ABigGuy4U
1d ago
Bear in mind that if you join the Peace Corps, you will be legally barred from “US foreign service” ;) :^) for at least five years. So if that’s your intent you probably shouldn’t join. Also you shouldn’t be broadcasting your career aspirations toward that on a Mongolian ceremonial woodworking forum.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
I would also add that there are a lot of hints that the death of Bear’s grandmother hit him very hard and he hasn’t really gotten over it.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
The People vs. OJ Simpson also used that technique to good effect, layering takes where Cuba Gooding Jr. played OJ as a genuinely wronged innocent man and ones where he played him as contrite and guilty or mocking and smug.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
If you mean the cute exaggerated frowny face, some people can just do that. I can do that.
I don’t know how you got the impression that Nikki’s father abused her
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The fact that Ian and Sarah both take it as a given that Nikki hates her father so much that she wouldn’t really care if he was dying of cancer.
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The fact that Nikki hates her father but still can’t bring herself to stop caring for him, which she expresses through the made up cancer diagnosis.
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The part where Nikki goes on a demonic rant implying that she’s sexually attracted to Bear because he reminds her of her brother, who her father regularly forced her have sex with. She dresses it up like a fairy tale, but when you combine it with everything else it seems pretty damning.
I Saw Obsession (For Real This Time)
So I saw Obsession (2026) for real this time, and the discourse around it makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. All the rape/incel stuff is just projection, it’s clearly intended to be a metaphor for a codependent relationship between people who just aren’t good for each other.
The actual sequence with Bear wishing on the willow is obviously supposed to be a metaphor for Nikki genuinely latching onto Bear in a time of unique emotional vulnerability, not a rape scene.
The problems in the relationship don’t start until a few months later, when Bear begins to pull away. And unfortunately in his years of idealized pining, he didn’t notice that Nikki actually has pretty serious mental problems. There are major hints that Nikki was molested by her father (everyone in the discourse just seems to not pick up on that) and that she had a serious mental breakdown in high school: Bear misunderstands the “Freaky Nikki” nickname as implying that she was slutty, when it actually arose due to her genuinely bizarre behavior. Pay close attention to the way she acts before the willow. Her affect is already a little bit off (glib charm suddenly snapping into hostility). Ian’s concern isn’t just him being a cad, I think he knows Nikki has serious issues.
And Bear is a weak-willed drip incapable of handling Nikki’s worst impulses. She feels simultaneously suffocated and abandoned by him. The whole joke about the cat is Bear IS the cat, he got into something he didn’t understand and now he’s screwed. He’s certainly an ugly person inside, but not because he’s a bitter resentful incel. He’s just needy and narcissistic, and he’s willing to look the other way on Nikki’s mental breakdown way too long because she validates him. Then when he realizes the full gravity of her problems, he tries to dip out on her. The central thesis of the film is directly stated by the demonic phone operator in a line that everyone misses, right after it breaks the news that the curse is permanent:
“Huh, sounds like you have a moral obligation to be there for her....”
Bear’s sin isn’t getting Nikki into the relationship, it’s that he did it to only to validate himself and not because he really knew or loved Nikki, or wanted to take care of her.
Everyone seems to put a lot of weight on the scene where Nikki is talking in her sleep, but she’s constantly saying a lot of bizzare and inconsistent stuff both before and after the willow.
I really don’t know what the internet is smoking on this one.
In terms of a quality review I think it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Vicious things happen in it, but it’s shot through with tragedy in a way that makes it feel very surprisingly humane. It’s not coldly sociopathic like Saw or Evil Dead. I think it’s no accident that the ending is a very on the nose reference to Romeo and Juliet. I may have been pretty rough on the two leads above, but pretty much every single character in the film is really likable and when bad things happen to them it’s genuinely sad. Even demon-Nikki is genuinely heartbreaking.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
No it’s the one where Mel Gibson skewers Jason Isaacs with the Betsy Ross flag.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
Rich white people were already being taxed at an 90 percent rate so it wasn’t a live issue. To seriously answer your question, Kennedy was broadly sympathetic to the racial Current Thing of the era, in a mealy mouthed Barack Obama kind of way.
I’m not asserting that Mamdani is necessarily either a good politician or a good man. I’m just saying that the racial and religious politics surrounding him are currently well within the bounds of what we have seen for other integrating ethnic groups historically.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
Politics and holidays aside, I think The Patriot is one of the most underrated films of the 2000s.
ABigGuy4U
5d ago
Yes, Kennedy being soft on Communism to the point of being a secret or not-so-secret red was a constant rhetorical drum beat on the right, like it has been about every single democratic politician since FDR. Look at the “Wanted For Treason” flyers that were being passed around Dallas the day he was murdered.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Everything that has been said about Mamdani was said word-for-word about Kennedy.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
So I'm left wondering what his play for the POTUS is
Honestly I don’t think he would even make it out of a fair Democratic Party primary. He would whiff it big with the Deep South, which is the most important region in Democratic primaries. Now given the recent track record I think there’s a good chance he gets a rigged primary and wins that, but he would flop in the general against basically anyone. He’s the white male Kamala Harris.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
In fifty years the Latinos, Indians, East Asians and Muslims will have Irishified and the United States will be back to being 85 percent white.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Sure, but even within that mindset Roe isn’t great. I think she also touched on the backlash it caused and said it might have been better to let it progress through democratic means, but I could be misremembering.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
All 12 members were killed in a vicious ambush set by the Free Wales Army.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
I’m one of those users, but I’m in no way qualified to tell you what any kind of aerial phenomenona are.
Eh, it wouldn’t be as big a deal as you think. Cops and courts had been catching and charging drunk drivers for 80 years before the breathalyzer or other chemical testing even existed. The first one was in 1897.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
I am solidly pro-choice, but I fully understand the pro-life's anger at Roe v Wade.
Even Justice Ginsburg once said that she thought that Roe was awkward law that probably set back the pro-choice movement a lot.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Probably they get rid of birthright citizenship but make an exception for anyone who’s gotten it to date. Which isn’t totally inconsistent because the Constitution frowns on the ex-post-facto application of laws.
The Stalin-haters won’t accept any source.
Edit: Kek, guys it’s just a meme
I liked him for it because he captured the public image of OJ before the murders, of a very friendly and harmless guy. The guy that got turned down from Terminator for not being a convincing enough killer. So because of that, I didn’t mind that Gooding is physically completely unlike OJ. That said, it’s a shame they didn’t get Jonathan Majors, I think he could have pulled that disarming friendliness off while at least approximating OJ’s real build (he was a big guy).
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