#evrart knows harry is impressionable in this moment

[57sfinest]

What do you think about Evrart Claire? You mentioned you think about him in one of your tags I think.

okay i will first direct to you to trusted mutual @sydmarch for the most in-depth evrart thoughts with the appropriate warning for nsfw lmfaoo

but like. evrart is one of those characters where you have an initial knee-jerk reaction to them and then you kinda have to reevaluate after all is said and done because you get a LOT more context on them as you go.

most shallowly, you're meant to see evrart as the slimy "fantastically corrupt" union (mob) boss who sits in his office embezzling and making others do his dirty work (the hardies as his enforcement, you as his little errand dog, you get the point). however, a first point i want to make is that comparing a justified labor or civil rights advocate group to a "mob" is such a ubiquitous piece of capitalist/bigot rhetoric that it should automatically clue you in to the fact that something else is going on here. also taken in context with the fact that kortenaer poses as a scab to break the strike, further framing the union as a lazy, entitled, unreasonable splinter faction of stupid socialists-- obviously we know that the people who made this game are leftists, so it's not just Ough Unions Bad. there is Something Else Going On! because we are seeing this union strike filtered primarily through the lens of someone who is, consciously or not, a moralintern lackey! even at his most self-aware, calling himself the moralintern's bitch, harry does not have enough awareness of the world and his role in it to recognize how he is being manipulated by the various agendas at play here, and that affects our perception of it.

i think evrart presents as corrupt and weaselly on purpose! again syd has said a lot of this already & i've added some stuff in their tags, but i'll reiterate here for convenience. he is aware of the rhetoric people can use against him and he uses that to his advantage. he's using his personal reputation as misdirection. we see in dialogue that even joyce, an ultraliberal diehard capitalist who obviously dislikes the union, concedes that it was respectable in and of itself before the claires came in:

and we can infer that a lot of that might be because the union was *less effective before the claires took charge*. of course a capitalist will respect an ineffective labor union! but on top of this, the claires' open "corruption" give anti-union people an easy target for criticisms that serve to legitimize the union itself. oh, they say, well, the union is alright, it's just the claires that are ruining it. it's misdirection and it's genius. evrart's reputation isn't a concern if the union is doing its job, right? and here's another thing: i think people will trust open corruption more than they'll trust altruism that seems to good to be true. especially in a world with something like moralism, where this organization has killed millions and will kill *millions more* for a "greater good" that is literally just the status quo. if evrart's corruption is an open secret, as joyce puts it, people feel they can trust him *because* he's transparent about the bad things he supposedly does or supports or whatever. at least he's honest, right?

this makes the juxtaposition of evrart with joyce SUPER interesting, too. i think they both have that 'honest about their bad traits' way of going at people- joyce with her self-aware but relentless ultraliberalism, evrart with his intentionally misrepresented agendas. of the two, i think people tend to like joyce a lot more, despite her and evrart using pretty much the *same exact tactics*, and i think that tendency is largely explained by the intersection of gender and fatphobia and ingrained capitalist rhetoric, but i digress.

yes, the way evrart's little tasks are presented makes them *feel* slimy- you're evrart's peone, you're a little bitch dog running his errands to get a gun you never should have lost to begin with, he knows how to help and he's toying with you- but it's on purpose!! you can be joyce's little bitch dog too and it's not framed anywhere near as scummy. It Is On Purpose. because if evrart pretends to be the "socialist" mob boss, maybe it really does get martinaise the youth center, or enough money to, you know, fix the crumbling buildings that could kill the tenants at any moment. there are genuinely good things he is sincerely trying to accomplish. he is curating his image exactly as he needs it to be to get things done and that's partly why joyce hates him *so much*.

and of course this isn't to say that the claires never do anything wrong. contracting dros to kill the previous union head, for example. if i had to pin evrart's major sin, i think he's an "end justifies the means" type of guy. the other union head candidate needed to die for progress to be made. the fishing village will have to go so we can build martinaise up properly. some people, if not willingly cooperative- like harry- need to be used for their status regardless. we see the union at the opposite end of "for the greater good" as moralism: where moralism wants to stall the world, the union represents ruthless progression. why else the red-vs-blue juxtaposition of the union vs the moralintern and its financial interests? the red banners draped over shipping containers?

#the passivity of 'a blue forget me not a piece of the gray sky' #and the absolute useless resignation of their unofficial motto 'for a moment there was hope' #vs the unyielding demand of EVERY WORKER A MEMBER OF THE BOARD #do you understand. gripping you by the collar DO YOU UNDERSTAND. #also this shit is partly why evrart goes for harry and just shuts kim down every time he tries to interject #evrart knows harry is impressionable in this moment #kim 1) has the potential to talk harry out of sympathizing with the union #and 2) has strong moralist or at least anti-disruption convictions already so evrart knows he can't be swayed so easily #if evrart bothered to do research on harry OF COURSE he looked into kim as well. #saurrr yeah take evrart as you like but he is doing real work you can't deny that #kiwipost #evrart claire #disco elysium #ec meta #gen meta #ask