Board Thread:General Grimm Discussion/@comment-98.117.68.195-20150503215639/@comment-24399666-20151121180455

(FYI, I posted this on tv.com, but it's exactly what I wanted to post here as well. If you happened to have read the comment on tv.com, it's totally unchanged here):

Ok, so I have a bit of a confession: I am a closet Nick/Adalind shipper. But what I am not, is a rabid shipper. I want them together... but only if it makes sense from a character-continuity perspective, doesn't violate Nick's integrity, and doesn't try to completely overwrite the past or excuse Adalind's past actions solely on the basis that she was a Hexenbiest (because, for starters, she wasn't a Hexenbiest during her most villainous acts).

I really, really, really like the look on Adalind's face when Nick hugs her. I've been bothered for some time about them acting out of character, but that look makes everything better. That look means that there's a reason they're acting out of character. A reason beyond, "Facebook fans are calling for them to get together and the writers are trying to fulfill their wish," that is. An in-universe reason.

That look very clearly says, "Oh, god. What did I do? What should I do? What's going on here?" Which makes sense, when you consider that she is entirely dependent on Nick right now, and whatever is going on with him... from her perspective, it could end very badly if she makes a wrong move.

Now that there's some indication that something purposely strange-ish is going on with Nick, here are some theories. They could be any, or even all, of them, going on at once (it's more likely to be more than one factor than just one):

- Grief. Plain and simple. At the risk of stating the glaringly obvious, grief is painful. Grief wreaks havoc with the emotions. And sometimes confuses them.

- Adalind has, like it or not, actually been there for him lately, and in a way, it might actually have been helping that she wasn't his friend all along, like everybody else that has been there for him. Less to lose by confiding in her, in a bizarre way. Less like a friend, more like a therapist. And actual therapists have to be careful that their patients don't develop emotional attachments.

- Lust. This is what most rabid shippers would put at the top of their list... the only reason I'm not putting it at the bottom of mine is that I want to end with something else. It is there. Adalind has been using every trick in the book to call on it (although she clearly didn't expect it to start working THIS soon). Nick has a lot more integrity than to act on it, if that were all that was going on, though. To be very blunt, except for the Musai in S2, Nick has never been somebody who can be solely led around by his dick.

And here's a new theory... one that just blossomed late last night right as I was going to bed...

What if Kelly's doing something?

I don't mean something diabolical - I can believe in spider powers, wizards, elves, and any number of future worlds as long as they don't contradict themselves and the characters act like people... but give me a newborn baby that schemes, understands why to scheme, and understands the world well enough to hatch schemes, and that breaks it for me. But I can think of no less than 3 totally innocent ways that Kelly could be influencing Nick's emotions, just by being an innocent newborn half-Zauberbiest.

I've been thinking for a while that Zauberbiests may be empathic, and one idea I've played with is the idea that one of the first signs of manifestation in a Zauberbiest (who are confirmed to be very different from Hexenbiests) is that they form an empathic link with their fathers.

Kelly was born on the worst day of Nick's life. During the birth scene, the camera focused on Adalind grabbing Nick apparently on the stomach, and then immediately the baby went into distress. I know the official reason was that his arm was over his head, but... what if he also sensed Nick's distress and that put him in distress?

If Kelly and Nick have an empathic link, I'm thinking Kelly could be unconsciously influencing his father's feelings in any of the following ways:

1) Kelly could simply be broadcasting his own feelings about Adalind to Nick, and Nick's subconscious is (hopefully) translating the feelings into more adult terms (I say, "hopefully," because I don't think anybody - shipper or non - wants Nick to feel about Adalind the way an infant feels about his mother).

2) Kelly could be taking the pain of grief away. After several months of this, given that Adalind and Kelly are always together, Nick's subconscious could be putting it together that he feels better when Adalind is around (and not the more accurate version: he feels better when Kelly's around).

3) Kelly could, in a very naive way, be trying to get his parents together. This speaks to a little more deliberation, but it could still be instinctive... the need all children feel for a stable home life where everybody loves each other is... well, it could be something we're all born with, rather than something we learn.

So... yeah, now that the writers are showing, with that one look on Adalind's face (and kudos to Claire Coffee), that they're not just trying to push a totally nonsensical ship onto us whether it makes any in-universe sense or not, I can actually see some sense in it.

On a semi-related note: I do love that they're keeping Kelly an innocent newborn, and I love the added screen time where we can actually see some father/son bonding. In the case of some of it, Adalind isn't even in the room, distracting us with the hammer of, "you must like Adalind NOW." Hoping we see more of that.