johan!!!!!! he/him malay-malaysian artist :3 š³ļøāšš³ļøāā§ļø [previously starjunkyard, rebranded to thestarlotus]
i <3 art and animation and media!!!! i <3 cringe and authentic human expression!!!! I reblog a lotttttt lot... I AM NEVER IN JUST ONE SINGULAR FANDOM!!! I juggle all of my interests like those motherfuckers at circuses who juggle torches and only time will tell if i come to be engulfed by the flames
some of my art :-)
tags for if you want 2 sift thru my blogā¦ (if tumblr decides to tweak out just search up the keywords in my blog n they should come up)
> #johans scrapbook ā my art n edits!!
> #johan being crazy about (dps, yaoi md, iwtv, heated rivalry, etc) ā miscellaneous thoughts n' analyses on my favourite media!!
> #johans mailbox ā asks n Qs!!
> #johans mindpalace ā yap
art perms
no reposts! ok with usage of art in edits / layouts / etc with creds
(tag me if u do btw. iām nosy and i wanna see it)
@/thestarlotus on every other platform!! see u there :3
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I am a firm believer that Nikki Freeman saved herself.
She made the wish, presumably, that Bear would love her as much as she loved him, and only after she makes that wish does he become strong enough to let himself die. He stop trying to vomit, he goes out to see her, and he finally dies, setting her free. He didnāt do that though. She made a wish that forced him to love her enough to save her. Yes, she did this unknowingly, but it was still ultimately her action that freed her from the wish.
I find Nikki as a person distinct from the wish genuinely very compelling, just as a character. She apparently isnāt into sappy romantic gestures, and would find the idea of citrine being āsunshine in a rockā lame. At the same time, sheās not cold hearted. In fact, sheās openly very affectionate: she calls everyone she meets babe, jokes around with Ian, tells Sarah she loves her, gives money to the homeless, pays for her friendās drinks, and thanks Bear for being someone she can talk to. She calls up Bear to talk about both their days and convince him to come to trivia night, then checks in to make sure heās okay when she finds out why he didnāt want to come. Even though sheās not into sappy stuff, the book sheās writing is a love story. Sheās straight up with Bear about the fact that Sarahās into him and tells him in no uncertain terms when heās crossed a boundary by calling her āfreaky Nikkiā. On the whole, the fifteen minutes we spend with her paint the picture of someone who is wholly genuine, and, it seems, someone who really values honesty. Which is why Bear messed up so badly by lying to her. All she asks is for him to be honest about if he has feelings for her, even says ānow is the time to tell meā and he still canāt tell her the truth. And, she can clearly tell thatās the case. At the end of the day, it doesnāt matter whether she wouldāve said yes to a date because he didnāt ask. She mightāve gone. She might not have. But instead of risking her declining, Bear chose that heād rather her be with him no matter the cost.
The most disquieting part of my experience with Obsession is after watching it, thereās a part of me (that might just be the law student) that is thinking of the ways to word the wish to get a result that doesnāt undermine Nikkiās autonomy and consent.
And like, by even asking that, by focusing on the result of a wish rather than thinking about how bear could have just not been a coward and told Nikki how he felt when she asked him, I am undermining her consent. Even something like āI wish I knew how Nikki felt, and if she would be open to dating meā directly goes against her consent, because she said āif I like someone, youād never know.ā
I think the film is deliberately vague about if Nikki liked him back, but regardless, if she did like him, she didnāt say anything, and I think part of that is bearās cowardice. In a world where she liked him, he needed to grow up some before sheād entertain a relationship. Heās scared of honesty, scared of loss and the idea of truth preceding it. Heād rather have a fantasy than the real her, who has autonomy and the ability to reject him.
Like thereās something to the very premise of ābe careful of [what/who] you wish forā that primes you to think exactly like bear. Really masterful storytelling.
The conceit of wishing deals with the entitlement of these ānice guysā like they want the reward without the risk or the work.
Sorry if Iām rambling, I just want to process my experience of the film
I really do think Entity! Nikki is a childish existence and on top of it I think that's why it feels so bad to see her becoming traumatized from being with Bear when his wish ripped out parts of her that made it impossible to love him. Not! Nikki exists as sparknotes of her former self with the missing pieces filled in by Bear's own personality and habits, but she's still being traumatized because fundamentally Nikki and Bear's relationship is defined by her saying no and him not caring. It why I see the ending scenes of the movie as really nauseating because Not! Nikki is this new being without life experiences gauging her personality and behavior off of Bear's reaction and she starts to associate her genitals with violence. Entity Nikki is crying in the corner and starts to force herself to sleep at night and give Nikki full control because before that scene E! Nikki has the real Nikki's nightmare about how Bear raped her. It makes me feel sick since she's like a child that can't comprehend what's happening or why this is all hurting, and why she feels terrified by someone she loves. She doesn't understand why she feels so violated when one of the scenes with her and Bear is her assuring him he didn't violate her cause that's what Bear wants her to be telling him
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"We played with this idea of, is she fully seeing through her own eyes what's happening and doesn't feel in control,Ā orĀ if it's kind of like teleportation where every time that she pops back in, it's from the moment that she popped back in before, which is why whenever she's in the house, she comes out and she's like, 'Wait, where am I?ā So we played with both of them, and now that I've watched the film back, I think that she does both. I think that in the very beginning, whenever she doesn't understand what's going on, she's teleporting, and once she realizes what's going on, Nikkiās a fighter, and so her urge to fight the wish just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and thatās why she has the grief at the end, because she's watched it happen. She's felt it. She has to deal with it. It wasn't her fault. Her life has completely changed. And she just lets it all go." ā Inde Navarrette (x)
getting emotional at the thought of shane and ilya stumbling into that flint of desire conversation. ilya goading shane asking if he jerked off to posters of hockey players in his room when he was a teenager, trying to get a rise out of him and make him blush. but shane, extremely earnest in that way of his, says when i jerked off as a teenager it was just like a bodily function, i wasn't really thinking of anyone. the other boys would talk about beautiful actresses or look at dirty magazines but they never made me feel anything really. and ilya is still making fun of him poor shane you didn't think of anyone because you were waiting for me, hm? it's only me? and shane. in that earnest way of his. says yes. eyes shining. says i didn't know, not really. until you looked at me in those showers. i didn't know it could feel like that. and ilya obviously has to fuck him violently about it immediately
āthe most beautiful thing about (syd and carmyās) relationship is their true unconditional belief in one another. they see the beautiful things in one another that the other one is not able to witness in themselves. [ā¦] in a lot of ways, they saved each other. the piece in the opening episode of season 3, where carmy gets the call about mikey and serves the scallop to syd without ever having met her ā there is this invisible tether that was not witnessed by either of them, but it inspired syd, and whether carmy knew it or not, this thing was loved and enjoyed by someone that was birthed from this very traumatic moment. thereās just this beautiful, invisible tether that has always existed and will always exist between the two of them.ā JEREMY YOU GET ITTTTT
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what do you think it is about the other specifically that draws them to each other
oh WHAT a delicious question thank you for asking it!! okay let's think through this.
for ilya, i think that there is initially no emotional connection at all. he's attracted to risky sex with ill-advised partners. BUT he also probably isn't going to go cruising for male hookups in the US at least at first (i'd imagine that the language barrier + learning to navigate different cultural norms would make it harder for him to evaluate what's a sexy risk that gets him off but isn't ultimately THAT dangerous vs. a risk that could blow up his career). so when he meets shane, it's like, the perfect level of danger. shane is a bad idea, but shane is also giving strong 'press here and i might reveal something interesting' vibes from that very first gym scene (poor shane lol you get the distinct sense that he's never been in the presence of someone with that much sexual magnetism and has no idea what his face is doing). ilya then pulls some strings to get them to shoot that commercial together so he can explore that hunch further... and then, when he's reasonably sure shane's at least open to the idea, he acts on that hunch (ie jerks off in front of him in the showers... still so insane lol ilya rozanov the man that you are).
i think that for ilya, it's both a surprise and a turn-on to realize almost immediately how sexually compatible they are. ilya's a little bit of a bully in bed; shane likes to be bullied a little (shane likes it a LOT, as it happens). shane's needy and desperate for it in a way that makes ilya feel hot, sexy, powerful, in charge, etc., which are all feelings that feed ilya's desire for control. he wants to be in charge of sex and shane wants him to be in charge and that's hot for both of them. but there's no deeper connection there. ilya's got other stuff going on, and also, he's very experienced setting up sexual arrangements with people that don't involve any messy emotional entanglement (that's how you stay safe from emotional vulnerability!). you kinda get the sense that ilya's like cool, well, i've got a sure thing in hollander, so i'll keep him in my rolodex and look him up when i'm in montreal. (i legitimately do not think that ilya was expecting shane to play hard to get for two years after that! i do think that shifts his conception of shane a little bit and sharpens his interest!!)
ultimately though... in terms of what keeps drawing ilya back to shane over and over again... i think he's drawn to shane's emotional sturdiness, for lack of a better word. shane's a nice person who has been well loved his entire life. he doesn't seem to experience much shame about his desires. it's easy for him to submit for ilya because he doesn't expect to be hurt or humiliated. why would someone do that to him? why would ilya do that to him, when they have a nice time together and make each other laugh and have really, really good sex? he trusts ilya not to hurt him or make fun of him or otherwise weaponize shane's desires against him. i also think that like, he really just doesn't see ilya as an asshole at all. he gets that ilya plays a role on the ice/in his public life just like shane plays a role. but the real ilya, the ilya he gets to see when they hook up, is a really gentle, attentive, careful lover. i think that shane really clearly telegraphs his warm feelings of trust to ilya, perhaps especially in the scene where they have penetrative sex for the first time. and man that's like a drug to ilya (guy who's grown up believing he's a lazy, irresponsible piece of shit is treated like a responsible, attentive, caring person who is worthy of someone else's trust) even as it's also terrifying to him (like ok, shane thinks this now, but if he gets any closer he will inevitably see the truth about ilya, and it's unbearable for ilya to contemplate seeing shane's warm affection for him replaced with his father's disgust, and that's why ilya has to aggressively push shane away anytime he gets too close).
so i guess the tl;dr version of the above is: ilya is drawn to the way shane makes him feel -- part of that is shane making ilya feel strong and in control (shane submitting to him in bed), but gradually, as they get to know each other more deeply, it's shane making ilya feel like a better version of himself. that's my preliminary thesis based on what we've seen so far... but tbh i think it's an incredibly tangled mess in there emotionally for ilya.
shane version under the cut!
i think ilya, for shane, at first represents the possibility of having something he expected he would have to spend his entire career denying himself. i don't know what kind of life shane imagined for himself as a pro athlete who wanted to sleep with men, but i'm betting it either involved complete celibacy with men and unsatisfying relationships with women. maybe he'd get to have a handful of risky, fraught one-off hookups over the years with men he'd never see again. instead, he gets ilya. they're not boyfriends, or even friends exactly, but they are in a relationship. by that i mean: they have a connection that they both choose to consciously nurture over a period of many years. they come back to each other again and again. they choose each other over competing priorities. they're in regular communication when they're apart. they tease each other and have inside jokes. and they also have really, really hot sex where shane seems to feel almost totally free to explore his desires without fear of being shamed or embarrassed for the things he wants. you know i want the unsafe insane dubiously consensual BDSM in fic but in the actual canon of the show i think what we actually get is pretty safe sane and consensual sex between two people who respect each other's boundaries and communicate pretty well through sex (even if they are not communicating AT ALL outside of sex). anyway this is all to say that: shane thought he wasn't going to have ANY of that, possibly ever, and instead he gets it, with a lover who is in many ways incredibly compatible with him, both sexually and in terms of intuitively understanding the pressures/realities of their shared career. also ilya is smokin' hot and shane VISIBLY goes weak in the knees anytime ilya so much as looks at him so that doesn't hurt.
i think where it gets complicated is like... obviously... where we are now. ilya is attracted to shane's security and willingness to trust, but he's also scared of it and he repeatedly does things to protect himself from shane getting too close that end up hurting shane. and shane is like... he's a guy who is under a lot of pressure from many diferent directions, but he's not giving tormented, repressed gay who hates himself. he hates feeling pressured to lie to the people he loves, sure, but he doesn't seem to internalize any of that as "i'm a bad person and i deserve to feel like shit." shane KNOWS he doesn't deserve to feel like shit, because he has healthy self-esteem and healthy models of relationships around him. and when ilya starts doing things that make shane feel like shit, shane pushes back. he doesn't just roll over and accept it. ilya skips out on the afterparty after losing rookie of the year to shane, when they've already been hooking up for a while? shane confronts him about it -- it's not cool to withdraw your attention and affection from me just because you're mad that i won and you didn't (obviously there's more going on there for ilya, but shane doesn't know that). ilya tells shane he bores him, ghosts him for six months, and then has the nerve to feel him up on stage as a joke and laugh at shane's visible distress in the bathroom? shane's like fuck you, actually, you don't get to treat me like this. want me or don't, but you don't get to string me along. ilya asks shane to stay over at his house, then delivers a long speech about how shane's just one of the countless options he has and is honestly a pretty boring one, and THEN has the nerve to call shane by his first name during sex? shane ends things, because it's not okay for somebody to mess with your head/heart like that.
i think shane really, genuinely likes ilya, and what keeps him coming back is these glimpses he gets of the real ilya underneath all of ilya's layers upon layers of bullshit. i think shane senses that the "real" ilya, or the version of ilya that ilya himself wants to be, is the guy who will tease shane goodnaturedly but never humiliate him. the guy who is gentle and careful and attentive during sex, even when that sex involves playing with power dynamics or doing things that might, with a different partner, feel scary or vulnerable. the guy who is a shit-stirrer on the ice but is a good captain who works hard and cares about how he's perceived by others. but at a certain point, if ilya can't figure out a way to let go of his bullshit and actually be that person, shane's going to have to cut himself loose from this. it's making shane too miserable, to see these flashes of what he could have, of what they could be like together, and then to have to watch ilya sabotage it and push shane away in increasingly painful ways just because he's scared. it's making ME miserable (in the most delicious ways because i love the angst i love the pain i love the mess).
anyway i cannot WAIT to see how jacob tierney gets us out of this one because hoo boy!!!!! but i have a feeling it's going to involve cracking ilya rozanov open like an egg and finally letting shane see just how much ilya's actions are driven by his excruciating certainty that he is rotten all the way through, in ways that no one could possibly look past to love him.
the "zombie" in zombie stage is easy to comprehend when you cast off preconceptions about what zombies are typically like in other media. it is said explicitly in the trailer: they are essentially a new group of people for the upper class to exploit, placed even lower than the lowest existing class in society. undead and inhuman, they are the ideal worker.
there is also specific emphasis put on the upper class being physically "upstairs", and the underworld that is literally "underground" with the lower class, as seen by one of the shots in zomst r1. we also see the zombie being sold from the top down, juxtaposed with a rat mizi kills - just like in alien stage, the aliens (humans), and now zombies, form the lowest rung, and are treated as animals.
another aspect is how infection works and does. infection consists of the body turning into gemstone. these parts are subsequently cut off, framed or sold as regular practice within the idol industry. the idols are literally objectified - they turn into the physical product that is sold, which in turn chips away at their humanity.
infection seems to spread via a single bite, as literally written in the screenshot above. additionally, the infection pattern shares a similar shape to the 'roots/veins' mizi conceptualises relationships as in karma. it is then no surprise that zombification is shown as a result of sexual violence, that which strips away autonomy and leaves you unmoored from yourself. infection is inherently the crossing of boundaries, the undermining of interiority, and the corruption of intimacy. the trauma inflicted and then exploited by the industry is the centrepiece of zombie stage. in this universe, there are no zombies without the discussion of sexual abuse, and of class.
let's all engage in the main metaphor of the show we're watching. together.
i recently spoke to someone who was wondering if mizi was wearing something on her face in zombie stage. they cited the weirdly perfect/specific heart shape as a reason why they thought it had to be a visor of some kind. i disagree with this for practical reasonsāthat absolutely is her face, you can see the rot around her mouth feeding into itābut the specific shape is definitely still odd. after thinking on it, my interpretation of it has turned out to be this:
making the rot where miziās eyes used to be heart-shaped is an extremely important symbolic design choice that does not need to make logical sense.
actual analysis of this choice below:
throughout the video, miziās eyes are more or less the only window into how sheās actually feeling, especially when sheās doing her idol work.
just like her agency was taken from her in life with all the fanservice she was made to do, it was also taken from her in death with the removal of her eyes, the only thing that showed her emotions for what they really were. the one thing that would have given a hint to her being unsatisfied is removed to further the image of āperfect idol miziā, even when sheās a singing, dancing corpse.
this alone is pretty horrifying and thatās an understatement. but the character design choice to put a heart where miziās eyes used to be is just as important as the decision to remove them at all. it holds similar meaning.
iām sure i donāt have to point out that hearts generally equate to love, especially in a nearly entirely visual piece of media. the placement of the heart over the eyes, though, takes miziās agency away from her yet another time. the expressions āheart eyesā and ālook of loveā are relevant here. figuratively, when she still has her eyes, we see mizi give this to sua.
in the second photo, if you look quickly or from a distance, it even looks like the highlights in her eyes are heart-shaped. this is mizi looking at someone she genuinely loves, with figurative āheart eyesā that portray her truest emotions, just as they do in the rest of the video.
then mizi is bitten and infected. her eyes are removed and auctioned off. and where they used to be, sheās left withā¦
ā¦literal heart eyes. and this time, when sheās barely even mizi anymore, she doesnāt get to give them to sua like she would have chosen to. no, whoeverās behind zombie stage chooses who she directs them to now.
so, whoās getting the ālook of loveā from mizi as she is currently?
the group of people she was sexualized and sold to, the group of people for whom sheās been exploited at every turn in both life and death, the group of people we know she hates doing this for more than anythingāher adoring fans.
being marketed to this exact kind of audience forced all of miziās control over her life away from her, ruined her mental state, and even ended up destroying her relationship with sua by extension. and now, sheās a zombie being made to sing and dance for them forever, and to look at them with the same āheart eyesā that were only meant to be for sua. this kind of marketing works best when the fans can develop a parasocial relationship with the idol, after all, believing that they love you just as much as you love them. putting a heart where miziās eyes once were forces her back into the same position she was in in life, performing for men and playing to their preferences. only this time, thereās no way for her true feelings to peek through anymore. all thatās left isā
āthat ālook of loveā.
now, this could all still be true and valid analysis even if that heart shape were a visor or covering of some sort. but i personally believe the point about miziās agency being taken from her becomes much weaker if the shape is a removable object. itās important that this is her true face (haha. get it?) and not a visor because this is no longer the mizi we know. we can see it in her unresponsiveness to sua, how she barely knows sheās performing with someone else at all, how her focus is singlemindedly on giving her loyal and loving audience the performance they deserve. thatās common knowledge at this point, sure, but if this shape is a visor, it undercuts the severity of that. our mizi would never look at this audience that way, not when theyāre getting enjoyment out of her exploitation, out of suaās exploitation. if that heart is something she (or anyone, really) can just take off, it creates an implication that she can go back to being our mizi. that she can stop looking at the audience that way, that she can stop being āperfect idol miziā.
and she canāt. she couldnāt in life, she canāt in death.
making the heart removable in any way gives mizi some of her agency back. and we canāt have that. not when perfect idol mizi sells so well and makes the audience so happy! she canāt go back.
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