#toxic jaylex my beloveds. god theyre so unbelievably fucked up and its all my fault

[squarebracketsmileyface]

Hi we are a little drunk right now and we want to be annoying. Sorry in advance.

We wonder if Alex and Jay would have ended up together or even like…. less toxic in S,IL if Jay hadn’t coerced Alex that one time on the couch. Like we find ourself blaming Alex a lot until we remember Oh yeah! Jay did That. And it’s kind of sad you know? But also interesting because we see a lot of media where in BDSM dynamics it’s assumed the Dom is the abuser. So it’s nice to see it from every angle. But also Jay why did you do that???? Like he said he didn’t want to and now you’re miserable forever because you guys can’t talk about your feelings. I am beating them both up. I love your work. Does this make sense? I am intoxicated. Yeah. 👍

Hi to you too :]

Honestly, I've thought about this so much since I started writing If It Ain't Broken because their fucked up relationship and dynamic are so interesting to think about. Honestly, I don't think that if you took away that one time on the couch it would change things, because unfortunately, it's not the only time it's happened, it's just the only time I've actually written. Jay genuinely thinks he's in the right/that he's helping Alex there, like, he thinks that Alex will feel better if he's just a bit rough with him to get his frustrations out, so even if he didn't do it that one time in chapter 2 of If It Aint Broken, hed have done it another time.

He really thinks he's doing the right thing, fully, wholeheartedly, genuinely believes it. If you could get him to understand that what he'd done had hurt Alex (which, I admit, would be hard because he doesn't like hurting Alex, he can accept that he does it when he's angry and loses control, but the idea that he could hurt Alex even when trying to help him would be awful) he'd be horrified.

Anyway, their relationship, even just as a friendship was always rocky. Like, honestly they probably shouldn't even be friends in S,IL, they fight and hurt each other and say nasty things and Jay manipulates Alex even when they're just friends. So even without the FWB stuff, their relationship would still probably be pretty toxic, just in different ways. I don't think it'd go as far in its toxicity as it actually ends up going (with Alex saying you know what fuck you and moving away, which I'm making the main catalyst for being Alex needing to get away from the toxic relationship, and the secondary reason be the whole Operator thing)

So without that one time on the couch? No, they'd still be that toxic, Jay would still out Alex to their friends, the manipulation and coercion would still happen other times, they'd still fight and scream at each other and say nasty things.

God I love thinking about this lol. Just, angst is so fun to write. So are unreliable narrators, I'm so glad you find yourself blaming Alex, honestly, because that's how I wrote it to be, you're meant to blame Alex, even if you now have a lot more of the information and know that actually he and Jay were in the wrong and doing unpleasant shit to each other. Hell, Jay's probably kinda worse than this point. But like, yeah, especially if you're reading the fics in the order they come out in, your first impression of Jay is him in S,IL itself, and it's hearing about his and Alex's relationship from his POV, and he doesn't think he's in the wrong for the actual things he's in the wrong for.

Like, your first impression of these characters is massively biased towards Alex being to blame for everything.

Honestly I kinda wonder how different the opinions/conclusions people would form if the first time they read S,IL they read it in chronological order, so with If It Ain't Broken first. Like, would that give them an entirely different perspective of the story, if they didn't first get introduced to Jay and Alex's messed up relationship through the incredibly warped lens that is Jay?

Some government should give me science funding to stick a bunch of people who've never even heard of S,IL before in two rooms and force them to read it either in the chronological order or in the upload order, so that I can ask them about the story and find out how different or similar their conclusions about the characters and their relationships are.