I’ve seen people joking about how fucked up it is that jay leaked tim’s medical records for a while now, and it Is very funny, but I’ve also seen it presented as genuine criticism of him as a character. which aren’t Wrong necessarily, I’m not about to start excusing doxing people, but they never really examine it within the wider context of the situation. which not every post Has to do, it’s valuable to say “that was fucked up” and leave it at that, especially when talking about how that would’ve impacted tim specifically. but it gets problematic when it comes to meta making a value judgement for him as a person.
the short of it is, people Severely underestimate the effects of both the operator sickness and the mental toll of his experiences in general on jay’s mental health and how they influence his actions. yes it Was a shitty thing for jay to do, and his mental health being Not Great doesn’t change that his actions have consequences that affect other people, but some people look at it like it says something about jay’s morality and not his severe paranoia.
this is relevant because people don’t talk about the more visibly mentally ill and traumatized characters the same way. for instance, I’ve never seen anyone call out brian for being the one to dig up tim’s medical records in the first place, likely by stealing them from his house, and deliberately send them to jay in the most cryptic and disorienting way possible. which on the one hand I Get it, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a callout post for alex’s property damage any time soon, but it’s not only hypocritical (especially in this case when brian was Absolutely enabling and pushing jay to do exactly what he did) but it points to a larger problem of symptoms of jay’s mental health going unnoticed As symptoms because his poor mental health is less obvious.
jay’s perspective gets lost in hindsight (everyone loves tim and they Should), but to be frank he had every right to be suspicious of tim at that point in time. I go over more or less his entire twitter here (Link) for anyone unfamiliar, but I wanna put this in perspective
at this point jay has spent Years looking for someone who actively tried (and possibly succeeded) to murder his friends, who then held him at gunpoint after he tricked him into thinking he was on his side for months on end. jay didn’t suspect or Remember anything alex had done to him or around him or to anyone he knew before he started looking through the tapes. he’s been in a continuous life or death situation, both with a monster and with a person that he thought he could trust.
moreover, his relationship with totheark has always been uncertain. while totheark very clearly hates alex they’ve also been openly antagonistic with him for reasons he doesn’t have the context to understand. tim as masky has broken into his house, charged at him at mach speed, and featured in Several vaguely threatening videos directed at him. the most Prominent being entry ####, which had totheark threatening him overly and directly proceeded his apartment burning down. he’d have no reason to know or assume that it was alex when it happened and alex wouldn’t commit More arson until he was already dead. it would be stranger if jay Didn’t think that totheark burned his apartment down.
and the stalking, the literal constant stalking. in hindsight we as the audience know the mask boys were doing it to protect him, but it didn’t help his paranoia a single iota. jay’s first interaction with masky was him gargoyling in his house watching him sleep. jay hotel hopped because no matter where he was he didn’t feel safe, and he was proven Correct time and time again. when he’d spend too long in a hotel he’d wake up with his previously locked door wide open. after he’d slept. and when he sleeps in his car hoodie literally films him and posts it. and when he watches the tapes? hoodie and masky are always there following him when he’s with alex, and alex is more than capable of finding his hotel and room number to send him a package directly.
jay doesn’t feel safe at any point or with anyone. we See how paranoid he is around total strangers who just happen to be walking in the woods so of Course he’s going to be uncomfortable around tim after his experiences with masky. tim was right to be mad about the stalking and the lying, but that doesn’t change the fact that jay did what he had to for his own protection. he doesn’t know what tim’s mask state is or how much he does or doesn’t know, what he’s lying about and what he wants. alex spent months lying to him, had spent years lying to everyone around him. once that level of trust is broken it’s hard to go back, and in this case he genuinely had reasons to believe that tim could be dangerous.
and that’s just it, a lot of his earlier awkwardness and unfairness around tim is, yes, in part issues with empathy (jay reads as autistic harder than some canonical autistic characters I’ve seen). but it’s Also a traumatized person being filled with supernaturally charged paranoia trying to figure out if he’s Safe, if he’s being Lied to, if he’s about to be Hurt. it’s unfair in hindsight, but jay didn’t Have hindsight at the moment.
(for instance, jay pointing out that tim was uncomfortable in the hospital despite not remembering what happened there. it is insensitive but it’s also pretty clearly jay trying to figure out if tim is lying about what he knows. he doesn’t know about tim’s childhood trauma at this point so it brings up the possibility of tim remembering what happened that night on tape.)
moreover, this is coming After jay lost 7 months of his life to traumatic memory loss, including the fact that he was almost Murdered. anything that wasn’t caught on tape is gone forever. most of his time on the set of marble hornets is gone forever (he didn’t even remember that alex’s mood had changed). and people have been breaking in to his stuff since the beginning. he can’t trust his own senses and he can’t trust that anything he tapes and doesn’t post won’t be stolen or broken or burned.
so when totheark leads him on a chase to find Secret Documents after making it clear that tim really has been lying to him after all he takes it, he films it, and he posts it. so he can keep himself safe, so he can trust that he won’t forget it, so he can move one step closer to saving someone whose death he feels responsible for.
it was not fair to tim, it wasn’t the Reasonable thing to do, but it was probably the Smart thing for someone in his position to do and it was certainly what he had to do to feel safe.
people Really need to contextualize the things that jay does in the context of his situation, his paranoia, and his mental illness. those things don’t Excuse his actions but they explain them and you really can’t understand his character without it
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