#cod critical

Somehow, talking about being force-fed fetish content is the easiest thing at this moment after the nerve wracking experience of watching my own posts release.

So, a little bit of history about me. I used to be quite focused on the Modern Warfare fandom before I moved over to being focused on the BOCW fandom. Why'd I do that when the juicy action pieces I'm hungry for are in MW? Because I got tired of being force-fed sexual content.

And I had so much peace here before the Black Ops Six reveal attacked. Seriously, I think that 2023 was the most enjoyable time I have had here. 2024 is when it turned to shit.

Nowadays, I can't just support a Bell post, I need to analyze it to see if there's a barely disguised fetish the OP decided to include with no warning. It doesn't matter if you're a mutual of mine or a complete stranger, whenever I see Bell included I have to pause before I support the post.

My perception of Bell has nearly been ruined a couple of times, and I have nearly left the fandom before.

It took me a bit to realize this, but I don't hate AdBell, and I'm not "anti adbell", I'm actually anti "untagged torture porn" :)

I hate how I constantly need to ask myself a set of questions before I can feel comfortable even liking a post with Bell in it.

It's not an enjoyable experience asking "does this author secretly have a hypno fetish", "does this author have a transformation fetish", "does this author have a torture fetish", and so on and so fucking forth until I inevitably leave this place.

Now, that's dramatic. I know it is, but guess what? I was groomed with this kind of material :)

I'm still dealing with the effects of that to this day :)

It's very triggering for me to see this kind of shit suddenly with no fucking warning :)))

I hate to say it, but being here sometimes feels like an uphill battle. I'm having to use all these strategies so that I don't ruin one of my favorite stories for myself before I can even play the fucking game. And not even just that, there are so many awesome people in this community that I have almost cut off because I assumed they were going to pull some shit with fetish content. And then there are the folks I had to unblock because I realized they're actually fine.

I HATE DOING THIS! I HATE FEELING LIKE THIS. HOLY SHIT. Oh, and I haven't even gotten to the worst part! I'm not the only one who feels like this 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I'm not the only one who has to deal with this, isn't that so fun? I'm not the only one running through a mental checklist every time Bell appears. GREAT /s /s /s

I love how I have been basically driven out of tags I used to LOVE browsing. That's so fucking cool. I'm glad I don't have a place here anymore! Thanks.

Yeah I do think wholeheartedly that this fandom has a problem with either excusing a morally dubious character's behavior because they're physically attractive (and white), or really exaggerating it. And this applies to not even just Russell Adler, this also applies to 3/4 of 141 in Modern Warfare, and so on.

Honestly, the discussion around Adler and Bell has become super uninteresting on Tumblr because of this. Mild side tangent here: I'm getting kinda tired of people summing up the existence of Bell's character as a "slobbering loyal dog soldier" because it's not just plainly uninteresting imo, it's also missing the point of Bell's existence in BOCW. My stance on this is almost the same as my stance on Adler's characterization, if you can not seriously tell me what makes Bell an interesting character, and I see you basically stripping whatever character they had to make them only an accessory to Adler, then I don't take you seriously as a Bell Fan.

I also don't take you seriously as a Bell fan if I see that you can't accept the two truths of Bell's character:

1. Bell is absolutely the victim in BOCW, and we have an entire game (BO1) explaining why MkUltra is an evil fucking thing to inflict on someone. Because of their involvement with MkUltra a solid chunk of the cast in BOCW are not good people or role models to look up to.

2. Bell is not innocent and was either actively helping Perseus in his endeavor to take millions of lives through nuking Europe, or they were at the very least an accessory to it. Both are bad.

The most interesting thing about BOCW is its complexity. Bell is a very contradictory and complicated character by nature of the choices you are given in the narrative. You can decide who dies and what happens at the end. Bell is both powerful and powerless, they both have agency and none at plenty of points.

To address your point about shipping:

I don't hate AdBell as a ship (I apologize for my post saying that I did in the past, I was having a knee-jerk reaction to a lot of triggering posts), but I do hate how for whatever reason when you want to look up Bell or talk about them, this ship immediately comes into focus. No, that's an understatement... It's fucking inescapable.

Like, Adbell and Bell has become interchangeable for this character, and that's annoying, it's the new Ghoap. And you're right about the shipping kind of making the fandom inaccessible. It's also annoying trying to dig for standalone content.

I'm not even trying to say that the shipping is bad because I'm a shipper myself (Roach x Bell crackshipper lmao), but I completely understand what you're saying. The shipping also really flattens the characters when the author clearly only thinks of them as characters in a relationship, and not anything else. That's super boring, actually. (Admittedly, I've had this problem with Bell and Roach, but this may be because I'm not fucking writing right now. I HAVEN'T CONTINUED MY FANFIC IN 500 DAYS FUCK. But that's unrelated. This problem is usually caused by tunnel vision, happens to a lot of authors.)

And also, I hate to say it, but I don't like browsing certain cod tags anymore (ghost, bell, soap, and so on) because they're just filled with untagged porn, or untagged suggestive content now. There's also a bunch of untagged kink shit for AdBell that's just circulating around now, and I'm not gonna pull my punch here, it's irresponsible and borderline assholery. (Not to mention the amount of dark fics that are also un-fucking-tagged, and the apparent allergy to using the read-more cut.)

If you don't tag your shit as mdni, smut, or nsft (not safe for tumblr. it's another way of saying nsfw without getting your post shadow-banned), or whatever, then it's on sight. I block you on sight and start thinking less of your opinions. (Unless it was an honest mistake, and you fixed it, then we're all good.)

If I, a 20-year-old, can find that kind of shit without even looking for it, I can almost guarantee that a minor saw it by complete accident. And dude, I know that probably happened to you, and I'm so sorry. I had that happen to me when I was 17 (maybe a little younger). It fucking sucks. It also fucking sucks that you literally can not look up these characters anymore for any reason. I'm an adult now, and I can't even scroll through the Cod Bell tag anymore. Fantastic, glad this fandom is so all-inclusive /s.

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I feel like there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in this space because we're all left leaners getting on a fandom that is centrist leaning on the right.

Then again, it's probably because CoD is trying to be "woke" now, and that's attracting a lot of folks. But, it's kinda disappointing that we never get to talk about the actual canon with all its characters because that would require us all to get political, and that's pretty uncomfy (apparently).

So we get this "rebellion" of people focusing on shipping the characters, and I won't repeat myself, but that doesn't really accomplish much? It's a really tone-deaf and dissonant response to a game franchise that is openly propaganda for western hegemony and imperialism (and all that comes with it).

Fandoms in general don't handle moral duplicity and complexity well. They're generally very polarizing, and that is unsurprising. Media Literacy dies here.

I also think a lot of the cod fandom's problems are caused by performative leftism, and the problems that come around with fandoms in general especially when it comes to fucking up their interpretations. We've really got to reach a happy medium because this pendulum swing where we just have to be toxically positive all the time is bad, but when it swings the other way it's also bad because the result is people terrorizing one another over meaningless shit. (Both the "let people enjoy things" and "I HATE when people enjoy things" crowds are equally annoying.)

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And now we get onto the franchise its self. Honestly, if I knew how to pirate these games and not get myself fucked over, I would one hundred percent do it because I do not think these games are worth the price they are for the ethics and quality involved.

I hate how you can see the decline in cod started when the games got too bloated and unfocused as a result of there not only being too many cooks in the kitchen, they're also fucked up on the redbulls because they're tired and overworked.

It's a shame how 2019 was basically when the games released (MW19 and BOCW) were incredibly focused and good, but then over time they started to become mid (decent) but unfocused and toothless as fuck (MW22 and Bo6), and then we reach the apex of what was built in the past of this franchise and the current gaming industry where we just get total shit because of bad ethics (MW23 and Bo7).

I used to say that MW23 was the worst made CoD game because everything surrounding it is bad. The story is bad, the characters are bad now, the game itself is bad, the quality is bad, and the development behind it was bad. There is no acceptable context in which people only had a couple of months to work (16 if I remember correctly), and were ruining their health with the stress and sleep deprivation.

Activision deserved to go bankrupt for this because those are disgustingly common industry practices, but they are terrible ones. Crunch Culture is destroying the gaming industry, support Game Developer Unions so that this will stop happening. I want Activision to be destroyed tbh.

And I hope Black Ops 7 is the nail in its coffin (wishful thinking, but let me dream) because holy shit they turned every single dial up to 11. This was absolutely unacceptable. The story was probably written by ChatGPT, and the game assets were AI generated. There were layoffs for the development team of this game.

Genuinely one of the worst games of 2025. I knew it was gonna be bad too, my spidey senses tingled. If Bo6 is mid and has Ai generated content for its multiplayer, then it was gonna get worse with Bo7. Let's do what MW fans do to MW3 and pretend it doesn't exist.

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Wrapping up some loose ends here.

I think that you're right about a lot of the CoD fandom's unfriendliness toward certain groups of people being definitely unintentional.

I mention racism and misogyny because it's usually unconscious and internalized because when we grow up in a society that's patriarchal and racist by design, you do end up picking up stuff like that. It's still your obligation to recognize that and take the steps that you can to unpack that. It's mostly not malicious.

When I talk about performative leftism, I mean leftism with no work. As is in, you have those values, but you never actually apply them in a meaningful fashion for the spaces you come into, how you shape your thinking, and the content you consume and support. (When I say "you", I mean a hypothetical strawman, not you as a person Harpy.)

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Alright, I think I got most of everything, but feel free to add on or point out stuff that I missed. Thank you for your message, I really fucking appreciate it!

I'm trying to keep myself together (mentally and physically).

But this is a rare moment of activity, enjoy it while it lasts, you're not getting this again for a month or two. Lol.

Copy-Paste Policy on responding to my posts:

Feel free to tell me your thoughts! If you disagreed with anything I said in my post, please tell me why. If you agreed, feel free to add on and tell me why.

What you said also applies to characters like Graves or Makarov. And he also falls into the exact dichotomy that explicitly morally dubious (either grey or evil) characters do.

You either get a complete sweetening of the character, or you get the absolute worst version of them that isn't even in line with how they're evil (sweetheart vs demon). And usually with the latter, it's sexualized, and let's be real for a second, it's because these are hot white guys.

I rarely see this kind of shit for feminine characters, those of color, or even those who are considerably less attractive. Not saying I haven't, but there's considerably less.

I feel like we should also discuss how we, as a fandom made up majorly by women, queers, people of color, and all those who tend to fall within these groups, tend to gravitate toward inflicting internalized racism and misogyny on ourselves by thoughtlessly gravitating toward characters like this.

[I'm also not saying that if you like any of the characters named/tagged in this post that you are somehow a bad person. You are not a bad person for liking fictional characters, even if these characters are bad people. They are not real, so that is not what I'm even remotely trying to imply.

I'm also also not trying to twist your arm into feeling bad about liking white characters. Liking or disliking a character based on race is incredibly racist, believe it or not. If you like them for reasons OTHER than the fact that they are white, then obviously you are not liking them for overtly racist reasons. Shame is not the goal here, please do not feel ashamed of yourself.]

And honestly, I'm not even against sweeter or domestic versions of evil or dark-grey characters because the whole point of fandom (and fanfiction) is to be subversive and diverge from the canon.

The problem comes around when you can not seriously talk about why you had to alter the characters so drastically. As in, you can't genuinely talk about what made these characters "dark grey" and "evil" in the first place. And yes, this does involve politics. If I hadn't repeated it ad nauseam at this point, Call of Duty is a political franchise which means that all of its characters are attached to real world political concepts.

You are not going to escape the politics attached to these characters just because you stripped them away from your fanon version and made them tender. (Please read the post I linked before you comment or reblog. I'm not going to repeat what I said in that post here again.)

And honestly, the most irritating behavior that has ever come out of this fandom is when people talk about the *canon* version of Adler and point out that most fanon interpretations of him either fetishize his dark aspects or completely strip them away, which ends up missing the entire point of his character, folks get mad. (The amount of times I've seen someone get treated like fucking Voldemort from Harry Potter, right down to people refusing to name them whilst clearly talking about them, is insane. And this is over them saying something about Adler being a canonically dubious character. Thankfully this is lower than in the Modern Warfare fandom over other characters, but it's still happened enough times to be concerning. If someone has an opinion you don't agree with, you can either: openly state your disagreement respectfully to them or ignore them by using the block button. Don't treat them like some kind of shadowy monster, for fuck's sake.)

I'm never going to understand this because your fanon is never going to replace the canon version of this character that most people know. And I thought that this was widely understood, given how I just explained how fanfiction is supposed to work, but alright!

Anon hit it right on the head here. The truth is, Adler is not an idol to look up to in BOCW let alone a good person. A big part of BOCW is the fact that most of the "good guys" in that safehouse are not very good people. There's also a case to make that Adler canonically has abusive tendencies, and it's shown pretty clear as day that he is a manipulator. It's also shown that he can be pretty cruel and heartless when he's able to get away with it. Which is, again, a tendency that abusers tend to have.

To really drive home the repetition here (I WANT you to be sick of me saying this shit), there's also the very real politics and propaganda for Adler that I've seen either be outright ignored or it ends up being euphemized, like in Copaganda shows. It's not meaningful discussion of this character, and to be honest, I don't take you seriously as an "adler fan" if you can not also explain the politics, the morality, and the narrative surrounding his character.

And also, if you do recognize that the reason why you gravitate toward Adler is because of either internalized misogyny, racism, or both, DO NOT FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. They are fictional characters! There are no morals attached to liking them, and you do not have to stop liking the character just because you realize there's something problematic attached to your interest. Just analyze it, and apply it to your analysis of the character. DON'T FUCKING SHAME MAXX.

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Alright, I've exhausted myself on Adler and BOCW, let's talk about Ghoap.

Anon fucking got it in one go. I'll add more on to this, and again, read the post I linked in the embed because I do go over this. I will only repeat myself once, and I will not dedicate energy to doing it again.

I feel like the issue with Ghoap is honestly one not even limited to this fandom, even though people desiring to not be made uncomfortable by the propaganda is playing a role here. The issue comes down to fandom's obsession with fetishizing gay men, and this does come back to my comment about internalized misogyny. People of all walks of life tend to gravitate toward men in fandom, and that's not necessarily because the "women are not well written", it's because we view men (especially white men) as the "default" in fiction. (I dare you to seriously tell me that Helen Park from BOCW is a badly written female character, I'm being so for real. She's on the same level of complexity as Adler.)

It's also kind of annoying when you have to really dig to find content that isn't shipping related. I'd like to see more standalone stuff involving the characters, please.

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And that's all. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Anon thank you for messaging me!! I'm going to rest, I wrote this as soon as I got home from work. My voice hurts because I'm sick and I've been reading this outloud.

Feel free to tell me your thoughts! If you disagreed with anything I said in my post, please tell me why. If you agreed, feel free to add on and tell me why.

You know the deal. If you're going to respond to my post, please tag me, directly comment, or reblog my post.

Good evening everyone.