wait while im on the subject, another misunderstanding i see a lot is how jon’s power works. i think it’s helpful to think of the information that the eye feeds him as less like… random facts. it’s almost always really invasive personal stuff. like, things that the other person wouldn’t expect or want you to know. 

so if martin gave jon tea and he was having an Eye Moment™ it’d be less likely to bombard him with facts about the chemical composition of the tea and more likely to go into excruciating detail about how oolong tea makes martin think of his mother and all the unpleasant silences he remembers while drinking it alongside her. that kinda thing.

@gammija

@gammija rly good point + thanks for the correction! i definitely think ppl do underestimate the effects Jon Nightmares have on his victims + it’s a lot more interesting to talk about them as a much more lasting repercussion of statements. i don’t remember if jon reading statements has the same effect (he did mention ones where the ppl are already dead feel stale?) but i’m willing to bet they do something to the victim as well, otherwise i can’t imagine it would sustain him.

so thinking about the number of statements jon has not only taken live but also read about while the victim is still alive… that’s a Lot of traumatised people. rly puts things in perspective.

Np, you did say ‘more likely’ so I didn’t even mean it as a correction per se, more an elaboration! Now if you’ll excuse me now I’ll be spending the rest of this reblog trying to figure out the effects to the victims of written statements 😅

Written statements do seem to be more tame, since Jon talks to a few people who have given theirs, afterwards, and they don’t give any indication of statement-related spookiness afterwards (specifically thinking about Julia and Trevor here, who would be a lot more hostile towards him if they recognised him from spooky dreams or visions). Only Salesa vaguely alludes to nightmares in his written statement (“So I suppose if it’s a statement you’re wanting… it’s no inconvenience to me. I don’t sleep well anyway.” - 115) but I honestly assumed he just didn’t know either whether writing one worked the same as giving one live. Still, he definitely doesn’t show up in Jon’s dreams per 120; only live statement givers do.

If the statements only sustain Jon because something happens to the victim at the moment Jon reads them, then statements by dead people should not be nourishing. Annoyingly, I can’t find any direct reference by Jon about feeling better (or not) after reading a statement by someone we know for sure is dead, but if they canonically didn’t work, that feels like something he would’ve noticed and mentioned on tape? So, what the written statements do is kind of a gray zone; I think they were probably not intended to be read as more of Jon’s victims, but it’s vague enough that you could hc that they do.

Personally, if when Jon reads the statement of someone still alive, they suddenly remember the incident out of the blue and feel a shiver run down their spine, or maybe they just have one nightmare on that night, instead of ongoing - I think that sounds p in keeping with canon

There is another possibility I’ve seen suggested once or twice, which is that since almost all statements Jon reads were given during Gertrude’s time, the reason he finds them stale and doesn’t dream about them… is that Gertrude already did