Nikki may have been disconnected from her physical body because it was given independent agency

The director of Obsession said that the wish was essentially neutral and that Bear got exactly what he asked for. What Bear asked for was, "I wish for her to love me more than anything in the world." It's strange because he didn't really get his wish. The real Nikki didn't actually love him. The new, fake Nikki—or new version of Nikki—seemed to go through a form of limerence. She did appear to have a form of infatuation or love for him, but at the same time, it was a type of romantic love that was extremely creepy. It seemed more like limerence than genuine love. Essentially, it was a one-sided relationship.

There are cases where someone is romantically interested in another person and develops a crush. The crush doesn't like them back, and they know it. They're fully aware of this, but they don't make their feelings clear, they never confess, and nothing really goes anywhere. They just have feelings. They don't really push things forward.

As a result, this makes his wish seem strange. If his wish is simply, "I wish you would love me more than anything in the world," then consider something someone once pointed out to me. Remember when you had your child and your baby was born? There was a burst of love, a burst of oxytocin. That was you loving your child. The brain biologically encourages this. It causes the child to become attached to you, and it causes you to become attached to the child through oxytocin production. This process occurs throughout pregnancy.

Now, this may not always work. Your body may not always produce the oxytocin necessary, and it's normal for it not to happen immediately. However, it can become concerning if it doesn't happen for an extended period of time. Many parents who don't initially feel that bond eventually develop it through bonding, talking, and communicating with their child.

That "love at first sight" experience is real, but biologically, it is more associated with parenthood than romance. It is necessary because parents who didn't feel attached to their children often struggled emotionally. Some experienced guilt, stress, confusion, or symptoms similar to postpartum depression. Parenthood can be extremely difficult. That parental love offers a strong emotional payoff. You receive an emotional and psychological reward from being around your baby—a sense of joy and fulfillment.

The baby, meanwhile, cannot do much to bond with you yet because it is a baby. The baby must gradually build that relationship. It may be attached to you, and it may recognize your voice, but the bond develops over time.

The question then becomes: how does the baby grow that bond with someone?

At first, the only thing the baby can really recognize is your voice. Babies in the womb hear before they can see. They become familiar with sounds and environments. How do they come to love you? By being raised well. The oxytocin produced in the mother and father creates urges to protect, nurture, and care for the baby. As a result, they act on those urges. They hold the baby, comfort the baby, and spend time with the baby. The baby gradually develops trust and affection because of those experiences.

In a sense, it's biological programming. God, if you believe in God, designed human beings so that this attachment could form naturally between parents and children. Of course, people still maintain autonomy, choices, and decision-making. A parent can become angry, yell at their child, and later apologize because they feel bad. A parent may even take a few days away while leaving the child with grandparents.

It's not like Nikki locking someone in a house. Parents protect children because they don't want them to get lost or harmed. They still allow them to go to school, socialize, and develop independence.

Babies are clingy and instinctual. The more a baby bonds with you, the more attached the baby becomes. Babies cry when they are separated from the people they trust. They enjoy familiarity, comfort, and routine. Why? Because babies are people with thoughts and feelings, but they are also highly instinct-driven.

Emotions create urges. Babies cry automatically. As a child, I noticed that crying often was automatic. I usually didn't force myself to cry; it simply happened. Babies often cry the same way.

There is even a type of crying where a baby cries so intensely that they struggle to breathe. They continue forcing air out while crying and have difficulty inhaling. In severe cases, a child may briefly turn blue or pass out. The body generally resumes normal breathing automatically afterward.

Now, does love cause this type of crying? No. This type of crying can result from many different situations. A child might become overwhelmed, frightened, frustrated, or upset.

One person described remembering this experience from when he was a toddler. He recalled trying to breathe but being unable to do so while crying. Eventually, he passed out. When he later became a parent, he learned techniques intended to prevent similar situations from occurring with his own child.

You can even cry so hard that your nose bleeds. This happened to me once as a child. I wasn't emotionally devastated—I simply believed I should cry because my fictional babies in a game had been deleted. I was a strange child. I thought, "Those are my children, so I should be upset." I cried so intensely that my nose started bleeding.

You may wonder why those children didn't simply stop crying. The answer is that they often couldn't. For many children, crying is an automatic biological response.

So yes, babies are highly instinctual. They have many survival instincts besides crying. For example, rooting and sucking behaviors are hunger cues. There are numerous newborn cues that help parents understand their babies' needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiV_uXOg6Bg&lc=Ugx0KPyqXeUF9fH6Qc94AaABAg

A baby that loves and trusts you isn't creepy. The baby simply wants comfort, familiarity, and safety. The baby may walk toward you, reach for you, or seek your attention. There are also many different types of cries, each communicating different needs.

However, babies do not always want interaction. Sometimes a baby becomes overstimulated. There is a particular cry that sounds distressed or pained. In these situations, the baby may pull away or attempt to avoid interaction. The baby wants space and less stimulation.

Some people accidentally make the situation worse by continuously trying to interact with an overstimulated baby. The better approach is often a calm, repetitive motion and a reduction in stimulation. The baby is essentially communicating, "Please leave me alone for a little while."

Going back to what the director said about Obsession, I have heard many parents say they love their child more than anything in the world. Because of that, the director argued that Bear's wish was neutral and that he got exactly what he asked for.

But it doesn't really look that way to me. He asked for Nikki to love him, not for a new being to appear that loved him. If he truly received someone who loved him more than anything in the world, then perhaps the closest comparison would be a distorted form of parental love.

Parents are not always clingy toward their children, but they are often protective and deeply invested in their well-being. If someone loved you more than anything else in the world, perhaps they would behave in a similarly protective way. It would be strange. It would create a very unusual relationship.

The problem is that Nikki doesn't seem to love him. Instead, it appears as though something else is happening. It almost feels like a separate entity sharing her body.

If it isn't a separate entity—if it is simply Nikki struggling with overwhelming emotions—then perhaps she no longer recognizes herself. Maybe she interprets these intense urges as another personality when they are actually her own emotions magnified beyond normal limits.

One of my biggest questions is how Nikki would respond to having a child. Human brains are biologically geared toward loving and caring for children. Most parents who love their children have normal, healthy relationships with them.

If this is genuinely how Nikki behaves when she loves someone more than anything in the world, then wouldn't she react similarly toward a child?

This reminds me of a fictional character I once created. She became a mother and became obsessively attached to her child. She didn't want anyone around the child. She didn't want the child leaving the house.

This was from a game I was working on. The main character was named Jewel—or perhaps Jewelry; I don't completely remember. The mother became intensely jealous. Her child wasn't allowed to communicate with the father because she became jealous of the attention he received.

There was no romantic element involved. It was purely a platonic parent-child relationship taken to an unhealthy extreme.

The mother became paranoid. She didn't want her child interacting with other people. She became jealous whenever anyone else formed a bond with the child. The child was effectively trapped inside the house.

If Nikki's reaction is supposed to represent loving someone more than anything in the world, then who does she already love so intensely that this behavior emerged?

Wouldn't that imply she would behave similarly toward a child?

I noticed some parallels with parenthood. Parents sometimes watch their babies sleep. They gently stroke their hair or stand nearby simply because they enjoy being close to them. Some parents even say they feel as though they have lost part of their identity and become "just a mother" or "just a father."

Notice how Nikki feels as though she has been replaced by another version of herself.

That is one reason I wonder whether the wish was accidentally trying to mimic motherhood.

It might even explain some of Nikki's unusual behaviors. The wish could be attempting to recreate a parental attachment pattern and applying it to a romantic context, creating something unnatural.

This also reminds me of the phrase, "He doesn't want a wife; he wants a mother."

I was chatting with God in prayer about this and thought about it deeply. If Nikki's behavior resembles certain exaggerated parental behaviors, then perhaps the wish is drawing from that template.

Not everything Nikki does resembles normal parental behavior, of course. This is not ordinary parental love. It resembles romantic infatuation mixed with an extreme level of attachment, devotion, and obsession.

In my story, Jewel eventually sneaks out of the house repeatedly so she can make friends and interact with other people. She keeps these friendships secret because her mother disapproves.

From the day of her birth, her mother felt jealous whenever her father interacted with her. It disturbed him.

Again, there was no romantic element involved. It was simply a distorted and unhealthy form of parental love.

The mother was obsessively attached to her child without any lust involved.

She was simply dangerously obsessed.

Basically, if this is simply how Nikki would act when she loves someone more than anything in the world, how would she respond to her own children? How would Nikki naturally behave without the secondary Nikki? If she ever had a partner and eventually became a parent, would she act normally?

It seems like she would be more normal because many of the dangerous and bizarre behaviors shown by the other creature version of Nikki may be the result of it being an inhuman, newly created being—almost like a newborn that doesn't know how to be human. Without that element, would she simply act like Nikki without the self-harm, the loss of bodily control, and the strange cat-like behavior?

Would she lock her child in the house? Would she watch her child while they slept? Would she watch videos of her child sleeping? She probably would.

Of course, there would not be things like killing friends. You wouldn't kill someone simply because you were jealous of them spending time with your child.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XsaaxdffhdE?feature=share

If you look at the video, the actress herself doesn't seem to fully understand what is happening. She describes it almost as if she's teleporting. It feels as though a different entity is taking over her body while she disappears.

What it sounds like is that her soul is teleporting in and out of her body into a different realm or world. If that's true, then Nikki was right when she said, "It's not me. You were never with me. I was never with you."

Nikki was never truly with him, which is why Curry's statement that Bear got exactly what he wished for seems strange.

The only way Curry could be correct, from the perspective of someone who is trying to analyze the story logically, would be if Nikki literally had a second version of herself created and those versions were switching in and out of the body—almost like a second soul or spirit.

Think of how some Christians describe the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as being one God while also acting distinctly. Some people explain it as different persons sharing one divine nature. They remain one, yet they can act independently. The Son can pray to the Father, for example. When Jesus prayed before the crucifixion, He expressed distress and asked if there was another way, while still submitting to the Father's will.

Is that what is happening with Nikki and the other version of herself?

However, there are also signs that this may not be Nikki at all. Nikki repeatedly says, "It's not me." That makes me wonder whether it truly isn't her.

My theory is that the spirit that originally belonged to Nikki is not the one being forced to love Bear.

Some Christians believe that the spirit and soul are distinct parts of a person's spiritual nature. They describe humans as consisting of spirit, soul, and body. Because of that belief, I began wondering whether someone could argue that one part of Nikki is experiencing the effects of the wish while another part is not.

Personally, I think the wish made a mistake. It misinterpreted Bear's request.

It's almost as though the wish thought, "He wants Nikki's body to love him, but her spirit doesn't love him. Therefore, I will create a new spirit that does."

In that scenario, the body would correspond to the new spirit rather than Nikki's original one. Physically, it would still be Nikki, but spiritually it would be someone else.

Another theory I have is that Nikki's body became separated from her spirit and soul entirely.

Normally, if the spirit and soul leave the body, the body dies. But perhaps the wish prevented that from happening. Maybe Nikki's spirit and soul were removed, yet the body was allowed to continue functioning independently.

This would explain scenes where Nikki appears while the other version is asleep and says things such as, "She's asleep. Please kill me."

Perhaps Nikki's spirit was temporarily regaining access to her body and was begging for the destruction of the physical form because she no longer controlled it.

My theory is that Nikki dissociated completely from her body. Her spirit and soul were separated from her physical form, and the wish only left the body conscious and active.

In other words, the body began functioning the way some atheists might describe human existence: as though the body alone is the person. A Christian perspective generally treats the body as only one aspect of a person, with the soul being the true self.

Under this theory, the wish effectively removed Nikki's soul and trapped it elsewhere while allowing the body to continue operating independently.

This would explain why Nikki keeps "coming back." Every time she appears, she is returning to her own body.

It would also explain why she says, "She's asleep." She is referring to the body, not herself. Destroying the body would destroy the thing that had become dangerous.

The body itself appears to be operating under an extreme flood of hormones, oxytocin, and obsessive attachment.

If Curry intended Bear to be an atheist, then perhaps his statement makes more sense.

Suppose souls and spirits actually exist within the universe of the story. If Bear is an atheist, then he may only believe the physical body is real. When he wished for Nikki to love him, perhaps he was only thinking about Nikki as a physical being.

From that perspective, the wish technically worked.

It made Nikki's body love him.

The body began producing overwhelming amounts of hormones and oxytocin. It became devoted to him. It behaved as though it were an entirely separate being from Nikki's spirit and soul.

Meanwhile, Nikki's spirit was either rejected or pushed aside.

Another possibility is that Nikki's spirit remained connected but struggled to control the body because the wish severely weakened that connection.

Normally, the soul and body function together. During sleep, for example, the body sleeps and the person experiences that sleep as well. Nikki no longer seems to experience that synchronization.

Instead, she appears to observe her own body from outside of it.

It's almost as if she is possessing herself.

Under this interpretation, the wish granted the body independent agency. The body could think, feel, and act separately from Nikki's own will.

That would explain why Nikki is so confused. Her spirit and soul would be asking:

"Why is my body doing things without me?"

"Why am I not controlling my own actions?"

"What is happening to me?"

The answer would be that the wish granted autonomy to the physical body itself.

Before the wish, Nikki's body and soul functioned as one. After the wish, the body gained its own agency while Nikki's spirit remained separate and powerless.

If Bear's worldview excluded the existence of souls and spirits, then the wish may have interpreted his request according to his own beliefs.

He wasn't asking for Nikki's soul to love him.

He wasn't asking for Nikki's spirit to love him.

He was asking for Nikki's body to love him.

As a result, the wish affected only the physiological body. It flooded the body with hormones, attachment, and devotion, causing it to behave as though it were deeply in love with him.

The soul, however, remained unchanged.

That would explain why Nikki insists that it isn't really her, why she seems disconnected from her own actions, and why the body behaves as though it has become a separate entity altogether.

To me, this could explain why this is happening. It's not necessarily Nikki herself.

The reason I think Nikki was glitching in the corner, based on what people have said—since I haven't actually seen the movie—is that Nikki's body was battling with her soul for control. The body had been given its own agency, so it was trying to control itself while Nikki was simultaneously trying to control it.

As a result, the two were essentially fighting over the same body, which could explain the strange, glitch-like behavior.