LOVE when a statement giver switches from present-tense to past-tense and you know that the person whose story they’re telling is dead and now exists only in the past and in the narrative, having been removed from the present
i feel like a big reason why tma rarely scares me is because of the format of jon and the others reading statements. the statement makers are speaking in the past tense; whatever they are making a statement about, they have survived it long enough to make it to the magnus institute and give their testimony. those they are speaking about may have died or disappeared, but with the exception of historical statements and statements taken from deceased subjects, you must be alive to tell your story, and so whatever has happened, while awful, was not fatal. but that is also why the worst part of the episode is often the final comments, when jon details the research done by the archival team, often concluding with the news the statement maker was killed by the thing that was terrifying them shortly after making their statement. as soon as the statement maker’s story has been taken from them, as soon as what they have been experienced becomes part of the larger meta-narrative, they die; they become someone that a different narrator, telling a different story, is speaking about in the past tense. the story needs to keep eating people in order to continue being told; it needs people to be sacrificed to the past tense in order that those still lucky enough to be in the present might have something to talk about.
