History Recap / RWBYV6E6AloneInTheWoods

* HumanoidAbomination: Most of the Grimm are based on real or mythic animals, but the Apathy are humanoid in shape, so thin and sinewy that they appear skeletal. Their white mask covers their face and looks like a human skull. Their bodies are capable of twisting in inhuman ways, and they twitch with bone-cricking tics when they straighten up, just like the Nuckelavee and the God of Darkness.

* TooDumbToLive: Though he acted with the best intentions, Bartleby's final scheme to help the town overcome its hardship only ended up wiping it out. When separating a pair of Grimm from their pack, he failed to consider that the rest of the pack might try to follow the pair. These specific type of Grimm had the ability to drain the will from a living being with their sheer presence, causing its victim to either waste away or be left open to being killed. When Bartleby put the pair of Grimm in his cellar, he didn't bother to immediately seal up the tunnels, instead leaving it until the following day. This gave the pack plenty of time in which to arrive at the farm and locate their missing members. Bartleby therefore sealed in an entire horde of Apathy Grimm rather than just two. The sheer level of power emanating from such a huge pack saps the energy from the entire farmstead, killing all of them in their sleep, even Bartleby.

Seeking shelter in an abandoned farm, the heroes ride out the blizzard and come to terms with new information about their mission.

Then they discover that the farm isn't abandoned at all...

The heroes seek shelter in an abandoned farm to ride out the blizzard and come to terms with new information about their mission.

As darkness falls on Brunswick Farms and the snow continues to fall, Team RWBY's morale is at an all-time low. The only thing worse than being stranded, alone in the woods ... is realizing you're not alone at all.

[[caption-width-right:350:"This is fine." [[note]]No, it's not! GET UP![[/note]] ]]

----

'''Volume 6, Episode 6:'''

* DeadlyGaze: At the end of Volume 3, Qrow tells Ruby that legend claims the Creatures of Grimm are afraid of silver-eyed warriors because the warriors are capable of striking the Grimm down with a single loop. Qrow regards it as ridiculous, but Ruby did freeze a Grimm Dragon to Beacon Tower when the power of her eyes instinctively activated and Qrow isn't quite sure what happened. In this episode, Maria deliberately activates Ruby's eyes to save them all from the Apathy Grimm. Controlling her power for the first time, Ruby is able to reduce an entire room full of Apathy Grimm to particles with a single burst of silver light from her eyes. It does not destroy any Apathy Grimm that were not in the room at the time.

* OhCrap: Maria goes wide-eyed with shock when she reads Bartleby's journal and realizes the farm's tunnels are filled with Apathy Grimm. Yang, Blake, and Weiss have [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rwby/images/d/dd/V6_06_00037.png/revision/latest?cb=20181208175425 much the same reaction]] when Ruby comes across the horde and screams in terror.

* OhCrap: Maria goes wide-eyed with shock when she reads Bartleby's journal and realizes the farm's tunnels are filled with Apathy Grimm.

** When Ruby instinctively uses her silver eyes to prevent Blake from being killed, the activation is only momentary and barely affects the Grimm. It's enough for Maria to ask Ruby what colour her eyes are. Upon learning they're silver, Maria gasps them instructs Ruby on how to activate them, which destroys every Grimm in the room. At the end of the episode, Ruby asks Maria how she knew so much about the silver eyes; Maria tells her that it should be obvious by now that she also had silver eyes.

* EvilIsNotAToy: Bartleby tried to use a single pair of Apathy Grimm to keep the inhabitants of the farm calm so other Grimm would stay away and he could cut costs on Huntsman protection. Unfortunately, the other members of the Apathy Grimm's pack followed their missing members, and the plan [[GoneHorriblyRight was more effective than it was supposed to be]].

* GoneHorriblyRight: Bartleby tried to bring back a pair of Apathy Grimm to help keep everyone calm so he could cut costs on Huntsman protection. Unfortunately, the rest of the pack followed their missing members and ended up trapped in the waterways below the settlement when Bartleby sealed it up, causing the inhabitants of the farm to be so paralyzed with despair that they just gave up.
* HeroicWillpower: Throughout the episode, Ruby is able to consistently shrug off the [[EmotionBomb willpower-dulling effects of the Apathy Grimm]], only very briefly falling under its control. Even went subjected to the paralyzing effects of their screeches, Ruby is still able to move around when the rest of her team is unable to move. As Maria is also able to move in these situations, it may be that silver eyes offers some resistance to the effects.
* TheHorde: The Apathy's numbers seem to be ''endless''. Even when Ruby wipes out a room of filled with them with her silver eyes, there's still more coming up from the tunnels. Weiss ends up setting the building on fire, and even then it's never confirmed if the fire killed the rest of them.
* HumanoidAbomination: The Apathy Grimm are by far the most humanoid Grimm seen so far, and that just makes them ''more'' disturbing, especially the way they lurch together as a mass.
* ImmuneToBullets: The Apathy easily shrugs off shots from Ruby's Crescent Rose. For point of comparison, the bullets of Crescent Rose were able to damage the ''Nuckelavee'', TheHeavy from Volume 4 that shrugged off slashes from Jaune and Ren, meaning the Apathy's hides are tougher than that.
* InnocentlyInsensitive: When the flatbed's tire pops right after Qrow nudges it with his foot, Maria remarks how the group are "Clearly beacons for bad luck!" Given how Qrow feels about his Bad Luck Semblance, it hits a little too close to home and sends him into a bigger sulk than before.
* JumpScare: First, right when Ruby is in a daze, gazing at the Relic she's holding over the well, a pair of glowing red eyes suddenly appearing in the darkness below scares her so bad that she drops the Relic. Then, while the team is down in the waterways looking for the Relic, Maria is skimming through Bartleby's journal, and visibly startles when turning a page reveals a huge, nightmarish illustration of an Apathy Grimm, [[OhCrap keying her in as to what's really going on around the farm and what kind of danger they're all in]].

* MonsterOfTheAesop: The Apathy acts as a metaphor for the team’s despair. It also applies to Qrow’s alcoholism: they invited just a little bit in to take the edge off, but many more crept in and eroded their will to live until they died of apathy.
* MonsterOfTheWeek: In the greater plot, the Apathy Grimm are merely a set of EliteMook enemies, their threat only lasting this episode before Team RWBY, Qrow, Oscar, and Maria flee the farm.
* MoreThanMindControl: The Apathy’s attack is made more effective by team RWBY’s recent hopelessness. It hits Qrow especially hard since it's compounded with Qrow losing his faith in Oz and all the alcohol he's been drinking, to the point where he can barely move and has to be dragged out of the burning house by Ruby and Weiss.
* MotivatedByFear: Fear seems to be the best emotion to counteract the Apathy's effects on people. Ruby snaps out of it when she glimpses their eyes in the well, the other three snap out of it when they hear Ruby's scream, and Qrow who was the most deeply enthralled wakes up when he sees the horde of burning Grimm and realizes that his nieces are in danger and he was too busy drinking to notice.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Early own Ruby was coming dangerously close to succumbing to The Apathy's effects and throwing away the lamp before The Apathy's JumpScare gives her enough of a shock to snap her out of it.
* NighInvulnerable: The Apathy Grimm are lean and sinewy, but can take a lot of punishment. Bullets fired from Crescent Rose do nothing, and being lit on fire merely slows them down. It took a sample of Ruby's power to merely ''stun'' them, and a full display to bury them for good.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: The Apathy Grimm are clearly partially based off of zombies, with their slow, lurching gait, their appearance being like emaciated humanoids with exposed bones, and a tendency to function as a group.
* OutOfGenreExperience: This episode plays unlike most RWBY episodes. There is no comedy aside from a snide remark by Oscar at the beginning and little action that the team can do against the enemy, playing more like a dramatic horror movie about a group of friends lost in an abandoned place.
* OutsideContextProblem: The Apathy Grimm. While other Grimm have shown more esoteric abilities such as possessing objects or a BreathWeapon, those were clearly an extension of their biology. The EmotionBomb that the Apathy can use is something closer to a species-wide Semblance or even outright magic which no other Grimm seen yet have demonstrated.
* ThePowerOfLove: To activate her Silver Eyes, Maria encourages Ruby to "think about the people who love you" and to think about protecting them.
* TheReveal: When the Apathy Grimm begin to overwhelm team RWBY and Maria in the cellar, Maria asks Ruby what color her eyes are, which the audience already knows is silver. She then tells Ruby to focus on her loved ones, and wanting to protect them. Ruby then lets out a blast of light from her eyes that wipes out the entire pack of Grimm. When Ruby asks Maria later how she knew how to tap into the power of the silver eyes, Maria answers that she used to have them.
* RunOrDie: Once Team RWBY discovers the Apathy Grimm, this is effectively the situation they're in. They easily shrug off bullets from Crescent Rose, and they have the power to drain willpower to the point their victims lose their will to live with just their presence alone, if the team's mood sans Ruby before the discovery of the Grimm is any indication. Add in their ludicrous number in the waterway, Team RWBY and Maria have no choice but to get out of there.
* StoneWall: The Apathy Grimm species is not particularly fast or strong from what we see (heck, Bartleby managed to get a pair into his cellar with little apparent difficulty besides the apathy effect, apparently single-handedly), but their hides are tough enough to shrug off Crescent Rose's bullets, which even the ''Nuckelavee'' from Volume 4 couldn't boast. Combined with their EmotionBomb ability, and even if a foe faces them up close or tries to run, they can be paralyzed by the effects of their scream and be helpless while the Apathy closes in.
* TooDumbToLive: {{Well Intentioned|Extremist}} he may be, Bartleby's decision to use Grimm, beings drawn to negativity and compelled to destroy anything with life, as a means to calm the townspeople in place of huntsmen was a rather poor choice, especially with no huntsman capable of fighting them off should they get loose. Turned UpToEleven with the knowledge that Apathy are pack Grimm, meaning the others would come for the two he took, swarming the farm with them and leading to its demise.
* WhamLine:
-->'''Maria''': Well, isn't it obvious, girl? I had silver eyes.