Screwcaps

An aroace artist, writer, and storyteller with a penchant for procrastinating and torturing my characters. A fan of any genre (except for nonfiction, unless it's a memoir), a strong believer that Six of Crows changed my understand of what makes a good story, and a distracted, delirious personality running on too little sleep and too much creativity.

[macaulaytwins]

Daniel Arlington III the man that you are,,,,,,

[sophiesuncatcher]

no bisexual has ever done it like alex stern with her dead wife AND dead(?) husband, both of whom haunt and torment her every waking moment

[wavezies]

big fan of strattland being a little too comfortable in each others' space and weirding everyone else out completely straight-faced

[tenderhooked]

I WANT TO WRITE MY STORIES!!!!!!!!!!!! -> continues doing literally Anything Else besides writing

[senpaiisoupp]

I’ll be your freaky Nikki

[alienatedartt]

working on the petrova problem 💕

[obsessedwthehorrors]

Maybe the most telling lie Bear says throughout Obsession is after the first night, when he tells Ian about what happened with Nikki. After saying Nikki "freaked out" and then asked to sleep/cuddle with him, Ian asked if Bear actually did, because it'd be "fucked up" if he did. Bear says he didn't, an obvious lie that Nikki could easily refute if he was confronted.

This is Bear KNOWING that he did something fucked up, and lying about it afterwards to save face. He shows this even more when he interprets another conversation with Nikki as her accusing him (guilty minds). This was before Ian brought up molly or anything, so Bear assumed Nikki was just having a crisis, and took advantage of her.

Ian actually grew on me a little recently, as he seems genuinely happy for Bear that it may have worked out for he and Nikki, when they walk into the store together on the first morning. That pushes out the 'jealous ex/hookup' viewing of Ian imo, and I think he's genuinely just stupid when giving Bear advice, and generally a bad friend.

[mad-not-disappointed]

“which scene in Obsession gave you the chills? the backwards walking? the uncanny valley sleeptalking Nikki? Sarah getting murdered?"

actually it was the first time when Nikki became conscious after the wish. you know, when she was outside Bear's car, talking nonsense about the cat and she suddenly snaps into consciousness and goes "wait what the fuck?"

it wasn't enough to scare me but it was so fucking unnerving. especially if you know what's happening and what's coming, which i did.

like imagine you had a long night and you're going home to get some rest, and then suddenly your body starts moving of its own accord. and suddenly you're outside your coworker's car and you're talking nonsense, you're behaving very strangely, you're creeping him out and you don't know why.

did Nikki think she was going insane? did she think that she got drugged or that maybe something was wrong with her? how long did she wonder if she was just losing her mind, before realizing Bear had something to do with it?

even now, rewatching that scene makes me feel so uneasy. nothing extreme has happened yet but you can imagine the growing fear and confusion in Nikki as her body refuses to listen to her.

[shouts-into-the-void]

One thing about Obsession (2026) that I enjoyed was that it almost asks you to feel empathy for the entity possessing Nikki as well as the real one. Like, obviously the things she's doing are horrific and fucked up, but I think the scene where Bear is asking her to "just be Nikki!" and she eventually just desperatly screams "I can't be Nikki!" does a really good job of showcasing the entity's inner feelings. She's been created with the sole purpose of loving this guy more than anyone else but no matter how perfect it is or how much he claims to love her, its not her that he loves, its Nikki. And any time she stops pretending to be Nikki, he reacts (albeit rightfully) with disgust and horror. She can't be Nikki because Nikki would never love Bear, and so Bear will never love her.

[screwcaps]

I have too many thoughts about Obsession but the one I feel like not many people have mentioned yet (especially people asking whether it’s actually feminist or not) is that it’s so, so, important that Nikki lives.

Yes, she was tortured horrifically, and yes, she’s left with the fallout. But as a film, Obsession does not forget about Nikki. It does not introduce her for 15 minutes in the beginning just to essentially “off” her…she survives. She’s the final girl of the film.

And I think that’s so important in a film, with the plot driven by this careless, selfish, cowardly man, because she’s not a sacrifice and she’s not cannon fodder, and she’s not expendable (because usually, she would be. Her character would be.) She’s alive, and she owns that final scene, and I think that’s just as important to the message of Obsession as the wish and the possession and the horror of it all.

[lynsstrange]

A scene I don’t hear people talk about enough in Obsession is the very end of the phone call with the customer service rep when he is connected to Nikki on the line. Mostly the focus is on how during the conversation Bear specifically requests to alter the wish, not cancel it, and how it shows that he only cares about the impacts of the wish to the extent that it effects him negatively. Not the general immorality of forcing Nikki to love him. But I think the most blatant symbolism for this is him quite literally ignoring her screaming in pure agony, terror, whatever it is. It makes his actions later that much more disgusting imo. This woman that he supposedly loves, and therefore should care about the wellbeing of, is horrifically screaming while trapped in her own body because of his doing, and he simply doesn’t give a shit. It doesn’t affect his actions moving forward in the slightest. He’s just gotten true confirmation that she is actively suffering, and that he has done something truly awful, and he still chooses not to do anything about it. This is maybe the most direct evidence of exactly what she is going through that he is faced with, and it does not change anything. The scene where she begs him to kill her a little while after is made even more disgusting because of this. If you were trying to give Bear the benefit of the doubt, on the surface level you could maybe understand why he does not want to kill Nikki. He claims he cares about her. Maybe he still wants to find a solution where nobody has to die. Then he has the audacity to say “what’s so bad about loving me?” And any empathy for him is gone. He’s heard with his own ears the consequences of his actions, knows that she’s probably still screaming like that somewhere deep within herself, knows that he has been essentially raping her and using her for (weeks? Months?) and is so selfish that he cannot find it in himself to even attempt to undo it. He knows she’s screaming and he ignores it. He ignores every cry for help. He is fully aware of what he is doing, how it is affecting her, how he has ruined her life and scarred her beyond belief, and just does not care. I never want to hear someone call him anything except the villain that he is.

[summerbrook]

it is terrifying that bear only sought to "alter" his wish rather than cancelling it but what is even more terrifying is that he wouldn't even have called the number had nikki not inconvenienced him. if she did not act in such extreme ways bear wouldn't even have a problem. which is sooooo sooooo terrifying because he was completely fine living and being "loved" by nikki who he knew wasn't the real her. he claimed to love her, but even when she started acting like a totally different person it was water off a duck's back for him. he DIDN'T CARE whether it was the real nikki or an entirely different person.

even when she begs him to kill her, he does not feel even a shred of pity for her; he only worries "is being with me that bad".

the only reason he tries to change anything is because her behavior started to scare him FREAK him out. had she acted in a meeker way, bear would've lived with her HIS WHOLE LIFE knowing she ISN'T the real nikki NOT GIVING A FUCK about what she would've wanted. PERIOD.

the more i sit with it the more i realise that the title of the movie did not refer to nikki's obsession with bear but rather his obsession with her. because i know fs that what he felt for her definitely wasn't love.

[smilesbag]

i feel like people are overlooking the moment at the beginning of obsession where nikki straight up asks "do you like me?" and once bear lies and says no she replies "ok, good." for starters, it was a chilling moment to me because this is such a classic experience of having a close guy friend, only to realize that he wants more from you. girls aren't dumb! nikki isn't dumb! of course she knows that bear is into her, she has eyes! she can see his stuttering and sheepishness and she's just dreading the moment she has to turn him down, to tell him that he's like a brother to her. just before she had told him that she doesn't feel real love in her life, and i don't think it would be a leap to attribute a small part of that feeling to her fear that her friendship with bear isn't as simple as she wants it to be.

it's also a chilling question from nikki because once she walks away bear knows that she doesn't feel the same way about him, and he makes the wish anyway. he is incapable or unwilling to take a hint and see that she doesn't feel the same way. and that question is the last thing she says to him before he ruins her life forever. it's unfair.

[dishvnored]

I was never with you.

[modernmusess]

there’s something so gutwrenching about the fact that the female characters in obsession have real dreams and wishes but never get the chance to see them realized, while both male characters waste their wishes on short-term selfish satisfaction. they were complex, free-spirited young women who just wanted to create art, and they were destroyed by a man determined to confine them to his superficial perception of them. nikki wanted to be a writer, sarah wanted to be a tattoo artist and now neither of them will get to be anything at all

[serendipitous-posts]

Just saw the interview where Curry Barker explained that it's totally possible to get a normal wish from the One Wish Willow, and I love the way they did that so much. The reason Obsession happened isn't because it's trying to twist Bear's desires into something evil. It's not even because he phrased his want wrong. Obsession happened because Bear got his hands on a magic item that could do anything in existence, and chose to force someone to fall in love with him, which is an inherently evil thing to do.

[leeeen-90]

people who only use conventional social media are so funny bc they’ll casually be like “can I see your tumblr??” are you Insane. this is no instagram or twitter. this is my vault of secrets