#no more cold war

[anxietyjedi]

The Other Side of the Story Continues...

Holy shit...

Holy fucking shit...

So...as I already knew life is more complex than we often think. To say that I am surprised to hear about things from "the other side" is an understatement. What do I mean about "the other side", well, this goes back to a post I made in 2022 about the state of my life and emotional wellbeing. Just for review...

Growing up there were some relatives who I did not like. More accurately I should say I grew to resent them. I was just a kid, like any other kid; I had likes, dislikes, things that I didn't want to do, and so on. Well, these certain relatives didn't give a shit; they would talk down to me, gang up on me, make me the scapegoat for whatever issues they had. They turned what should have been happy experiences into terrible ones. Trips to "The Happiest Place on Earth" became anything but, and for quite a few years I avoided going there based on those memories.

In 1999 my parents separated and I ended up getting moved to where these relatives lived. The bullshit continued, and that was on top of the already stressful life of being a teenager. Being moved hundreds of miles away from all I knew, having everything that I loved ripped away from me, and having some of my interests like writing spoken about so venomously. They ganged up on people like a pack of rabid wolves so there was never any sort of intelligent discussion, just badgering until the one person was beaten into submission. I hated it, and eventually I just got to the point where I did the one thing I could to defend myself the best. I put as much distance between ALL of them as I could.

Yes, all of them. Every single relative on that side of the family I didn't want anything to do with. If a select few of them could do that and nobody did anything, in my book that meant they were all equally guilty. On June 19th, of 2001 I freed myself of all of that. I got out. I became independent and didn't have to answer to them anymore, didn't have to deal with them anymore, didn't have to put myself in their good graces to "keep the peace". Essentially, it was the start of a "Cold War". They were not in my life and I was not in theirs.

The distance and time away did not take away the emotional pain of what I went through. Not at all. It remained and I, well, I spent a lot of years being hurt and bitter. It didn't matter who reached out to me, it didn't matter who said anything to me, I kept them at a the maximum distance that I could and only spoke to them because I love my Mom more than I loathed their existence. I know with them being her siblings that they are important to her, so I kept it civil. Icy cold but still civil for the sake of my Mom. In the years since my "liberation" I spent time finding and recapturing my happiness. I went back to the "Happiest Place on Earth" and took my happiness back.

Yes, I wasn't given it back, I took it back. On my terms, doing what I wanted and abstaining from what I didn't want to do. I took it back and honestly I was in tears because I realized they would never be able to take that from me. Even though the memories of their treatment of me remained, I gave myself the empowerment that I needed to start to get my life back together and in order.

Then in the last week when I went to pick up my younger brother it opened the door to the topic of my isolationism. For the first time in 22 years I was getting a glimpse beyond the "wall" that was between the two sides. I spent years thinking that people probably bastardized me, thinking I was just an angry individual, that I was just someone with a chip on their shoulder. At 40 years old I am mature enough to say this; I was wrong. You see, they understood my stance, they understood the distance that I put between myself and them, they understood my anger, my frustration, my pain, my emotional trauma. They understood where it came from, why it existed, and the more I talk with my younger brother the more I learn that it wasn't all of them.

The relatives I had a problem with are in the scarce minority. They are the minority so much that they are often not included in family functions. For once it felt good to have confirmation that I was not alone in this, but as my brother put it, I was the first to see it. Quite appropriately he said I was the "Jedi" in the situation, seeing the problem when everyone else didn't well before any of them got an inkling. He even conveyed similar stories to what I faced that started the issues that I had with them, stories from not just his experience but the experiences of others in our generation. When I heard all of that in addition to getting the confirmation that the problems I had were indeed valid it felt like I suddenly had this whole new perspective on life, on them.

Now my Mom is going to be coming up this weekend and I think it's time for the "Cold War" to end. 22 years is quite a long time, but to hear the validation for what I did, to know that I was partially justified...in the words of John Lennon "War is over if you want it".

[abedalahdiaburas]

Osama and Hisham, two young boys from Gaza, are huddled together in a flimsy tent, trying to stay warm in the freezing rain. Their clothes are soaked, and they have no blankets or other protection from the elements. They are hungry and scared, and they don't know what the future holds.

Osama and Hisham are just two of the thousands of people who have been displaced by the ongoing conflict in Gaza. They have lost their homes, their schools, and their families. They are now living in makeshift shelters, where they are exposed to the elements and at risk of disease.

The situation is desperate. These children need our help. Please donate today to help provide them with food, shelter, and medical care."

🍉🇵🇸🕊️🍀

@90-ghost @9over0 @sugarmint-dreams @sabertoothwalrus @ankle-beez @afro-elf @akajustmerry @anarcho-smarmyism @bluewriter4u @nairafeather @nonbinarymerbabe @n-chu4ever @gaza-evacuation-funds @a-shade-of-blue @eternal-fractal @edwardiandaydream @anarcho-smarmyism @anneemay @batricity @leepacey @lesbianslasherfilm @lesbianmaxevans @lesbians-against-the-monarchy

@freepalestiniancivilians @freepaleatine95 @cloevr @jezior0 @freedomtopalestine @freewatermelon0 @moringmark @batmananimated @silverthroatednightingale @sayruq @faiya9996 @weirdmarioenemies @ragingbullmode

@mordhiobhail @turtletoria @bibleofficial @naradreamscape @ot3 @poetrylesbian @pcktknife @papasmoke @phuljhari @hotvampireadjacent @hexalt @lostaff @zuzecadyke @xeonkhan

[artsekey]

[khloxxy]

[fresh-snow]

So Hamas have been digging tunnels in Sweden from Palestine? Wow talk about efficiency 😑

Israhell once again is giving out clown energy.

Liars and schemers.

Thank goodness for social media and accessible internet. If it was 20 years ago, they'd have gotten away with it.

[ambigiousorganfailure]

this is a short in-between post while i gear up for the actual adler/bell and harrow/case comparison, but just an interesting note.

we all know about adler watching you/bell from the red room, right? but did you know he also follows you to the fenced-off area, too?

when i first played cold war, his behavior in this briefing stuck out to me. the way he shifts his weight, changing from foot to foot, looking between his table and the evidence board. it almost seems nervous, fidgety. it feels awkward on him, and it’s awkward to watch. when i was trying to record footage from the safehouse briefings for this miniature post, i thought i’d come out of it making a whole “lightning in a bottle” analogy for adler. but then you run into an issue-there is no other moment like this in cold war. at least, not in the briefings, not in the same way he acts here.

it was strange to me. why does he behave so differently here compared to any other time? his movements are so orchestrated, composed. this is past odd habits, this feels like a moment of weakness. he doesn’t breathe down your neck this severely at any other point in the game. why?

and it clicks in. this is the first briefing of the entire game. this is your first true moment as bell. before this, all he had known of them was a spiteful, frustratingly stubborn soviet and then an empty husk, trapped in a room where he’d have to strong-arm them into psychological submission with drugs and his own personal memories. this is his first time seeing bell out in the wild, moving of their own accord, not separated by restraints or reinforced glass. he’s nervous because of bell.

the reason this is the only time adler appears this way is because he’s reaffirmed of his leash on them after fracture jaw, after the memory exercise. hudson echoes this statement, too, as much as he is untrusting of them, for obvious reasons.

and how interesting is it, that he never shows this apprehension ever again.

[altcvnningham]

canis major

adler x bell!reader

summary: adler doesn’t go back to berlin to forget, but he isn’t so eager to remember, either. after leaving you for dead on that clifftop in the arctic, he knows best to leave the past well alone. too bad that past seems to be alive and walking right in front of him; though where he wants to forget, it seems you’ve already beaten him to the punch. or; bell survives solovetsky and only has a hole in her head and amnesia to show for it. read on ao3

tags/cw: bell!reader, amnesia, light angst, referenced adlerbell, somehow bell survives the ending of cw, adler can't let shit go, adler is not capable of remorse but mayyybe a lil guilt?? dog symbolism always, no pairing yet but hopefully i continue this as a spicy drabble series idk wc: 2.7k

a/n: sooo this is my first fic for the cod fandom and the first fic i've posted online in a long time so hopefully this lil ramble suffices!! i've had adlerbell brainrot and wanted to get at least something out before bo6 ruins all of my headcanons so here's a snippet of something i hopefully find the motivation to continue into a mini series. enjoy :')

Sometimes, he goes back to Berlin.

Stumbling out of the muggy bar into the dank alleyway out the back, Adler fishes out a pack of cigarettes from the front of his jacket; two firm knocks of it against his palm before he plucks one out with his mouth, pockets the box, and flips open his lighter. The clink of the metal echoes into the empty around him, the sudden quiet suffused with the sounds of passing cars on the street, muffled laughter from inside the bar, and the distant barking of dogs. Strays.

The cigarette ignites, glowing a cherry red, and he gasps around the filter greedily. Upon exhale, he sighs.

Adler isn’t a sentimental man by any means. What little he clings to, he does so with a loose grip, less than happy but stolid enough to allow whatever else he deems unnecessary slip through his fingers. Places, people. Things. Memories. Tucks the important things- logic, rationality, work, duty- into orderly compartments at the forefront of his mind, archived and marked off ‘til he needs it, while the rest, the mess, gets done away with, thrown into the great black gorge of oblivion. Anything else that stays- more often than not a thorn in his side, an unbidden, wriggling tumour he can’t find let alone cut out- is sequestered to a dark aperture in the back of his mind, anchored deep where it can’t come back up. Yet somehow, some nights, they always do. The smell of his ex-wife’s hair. The day he got his scar. Vietnam. The lab. Solovetsky—

The next word, the name, forks across his mind like lightning, and he bites his tongue before he can think it. It sits at the back of his mouth, nestled like an aching cavity in his molars. A tremulous breath that he forces down with another drag of his cigarette. Out with the rest. Out with the rest.

The barking doesn’t cease. Dogs, a pair of them, he can hear a couple streets over. He pictures them from the gravelly register of their snarling- maybe German Shepherds, a Bullmastiff or a Rottweiler. Their fight enunciated by the violent rattling of chain-link fences, segregated, the only threshold that keeps teeth from necks.

But no, not a sentimental man. He tells himself that the itch to revisit Berlin every Summer is for superficial reasons, and by no means is renting out a shithole hotel room opposite a sewer-laden river considered a vacation from anything other than the luxuries he gorges himself mindlessly on at home- maybe this is to keep him humble, more than anything. It doesn’t do well to remind himself of old times, not when he’s lived the life he has. Remembering seldom accompanies itself with the bittersweetness of reminiscence, and the taste it leaves in his mouth is always acrid. He doesn’t miss Berlin any more than he misses that dismal safehouse, or that sterile room he wheeled you into, questioned- tortured- no, interrogated- well, he doesn’t care to remind himself of the picture. Or the person he strapped to the gurney. But he catches himself thinking back to the city divided more than he likes to admit, and for whatever ostensible reason it is that drags him back here, he relents to it every time.

He tells himself it’s the weather, the cool rain a nice reprieve from the scorching California heat. Or that the food is better, not so much overprocessed shit and sugars. Can take his coffee as black as he likes without the waitress turning her nose up about it and double-triple-checking if he’s sure. And it’s the people, maybe, who leave him well enough alone. Or the drinks. The views, some places. The- air.

Not like Arctic air. Not like—

The one dog’s snarl rips bloodcurdling through the night, all froth and venom, and as the chain-link fence screeches and judders in its rusted welding the other mutt quiets a moment. Cowers under the meaner dog’s ferocity. Then, like it had been wounded, it lets out a low, anguished howl, beast reduced to a scared little pup. Adler holds the smoke in his chest around a stifled breath anticipating a release. But the first dog just grumbles, the fence clinks, and there isn’t much noise after that.

But the quiet doesn’t last long- just as Adler drops his cigarette and snuffs it with a wrench of his heel, another sound resonates, yowling through the alley.

The grinding of tires upon wet asphalt crunches from just beyond the alleyway entrance. The streetlamp overhanging the entryway glares bright yellow as it bounces off of the garishly coloured taxi cab, pulling up to a groaning halt outside the bar.

He thinks nothing of it, pulling at the collar of his leather jacket. It’s getting cold, and he’s left his drink inside. Wouldn’t want to waste good beer. Adler turns, and makes for the door.

And you step out of the car.

A half-finished cigarette bounces on the sidewalk before you exit, the softened heel of your boot following soon after in a splash upon the flooded curb. Your German is rusty- always has been- but it’s easy enough to utter a quick and easy danke as you pull yourself up out of the cab. The door shuts with a slam, and you tilt your head back to gaze up at the sign above the bar- Der Fluss Lethe glaring in faded lightbox red- and you let out a contented sigh, your breath suspended in the frigid air. Pink, bitten fingers pluck at your gloves, fingerless faded green knit, shovelling them into your jacket pocket.

Adler’s fist is already curled around the handle of the back door as he clocks your presence in his periphery, a stranger like any other- but your image resembles the one that coagulates in the borders of old memory, the dried blood of you he hasn’t been able to wash his hands of since ‘81. Enough that he does a double take, his eyes wide behind tinted glasses, and he stops, his heart following suit.

He’s seen enough bodies in his time to fill the morgue in his mind twice over, and plenty ghosts to wander coldly among the unmarked graves. Vietnam alone is an unwinding cemetery stretching endless, catacombs along the inside of his skull, lined with what his old shrink would call remorse. Guilt. As if the feeling mattered. As if self-reproach could turn self-flagellation into something so incandescent as redemption. As if the bile in the back of his throat could bring back the dead.

And it couldn’t, because it isn’t… that’s not—

Bell.

It’s in the way you stand, your back rigid, that slight slouch to your shoulders, always dragged down upon you like they bore the weight of the whole world (and they did, once, do you remember?). The pelting of rain smacks off of the lapels of your jacket and ricochets like stars, caught in the light of the streetlamp overhead, but for all he knows or cares it could be raining diamond and all he sees is you- the wrinkling of your nose as you accommodate to the cold, how your cheeks flush at the chill (as they had those nights he pulled you into the darkroom, evidence of your apprehension drowned in the red glow of safelights); your hair is longer, unkempt, but still that same colour (clumps he’d find in his clenched fist when you’d argue yourselves into a wrestling match, pinning each other by the throats to dented walls in Die Landebahn); that scar upon your brow; that wavering line of your lip, pursed and hiding behind your reticence as you always did, and your eyes- your eyes—

—you feel someone watching—

—your eyes turn, and fix upon him with the startled softness of a doe, hunter betrayed by the snapping of a branch underfoot. Adler’s heel crunches against broken glass, his hand lingering right in that threadbare threshold upon the doorhandle, and he can’t speak, can’t move, can’t think—

Open the door, Bell, open the door—

—and you stop outside the cab, your breath caught in your throat. You see a shadow in the alley, in the shape of a man.

The darkness of the alley gives enough cover that you don’t see much, but what you do make out of the man prickles at a part of your mind long dormant: the haughtily broad set of the shoulders; the halo of blond tinted red just beneath the flickering exit light above the door where he stands; the shadow of a strong, clenched jaw; and in the brief glinting of passing headlights as cars rush on behind you, you see a face half gorged by a thick, forked scar, a fissure struck down his furrowed expression. A pair of dark aviator glasses hide those eyes that you know are looking at you, reflecting back nothing but your own bewilderment.

There is something you know. Deep inside that half rotted head of yours, where an incomplete recollection of your existence before you awoke bleeding on that clifftop lies, you feel a twinge of recognition. Familiarity. Something. Something stirring deep in your marrow- a fear inherited, a conditioned surrender, a faded polaroid, a kiss? Your migraine, chronic, comes clawing back with a vengeance, as it does most nights, but this time with a savage fervour that wrenches your face into an involuntary grimace. Where the hole in your head had once been all those years ago it tickles and burns, burrowing into your brain and groping greedy fingers along remnants of memory. It claws at you, digging through your amygdala to find something fresh, something old, something palpable, real, something- anything. Searching what little remains visible to you in the thick fog of your own mind to pin a meaning to this feeling, an answer to your question, a name to that face.

You’ve seen him before. You swear. Somewhere. In a dream, reoccurring, behind a red door. You don’t know how, or why you’d think you recognise him- in those dreams, the door never even opens. Your hand ever stuck on the handle, jammed and impenetrable, what sits behind it forbidden to you. Like not even your own mind wants you to know. It confines you to your ignorance, almost blissful.

Adler’s heart kicks violently in his chest. He shot you. He killed you. He’d heard your death rattle on that clifftop in Solovetsky and the sound was almost like singing, your last word, your last breath. A miserere for your short and fractured life. And he’s looking at your ghost, standing there all owl-eyed and as beautiful as the day he found you bleeding out on that airstrip. Before he took you. Before he took you and collared you and made a damned mess of things.

The only thing separating you from the Bell he knows he killed- his Bell- is the star-shaped scar split across your left temple. The only wound he never had to sit and heal as he belligerently patched you up, poking and preening you like his prize dog. Yet in spite of never seeing it before, he recognises the wound all too well. He put it there himself.

And as you stand there for that brief moment- no more than twelve seconds stretched to an eternity- he thinks for a moment that you’ve put it together. You recognise him. You see him. As he is. You’ve figured him out, Bell, as you always do. You’re the only one to have gotten away with it, nearly. Or so he thought. And now he’s watching a corpse having dug itself out of the grave he put it in, standing there, staring at him. Suppose you’ve always been a dead man walking.

You could do it, he thinks. Turn. Fling your heel round and barrel towards him with all the enmity of a cornered animal. He thinks of the strays, barking. Can picture your mouth frothing at the sides as you sink your teeth down into him- gnarled canines, hooked to your chain-link fence- which he probably deserves. Not an unfamiliar feeling by any stretch, but one faraway enough to seem almost sweet now through the hazy lens of nostalgia. If there truly is a sentimental bone in his body after all, then maybe it’s just for that. Still, he holds his breath, awaiting the killing blow he’s surely due. But it never comes.

You release your held breath, finally, tearing your eyes away from the callous faced stranger. It’s a ridiculous notion. Just an uncanny instance of déjà vu. You don’t know that man any more than you know yourself. You settle on a more rational answer- just one of those faces. And with a disgruntled sigh you rub the scar upon your temple to soothe the ache, turn around, and enter the bar alone.

Adler sighs, his heart sinking from up high in his throat back down to his chest. His hand has latched onto the doorhandle for so long it’s gone numb from the cold, bruised knuckles bluer than they were before (bar fights- not here, but another, as there will always be). He wrestles his jaw pensively, knowing he ought to take it off, keep the door closed, turn away, and leave. Slink back, tail between his legs, to that shithole hotel room to drink himself into a stupor. Let you haunt him there, instead. As you always have.

But he doesn’t. He has no idea what idiocy compels him, what soft, dewy-eyed weak link in him snags on that chain, to willingly wander back into the viper den of reminiscence, but he wrenches his fist around the handle, pushes, and lets himself back into the bar, the thick, hot air hitting him like a drug that he breathes in, tart and sour with the cloy of sweat and alcohol but still faintly- just faintly- of you. Like rain carried along the wind.

And Russell Adler is not a sentimental man.

But from across the bar he hides behind his beer glass, watches as you move about, a phantom, weaving through the faceless mass of people celebrating a championship he cares nothing to follow. You take your order at the bar with a smile he’s never seen on you before, boots folded to tip-toes as you lean over the liquor-stickied top, your perfect mouth pink and sweet and laughing and alive. The world seems to move about you in a haze, an indistinct mist of blurred faces and bottled voices and beyond all the light and life and joy that seems to burn bright around you like a halo all he sees is you.

Maybe, then, he’s a fool.

But it isn’t lost on him, how your fingers skirt across your hair in an attempt to hide the scar upon your temple. Nor is it lost on him how you wince at the feeling, the stars in your eyes dimmed for just a split second as you shiver, like a touch imperceptible running fingers down your back. Nor even the way you fight the urge to look, to follow the feeling of his eyes fixed upon you, and surely not the way you lose that fight, surrendered to it, your sweet face turning and finding him in an instant. Without so much as trying, like instinct, like something as pathetic and saccharine as fate. Your heart called to it, a lighthouse in the fog. Port in the storm. Ships passing in the night but called crashing to the same shore.

(The pieces of you are scattered everywhere, Bell. He finds you in every split seam inside himself. Splintered shrapnel dug through his temporal lobe, severing synapses ‘til they go dark. Even stars die quicker than that. Quicker than you. Is that what it felt like for you, too? When the lights went out, was it him you last saw- or the sky, waxen, over the Arctic? A waning night, a distant moon. The inconsequence of death- brief celestial ephemera.)

The stranger across the bar looks at you, offering nary a smile, eyes indiscernible behind shadowed sunglasses. And where you ought to find his apparent coldness disconcerting, instead you wring out of your chest with a white-knuckled caress a feeling like… comfort.

Sometimes, Bell, you go back to Berlin. You don’t quite know why.

[darlingor]

I don’t care what anyone says, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has unmatched aura. The setting, the time period, the characters, the music, the story. It’s just an absolutely delightful game to play.

[visenyaism]

the reason i say bloodraven would absolutely demolish during the dance of the dragons just absolutely eat everyone involved for lunch is because while they are all from feudalism times, Brynden Rivers is the only character in the series who inexplicably has the personality of someone who has definitely seen the cold war. Like this man knows about and subscribes to Realism because he was at the Stepstones Missile Crisis and the Bay of Crabs Invasion and chaired the Un-Valyrian Activities Committee during the Blackfyre Scare. Assassinated JFKaelor. No dragon so he invented the 20th century surveillance state. It’s inspired

[prahacat]

first snow

[juiceagainandagainandagain]

a baddie never dies.......

[godsfavoritelitlesilly]

Frank, my man 🤝

And Adler, thinking about how he divorced the first love of his life and murdered the second:

[animefreak1145]

I think about the Duga Ending a lot. Not necessarily the more violent one, where Bell tells their allies to head to Duga to set the trap. But the one where Bell chooses not to, says Duga anyways. With no plan.

I think about that action of saying Duga, leading Adler and the others astray—the completely wrong direction, saying nothing and giving nothing away as they sit with Adler in the passenger seat of his car. How Adler trusts Bell wholeheartedly with the answer of Duga. His dog wouldn’t lie. Why would they? They would never.

Bell, who reveals after Woods words and Adler’s coaxing of the truth—if they lied. How Bell just wanted to see their faces of frustration, of anger, of emotion, but they just wanted to see it from Adler. Bell, the epitome of petty revenge with this action—the chance to actually see the arrogant and normally stoic man break. Only to see nothing. No anger. No yelling. Adler who only has a frown and tone to match his disappointment.

Here is the person, the terrorist that led you astray and purposely caused the death of millions just for the chance to see Adler’s anger—only for him to feel disappointed. More how one would feel and look after seeing their pet pee the bed, destroy and tear off your favorite bed sheets—not at the genocide of millions.

I think about the Duga ending a lot. And how even at the end, Adler’s pride at Bell lowered significantly but not angry. How Bell’s petty revenge tasted bittersweet with blood forming at their chest from the shot, with Adler’s scarred frown looking down at them.

I think about how disappointed America’s Monster was at his precious dog that was always supposed to listen, but bit back and decided to die like this. No assault. Just wishing to see their master’s true face. Only to see that their master’s arrogance and pride was always there, Adler’s mistake. His cocky attitude bit back just like Bell did—roaring confidence that the tool he made and took out a piece of himself to do it would betray him like this.

I think about how could it be a betrayal when Bell wasn’t part of the team in the first place. “You’re still one of us, kid.”

I think about the Duga Ending, and all I see is America’s Monster being betrayed and Bell’s momentary confusion how the monster was disappointed more than angry at their gall.

I think. And I think.

And then I think of Solovetsky. I compare.

And all I can see is their relationship always ends in a betrayal in some way or another. The taste in both their mouths being bittersweet, either with blood or just as a natural after taste of killing a piece of your mind or the one who created your mind.

I think about the Duga Ending a lot.

[budugaapologist]

still dont see how so many people say that dawntrail is poorly written in comparison to other expansions like. what, did you realize you had to learn about a new culture and immediately not care anymore lmao? you've done it before, was this one not white enough for you?

genuinely i think more people should do side quests during msq so idk you can form a heart about the characters you're interacting with if you struggle with that and understand the land better so when impactful shit happens your illiterate ass can actually read and have empathy. theres no excuse for this.

if you can't handle storybuilding and character introductions from the expansion that feels like stormblood and shadowbringers had passionate gay sex that got one of them pregnant and birthed a beautiful daughter they both love and care about then idk what to tell you, maybe youre just lame and can't read. best of luck with that.

[altcvnningham]

he looks so good i’m going to have a panic attack

[pavlov-sdog]

I remember seeing a post saying that Bell was less skilled/professional and less violent (i believe in comparison to Case) and it’s been stuck in my head for awhile

And while yes in comparison to a super soldier infused with a rage drug they’d be lacking, but i always imagined Bell being not only skilled, but violent in their own right. not as violent and aggressive as Case, but still. I think the post mentioned unnecessary movements in finishing moves being unskilled/unprofessional and Bell seemingly just trying to kill someone quickly as a point, but i always attributed it to Bell just being violent and unhinged. It’s unnecessary just because they want to hurt and stab and shoot more. While it’s less common Bell does also have a finishing move just using their fists, which i read as another sign of violence. 

Cryptography/language/intelligence may have possibly been their strong suit, but they were not really unskilled/unprofessional or nonviolent in my eyes, maybe just more mild mannered and controlled compared to Case. I don’t think they would’ve been so high up in Perseus otherwise. I also don’t think they would’ve been as proficient in half the missions and tasks they preformed otherwise.