can i say something. the capitalist/corporate allegory elias bouchard thing doesn’t really work for me because. well i genuinely don’t think the archives staff is oppressed enough… it’s a hostage situation, they’re not being worked to death. both tim and melanie entirely stop doing their jobs and there are no personal consequences as long as they don’t try to actively quit. when he finally ‘disciplines’ melanie, and while that scene does have that specific kind of theatricality to it (i believe your performance has been satisfactory!), the psychological torture isn’t intended to cow her back into being a good little employee, he’s instructing her to not get in his way. there isn’t a compelling story of labour exploitation here for me even though the worldbuilding surrounding the institute (read: the eye) lends itself very nicely to that kind of thing, especially the surveillance aspect of it—but the fear of being watched within the institute is never interrogated further than just a general, nebulous sense of unease. that power isn’t being exercised by elias as a mode of authoritarian control tactics to increase worker productivity or whatever, he literally does nottt care about all that, he just wants to end the world. like, you have to give me something more than “he’s their evil boss”, for me to be interested in this reading of the character.