YMMV / Fairies of the Shattered Moon

• Broken Base: The story's reviews are extremely split on the actions of Weiss and Yang during the Grimmlands Arc and which one was more justified in the events surrounding Summer's death, as seen below in the Unintentionally Unsympathetic section. People side with Weiss or with Yang, a third group feel that this was the right direction for both girls' character arcs, and a fourth group sees the author's intent but thinks that, given the scale of harm that Summer's actions resulted in, the whole thing is falling a bit flat.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Cinder/Ella's past of being kidnapped by her stepmother after the latter killed her father and being trained abusively to be a killer becomes this when canon reveals she was basically bought from an orphanage in Mistral by an abusive hotel owner and her two daughters who made Cinder's life hell.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In a way, Hazel first going after Salem for the death of his sister and only turning against Ozpin once he learns that she is immortal and the story's Awful Truth becomes this after Volume 8 reveals that he similarly went after Salem first in canon too, only turning against Ozpin after killing her multiple times to no effect and coming to believe that she couldn't be stopped.
• I Knew It!: Even the author admits in Chapter 32 basically everyone in the audience had already guessed Esper Rosenflos is actually Summer Rose, either by noticing Mythology Gags to his previous works or just how thickly he was pouring on the foreshadowing.
• Only the Author Can Save Them Now: The power imbalance between Salem's faction and the heroes has reached this point as of the Grimmlands Arc. Not only did Salem manhandle Jaune/Ren casually, but End brutalized Erza. Between this and Yang defecting to become a Gate, it seems rather improbable that anything can possibly defeat Salem at this point.
• Signature Series Arc: The author held a vote to determine what the readers' favorite arc was. The Haven Arc, consisting of such iconic moments as Ruby vs. Pyrrha, End wiping out the Branwen Tribe, Wendy and Erza's development surrounding the Nikos family drama, and ESPECIALLY the Erza vs. Cinder fight that capped the arc off, won with nearly half the total vote.
  • The Erza vs. Cinder battle was later voted the fan-favorite fight of the entire first half of the story.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While the story makes efforts to present Summer Rose's death as a tragedy, the fact that she has spent the majority of her screentime screwing over everyone around her for her goals makes it hard to sympathize. Her claim that everything she's done is for her daughters also likewise falls flat, given both that she's at least partly responsible for Cinder turning out like she did, and that she spends most of her final battle beating one of those daughters to death- she barely stops herself in time. Given that Weiss is avenging her own mother's death, it's extremely difficult to see Summer's death as anything but exactly what she deserved.
  • Related to the above, Yang entering a Face–Heel Turn over Summer's death marks her as, at best, a massive hypocrite; she wants to kill Weiss for killing her mother, but the very crime that Weiss killed Summer for was the murder of her own mother. Viewing Weiss' actions as unforgivable and her own as justified is, at best, Moral Myopia at its finest. The fact that Summer was one of Salem's forces beforehand makes Yang's actions even less justified.
  • From the other point of view of the above, Weiss. While Yang is hurt by Summer's death, the thing that enraged her the most is how Weiss completely ignored her pleas to stay her hand for the time being. Yang accepted that Summer was going to have to face justice for her actions but she just wanted more time with her until the bigger picture of the Umbral Spirit King was dealt with. Yang gave up her arms for her friends, she jumped into a bullhead with a superdemon for her friends, she was prepared to give up her mother for her friends and all she asked of Weiss was to delay her revenge for a bit. Weiss refused to do that and in the process nearly killed Ruby as well. Yang values loyalty above all else and Weiss betrayed that.