Tag: liza answers

I wish I had more faith in Grimm but I have just gotten to the point with shows this season that as soon as I hear that someone is being killed off, I think it is going to be a person of color, a female of an lgbt character. I don’t want to think that Hank will be the one who dies but he just seems like it will be him.

I’m worried about this too, for sure. I want–really, really want–to have faith in the Grimm Writers. I keep reminding myself of all the times I thought they were about to let me down only to be pleasantly surprised. But over this last seasons, it’s gotten harder to trust not only because of certain developments within this show, but also because of the general climate of “kill everyone who’s not a straight, white cismale” on other shows as well.

So believe me when I say I am with you in your anxiety. I am seriously concerned about Hank and almost dreading the last three episodes because of my worries over what could happen to him.

If I could talk to the Grimm Writers and say one thing to them right now, it would be “please don’t kill Hank. Or Wu. You have no idea how important they are. The message you’d be contributing to would be horrible. Please.”

Ok this question is just in the line of my another colleage anon, about have Bitsie and some GrimmWriters blocking to their fans . Ok i don´t have instagram, and i rarely interact in twitter and never in facebook, i don´t like make that. But i think that is quite inadvisable to declare war on your audience don´t you think? some ppl were blocked basically for say that Bitsie ” is not a good actress” since when a Show is not opened to all type of reviews? a show is made for that precisely not?

Well no, anon, I don’t think. I don’t think blocking rude people is even remotely comparable to “declaring war on your audience,” for one thing. For another, as I said in my previous post, I have never once seen a Grimm fan get blocked for respectful criticism, questions, and/or discussion.

Now assuming any of the claims of blocking being made are true–seeing as no one has bothered to provide any source for these accusations–showing up on someone’s personal instagram and saying they’re no good is not a “review.” It’s basically like knocking on someone’s front door and being like “you suck.” And the kind of comment you reference here is way at the lower end of the kind of bullshit Bitsie Tulloch gets daily on her instagram account, so it’s not even that relevant an example.

There’s no good reason for that kind of comment. It’s plain and simple meanness with no other purpose. People who post that kind of thing aren’t improving the show, they’re definitely not making the cast, crew, and writers want to interact with fans or listen to them more, and they’re not improving anyone’s performance. It’s useless, unnecessary rudeness, and exactly the kind of comment that should get people blocked.

Now, this is the last thing I’m going to say about this topic, although if other admins want to chime in they’re welcome to:

I’ve had a few fan experiences–in different fandoms, and one as recently as last night–over the years, and there are always fans in every fandom who have weird ideas about what they’re owed for watching, or listening, or reading, or buying. Frankly, it’s embarrassing and I’m tired of it. It’s a large part of the reason I typically opt NOT to meet or interact with the people who create the things I love even when the opportunity presents itself: I don’t want to be grouped in their minds with the kind of bratty, petty people who assume they’re owed more just for liking something.

So I feel pretty strongly that audience members who get all up in arms about what the creators owe their fans need to remember two things:

  1. The people who make our entertainment don’t owe us a goddamn thing, interaction-wise. They make a thing, we support it, they keep making the thing…and that’s it. That’s all they owe. The fact that they interact with us beyond the product they make is not an obligation, but a gift. It’s something they choose to do. And if they choose to stop interacting with certain people who take advantage of that to be needlessly rude, they have every right to do so.
  2. These are actual living, breathing people and those people have just as much right to their feelings as anyone else. If they don’t want to deal with negativity in their online spaces, especially the kind that’s pure vitriol and serves no actual purpose, then they don’t have to. And that doesn’t make them bad at their jobs or interfere with the “purpose” of their show.

im wondering if the royals are going to make any reappearance soon, because if seans family is going to be a public display, then people are going to notice diana. it would be interesting if they came into the scene and took out some of black claw. on another note, it bugs me that monroe & nick as a blutbad & grimm can not act violently despite stereotypically being violent by nature, but biests are apparently doomed to act the way they do and cant rise above it now??

I feel like the Royals have to make an appearance soon, assuming they’re done licking their wounds from having now lost several members of their line of succession. Because they really wanted Diana, for one thing. I actually kind of wonder if we’re headed toward Renard taking his place as head of House Kronenberg eventually. I mean, they’ve gotta be running short on princes at this point.

As for the hexenbiest/zauberbiest thing, I am totally with you. Although I don’t necessarily think that they can’t rise above it. If that’s what the writers are really going for they’ve screwed up big time, because we have seen several hexenbiests who are perfectly capable of controlling their powers and themselves (Elizabeth, Henrietta, Eve although that’s a weird case). And Adalind doesn’t seem to have gone spontaneously darkside again with the return of her powers, so I dunno…it may be one of those cases of that being what is believed but not what is actually true.

And if you think about it, it makes sense considering the sources that information is coming from: Adalind, who’s only ever known the dark side of being a hexenbiest and who only recently found the resolve to really want to change, is terrified of what those powers may do to that resolve. And Eve, who’s also only ever known the dark side of hexenbiest powers, was “broken” in order to bring them under control. That doesn’t necessarily mean she couldn’t have learned to control them any other way, but that’s what her experience–with herself and with Adalind–tells her.

I mean think about it: if hexenbiests were as all-out destructive and dangerous and out of control normally as Adalind and Eve seem to think, they would have been hunted down and eradicated, or nearly eradicated, by now. We’ve seen this with plenty of other Wesen being murdered in droves by Grimms, by the Verrat, by the Wesen Council, or even by their own parents as small children because they exhibited some trait that was considered “too dangerous.” So I think that on the whole, hexenbiests must manage to figure their shit out somehow, or they wouldn’t still be around.

That happens a lot on this show: something will be considered common knowledge or indisputable truth, and then it will be revealed that it’s actually not or there’s some kind of exception/loophole. Like Juliette becoming a hexenbiest, or there being a cure for Grausen, or Lycanthropia being exclusive to blutbaden. A lot of times, it’s just a matter of “these exact and very specific circumstances to create this anomaly have never happened before.” Team Grimm encounters a lot of that, but because their main sources of information are Wesen who were raised with certain beliefs, it sometimes takes them a while to get to that “aha” moment.

Is is true that Bitsie and the Grimm social media accounts have started blocking people and deleting comments?

I have no idea whether this is true or not, but let me just say that having followed Bitsie on instagram for a while, if she did start blocking some of the incredibly rude people who post on her social media I would not blame her one tiny bit. And the same goes for the Grimm social media and the Grimm writers.

I love the Grimm cast, crew, and writers. They haven’t always made narrative decisions I agree with, but they have always had an amazing amount of openness, interaction, and dialogue with their fanbase. I–and other admins on this blog–have been very openly critical of some of their choices in the show’s direction in the past, and I’ve never been blocked. Nor, to my knowledge, has any other admin here.

In fact, the people who make Grimm have been one of the most giving toward fandom I’ve seen, surpassed only by the cast of Supernatural in the sheer amount of sharing they do with the fanbase. Even though certain members of this fanbase have occasionally crossed the line, particularly when it comes to sending Bitsie hateful messages.

They don’t owe us that level of interaction, and there are occasionally good reasons to block fans. So if it’s true that the Grimm social media accounts and/or Bitsie have begun blocking people and deleting their comments, they probably had a very good reason and, given what I’ve seen directed toward Bitsie in particular, it’s about damn time.

Assuming Renard knows he’s working with black claw (and I’m drawing a blank as to what ep he found out, help?) it’s possible that he is working with Black Claw so he can take them down… now if that is the case he should have told SOMEBODY what he was up to. there’s no evidence for that story arc that I’ve seen but it does sound like a Renard thing to do. (part 1 of 2)

(part 2 of 2) Also Renard is REALLY firm that he isn’t a Hexenbeist so maybe he doesn’t have the same issues with his beist side along with the lack of abilities that we’ve seen. Mind it could simply be a gender thing but still I’d really like the show to clarify either way. Also using their beist as an excuse for hurting/killing reminds me of people using mental illness as an excuse and as a mentally ill person I"m finding it insulting… Am I the only one who noticed that?

Renard realized Rachel and Co. were with Black Claw the minute he found out she was part of the plot to kill Andrew Dixon (near the end of “Into the Schwarzwald”), because he knew, via Eve and Meisner, that the man who killed Dixon was a Black Claw operative, as was Lucien, who met with Renard shortly after he confronted Rachel.

And honestly? I would love for that possibility (that he’s working to take them down) to be correct, because otherwise what he’s doing really doesn’t make much sense to me.

I mean, even if he’s trying to take them down, it doesn’t make much sense, but at least it wouldn’t feel like a slap in the face to four and a half years’ worth of character and relationship development. I’m also fine with the notion that he’s with them in order to get Diana back, except that I can’t figure out why he wouldn’t have just trusted Nick and Hank with that information.

As for the mental illness parallel, you’re not the only one to make the comparison. I’ve definitely seen a few different Grimm fans mention that the way the show treats hexenbiest powers seems like a metaphor for mental illness. Although not a very good or well-handled one.

I think they’ve mixed their metaphors too much on this one, personally. Do hexenbiest powers change who a person is? Or don’t they? Who knows! I mean we’ve seen at least two hexenbiests who weren’t doing damage left and right (Henrietta and Elizabeth) and we’ve also seen Adalind do just as much damage while her powers were completely gone as she did when she had them. Not to mention that at the moment she’s just about the nicest she’s ever been, and she has her powers.

Sometimes it does seem to me like a general (and stigmatizing, and again, poorly-handled) mental illness metaphor. At others it seems like they’re treating it like classic possession…with the whole floating “evil spirit” thing that left Adalind when she was de-powered in season one and then re-entered her when she performed the ritual to get her powers back.

And then at still other times it seems like it’s very specifically a metaphor for addictive disorders, with the powers themselves being the object of the addiction rather than the illness itself. But even that breaks down depending on which hexenbiest we’re talking about, and when.

Then again you have characters insisting that being a hexenbiest fundamentally changes you, while having your two principle hexenbiests treat what they did during that time in totally different ways: Adalind doesn’t shy away from responsibility for the things she did, she apologizes for them and expresses regret and a wish to undo those things.

Eve, on the other hand, has distanced herself from Juliette and the things she did as completely as possible, deflects responsibility, and claims to feel no regret or remorse for any of it, although that in itself could be due to a separate mental illness (PTSD, dissociative identity disorder, maybe both).

All this to say that no, I’ve never thought of the whole “the biest made me do it” thing in that light, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a valid interpretation or that your feelings about it aren’t valid. It just means the writing around that topic is so gotdamn convoluted that I haven’t been able to draw coherent parallels about it yet.

Do you think Grimm is going to kill off Hank? Rusell wasn’t in the picture for the last day of filming for season 5 and a main character is supposed to be be dying this season aren’t they?

fuckyeahnickburkhardt:

Hi Anon – Admin Liz here. 

I really hope they don’t kill off Hank because he’s been with us since season one, and I, personally, absolutely adore him. Russell not being in the wrap photo doesn’t necessarily mean he was killed off – I think they’d actually make a point to include him if that was the case. He may just not have been around when it was taken.

Every year there are rumors that a main character is going to be killed off, and we’ve come close few times, but I try to not let those rumors stress me out until something actually happens. 

Hi Anon! Liza chiming in as well.

Every season so far has indeed ended with a member of the main cast (Nick, Hank, Monroe, Rosalee, Juliette, Sean, and Wu) seemingly dead, nearly dead, or in mortal peril. In season one, it was Juliette. In season two, it was Nick. In season three, it was Renard. In season four, it was Juliette again. And thus far all of those characters are still around (even if some of them don’t go by the same name).

So to me, I’m fine with Hank ending up in mortal peril like so many other characters have, just as long as they don’t try to “raise the stakes” by breaking tradition and killing him off permanently.

I feel it would be a huge slap in the face to have the first main cast death that sticks be one of only two characters of color in that main cast. Particularly a Black man and particular right now, with all the outrage over how many PoC, female, and queer characters have been killed off recently on TV, to say nothing of it happening against a backdrop of increased public hate speech towards these groups and unceasing police violence against PoC, especially Black men and women.

So…I really really hope they won’t kill Hank off but I’m also really worried that they will.

I love reading your opinions and wanted to ask, what do you think of what Grimm have done with Renhardt over the seasons and where they are now?

fuckyeahnickburkhardt:

Hi Anon – Admin Liz here. I think that Sean and Nick have had a very tense relationship (however you want to define it, romantic, friend, coworkers, etc) ever since Nick presented as a Grimm. 

Team Grimm has always been sort of suspicious of Renard, and who can blame them? His motivations have never been obvious, and we really have no idea where his loyalties lie (nowhere in my opinion, I think he’s out for himself, which is one of the reasons I love him). 

Ever since S1, they’ve relied on each other out of necessity – they know a lot of secrets about each other. The conflict we’re seeing between them this season is something that seems to have been building for a while now, and I’m excited to see how it gets resolved (whether it ends in Renard being our Big Bad, or in him tellng Nick he has a plan, or something completely out of left field). 

Hi Anon! Admin Liza here with my own two cents.

I actually find the tension between them now a little sudden and oddly contrived, given the events of the last two seasons in particular.

Renard definitely did not have the team’s trust in the beginning, but since season two they’ve relied heavily on him to go about their business, and in season three he actually trusted them enough to not only allow them to, but assist them in making off with his infant daughter. That’s a lot of faith to put in anyone.

Not to mention that he was the one who originally figured out what Adalind had done to Nick, and tried desperately to get the antidote to him in time–in fact died trying to do so.

Then, on the team’s side, they have worked very closely with Renard and trusted him with a lot up until this season, and showed real concern and caring when he was shot…not to mention that they went way out of their way to save him when he was possessed by Jack the Ripper, endangering themselves in order to help him.

In fact, Renard’s been involved in one way or another in everything they’ve done up until the magic stick’s discovery. And while the fandom has certainly had its questions about his true motives and trustworthiness over the years, the actual characters haven’t questioned his place as a part of their team in a long time. Moreover, there’s very clearly been a level of mutual respect and understanding there, and an ability to talk about things, even things that were difficult or personal.

So it just seems…odd to me, this sudden turn of events, with none of them talking to each other or trusting each other. Renard suddenly doesn’t trust Nick and Co. enough to tell them what’s going on with Black Claw (specifically that his main reason for siding with them is that they have his daughter)? Nick and Hank suddenly don’t trust him enough to ask him point-blank what’s going on? Monroe and Rosalee suddenly have never trusted him at all, despite two seasons’ worth of evidence to the contrary? It just…doesn’t add up for me.

Honestly, it reminds me a little too much of the way things went with Juliette last season. The writers were determined to sever her ties with the team, and they weren’t overly concerned with how much sense that process actually made in light of everything that came before so long as they got to the ending they wanted.

Never mind that this course of action (and certain other poorly-developed and ill-conceived plot developments) have led to the first real renewal scare this show has had since its first season. They’re still gonna do it again.

(If I sound a little bitter and disappointed, Nonny, it’s because I am.)

How do you all feel about the entire Juliette/Eve situation? Personally I’m hoping Juliette doesn’t come back for various reasons that have nothing to do with disliking the character or Bitsie (I love both of them so so much) and I’ve been meaning to make some long posts about it on my Grimm blog but while I’m not currently up for that, I thought I’d ask what your opinions are

fuckyeahnickburkhardt:

Hey there – Admin Liz here. I, personally, am just happy Bitise is around. I hope at some point the writers respect the characters of Eve and Juliette and give us some more information on how she was resurrected/changed/broken. I think there is still some Juliette in there (we see glimpses of her, now and again), and I’d like Eve to be able to find a nice halfway point between who Juliette was, pre-hexen, and who Eve is. It terrifies me that she refers to herself as a tool and an asset rather than a human being and I hope she eventually gains some autonomy and personal agency. Do I think that Eve could ever get back the relationships that Juliette lost? Not necessarily, but I think that Eve truly sees herself as a completely separate person, so it wouldn’t be a huge emotional loss for her.

 I think Eve is here to stay, but that we might see more Juliette coming out from under the surface the more time she spends around Team Grimm. 

Hi, Admin Liza here! Oh boy, do I have thoughts on Eve and Juliette and what’s going on there.

I agree that I’m happy to see Bitsie still in the show in (almost) any form. I also do share Liz’s need to know exactly what went on with her resurrection and transformation. Juliette was a very strong-willed person and an incredibly powerful Hexenbiest, and so far as we’ve seen HW had nothing and no one as powerful before they “broke” her to create Eve…so how did they even manager to do that?

Did they dampen her powers somehow? We know there’s only one spell that can really suppress them, but Hexenbiests are still susceptible to regular controlled substances, and I feel like any amount of brainwashing, let alone something that thorough, would almost certainly involve the use of drugs at some point. *shudder*

What I find most horrifying is the possibility–slightly suggested in one of Bitsie’s early season 5 interviews–that Juliette actually chose at some point to just lose herself in whatever they were putting her through in order to escape the feelings of abandonment, betrayal, anger, isolation, loss, and regret over everything that had happened to her. The idea that her existence was so painful that it was easier to just completely shut down and voluntarily dehumanize herself…it’s painful to think about, but would also make perfect sense with the way we’ve seen Eve behave so far.

See, I not only think Juliette is still in there, I’m like 90% certain that’s what the writers want us to think.

Moreover, I don’t think Juliette ever really left, and while I do think Eve is a separate personality, I also think she’s something of a way for Juliette to protect herself, rather than a replacement that’s edged her out or locked her down.

Eve tries a little too hard, in my opinion, to stay detached whenever she’s outside the HW base–wearing the wigs, avoiding direct interaction, avoiding eye contact, keeping physical distance unless absolutely necessary when she does interact–for someone who’s just completely severed themselves from any of the emotions associated with their old life and memories.

Her interactions with regards to Nick, in particular, make me think Juliette and all her emotions have been there the whole time, ready to kick up a fuss the second “Eve” lets her guard down.

We’ve seen Eve get up close and personal with only a few people (that she wasn’t directly attacking): Nick, Adalind, and Rosalee. In both the Adalind and Rosalee instances, she was displaying very un-Eve-like behavior: showing concern for Nick, expressing protectiveness toward him.

Of the times she gets really close to Nick, two were because he approached her first, and one was because they were in close quarters and she couldn’t get further away.

In the scenes where he approaches her, she either avoids eye contact all together or completely shuts down: stares blankly, talks business-only: short, to-the-point sentences, no more information than he asks for. She doesn’t make eye contact with him in the restaurant until he demands it, and even then it seems more like a knee-jerk reaction to being given an order than something she wants to do. When she tells him she regrets that he never got the chance to bury Juliette, she does it looking away from him. And in both instances, she leaves almost immediately after.

More recently, when she’s in the car with him, she barely looks at him, glancing at him a few times but never maintaining the kind of sustained, attentive eye contact he maintains as he talks to her. She also never shifts toward him, maintaining a distance between them even though he shifts and turns to be closer to her several times.

She doesn’t seem to need quite this level of emotional distance if other people are around, or if there’s a physical distance in place between them. But the fact remains that Eve is extra-careful about that distance when it comes to Nick, more so than with any other character.

And all of this taken together with her sudden displays of protectiveness point, for me, to Juliette’s emotional connection to Nick in particular not being completely gone, and Eve having to work a lot harder to keep contact with him from breaching that protective exterior.

(I’m also unabashedly and unashamedly dying to see that exterior just crack open, because while I find Eve interesting I miss Juliette like you would not believe, and I want to see her return and all of the mess from last season really get dealt with by everyone.)