horror stories are the stories we tell ourselves to distract from the greater, more existential horror that the world around us operates at random without taking the things we do and make into account… yeah
extremely funny whenever mr. jon archives is like ah yes in this statement we once again encounter tim riggins from case 10128378448383.. most troubling that he’s cropped up yet again…. as if im supposed to remember some Guy from 40 episodes ago
thinking a lot about how seeing yourself as a character in a story can be either incredibly empowering or straight-up horrifying depending on who’s in charge of the narrative - if you’re in charge of your own story, either literally or metaphorically, you’re in control of what happens next and your future is up to you, but if you’re a character trapped in a plot that’s scripted or predetermined, you have no agency and are left with only the terrible knowledge of the things that are going to happen to you and no way to prevent them. so the recorded statement, which is such a staple of so many horror podcasts, is intrinsically horrifying bc it’s the moment that you go from the author of your own story to a side character in a larger meta-narrative that is acting on you without your consent or control… and the fact that some statement-takers have supernatural powers which compel people to make statements only adds to the violence that is being done when someone’s individual story is taken out of them in order to weave together a more complete collective narrative
you know when you decide to just take a chapter to eulogize someone who’s still alive? me too
it’s about declaring yourself dead even though you’re still alive because you know for certain that death is coming and that the specific timing doesn’t matter as much as the end result… that even though the boat didn’t carry you to your death on this day, the novel is also a boat and its narrative can ferry you from life to death whenever it wants… that even though the whale didn’t swallow you this time, the novel is also a whale and if you’re in the novel’s stomach you’re already dead… to be a character in a tragedy is to exist in a perpetual state of pre-death and sometimes it’s just easier on the mind to declare yourself dead already so you can get used to thinking of yourself as the ghost you’ll inevitably become
