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Supernatural Perception: Nick has the ability to recognize supernatural creatures for what they are, regardless of whether or not they appear human. The default is that this won't work unless given express permission here.
Supernatural Perception: Nick has the ability to recognize supernatural creatures for what they are, regardless of whether or not they appear human. The default is that this won't work unless given express permission here.
info.
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Melissa
PLURK: kreugan
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Nicholas "Nick" Burkhardt
CHARACTER AGE: 30 (June 18, 1982)
SERIES: Grimm
CHRONOLOGY: Post episode 3x08, "Twelve Days of Krampus".
BACKGROUND:
Born in New York, Nick had a seemingly normal childhood until the age of 11, when his parents were involved in a car accident and presumed dead. Although Nick grows up assuming that both his mother and father were killed, it's later discovered that his mother survived the crash, which wasn't an accident at all — it was orchestrated by a group of hunters who sought a treasure held by his mother, Kelly. Kelly survived, but she stayed away from Nick in order to keep him safe. At her request, her sister Marie moved to Portland with Nick and raised him in her stead. Nick grew up believing that he and his family were entirely normal, tragedy aside. He eventually became a homicide detective at the Portland Police Bureau, working alongside his best friend and partner, Hank Griffin. At some point along the way he also met Juliette Silverton, his long-time girlfriend at the beginning of the series.
Things change when his aunt Marie comes home for an unexpected visit. Marie is dying of natural causes, and she knows that this is her last chance to tell Nick about his family and the powers he'll likely inherit. She informs him that fairy tales are real and also way more morbid and lethal than the modern adaptations let on, and that he's a Grimm, destined to hunt the stuff of these legends. The umbrella term she uses is "Wesen", and thus far there have been roughly a billion subgroups within it, usually based on different types of creatures ranging from rats to dragons. Wesen appear human, but Grimms have the ability to recognize their true forms. They also have a reputation for murdering Wesen to keep humans safe, so the Wesen vs. Grimm dynamic is pretty solidly established as hostile by the time Nick gets drawn into it.
The first season is basically an exercise in Nick stumbling through being a slightly less impressive version of Buffy, minus any kind of official training or guidance. His aunt Marie passes before she can be of much help, though she does leave him with her trailer full of cool Grimm weapons and research. Nick's best source of information ends up being Monroe, a Blutbad (werewolf, basically), who seems to either take pity on how clueless Nick is or simply wants to help do good deeds. Initially, Nick's role seems pretty clear: he keeps playing detective, and the fact that most of his cases now seem to include Wesen suspects or victims doesn't change much about his approach. Eventually, however, the animosity between Wesen and Grimms starts to affect his perspective, if in very subtle ways. The number of attacks Nick deals with from violent Wesen results in him responding with increasing force, and while as a cop he never would've used lethal force with much frequency, he ends up using it basically every time as a Grimm.
His relationship with Juliette suffers due to the fact that he's suddenly keeping Grimm-related secrets, when previously their relationship had been very communicative and open. When he gets up the nerve to propose to her, she rejects him on the basis that he's been keeping something from her, and of course she's completely right. When Hank finally sees a Wesen's true form while on a case, he thinks he's losing his mind, and it's not until Nick fesses up about being a Grimm and confirms what Hank saw that he's able to process it properly. Juliette actually figures out his secret well before Hank does, but almost immediately after she finds out she's put into a supernatural coma by one of Nick's enemies, only to wake up with absolutely no memory of who Nick is. This is also about when Nick's mother crashes back into his life, revealing that she's a veteran Grimm and causing him to question his entire life up until this point. She crashes out again soon after, but she's around long enough for Nick to realize he never really knew his own mother.
This period of isolation from Juliette is when Nick's tactics as a Grimm really start to slide into morally grey territory. While he was a genuinely nice guy and a reliable cop before, he starts to play into the fear that most Wesen feel towards Grimms, leveling threats and engaging in the occasional decapitation to send a message. There's a bunch of relationship drama when Juliette wakes up and finds herself uncontrollably attracted to Nick's boss (magic spells, etc), but after that gets sorted out and her memories start to return, they finally resolve their issues and get back together. Then Nick gets poisoned by a Wesen that essentially turns people into zombies, meaning Nick has a brief stint as a zombie. His friends sort out a cure, but it ends up having some lasting side effects that haven't fully been explained — for all intents and purposes, though, it seems like Nick occasionally slips back into a zombie state (no pulse, cold skin, adrenaline enhanced strength). There's also the fact that Nick killed a human being while he was a zombie, and when he finds out it throws his strict sense of justice for a loop, nearly causing him to turn himself into the police as a killer.
Generally speaking, his world is exactly like ours, but there are creepy "fairy tale" creatures lurking in plain sight. Most Wesen are actually totally normal people despite their tendency to be involved in every single crime Nick investigates. Magic exists, but so far it's just been in the form of potions and rituals. There are some old Wesen bloodlines and power structures (the Wesen Council) that are waging a much bigger war behind the scenes, but thus far that's been fairly detached from Nick's daily life, and the show's kept their motivations and hierarchies vague.
PERSONALITY:
Pre-Grimm, Nick was a nice guy who told some pretty dorky cop jokes while on the job and had a great relationship with his girlfriend, and his life was trucking along smoothly. A lot of his core personality traits haven't changed much: he's still a good guy, mostly. He rarely acts based on selfish motivations, and protecting innocent people is still his priority. Even if he often toes the line without noticing or putting much thought into it, he does have a strict moral code. He believes that there's such thing as right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, and that it's his duty to do the best he can to keep the bad guys from causing trouble. After discovering that he's a Grimm, however, Nick finds himself constantly on the back foot, and this ends up drawing out a lot of flaws that might have otherwise never come to the forefront.
He leans on sarcasm and blunt criticisms far more often than he used to, largely born of his impatience at being out of the loop on everything to do with his own ancestry. Because of that ancestry, Wesen usually assume he'll be a violent asshole; while he used to argue against that assumption with sympathy and concern, these days he's more likely to be annoyed by it. In order to deal with Wesen threats, he's had to rely almost purely on instinct, and this has leaked over into his daily life. His emotions and temper are a bit closer to the surface, and he's more likely to act on them or express them than before. Living a double life as a Grimm and a detective has demanded a lot of deception, and he's taken to lying, sometimes to his best friends, without much moral dilemma. He hasn't lost much sleep over the number of laws he breaks while enacting Grimm justice, either. Perhaps most importantly, his capacity for empathy seems to have gotten a massive downgrade somewhere along the line. He can still engage with people and know how to deal with them, but he's also capable of being very objective and callous in situations where it's not strictly appropriate. It should probably be noted that he was fairly good at compartmentalizing before, if only because of his experience as a homicide detective (bad jokes at crime scenes, why not), but it's escalated since.
This could just be because of what he's dealt with since becoming a Grimm. While it obviously shook up his worldview, it also introduced him to a lifestyle that's far more violent than what he was used to. A lot of Wesen engage in very brutal, medieval customs; in addition to witnessing these, he's been forced to resort to a very medieval brand of law enforcement in kind. In that sense, there's probably a level of desensitization going on, but it's also likely that there's a more literal change occurring. Despite appearing human at all times, Grimms are basically their own type of Wesen, and it's heavily implied that they tend to inherit more than just the ability to suss out monsters: they're known for being consistently violent, sometimes cruel, and it's possible that these are inherited traits that help them better perform their watchdog duties.
It's not until he's called out on his general lack of sympathy for his Wesen victims that Nick even seems to notice it. Once he does, however, it presents a dramatic conflict with his concept of who he is. The realization that he's not really following his own moral code causes him to second-guess his decisions, erring on the side of mercy even when it's probably a very stupid and unsafe approach. This doesn't necessarily speak to his capacity for empathy so much as his confusion over his lack of it. Acts of mercy have been turned into things he has to puzzle out, not something he can always come to instinctively. This would imply that it's the wiring that's changed: his behavior has unwittingly strayed from his ideals, but his belief in those ideals hasn't. Sometimes he seems to embrace the brutality of his Grimm ancestry, getting a kick out of the cool weapons or the fear he inspires; other times he's extremely disgruntled by it. His slipping self-awareness is definitely a problem, and it's only thanks to others calling him out on it that he's able to keep track of when he's crossing the line.
Even before he was aware of his Grimm heritage, Nick showed a knack for staying calm in a crisis. He almost never panics, and his first approach to most situations is to observe what he can and act on it. He's confident in his abilities as a cop, if nothing else, and he very rarely hesitates once he's made a call, with the minor exception of his newly discovered concern over his judge, jury and executioner instincts. It should be noted that Nick's instincts as a cop still take priority, and he's quick to defend Wesen that he identifies as victims or simply good people — but as soon as he decides otherwise, it's incredibly easy for him to write them off without any guilt. His lack of sympathy towards Wesen is mostly highlighted by the fact that when he accidentally kills one human being, he's a mess over it, despite having felt zero remorse over the countless Wesen he's put down. The fact that he helps Wesen at all is considered hugely taboo in both Wesen and Grimm communities, though, so on the scale of nice guy to murderous Grimm he's still doing a pretty good job.
Nick's used to being the good guy and feels confident in the fact that his actions are right, but the duties of the Grimm often inhabit a moral grey-zone. Although he's recently been clued into this discrepancy, he's doing a good job of avoiding that impending identity crisis at all costs. On the surface, Nick could at worst be considered a slightly self-righteous cop with very mild anger issues. When he's in a good mood he's capable of being witty and nice; when he's not putting in the effort, he might come across as a bit too intense/preoccupied to be entirely approachable.
POWER:
Grimms have the ability to recognize non-human creatures for what they are, usually during moments where said creatures are stressed or distracted. Otherwise, they're essentially just another brand of supernatural monster, meaning they have increased agility, stamina, and strength over that of your average human. You could probably argue that "strength" more applies in the form of durability, as he can brush off blows that might be fatal to a human, but we never see him lifting any cars. He also has a knack for learning the use of new weapons quickly. He's still completely vulnerable to blades and bullets. The only other firmly established ability is supernatural hearing, which he's able to focus at will.
The symptoms from his stint as a zombie aren't anything he can control deliberately, and so far the "zombie state" only occurs when he holds his breath for any length of time and occasionally while sleeping. This includes a dramatic drop in body temperature, no pulse, visibly pale skin, and increased strength. He tends to snap out of it as soon as someone catches his attention and gets him actively thinking, however, so it'd be very easy to divert. The only constant changes developed post-zombie are passive. Exercise doesn't cause his heart rate to rise or trigger any normal human responses like fatigue or sweating, though it's unclear if this is a zombie thing or just another newly awakened Grimm trait.
NAME: Melissa
PLURK: kreugan
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Nicholas "Nick" Burkhardt
CHARACTER AGE: 30 (June 18, 1982)
SERIES: Grimm
CHRONOLOGY: Post episode 3x08, "Twelve Days of Krampus".
BACKGROUND:
Born in New York, Nick had a seemingly normal childhood until the age of 11, when his parents were involved in a car accident and presumed dead. Although Nick grows up assuming that both his mother and father were killed, it's later discovered that his mother survived the crash, which wasn't an accident at all — it was orchestrated by a group of hunters who sought a treasure held by his mother, Kelly. Kelly survived, but she stayed away from Nick in order to keep him safe. At her request, her sister Marie moved to Portland with Nick and raised him in her stead. Nick grew up believing that he and his family were entirely normal, tragedy aside. He eventually became a homicide detective at the Portland Police Bureau, working alongside his best friend and partner, Hank Griffin. At some point along the way he also met Juliette Silverton, his long-time girlfriend at the beginning of the series.
Things change when his aunt Marie comes home for an unexpected visit. Marie is dying of natural causes, and she knows that this is her last chance to tell Nick about his family and the powers he'll likely inherit. She informs him that fairy tales are real and also way more morbid and lethal than the modern adaptations let on, and that he's a Grimm, destined to hunt the stuff of these legends. The umbrella term she uses is "Wesen", and thus far there have been roughly a billion subgroups within it, usually based on different types of creatures ranging from rats to dragons. Wesen appear human, but Grimms have the ability to recognize their true forms. They also have a reputation for murdering Wesen to keep humans safe, so the Wesen vs. Grimm dynamic is pretty solidly established as hostile by the time Nick gets drawn into it.
The first season is basically an exercise in Nick stumbling through being a slightly less impressive version of Buffy, minus any kind of official training or guidance. His aunt Marie passes before she can be of much help, though she does leave him with her trailer full of cool Grimm weapons and research. Nick's best source of information ends up being Monroe, a Blutbad (werewolf, basically), who seems to either take pity on how clueless Nick is or simply wants to help do good deeds. Initially, Nick's role seems pretty clear: he keeps playing detective, and the fact that most of his cases now seem to include Wesen suspects or victims doesn't change much about his approach. Eventually, however, the animosity between Wesen and Grimms starts to affect his perspective, if in very subtle ways. The number of attacks Nick deals with from violent Wesen results in him responding with increasing force, and while as a cop he never would've used lethal force with much frequency, he ends up using it basically every time as a Grimm.
His relationship with Juliette suffers due to the fact that he's suddenly keeping Grimm-related secrets, when previously their relationship had been very communicative and open. When he gets up the nerve to propose to her, she rejects him on the basis that he's been keeping something from her, and of course she's completely right. When Hank finally sees a Wesen's true form while on a case, he thinks he's losing his mind, and it's not until Nick fesses up about being a Grimm and confirms what Hank saw that he's able to process it properly. Juliette actually figures out his secret well before Hank does, but almost immediately after she finds out she's put into a supernatural coma by one of Nick's enemies, only to wake up with absolutely no memory of who Nick is. This is also about when Nick's mother crashes back into his life, revealing that she's a veteran Grimm and causing him to question his entire life up until this point. She crashes out again soon after, but she's around long enough for Nick to realize he never really knew his own mother.
This period of isolation from Juliette is when Nick's tactics as a Grimm really start to slide into morally grey territory. While he was a genuinely nice guy and a reliable cop before, he starts to play into the fear that most Wesen feel towards Grimms, leveling threats and engaging in the occasional decapitation to send a message. There's a bunch of relationship drama when Juliette wakes up and finds herself uncontrollably attracted to Nick's boss (magic spells, etc), but after that gets sorted out and her memories start to return, they finally resolve their issues and get back together. Then Nick gets poisoned by a Wesen that essentially turns people into zombies, meaning Nick has a brief stint as a zombie. His friends sort out a cure, but it ends up having some lasting side effects that haven't fully been explained — for all intents and purposes, though, it seems like Nick occasionally slips back into a zombie state (no pulse, cold skin, adrenaline enhanced strength). There's also the fact that Nick killed a human being while he was a zombie, and when he finds out it throws his strict sense of justice for a loop, nearly causing him to turn himself into the police as a killer.
Generally speaking, his world is exactly like ours, but there are creepy "fairy tale" creatures lurking in plain sight. Most Wesen are actually totally normal people despite their tendency to be involved in every single crime Nick investigates. Magic exists, but so far it's just been in the form of potions and rituals. There are some old Wesen bloodlines and power structures (the Wesen Council) that are waging a much bigger war behind the scenes, but thus far that's been fairly detached from Nick's daily life, and the show's kept their motivations and hierarchies vague.
PERSONALITY:
Pre-Grimm, Nick was a nice guy who told some pretty dorky cop jokes while on the job and had a great relationship with his girlfriend, and his life was trucking along smoothly. A lot of his core personality traits haven't changed much: he's still a good guy, mostly. He rarely acts based on selfish motivations, and protecting innocent people is still his priority. Even if he often toes the line without noticing or putting much thought into it, he does have a strict moral code. He believes that there's such thing as right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, and that it's his duty to do the best he can to keep the bad guys from causing trouble. After discovering that he's a Grimm, however, Nick finds himself constantly on the back foot, and this ends up drawing out a lot of flaws that might have otherwise never come to the forefront.
He leans on sarcasm and blunt criticisms far more often than he used to, largely born of his impatience at being out of the loop on everything to do with his own ancestry. Because of that ancestry, Wesen usually assume he'll be a violent asshole; while he used to argue against that assumption with sympathy and concern, these days he's more likely to be annoyed by it. In order to deal with Wesen threats, he's had to rely almost purely on instinct, and this has leaked over into his daily life. His emotions and temper are a bit closer to the surface, and he's more likely to act on them or express them than before. Living a double life as a Grimm and a detective has demanded a lot of deception, and he's taken to lying, sometimes to his best friends, without much moral dilemma. He hasn't lost much sleep over the number of laws he breaks while enacting Grimm justice, either. Perhaps most importantly, his capacity for empathy seems to have gotten a massive downgrade somewhere along the line. He can still engage with people and know how to deal with them, but he's also capable of being very objective and callous in situations where it's not strictly appropriate. It should probably be noted that he was fairly good at compartmentalizing before, if only because of his experience as a homicide detective (bad jokes at crime scenes, why not), but it's escalated since.
This could just be because of what he's dealt with since becoming a Grimm. While it obviously shook up his worldview, it also introduced him to a lifestyle that's far more violent than what he was used to. A lot of Wesen engage in very brutal, medieval customs; in addition to witnessing these, he's been forced to resort to a very medieval brand of law enforcement in kind. In that sense, there's probably a level of desensitization going on, but it's also likely that there's a more literal change occurring. Despite appearing human at all times, Grimms are basically their own type of Wesen, and it's heavily implied that they tend to inherit more than just the ability to suss out monsters: they're known for being consistently violent, sometimes cruel, and it's possible that these are inherited traits that help them better perform their watchdog duties.
It's not until he's called out on his general lack of sympathy for his Wesen victims that Nick even seems to notice it. Once he does, however, it presents a dramatic conflict with his concept of who he is. The realization that he's not really following his own moral code causes him to second-guess his decisions, erring on the side of mercy even when it's probably a very stupid and unsafe approach. This doesn't necessarily speak to his capacity for empathy so much as his confusion over his lack of it. Acts of mercy have been turned into things he has to puzzle out, not something he can always come to instinctively. This would imply that it's the wiring that's changed: his behavior has unwittingly strayed from his ideals, but his belief in those ideals hasn't. Sometimes he seems to embrace the brutality of his Grimm ancestry, getting a kick out of the cool weapons or the fear he inspires; other times he's extremely disgruntled by it. His slipping self-awareness is definitely a problem, and it's only thanks to others calling him out on it that he's able to keep track of when he's crossing the line.
Even before he was aware of his Grimm heritage, Nick showed a knack for staying calm in a crisis. He almost never panics, and his first approach to most situations is to observe what he can and act on it. He's confident in his abilities as a cop, if nothing else, and he very rarely hesitates once he's made a call, with the minor exception of his newly discovered concern over his judge, jury and executioner instincts. It should be noted that Nick's instincts as a cop still take priority, and he's quick to defend Wesen that he identifies as victims or simply good people — but as soon as he decides otherwise, it's incredibly easy for him to write them off without any guilt. His lack of sympathy towards Wesen is mostly highlighted by the fact that when he accidentally kills one human being, he's a mess over it, despite having felt zero remorse over the countless Wesen he's put down. The fact that he helps Wesen at all is considered hugely taboo in both Wesen and Grimm communities, though, so on the scale of nice guy to murderous Grimm he's still doing a pretty good job.
Nick's used to being the good guy and feels confident in the fact that his actions are right, but the duties of the Grimm often inhabit a moral grey-zone. Although he's recently been clued into this discrepancy, he's doing a good job of avoiding that impending identity crisis at all costs. On the surface, Nick could at worst be considered a slightly self-righteous cop with very mild anger issues. When he's in a good mood he's capable of being witty and nice; when he's not putting in the effort, he might come across as a bit too intense/preoccupied to be entirely approachable.
POWER:
Grimms have the ability to recognize non-human creatures for what they are, usually during moments where said creatures are stressed or distracted. Otherwise, they're essentially just another brand of supernatural monster, meaning they have increased agility, stamina, and strength over that of your average human. You could probably argue that "strength" more applies in the form of durability, as he can brush off blows that might be fatal to a human, but we never see him lifting any cars. He also has a knack for learning the use of new weapons quickly. He's still completely vulnerable to blades and bullets. The only other firmly established ability is supernatural hearing, which he's able to focus at will.
The symptoms from his stint as a zombie aren't anything he can control deliberately, and so far the "zombie state" only occurs when he holds his breath for any length of time and occasionally while sleeping. This includes a dramatic drop in body temperature, no pulse, visibly pale skin, and increased strength. He tends to snap out of it as soon as someone catches his attention and gets him actively thinking, however, so it'd be very easy to divert. The only constant changes developed post-zombie are passive. Exercise doesn't cause his heart rate to rise or trigger any normal human responses like fatigue or sweating, though it's unclear if this is a zombie thing or just another newly awakened Grimm trait.