whatever u say, SugarTits

INDE NAVARRETTE "The fake answer that I love to give [for my childhood crush] is Channing Tatum in Step Up. But the real answer is Optimus Prime in Transformers. Specifically, obviously, the first one. There's a monologue that he has at the end of the movie that leads right into [a Linkin Park song]. I think that was my awakening."

sadly, sarah and ian's actions rang very true to real life. ian said a few perfunctory words to bear about 'how its wrong' which made no difference at all, but he could pat himself on the back and sleep easy at night after doing so. sarah ended up making it about herself, telling bear "that he didn't deserve nikki putting her troubles on him" (paraphrasing) and suggested that he'd be better off with her, although she knew that nikki didn't have feelings for bear and a blind person could see that something fishy was going on. yet she took the easy way out and pretended she was caring about bear while being unbearably selfish.

maybe they could have helped her - maybe she would have snapped out for a moment and they would have realized what was wrong, maybe they could have forced bear to tell them, maybe they wouldn't have been able to change anything. but it is so sad that they didn't even try.

it must have been equally terrifying for her as it was for the real nikki to have someone else fight for control over what she perceived as her body. the scene where she's sobbing in the corner, terrified of her dreams is now more sad than terrifying to me. real nikki, who has just been raped by her once best friend hurting so badly that it seeps into entity!nikki's nightmares. entity!nikki who doesn't understand why the thing she wanted so badly is causing her so much pain. why she can't bring herself to lie in bed next to the man who is the center of her world.

and the worst part is bear doesn't even seem to like her. she's trying so so hard; she made a lovely memorial for his dead cat, she waited for him to come home all day without moving an inch, she made sure to be the most doting girlfriend at the party, and he's not pleased by any of it. he seems disturbed and angry and scared and she has no idea what to do to make it better. to make it worse, he keeps asking her to behave like the original nikki but he was the one who wished for her!! she can't be like nikki because nikki was simply not capable of loving bear even a fraction of how much she does!

she can't seem to reconcile it; he wanted her so badly he conjured her into reality and now he doesn't want her anymore. she doesn't know what to do. she tries everything. she obsesses over him, she threatens to hurt herself, she gets rid of that bitch sarah who keeps distracting him and trying to steal him away, and then dresses in her clothes for good measure and he still doesn't want her.

and then finally in a fit of desperation, she makes the wish and for one beautiful moment its all perfect. he's finally looking at her the way she looks at him. and then he's dead and she's lost everything.

While it's somewhat played up for comedic purposes, the scenes in which Bear asks Not Nikki to stop doing something and she just goes "Okay! :D" stick out to me so much. She was very willing to hear him out when he complained about her behavior (at least sometimes) but it was never going to be enough anyway. When he was telling her that hiding in the corner and watching him sleep made him uncomfortable, she seemed genuinely worried about having made him feel bad, something he never once did for her or the real Nikki (made even more heartbreaking by the "I can be anything you want me to be!" line)

A lot of people are focusing on how Bear first asks to alter his wish and only asks to cancel it once he's told it can't be altered (understandably, it's a great and very important scene), but do not forget that after he buys more One Wish Willows, the first thing he tries to do is wish for Nikki to "only love him as a friend." Even when he's trying to revert things back to "normal" he still feels entitled to having her in his life. And at first I thought "well that's still not good but it's a little better" but then I thought about it for more than five seconds and no, that's not a little better, because after everything he put her through she would never want to have anything to do with him ever again. To try to ask for her to still be in his life is also extremely selfish of him

Still on the previous point, when he asks Ian to wish for him to have never made a wish. There's a lot to say about this scene, but one of the things that sticks out to me is that phrasing. Don't wish for Nikki to have her autonomy back, just make a wish that will make me feel like I fixed my mistake and might turn things back to how they were before my wish (aka, with Nikki still liking me, even if just as a friend)

One more thing about that scene, when he tells Ian that "he can be with Nikki". Of course he says that he "didn't mean it that way", and I sort of believe him, but it's impossible to ignore that he immediately thinks bringing up Ian's attraction to Nikki will make him agree to go along with his plan, the same way his own attraction to Nikki made him make his wish

Maybe this is just me, but when he's in the car with Sarah and he questions her on whether she thinks he should be with someone "like you?", he doesn't seem upset like I assume someone would be if they're in a committed relationship and another person suddenly suggests they should be with them instead. He seems very open to the idea, despite never once having been shown to have feelings for Sarah (in fact at the beginning of the movie he outright tells Nikki he doesn't like her like that), like he just wants to be loved by a woman and now that a "normal" one is showing interest in him he's very willing to abandon Not Nikki despite literally wishing for her, just because she's not exactly what he hoped for and is causing him problems

This is more so just praising Inde Navarrette's acting skills, and I know the point is that Not Nikki is the exact opposite of Nikki, but one notable difference between the two is their crying, and now that I think about it their screaming too. Not Nikki cries and screams in a sort of childish way, and it reminds me of the way some men want their girlfriends to act, like a child that needs them for comfort (maybe minus the screaming). It doesn't work with Bear, it comes off as a bit of a tantrum and just annoys and freaks him out, but despite obviously being how she really feels, with the fact that he literally wished her into existence, I can't help but feel that even the way she expresses pain is geared towards making him like her. But Nikki screams like a regular, horrified adult woman. When she cries in the final scene, there's no high-pitched whining to it, just pure horror and despair. Man I hope Inde Navarrette gets tons of awards for her performance

One Wish Willow 💥

I think the thing that is the most disturbing to me about Obsession is just how quickly it becomes totally clear that Bear not only never loved Nikki, but that he never even liked her.

And even if that wasn’t the case, I’m not sure what you mean by “Unwilling to take hint”. She never at any point told him know.

I say this as someone with autism and has difficulty with recognizing tone and body language - You cannot expect everybody to be able to read the room. Sometimes you need to be upfront about what your feelings are.

Yeah, like how Bear was?

Or when Nikki literally said, “Okay, good.” When Bear replied said he didn’t like her when she asked.

I feel like one of them was clear on how she felt about the other.

“Both Bear and Nikki were not the best communicators”

I mean, one of them has absolutely no feelings for the other so I feel like she has a LOT less to say, right? Like what do you want her to do, say “hey, I know you’ve never said that you like me, Bear, but I just wanted you to know that I DONT LIKE YOU.”

Fuck off.

Nikki being the victim in this movie is literally not up for debate btw.

Bear f*cked up big time. He paid the price, sure, but not before causing a lot of damage and trauma around him. Especially to Nikki.

There are two key moments for me that clearly highlight how Bear is truly not a good guy and never was. At all.

Firstly, and most importantly, when Nikki asks him to kill her as her possessed self is sleeping and unaware of their interaction. This is Bear’s first very straightforward opportunity to fix his mess. If he truly cared about her and her wellbeing, he would take immediate action. Like kill himself. Sucks, but gotta do what you gotta do, man. But no, of course. Bear takes personal offence into the idea that she’d rather die than forcefully be with him. It’s pathetic and enraging. Let’s remind ourselves here that Bear is regularly r*ping her (and forcing other forms of intimacy on her as well), enslaving her mind and quite literally stealing her entire life from her. The notion of consent is simply nonexistent and he’s actively okay with that. Before everything spirals into total chaos, he just wants to alter his wish, not erase it fully. He still wants that control over her, whether she is happy or not. She pleads for liberation from this curse and Bear decides to victimize himself, be selfish again and then he walks away. Ruining his ultimate chance.

Secondly, the suicide scene. Here’s the thing… It’s too late at this point. He missed out on several opportunities to make things better and he kept on prioritizing his power over Nikki. It led him to a point of no return where his life is irreparably turned upside down, his two closest friends were killed (because of him) and Nikki’s possessed self represents a very real danger for him (all his fault, once again). There is only one way out of this: He needs to die. Even with this unavoidable truth, Bear manages to fail again. He swallows all the pills and a few seconds later, he cowardly tries to undo his actions. The storyline leads to him overdosing and dying regardless, but this moment is decisive to represent his true character. It still wasn’t enough, somehow, for him to end it all. Truth be, it was unfortunately too late for Nikki one way or the other. The trauma was just too massive with the murders and the self-harm. He ruined her entirely.

If you ask me, the title is about him being horrendously obsessed with her, not the other way around. His obsession led him there. He refused to take a risk and potentially get in the friendzone. This was unthinkable and impossible to accept for him.

And also, that sickening story she presents at the party… It’s not just to generate a deeply uncomfortable and eerie atmosphere, it’s not just to shock the audience with its content. It’s about them. It’s literally them. She mentioned feeling a sibling-like connection with him. Nikki is being abused and tortured by someone she considered a brother. This is a tale about his cruelty. This is her cry for help. And it breaks my heart.

Bear is a coward at every turn, yes, but he was kind at heart. He admired Nikki for her generosity. Sarah’s success lit him up for her sake. He was lonely and depressed and struggled with the soft, tender vulnerability at the beginning because every time he showed it he was told it wasn’t manly by Ian AND Nikki.

He wanted love, but he never actually took advantage of Nikki when he thought she was herself.

Throwing the pills up was desperation for life. That’s not cowardly, and I was relieved. I felt sick when I thought we were about to watch him die using the pills that killed his cat, finally giving in to that quiet beast that is suicidality.