then? That's kind of difficult since there are multiple different paths she could go down. I don't think Cinder will stop going after team RWBY and co even if Salem betrays her, which will make her just a persistent threat and one they have to get rid of eventually. I think, in the end, Cinder will die. Maybe Salem kills her, maybe one of our main characters killed her, hell maybe she even sacrifices herself or something. There are a lot of different ways her story could end, too many for me to talk about here.

I don't think Cinder's Grimm transfers work on ATM rules. If it did she'd probably have Amber in her head. And Eddy has said that unlike with Amber Cinder wasn't able to get any partial power from her holds on Raven and Penny. So it seems more like her Grimm arm has to first eat through their Aura to get to the magic (with Amber's Aura already having been broken before Cinder put on the glove) with no Aura combining.

i feel like at this point, it's difficult to say how exactly any of this works because there's so much uncertainty about in-universe as well. the inner circle didn't know what would happen with the aura transfer machine — from ozpin's point of view, it's understandable that the possibility of transferring aura from one person to another could alter their personality.

but we also do know that when the powers change host, the maidens' souls combine in a way, it just doesn't happen in the same way as ozma's does where you get someone talking to you inside your head.

that brings me to another point: what's more important in this scenario, soul or aura? obviously, aura is connected to the soul, which is why grimm don't have it, so there's that. but gillian, to my understanding, siphons aura and can transfer it between two people, and there's no changes in personalities or anything like that.

so, to me, soul is what is important. that's who you are. aura is more like a fuel that is connected the soul, but aura's break all the time and no one is losing their personalities or lives or anything because of that.

so how exactly does cinder's grimm arm work? when she tried taking powers from raven and penny, it was the color of their auras. same with amber, though with the grimm bug instead. with vernal though, there was nothing, so it would seem like the grimm needs to siphon the aura first, or maybe it recognizes the magic that's part of the soul that's connected to the aura, so it's like. to get the magic you need the soul and the quickest and most direct way to that is the aura. same with the aura transfer machine.

gillian also experimented with her semblance on grimm, trying to transfer aura to them, resulting in the grimm excessively siphoning aura from her and almost draining her dry. so not only do grimm not have aura, they also want none of it.

which could be the case with cinder's grimm arm too; it siphons the aura to get the soul to get the magic and in the process gets rid of the aura too because it has no use for it, leaving only the soul and magic, which would move along during a natural change of maiden powers as well.

this is incredibly long and rambly and i'm sorry but i got really into thinking about this stuff. tldr; the rules are uncertain, but with the way the aura transfer machine has been presented in negative light (at least when it comes to transferring maiden powers) i think paralleling it with the grimm arm in terms of how they work makes sense.