Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20181201123231/@comment-4141313-20181204032331

SomeoneYouUsedToKnow wrote: BlizzardDragon wrote:

Ren's semblance is literally "Zen Injection", he calms down people, and since the Apathy magnify negative emotions, ...........Ok, you really need to watch the episode again, because it's very, very obvious that the Apathy does not magnify negativity. They do exactly what their name implies: They make people apathetic.

Basically they do the exact same thing Ren's Semblance does, but on overdrive; instead of just nulling emotions, it makes you enter a total monotone DGAS mode, or just tired if you're not right in front of them.

Remember: The Apathy were trapped below Brunswick so that the farm people would stay calm so that Grimm attacks stopped being an issue and they didn't have to spend money on Huntsman protection. Except it also seemed to magnify their existing issues, such as Weiss not wanting to go back to Atlas, Yang's frustration with Blake, Qrow's self-loathing.

It made them apathetic in that they stopped caring overall, about pretty much everything. To start off though it made their negative emotions come to the forefront. The apathetic attitude isn't instantaneous. It starts off as irritability, then turns into pure apathy. Everyone was irritable in the morning, but the night before they all seemed depressed or angry.

It comes across as a two stage change. First it sucks away the inhibitions that keep the emotions bottled up, then it sucks away everything else. Grimm are basically blind without negative emotions we've seen, so they need some level of negative emotions afterall.

Also doesn't change the fact that Ren would have been their best weapon sans SEW, since he could easily calm them down rather than let them feel tired and depressed, making it harder for the apathy to fully affect them, while Nora with her hammer and Grenade Launcher would have a better chance at fighting them.