the thing about obsession is that every single aspect of the dynamic between bear and nikki forced anything that was hard, any aspect of burden, onto her. even before the wish.
she calls him (iirc) to talk about why he wasn’t at work and their plans for the bar. instead of being honest or emotionally vulnerable with her because it would be uncomfortable for him, he doesn’t tell her why he’s not coming out until later (seemingly off-screen). for the duration of their phone call, she is the one giving up vulnerable information and throwing out the rope to express she wants to hang out with him.
when they’re at the bar and he tries to pay, he hands her the card. i don’t actually want him to have paid bc nikki didn’t want him to, but he very easily could have handed the bartender his card instead if he really had much intention. instead, it (imo) functions as a brief symbol; even when he’s trying to do something ‘nice’, he still hands that symbol of responsibility over to her to have to deal with.
when he’s too scared to tell her how he feels and instead tries to neg her, it instead forces her into the position of feeling the need to be really direct and ask if he likes her.
his wish, made in frustration, also puts all the burden on her; he could have simply wished she knew how he felt, but instead he wishes that she loved him, and emphasizes the very weighty burden of “more than any one in the fucking world” (which i don’t think was poor syntax on his part. i think he meant it like that). this wish forces wish nikki to be the one to start initiating and showing interest, even kissing him first. bc while he wants this from nikki, he never wants to have to make the first move for fear of being rejected.
when he’s confronted with reality that real nikki is suffering hearing her screams over the phone, he hears what he’s putting her through and just… does nothing. i don’t even mean that he doesn’t do anything to help her (though that too, since at this point he knows his death would free her) or that he hangs up (though how quickly he does is gross) bc he has to hang up at some point. it’s that he doesn’t even express regret or acknowledgement that it’s fault. an “i’m so sorry nikki” wouldn’t have even begun to make up for it, but the fact that he couldn’t even do that? it was just all about how it made him feel. and then he just… goes along with life. knowing the torment she’s being put through because of him, however one interprets what that torment was.
wish nikki also expends (in deeply strange ways, bc she doesn’t know how to be what he wants from her) a lot of energy trying to do things for him. she cuts his hair, makes lunch. and it’s the weirdness of the way she does those things that freaks him out, not the fact that she’s apparently trying to serve him in ways real nikki never has before and wouldn’t if she had a choice. if wish nikki had cut his hair while he was awake and had given him a normal lunch, he wouldn’t have cared—if anything, i think he’d have liked it. he’s perfectly content to eat the lunch before he knows what it is.
when wish nikki is watching him sleep and freaks out in the night because she didn’t like her dreams (presumably real nikki’s nightmares), and starts watching him sleep, he doesn’t actually do anything to comfort her. he just tells her to come back to bed. and the next morning, when he’s expressing that it freaked him out, wish nikki tries to literally perform happiness for him with that smile and ask how it is.
speaking of that lunch: real nikki is also put through the burden of trying to show him it’s not really her with the pictures and notes “you. not me.” she has to do this seemingly unaware that he already knows.
at the party, when they’re playing a drinking game, bear SO easily could have just taken a drink when the card said to kiss the person on his left. i’d have to go and check, but i’m pretty sure his bottle’s even already open. he could also choose to say he’s not kissing someone else, the game be damned, even if that one sip of a beer he was already holding was just too much. (yes i have seen the “well he doesn’t like the taste of alcohol” defense yes i hate it.) and instead he just… waits for wish nikki to freak out, make a scene, and allows her to do all this in a way i feel sure would be deeply degrading to the real nikki.
also at the party, when wish nikki freaks everyone out, it puts both her and real nikki in the position of having to defend herself to their friends. “i’m just kidding guys” vs. “it’s not me”! it’s for different reasons — real nikki is also crying out for help - but the same general prinicipal applies. bear says and does nothing to help.
they both are forced to fight each other for control while, again, bear sits there and does nothing until nikki smashes herself with a bottle (it’s unclear to me whether this is real nikki trying to hurt herself or wish nikki trying to stop her) and it’s only at the continued insistence of everyone else he eventually takes her to the hospital.
the scene of wish nikki on her knees, sobbing and insisting she can be whatever he wants her to be while knowing she can’t, happens because that is what he has shown her he wants. all of her unreciprocated effort in a task that is impossible for her to live up to. and when real nikki seems to lunge for him (rightfully so), it’s wish nikki doing the work to hold her back rather than him making any substantial move to protect himself.
and while i think it would have been horrifyingly bleak for him to kill real nikki before or even when she literally begs him, it’s also horrifying that he can’t even find it in him to put her out of her misery and put his ego aside. she is begging for him to KILL her, she has to ask him for this one bare scrap to show he cares anything at all about her or what she wants or her suffering. and not only will he not do it, he makes it all about his own feelings. “what would be so bad? what’s so bad about being with me?” in this moment she is literally begging him to KILL her because of what he’s done to her, he responds with a question that puts weight on her to emotionally soothe his ego.
when wish nikki kills sarah, she has to convince him to help her start to dispose of her body.
and even once he finally decides to die, you get the sense that it’s less because he’s trying to save her and more because he’s reached his breaking point. and even then, he can’t go through with it. he’s going to throw the pills up, and the only thing that stops him is wish nikki using her own OWW, presumably to make him love her the same way she loves him.
and the fuck of it all is that it doesn’t end when bear dies and wish nikki is gone and real nikki is in full control again. she wakes up covered in blood and with bear’s dead body in her lap, her own body forced to have killed their other two friends. her life, more than likely, is ruined, because even outside of the horrific trauma she’ll always be dealing with, bear dying, while it freed her, still left her completely alone to deal the aftermath. after all that, she’s probably going to jail for a chain of events he caused and she had no say in.
bear wanted the power to make nikki love him, but he wanted none of the actual responsibility of a relationship between equal partners (obviously.) even in a relationship bear literally forced by wishing for it, nikki still had to do and suffer the burden of literally everything.
ellievsbear
tangentwithtanner
