After my total gushfest about Grace, I decided to take on the challenge of defending her water-throwing incident. Something I was totally against, and if I had been in the house I'd have probably been as shocked and appalled as Aisleyne.
1. Susie is a very refined and laid-back 40-something year old, so not exactly the easiest person for a 20 year old girl to try and communicate with, especially with all the other housemates buzzing around her.
2. The housemates being immediately told about the twist of Susie being the only one to nominate instantly made everyone feel awkward that being nice to Susie would be seen as trying to save your own skin.
3. Grace had heard a particularly vicious crowd baying for her blood the week before, so in her mind everything is working against her, she's feeling very personally attacked and her stress levels and insecurities are going off the chart. Grace probably feels that Susie has been influenced or thinks the same and isn't willing to give Grace the benefit of the doubt.
4. The State of Susie task where Susie reigns supreme for the week was clearly done to try and antagonize housemates. With Grace it was like prodding a sleeping lion with a stick. She was bound to snap at some point, and in that regard throwing water over someone seems rather tame.
5. It wasn't a powerful throw. It wasn't in the face, and only hit Susie on those cheap-looking gold clothes that BB had provided her with. Plus Grace did say sorry straight away, didn't sound very regretful but she still said it.

There that's it.
I've found though that it's hard to defend a particular housemates actions without slating another. Which doesn't exactly keep up with the general spirit of the thread.
With this though I tried to put more of the blame on BB, rather than just Susie.

Yeah, that's very good. And if you can ignore the water throwing (a big if) there was a certain courage in her exit. She had known for days how vile her reception was likely to be, and that was before every housemate laughed at their probably boos.

Nice one!

I liked Grace though!

Would have much preferred the continuance if Grace's gang v Richards gang! Would've been a much more interesting show!

Tis a shame that age comes to all of us..

Denise is a poor misunderstood woman (I admit that I do not understand her).

Denise tries hard.

Denise does not spend her hard earned money on fancy bras.

Denise will not let anybody feel left out, even if they take to their bed she will rouse them, to join in with all her fun.

Bless her.

You know what? If we were all as interested in human nature as we profess to be, there'd be a MAMMOTH thread on why, why on earth, a woman of Denise's status, would go on a television show with old, discoloured underwear. It's actually fascinating.

Tis cos she is real, and this is the SADest thing.

***



HA! nice shiny glass house you've got there

Jonny BB3: he might be an organ donor or something.

Denise - she has never claimed NOT to be a Loose Woman.

She is not actually my least favourite HM but it was all I could think of as I have forgotten most of the previous HMs.

I find it impossible to narrow it down to just one hm and almost impossible to post something positive about any of the following hm's, but here goes.

In no particular order.

Charley - If you got some very strong tape and wrapped it very tightly around that gob of hers, she might actually be quite ok.

Alex [bb9] Well, at least she didn't kill a hm.

Dennis. Not quite as vile as Alex.

Mo. Not quite as disgusting as Dennis.

Darnell. Not quite as vile as Alex or Dennis.

Kat. There's bound to be someone somewhere in the world more irritating than her.

Kitten . Not quite as irritating as Kat.

Mikey - Not quite as whining as Darnell.


Kat -

Really enjoying reading everyones responses (great idea for a thread wonkey) and some really fantastic defences going on, had to single out the below though brilliant!!

(It was interesting that people expected Jenni TH to turn against Grace because of it, but she didn't.)


It's not necessary to ignore the water throwing to see courage in it. Contrary to the myth that throwing water when you're about to leave is cowardly, most HMs wouldn't have the courage to do it. (That it takes less courage than to do it at some other time doesn't mean it takes none to do it then.)

And btw, even Aisleyne says Grace was a strong girl for the way she went out into the boos. (That was during the period before Ash decided, partly influenced by Richard, that the water-throwing was a horrible crime after all. Not that Richard thought it was so bad. When he was re-enacting the scene with Jenny he said it was "liberating" and asked Aisleyne if she wanted to try it. And Ash, though she didn't try it, also didn't seem to think it was outrageous that they were doing it.)

BTW, I could of course defend Richard or Aisleyne, but since they aren't among my most disliked HMs, it wouldn't really fit this thread. But if anyone cares what I might say in Aisleyne's favour, they can find what I said a while back in the "BB7 Angels" thread, um ... here. (There's also my Aisleyne myth poem, but alas! the D Spy blogs are no more.)

Why do you say that?, I am sure the insincerity of my post was obvious, 'sweet' certainly doesn't ring true to me as a suitable word to describe Charley.

Did you actually see some truth in my post about Charley?

I remember your DS blog. How odd that they have gone.

I thought it was perfectly true. I liked it.

Aw I didn't feel very sincere writing it, does it still count?

Ben

He would selflessly not do any cleaning ,tidying up in the house just so other H/MS had something to do with their time and not become bored

He would also talk about himself endlessly for hours on end ,just so the others didn't have to be nervous incase they said something or revealed something about themselves the public might not like

Why does it take even an ounce of courage to throw water over a hm
Grace did what she thought was a just act that was aimed at BB just as much as it was Susie, but i don't see how it took courage.

I don't know exactly why -- that would require knowing a lot more about psychology, the evolutionary basis for emotions, etc, than I do.

But I know that it does and that most HMs would be too chicken, too timid, ... whatever we ought to call it.

Certainly an unpleasant scene might result. You might even be physically attacked. That could be a bit daunting, surely.


I think many people could see it by imagining themself in the situation (not imagining themself as what they think Grace was like), so long as the idea that it's cowardly isn't too deeply engrained.

The usual "argument" that it's cowardly is that doing it when you're about to leave limits the repercussions you'd have to face. At best that makes sense only as a relative judgement: it would take more courage to do it when you weren't about to leave, therefore it's "cowardly" to do it at a time when the consequences are less. But that doesn't actually mean it takes zero courage to do it at the "safer" time.

(And it also has too limited a view of what repercussions or consequences are relevant, since it considers only the ones that would occur in the house.)

Carole...
Carole????
Carole
Nope, it's gone.

In my opinion, fostering is the hardest job in the world, and I take my hat off to anyone that does it.

Try Denis. And I mean without such things as making other people sound worse, speculating about how he might have changed, describing things in ways that make them sound blameless ("poor impulse control"), appealing to the editing or to any positive view of him other HMs may have expressed, or referring to things that couldn't actually make enough difference such as "he could dance".


But what kind of defence is it to say someone's not completely bad? I think someone above tried "maybe he's an organ donor" about bb3's Jonny (funny, but not much of a defence). I'm sure any HM, even the worst, may have petted a kitten once. But such things are kinda the defence equivalent of faint praise.


Not everyone who fosters does an admirable job of it; and not everyone who fosters even does it for good motives.

Anyway, quasimoron made an interesting attempt at defending Carole in (I think) post 53.

Woe. Are you trying to take all my weapons away before challenging me to a duel? Let me sleep on that one.

Nice thread, WD!! I spent so much time disliking Jay last season, I thought I'd give it a go:

He has a nice bum and considerately took the time to keep it hairless.

He followed the rule while in BB and never resorted to violence to resolve issues with other housemates.

He possesses a lot of discipline to keep his body so muscular.

He was willing to make himself look a bit silly on TV by making homemade gifts in order to show the girl he was wooing how much he liked her.

For the brief bit of time, when Louise decided not to pursue a relationship with Jay inside the house, Jay never had a bad word to say about her to others, especially the other guys.

He displayed a sense of loyalty to stand up for his girlfriend, even though I suspect he felt it was wrong. (When Louise was asking Jay to annoy Anton after Anton nominated her. And again, when he felt Louise was wronged by Alex when she didn’t share her money with Louise after BB was over).

He was upfront and honest with Louise about his ladys boys adventures in Thailand.

He loves his mother.

He did have a kind streak when you look past all that horrible frat boy stuff about shitting in the kettle. He really did try hard to talk Aaron out of leaving when he was down, and made poignant efforts to find conversational topics that would cheer him up. And on Twitter he makes a lot of effort to reply to lots of fans, and is always thanking them and answering questions for them, albeit in a language that is never quite English.

LOL I tried reading a few of his posts but gave up quickly after realizing I had no idea what he was saying. But, yes, Jay wasn't ALL bad.