there’s a very specific flavor of passive aggression from elias bouchard that i feel like a lot of people forget about. before he was fully mask-off, he didn’t say things like “now jon, i’m very disappointed in you letting the archives get attacked by worms.” that’s too easy, too obviously evil. it’s more like “oh jon, i’m so sorry, are you alright? you should go home immediately. don’t even think about coming back here and exploring the tunnels, i mean it.”
he has plausible deniability of caring, while we also know he dragged his feet for ages before actually doing anything like updating the fire suppression system, and shittalking both jon and martin behind their backs to sasha. but crucially, he planted toxic ideas without actually taking ownership of them. even when he WAS shittalking to sasha, he was still like “oh geez, i was wrong about them, i thought they were exaggerating, but i mean, you know what THEY’RE like.” simultaneously making himself look like a doofus and letting SASHA fill in the blanks about how her friends are stupid and unreliable, while also implying that of course that would be WRONG to think.
master of the “don’t think of pink elephants” technique.