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Heshsus

what’s in a name?

alluded to it in my last adlerbell rot post but i have such a complex over adler naming bell and i find it difficult to put into words. so here’s a very lengthy attempt:

most of the symbolism behind bell’s name is obvious and doesn’t need much stating: it’s indicative of adler’s ownership of bell, literally naming them like a pet, his property. obvious also that a bell was used in their conditioning; as well as a reference to the study of classical conditioning itself by pavlov, who similarly used a bell to condition behavioural responses in the test subject: a dog (hence the myriad dog imagery/symbolism in adlerbell fics… it’s like crack to me)

but the obvious aside it always hits me deepest as part of the “it wasn’t personal” narrative. it’s insanely personal- it’s intimate. i think i put adlerbell on a little bit of a pedestal to view everything about them through a vaguely romanticised lens, but to me it really is- in the most horrifically tragic and sickening way- romantic.

like, you’re bell, right? you trust this man, bell. he is your friend. you witnessed some of the worst atrocities of mankind and survived hell with him and he is your friend. he calls your name through the smoke and gunfire, as a bullet zips past your ear you hear it amidst the splitting of shrapnel, the tearing of screams silenced for but a moment. each time he extends his arm to pick you up, he calls you, bell. every time he directs you to a point of interest, he beckons you, bell. when he nudges you out of your cot in camp haskins, it’s your name he laughs, bell. when he praises you, and smiles at you in that wry, almost boyish way, and tells you how good of a job you’ve done, how we couldn’t have done it without you, how they should be thanking you- it’s your name, bookended, every time, a fondness notched into the welding that stamps you both together inseparably. bell. every single association you have to your name is whenever he pulls you close, helps you, praises you, saves you. your name alone a positive association- to the respect and affection he has for you. bell.

and it’s to the point. adler says their name at any given moment he can. he says it so often it’s infuriating. like deadass take a shot every time. it’s practically a trope in any fic featuring the two, that he utters their name every other line of dialogue. it’s the first thing he says to them at the start of the game- walking into the safehouse at west berlin- not a word, but their name. sure, obviously isn’t the first time he’s spoken to bell, knowing what came before- but it’s presumably bell’s first time walking around freely since mk ultra. that coupled with the trigger phrase must make for a very pliant response- when he says their name, it’s the same man, as far as bell knows, who fought with them back to back in vietnam. something thicker even than blood.

and i reckon adler likes it. mk ultra was a joint effort but bell’s past is based on his choosing, his memories. by no means did he have to pick their name, but he did. he chose to name the thing he’s helped create. it’s almost sick that the ‘closeness’ bell feels towards adler is really only partially synthetic- over a span of months adler really was there, every day, talking for hours and conditioning them over and over and over again. of course he’d name them. something something don’t name an animal you don’t want to get attached to. but it’s his animal. it’s his dog. they’re his bell.

and there’s something just so sickening and so adler that he could have named them anything else in the world- maybe something inconspicuous and plain, like john or jane; something sweet, something that reminds him of someone else, a song he likes, a nickname, an insult, or even something downright cruel. but i don’t think anything could be more cruel and tragically appropriate than calling them by the name of the instrument you used to condition them. to call them by the tool you used to enslave their mind. the very thing that reset their entire being to zero. a bell. not just their name- but the sound, ever ringing, in the back of their mind. the thing that echoes in the empty inside them, to remind them why it’s empty in the first place, its sole purpose to keep them chained in their loyalty to adler. bell.

like i said, i do really think adler likes it. for whatever reason. ownership, spite, just a way to rub salt in the wound any chance he gets, a small victory only he gets to revel in, right in their face. but bell is his. bell belongs to him. when he says their name, it’s the one he chose. time and patience came alongside that bell that rang perpetual in that lab. he’s said that name as many times as he rang it. maybe a part of adler’s as attached to that instrument as much as he is the person he named after it. i’m sure adler hears it chiming in the recesses of his own mind more than he’d care to admit. he’d been around to hear it as long as bell has, hadn’t he? maybe part of him has grown conditioned in his attachment to that instrument too.

but there must be a semblance of pride when he says it. really, to be able to beckon your dog by the name you chose for it. i wonder if a swell of maddened joy tugs at his blackened heart whenever he sees bell’s head perk up at the sound of their name, the one he chose, as implicit and unthinking, automatic, as though it truly were their own. since birth.

and like it couldn’t be enough that he took everything from them. and most importantly that he took them away from perseus- that he stole perseus’ most precious comrade right out from under him, and turned them to an unflinching loyal pup for himself. this isn’t about you, this isn’t about me, this is about millions of other fucking people. is it? when you croon and tut their name between every sentence, are you sure you don’t just like the satisfaction of saying it, knowing how deeply it disarms them? knowing how they are wholly yours, to their very core? to the name they introduce themselves as? to the one they flinch and come running whenever you say it?

ugh. it’s just- a name is so integral to one’s identity. it shapes their life. their personhood. and he didn’t just erase theirs, but he gave them a new one and made sure they’d like it. a conditioned response of pleasure whenever he’d say it. isn’t that intimate?

he took everything. every single shred of who they were. that not even their name is their own. that even their name, their name, belongs entirely to him.

this didn’t make sense, i wrote this mostly for myself, congrats if u read this far. i just wanted to have every single thought and feeling i had about it jotted in one place and file it away ajshsjksjsjsjs

After finishing bo1, bo2 and bocw i have turned into the biggest Hudson apologist ever

Is it too weird that I've been thinking about something similar? 😞

The dichotomy between tenderness and torture Bell would've received during the MK-ULTRA process is something that is very special to me. Tenderness in the wound care they would have needed to receive in order to keep them from dying from the bullet wound they got on the Trabzon Airfield and Torture from all the physical and mental pain that was inflicted on them with the express goal of grinding their entire being to a stub in order to be rebuilt in Adler's image.

Yeah sure gender swapped milf Adler is hot but let's not pretend that svelte English twink Park wouldn't do numbers on this site

I'm so in love with Netflix's Castlevania 😔🤍

thinking about love as the ultimate transformative power in castlevania... richter's love giving strength to annette when she's practically dying from sekhmet's possession, juste and tera's care bringing maria back from the darkness, lisa showing dracula that he can be loved and good, alucard's love for each generation of belmont making him come back not to fight evil but simply to teach them how to fish despite knowing that he'll have to watch them die, olrox coming back to fight erzsebet out of love for mizrak, alucard saying that dracula still had goodness in him at the end precisely because his last action on earth was loving lisa's last gift to him, their son,... the only characters that are truly evil being the ones like Carmilla, the Abbott in nocturne or drolta who turn acts of devotion, love and trust into destruction and violence.... going to kill myself

We know from Sims that everyone in the safehouse gets their paychecks through Adler. But does this include Bell? After all, Bell isn't really a team member, he just thinks he is. Was Bell collecting a real paycheck or were Park and Adler paying him in Monopoly money?

Did Park and Adler go up to their supervisors and be like "Yeah we need a bunch of money so we can pay a fake wage to our brainwashed Soviet operative so he doesn't suspect anything wrong" and the CIA just had to accept this? In the CIA's archives somewhere is there a budget allocation for the cost of paying Bell a pretend Salary? Did they collect all the money back after killing Bell?

If they gave Bell real money how freely was Bell able to spend it or did Adler say something like "I'm going to hold your paycheck for you Bell" and Bell just had to accept it because Adler is his friend and his boss and would never do him wrong? Was Bell paid the same amount as everyone else or was he given a pittance? Did Bell ever suspect anything was off? There are so many questions left unanswered here

is it just me or am I the only one who tends to gravitate more towards '' blank '' protagonists like Logan or Roach?. Like they don't say a word, they have absolutely zero character development and in Roach's case don't even have a canon appearance

I guess you could say they're like canvas and so you could imagine and headcanon basically anything about them.

Though I guess we must be content with the few crumbs we get as these characters tend to be less popular.

Logan nation rise up 🙏

Listen, I know why people like to have Adler and Bell get their own happily ever after where they can be domestic and in love or whatever. I understand the appeal. But man I NEED more of adbell being fucking weird and violent. The line between hate and love is incredibly thin further blurred by all the shit they did to bell's brain. They're enemies but also allies, then enemies again and allies once more. They're old friends, they've only known each other for a few months, they went through hell in Da Nang together, Bell has literally never been to Vietnam, Bell's a highly skilled professional Adler trusts the skills of, Adler literally does not think of bell as a person. And all of these are all mixing and overlapping. Give me the dubiousness of how much of Bell's attraction to Adler is genuinely his own versus how much of it was either accidentally or deliberately imprinted into his brain! If Bell has Adler's memories of Vietnam then part of Bell's personality and psyche is actually Adler's. And if Adler is attracted to Bell then this begs the question of whether or not Adler is actually attracted to Bell or rather to the reflection of himself within Bell?

Yes.

reblog if it's okay for your mutuals to message you and create an actual friendship, not just interactions