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Marble Hornets s2 speculation re: Alex Kralie
(Originally posted on LJ on the 14th November 2011.)
Stream-of-consciousness. Fairly long.Largely not yet fact-checked against entries, as I've been going by memory for the most part. Contains associated discussion of what I might do with Kralie in the roleplay I have him in, because I'm that kind of lamentable person.
Fact-checked Timeline (with a bit of headcanon)
4th April 2010: the Operator house-invades dudes and wrecks shit; Amy goes missing; Alex gets her out of the window, then wakes up back in his apartment with the camera and a blank in his memory. Someone, probably Alex, texts Jay with "41810".
18th April 2010 (exactly two weeks later): Jay receives a package with the tape of the incident and a HELP message. He sets off to the return address and drives pretty much solidly until he arrives.
21st April 2010 (17 days after the incident): Jay arrives at the address a bit after four in the afternoon. He finds a squatting, abandoned concrete building with only one floor and a basement. He gets spooked by a loud noise and doesn't explore the dark basement yet.
A few days later (very late April / early May): We're not told how much time has passed since Jay first found the house, but it may have been at least a few days, since in the future he will take a week to get from one tape to the other. Jay goes to the house again, and Alex turns up. It seems likely that Jay knew Alex was there, because he's talking out loud. Jay rarely talks to himself except for brief occasional comments, and never so loudly or for such a long time as he does here. Then, when Alex appears, he doesn't react except to turn around at his name being said. The creators have talked about Jay "finding Alex at the house", so perhaps they met off-camera and Alex told Jay he wanted to show him something -- that something maybe being the identity of Masky. Tim and Alex have obviously had trouble with each other before, since Tim goes straight for Alex with the knife and Alex has no qualms about laming or even killing Tim. Maybe each thinks the other is an Operator minion. In any case, Tim gets block of cemented.
Alex and Jay drive away, and then Jay yells at Alex for breaking Tim's leg. Alex is unrepentant. The tape cuts out and is extremely corrupted, but presumably he explains about looking for Amy and tells Jay he'll call him. Maybe he even offers an explanation for his actions, a bit, since obviously masked people have been stalking around bothering him. Then again, this is Alex we're talking about, king of the lack of explanation.
Anyhow, Alex tells Jay to "lay low" until Alex contacts him. Jay is sarcastic. Alex drives away. It's not a glowing reunion.
Maybe Alex, in his search for answers, has found the Marble Hornets youtube channel. It might well explain his short attitude towards the guy who has after all come to help him.
Over a week later (early May): Alex calls Jay and tells him to meet him at Rosswood Park the next day. Alex is a douche who doesn't return Jay's calls. Jay sleeps in his car for the umpteenth time and a mysterious tallish figure -- not the Operator, not really built like Tim -- peeks in through the rear window. Alex? Hoodie?
The next day: Jay goes to Rosswood Park, gets bored of waiting for Alex and goes into the unfamiliar forest and gets lost because he is an enormous derp. He makes sure to leave Alex a voicemail saying as much so that Alex has something to facepalm over. SHOCKINGLY, the Operator is there in the forest and he drops his camera and runs away. The helpful hooded guy helpfully picks it up and plays with it a bit and then puts it lovingly in Jay's car.
Alex gets to Rosswood Park at the same time as getting Jay's voicemail. He enjoys a well-earned facepalm. Jay isn't answering his phone, so Alex goes into the forest to see if he can find the guy. He does: Jay is running like hell in the other direction. Jay informs Alex that "that thing" is in the forest, and says he's done for the day, for all that Alex tries to get him to help look for Amy. They drive away and they stay in a hotel.
This is the earliest video on Alex's hard drive. There are two possibilities: either Alex only started filming himself on this day, or his older tapes are stored somewhere else. I think the second explanation is more likely, since it's barely a month ago that his girlfriend's been kidnapped by the goddamn Slenderman.
Presumably the next day: Alex and Jay drive to Amy's house. It's raining. Alex goes and knocks on the door just in case, but nobody answers. Alex phones Jessica, Amy's housemate, who is presumably on holiday somewhere or something maybe because if she was at the house how even would she not have realised Amy had been missing for a month. He leaves a message asking if she's heard from Amy.
Alex says that it's best Jay doesn't know where he lives for now. We later learn that this is because he's afraid Jay will lead the Operator to the house. Which turns out to be a useless precaution, because now Alex does a great job of leading himself to the Operator.
We see him standing outside the forest, possibly for a pretty long time. He's just staring into it. Eventually he can't wait around any more (maybe he's frustrated with the lack of progress) and does a stupid thing. He walks into the forest with his camera, whereupon the Operator turns up to greet him with collapsing, coughing fits, tremors and a dramatic cliff-hanger as the camera warps and cuts out.
Much later, at night, he arrives home and phones Jessica, leaving her another message: he's found Amy, she doesn't have to worry. He's getting her out. Then he stands and sits around his house, not talking, staring into space. Draws crazy scribbles as a light static hiss mutes out the camera's audio. Coughs up blood into the sink. A shadow moves across him and he closes his eyes. He sits cross-legged in front of his bedroom door, staring at it. He finally goes to bed, and the picture warps; the Operator appears, and then both it and Alex vanish. The bed remains empty until the camera's batteries run out.
A later evening: Alex is fiddling with his tapes and hears a noise outside. He goes to see what it is, then runs back inside and grabs his camera, and pelts after that bloody hooded guy who is stalking around his house AGAIN OH MY GOD WHY. He chases the guy a fair distance, into the forest, whereupon he's ambushed by Masky. Masky threatens him with a rock and tries to strangle him while Hoodie looks on. Then they both look up like startled rabbits and run. Something's scared them away. Something which warps and distorts the camera's picture and sound. Cut to black.
Then Alex is on his feet again, threatening to kill the pair if they ever come snooping round his house again. The sound warps with his voice.
Yet another evening (three months after Jay arrived, so late July): Jay is also frustrated with the lack of progress, and his own solution is to track down Alex's house and break in to search while Alex is taking out the trash. FLAWLESS PLAN. He takes a tape that was lying on the desk and then hides in the airing closet. Alex comes back inside and leaves a message on Jay's answering machine that suggests he's been trying to contact Jay for a while. Then he finds Jay's flashlight, which Jay left behind. Jay tries to make a run for it, but doubles back when he sees the Operator outside the window. Alex catches him and takes the tape back, and then the Operator comes inside the house, much to Jay's horror and Alex's lack of reaction. Jay runs the hell away, taking the spare front door key as he does. Alex just kind of chills.
About an hour later, Alex goes out and finds Jay in his car in the parking lot. He rages at Jay for breaking into his apartment and acts weirdly about the tape he was trying to steal. He walks off, and Jay follows him, but Alex ignores Jay's question of how he got out of the house. "I brought you out here to help me, but you've done nothing but make everything worse." Jay reveals that he's had his own project going on: "I've done so much more than you." Alex says he's done helping Jay.
Jay demands Jessica's phone number, and when Alex refuses to hand it over, Jay steals Alex's keys and locks them in his own car. Alex gives up the phone number surprisingly easily after that, considering he wanted to keep Jessica out of harm's way before. Maybe he just doesn't care any more. He does sound like he'd like to throttle Jay, though.
Alex and Jay have a very unfriendly parting of the ways.
Jay phones up Jessica and finds out that Alex lied to her about finding Amy. As a result, he starts hardcore stalking Alex.
The next four months: Alex starts carrying around his little camera bag / satchel of stuff. He also starts going into the forest trails at Rosswood Park on a regular basis, wearing his tit camera. Jay doesn't dare follow him in for a long time, presumably because of seeing the Operator in there before. Perhaps this is him still looking for any sign of Amy -- heck, if she's been taken by the Operator, then the Operator's apparent new home seems a good place to look.
Jay followed Alex like this for a "few months", but this was the only suspicious thing Alex did. Four months would bring us up to the end of November and the seven months that Jay lost from his memory, so let's say that, since stuff starts moving quickly now.
November 22nd: Jay finally decides to follow Alex into the forest. He is the worst stalker and makes all of the noise. Alex knows he's there, and spends some of his time muttering "don't follow me". Jay follows Alex past the spot where Alex was Slendered a while ago. He loses Alex almost immediately because he is the worst stalker, but follows the trail and eventually finds him again in the mouth of a corrugated iron tunnel. He's checking the contents of his camera bag. Alex looks around and sees him and Jay scrams.
Alex just sits in the tunnel mouth. About fifteen minutes later, some randomer comes and tries to talk to him and gets his head bashed in with a rock while the camera's sound (cricket-like ringing) and picture (all sorts of fancy crap) warp. Alex picks up his glasses, walks away from an explosion without blinking and has sex with an entire class of Catholic cheerleaders. Then the Operator turns up and wigs the sound and picture out completely, vanishing with the body.
If Alex has been umming and ahhing over whether placating the Operator is worth betraying Jay, then this decides him. He phones Jay up and tells him to meet him at Rosswood Park the next day. Says he's found something important, something to do with Amy.
November 23rd: Jay meets Alex at the park. Jay is the only one with a camera, which they take turns carrying. They walk into the forest for a long time, until it starts getting dark. Alex asks whether Jay stole a key, which Jay denies. Alex does not buy it, and presses Jay on what's going on between him and Jessica. Jay says there's nothing to tell. They barely speak to each other for the rest of the walk.
They reach their destination as Alex tells a spooky ghost story about criminals being strung up and executed in that area in the 1800s. That may just be Alex bullshitting and trying to make Jay think he really has found something.
Jay stops to change the tape, which has almost run out. Then he backs out of actually seeing the thing, since it's getting dark and he's a bit weirded out by Alex's behaviour. Alex tells him sure, and next time to bring Jessica. The picture is starting to flicker at the top, and the sound's getting tinny. Alex stays in the forest without a camera. Maybe he's looking for an audience with the mob boss. Maybe he's realised that the Operator wants him alive for some reason, despite the innate unpleasant effects of being around the creature. It's a threat to his well-being but not to his life.
Jay takes the opportunity to break into Alex's house again and steal the mysterious tape, which turns out to be the Brian tape.
November 24th: Alex finds out that the Brian tape is missing. It's probably the worst thing that could've happened, because he just knows that Jay is going to put the thing up on his damn youtube channel for the world to see. So that brings his anger about Jay putting the tapes on youtube back to the fore. And the Operator wants Jay, but what if the Operator fails to turn up again? There's too much at risk. Alex has to end this himself.
He leads both Jay and Jessica to an abandoned building in the forest and pulls a gun on them, complete with a little bit of warping sound that might just be because Alex started yelling, but Tim attacks him and the to men tumble down a staircase. Jay and Jessica run away and hear the gun go off behind them, but don't see what's happened. They arrange to meet at a hotel and Jay steals Alex's camera satchel and tit camera from out of his car. The satchel contains the hard drive holding Alex's memories.
Alex is probably still alive, because otherwise the third season will be really short. No word on his status, though.
Old Conjecture
Starting point?
Alex began trying to find Amy, who's been missing since the Operator's attack.
He enlisted the help of Jessica, Amy's housemate? Or did she get involved on her own? Double check this. Either way, later on he lied to her to keep her away from the whole horrible business, telling her that he'd found Amy and everything was fine. Maybe because she wasn't a part of the original Marble Hornets project and therefore wasn't required by the Operator? Or maybe because he considered her innocent of the whole mess, unlike Jay? Maybe because she would've been one too many dead bodies?
He's either enlisted Jay's help and then turned on him, or been planning to betray him from the season's start. I'm thinking maybe he handed most of the Marble Hornets crew over to the Operator way back during that summer when things had gotten too much, but he balked before handing Jay over for whatever reason -- might even have been that they were too close as friends for him to go through with it, or Jay was just one body too many. Or, if he was acting under some kind of control, he recovered himself enough to fight it and run away.
Who did he kill (i.e. hand over for slender-breakfast)? Definitely Brian. Evidently Seth. Probably Sarah. He seems to have attempted it with Tim, though it looks like Tim escaped and worked out a way to keep the Operator from flooding his brains or whatever it is he does.
You know what, thinking about it, I think Alex has started off looking for Amy in good faith and ended up succumbing to the same Slendercommands he did that summer. It's also possible that he's just absolutely batshit crazy and acting 100% under his own steam, for all that he's being a good little slenderminion. But the truth is unrevealed as of yet, so I'm going to have to choose one way or another for rp, and the second Alex wouldn't stay Mark's bro for very long.
Evidence for the first Alex:
- He statics up cameras, which suggests he's very heavily involved with the Operator - and perhaps not in a prey way any more, not directly, since I don't remember him doing that last season.
- He keeps running into the Operator and passing out in a burst of static, and/or being slendernapped in his sleep. That stuff must have some motive behind it, and it doesn't look like that motive is 'vanishing forever' as it was with Brian and Seth and Beardy.
Evidence for the second Alex:
- His rant to Jay and Jessica (though mostly Jay, let's be honest) is less "binary static thoughtless attacking bzzzz" and more like a real, lucid person desperately trying to justify an act of violence.
Even if we go with the first Alex, he's not "pure and innocent sane guy" + "slender-mind-control". Not even slightly. He certainly had some drive behind killing Jay either way. Pulling a gun on him in the whatever the hell that building was, and that speech, were screaming "I have a personal grudge and I'm trying to justify this to both of us" rather than "I am floodled into feeding you to my slenderbro over here".
Maybe the gun escapade, part 1 without and part 2 with Jessica, were fuelled by his discovering the Marble Hornets channel on youtube. That's a pretty big blow right there: proof that Jay hasn't kept this under wraps, he's gone and shared it with the whole damn world. The opposite of what Alex wanted. Potentially giving the Operator more power or loosing him on more people. Probably the thing that brought the Operator back after all this time. This, on top of Jay stalking him, Jay stealing the Brian tape, and general stress and crazy, could've pushed him over the edge into "you know what fuck this Operator thing I want you dead for its own sake". Jessica was a regrettable loose end. Alex hasn't been firing on all cylinders for a few years now and that was an especially low point in his humanity.
Roleplay stuff:
So what do we have here? Partly core personality difference that works as a shift over time and doesn't void out who he's been at Entranceway so far. He is a head-case and an asshole, after all, despite the good things you can also say about him. Partly Operator influence, which could work as a gradual recuperation thing. Maybe he should come back noticeably different, causing subtle static when he tries to video chat, going a bit mad in a Markus sort of way because Jay is there and he is here and how does he kill him when he's here. (Hahahahahaha the scribbles in his room could take a turn for the even more sinister.) Not a melodramatic thing, maybe even stuff (besides the static) that could be passed off as ordinary changes. Then he could gradually recover, since Wonderland has no Operator and therefore he's sort of away from the infection. The same sort of recovery he might have gone through after leaving Helena and hiding from the Operator the first time.
Back to general canon stuff:
The Alex-Operator relationship has certainly become something more complex than predator and prey. The Operator was RIGHT THERE in his apartment and, as far as we can see from aftereffects, didn't lay a noodly finger on him. We've seen encounters between them during season 1, and barring entries where Alex didn't yet know what the fuck, they always resulted in Alex either getting injured or running like a little bitch. Here, he doesn't react, and the Operator's as chill as if he just dropped in to chat. Alex doesn't emerge with blood running down his face. Maybe the Operator doesn't have to beat him into submission any more.
So how does he feel about the Operator this time around? Honestly, probably more chill (not that that's saying a lot). Not because the Operator is any less dangerous, but because Alex has this situation under control now. Kind of. Relatively speaking. And the static is just so reassuring.
Conjecture:
He evidently had that tape of Brian's betrayal. Maybe he found it and watched it and worked out some of the things he'd forgotten about circa his confession in Entry 22. (Maybe he lost his memory then because he just got too close to the Operator when Seth was floodled.) He was trying to rationalise some reason for leading his friends right to the Operator, and thought that perhaps it was an exchange. Their lives for his. For fuck's sake this is literally the plot of Amnesia. >:I So anyway, this was not an attractive prospect but because he's just that scared of the Operator it, well, was a potential way out (who knows if it was really what was going on, the boy only has the same tapes to work off that we do) and made him inclined to give in to slender-influence in a way that Jay isn't.
(Which is one reason why they've both been slender-haunted but only one of them has gone axe crazy that we know of. The other reason is that Alex is the Operator's main target and has been since his fifth birthday, whoops.)
You know, even though this would make him a bit less responsible for his actions than Daniel is, he'd still be a lot more willing to own them. And it's these little details that reassure me when I start feeling like I'm writing a couple of clones.
Timeline: conjecture until stated otherwise:
Alex initially wanted Jay's help for real. Jay took the tapes way back when, so there was a chance he'd know what they were dealing with -- a slim chance, and one which would bring its own problems, but a chance nonetheless. Also, Jay was a friend from the old days who was already kind of involved, and while Alex didn't feel up to facing the Operator alone he also didn't want to involve anyone who wasn't already caught up in it. He left the return address on that package for the specific purpose of leading Jay to that abandoned building.
But then Alex found out about the Marble Hornets channel on youtube, and that turned him against Jay in a big way, especially in terms of doubting his trustworthiness. Goddamnit, Alex told him to burn those tapes; he thought that implied not sharing them with the world. With that hope extinguished, he was desperate for another way out. The tapes online prompted him to look through the few tapes he hadn't given away, trawling them for clues. That was how he found the Brian tape.
Well, shit.
[Insert here previous pondering about him trying to justify his actions and getting the idea that it protected him from the Operator, thereby falling back under the Operator's influence.] So he decides and/or is informed that Jay and Tim, as the final surviving WAIT WAIT WAIT
Holy shit. He clearly knew where Tim was, and the whole thing seems like a bit of a set-up on Alex's part.
Alternative conjecture: Maybe Alex found the MH channel before season 1 even ended. Maybe he found the Brian tape, fell back to the Operator, plotted to sacrifice Jay, all before Entry 26. There was time enough to do so -- and Jay started recovering from his illness and paranoia in the lead-up to 26, almost as if the Operator's attention was pointed somewhere else.
Maybe he found out where Tim was hiding, knew Tim would be against him, lured Jay there to (a) solidify Tim as the enemy in Jay's eyes and (b) get Tim out of the way. Did he stage the HELP video? It does seem really weird that his camera ended up in his girlfriend's closet. Not an obvious hiding place at all. Was Amy a sacrifice as well?
It might not make sense for her to be a sacrifice, from a logic or a morals standpoint. She had nothing, but nothing, to do with the filming of Marble Hornets, so potentially the Operator has less reason to be interested in her. And if Alex thinks of Marble Hornets crew members as fair game, he has every reason to think of her as off limits -- especially since she's a central part of his new, Operator-less life. Maybe she was never supposed to disappear. Maybe he thought he was protecting her, even: getting rid of the Operator by getting rid of Jay. He must've been doing something when he wasn't luring Jay into suspicious forested areas; maybe he was genuinely looking for her.
"Amy?" A pause. A weird, tight sort of smile. "I found her. She's fine."
He's never going to find her. He's accepted that now.
Still conjecture: Entry 26 was a set-up. He gambled Amy and lost. He's been living with that and searching for her, though it's increasingly clear that the search is going to fail. He lied to Jessica to keep her out of it because he didn't want any more innocent people involved. Jay brought her back into it, though. He's furious with Jay and blames him for a lot. Some of the stuff he blames Jay for out loud is stuff he blames himself for silently.
After Jay has failed to be eaten by the Operator about a million times -- he can't even do that right -- he's started stalking Alex around in a way that's entirely too reminiscent of Tim. And then he steals the Brian tape. That's the last straw. Alex can't let that tape go up on Jay's goddamn channel in front of the whole world. He lures Jay out into the forest again, not to sacrifice him, but to straight out kill him.
But what if he's shown the Brian tape to Jessica? She's involved again. She knows he lied about Amy (I think there was an entry where Jay told her about that? Maybe? If not on camera then it makes sense that he would have). She has to go too. This whole thing has to be over.
And then, Entry 52.
OR: All of the above, minus the set-up part. Alex had the videocamera because he was making the HELP tape, planning to lure Jay back into the situation, but Amy was never meant to find it. Alex may have been living with her by that point, or just there a hell of a lot - either way, it made sense to work on the tape at that house, and that's why the camera was in her closet.
I am more inclined to go with this idea, considering my Alex/Amy headcanon and how it would be soured more than I want it to be by the previous conjecture (shut up I'm a shipper). It also offers an explanation for the TTA-ish stuff on the tape: since Alex had found the channels, he was imitating TTA's style, because his original intention was not to out himself as the video's maker.
So Alex found the Marble Hornets and TTA channels. He began to be slender-haunted again. ...No. No, I'm rethinking this even as I type it.
If he knew that the Operator was hanging around again, if he knew that it had come back in response to his watching the tapes, Alex would not have been so blase about Amy finding the camera. It was fake calm, sure, but it was a level of fake calm that I don't think even Alex would have managed if he was blindsided by a potentially slender-summoning development.
So we're back to two possibilities:
(a) 26 was a set-up to bring Jay back into the game; Alex meant Amy to find the camera.
(b) The camera really was just left over from the old days; he had no idea the Operator was still hanging around, and therefore no reason except lingering paranoia to think it dangerous.
What does (a) imply? Well, I'm pretty sure that when Alex leads the Marble Hornets crew to their slenderdooms, he's doing it under eldritch influence to some degree. This is a direct thing: he is influenced to deliver them. But Amy is incidental to that: while it would be a similar sort of betrayal, the motive would be different. Amy wouldn't be the prize the Operator's after. I might be making too many assumptions about how this would work, but I picture the Operator providing the what and Alex figuring out the how, which would mean he chose to risk Amy more or less of his own accord. I'm leery of this idea. He clearly does pre-meditated murder, but maybe only when he feels his hand is forced (by the Operator's influence or by Jay stealing incriminating tapes).
Part of me wants to say that the influence was strong enough, made him obsessed enough with luring in Jay, that he did think it was worth gambling Amy to get him. But part of me thinks that's a bit too strong given his later actions, and a bit too close to being irredeemable. And also it contradicts stuff I've established for him at Entranceway, which there is a loophole for, sure, but I'd prefer not to have to use it.
Also, let's compare and contrast what would be the two non-Operator-mandated betrayals: gambling Amy and pulling a gun on J2. Not identical, but I think it's a doable comparison. Both betrayed people close to him; both were pre-meditated; both would've ended up with the victim dead or probably worse. In the latter scenario Alex was rambling and desperate and pretty much as emotional as we've ever seen him. In the former, he was calm. Sure, it was false calm, and he would've needed to act for the camera; but you need a certain amount of composure to fake calmness, and that's composure he clearly didn't have when he pulled the gun. So even if he had motive to set up the HELP video, would he have been able to play his part?
And if his motivation in betraying Amy was to make a compelling "gdi Jay I need you" tape, was her betrayal even necessary? Jay didn't know her. Alex could just as easily have filmed himself describing some horrible mishap. Hell, the whole scheme would've hinged on her finding the camera, watching the tape, and then having it rolling when the Operator maybe turned up. In hindsight it would've worked, but as an actual plan for something to do in the future, there are far too many ways it might go wrong, and in the end it's an unnecessary sacrifice.
So yeah, I'm going to discard (a).
That leaves (b). And now I have a lot of suspicions, but I'm going to have to do some hardcore entry re-watching in order to get my timeline straight and see how well things fit.
But first, let me transcribe some of those suspicions real quick:
- Entry 26 is filmed
- presence of camera just kind of a plot hole??
- fear, search for Amy
- searching remaining tapes for answers
- find Brian tape
- shaken, goes against what he thought he knew
- get idea of exchange
- fall under Operator's sway
- Tim finds out somehow? starts hounding him??
- Alex sends out 26 tape to lure back Jay
- finds out Tim is lying in wait at the place
- prepared for him, breaks his leg
- would kill him but Jay intervenes
- keeps trying to lead Jay to Operator
- moments of lucidity; gets Jess out; doesn't want any more innocents involved
- Jay gets Jess back in, derp
- finds out about stalking and stolen Brian tape
- finds Marble Hornets channel
- flips out, GUN
Loose ends:
Fact-check against the entries, especially re: Jessica's role.
I still need to work out the pattern for his wearing a camera. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. It's probably not an obvious 'camera when there's slenderman about' thing, since he wore a camera when he beat that guy's head in in the tunnel, but he didn't when he stood suspiciously around in the forest in the dead of night. Must think more on this. Rewatch entries. Work out pattern.
52 rant transcript:
JAY: Alex, just tell us what it is.
[He turns around and the camera picks up ALEX, pointing a gun at JAY and JESSICA.]
ALEX: I know you stole a tape from me. The one with Brian on it.
JESSICA: Oh my god oh my god, it's a gun!
JAY: That's a gun.
ALEX: And I know you've been following me too.
JAY: What?
ALEX: I've had plenty of chances to do this.
JESSICA: So you're going to kill us?!
ALEX: I didn't want to get Jessica involved!
JAY: Just - just listen to me -
ALEX: That's why I told her I found Amy. That's your fault!
JESSICA: Alex, please!
ALEX: I told you to burn those tapes!
JAY: Don't do this, Alex.
ALEX: And never to mention them again! I thought that implied not sharing them with the world.
JESSICA: [unintelligible]
JAY: I didn't know! I didn't know that any of this would happen!
ALEX: I should've burned those tapes in the first place. I should've burned them when I -
[TIM arrives to kick ass and take names.]
Stream-of-consciousness. Fairly long.
Fact-checked Timeline (with a bit of headcanon)
4th April 2010: the Operator house-invades dudes and wrecks shit; Amy goes missing; Alex gets her out of the window, then wakes up back in his apartment with the camera and a blank in his memory. Someone, probably Alex, texts Jay with "41810".
18th April 2010 (exactly two weeks later): Jay receives a package with the tape of the incident and a HELP message. He sets off to the return address and drives pretty much solidly until he arrives.
21st April 2010 (17 days after the incident): Jay arrives at the address a bit after four in the afternoon. He finds a squatting, abandoned concrete building with only one floor and a basement. He gets spooked by a loud noise and doesn't explore the dark basement yet.
A few days later (very late April / early May): We're not told how much time has passed since Jay first found the house, but it may have been at least a few days, since in the future he will take a week to get from one tape to the other. Jay goes to the house again, and Alex turns up. It seems likely that Jay knew Alex was there, because he's talking out loud. Jay rarely talks to himself except for brief occasional comments, and never so loudly or for such a long time as he does here. Then, when Alex appears, he doesn't react except to turn around at his name being said. The creators have talked about Jay "finding Alex at the house", so perhaps they met off-camera and Alex told Jay he wanted to show him something -- that something maybe being the identity of Masky. Tim and Alex have obviously had trouble with each other before, since Tim goes straight for Alex with the knife and Alex has no qualms about laming or even killing Tim. Maybe each thinks the other is an Operator minion. In any case, Tim gets block of cemented.
Alex and Jay drive away, and then Jay yells at Alex for breaking Tim's leg. Alex is unrepentant. The tape cuts out and is extremely corrupted, but presumably he explains about looking for Amy and tells Jay he'll call him. Maybe he even offers an explanation for his actions, a bit, since obviously masked people have been stalking around bothering him. Then again, this is Alex we're talking about, king of the lack of explanation.
Anyhow, Alex tells Jay to "lay low" until Alex contacts him. Jay is sarcastic. Alex drives away. It's not a glowing reunion.
Maybe Alex, in his search for answers, has found the Marble Hornets youtube channel. It might well explain his short attitude towards the guy who has after all come to help him.
Over a week later (early May): Alex calls Jay and tells him to meet him at Rosswood Park the next day. Alex is a douche who doesn't return Jay's calls. Jay sleeps in his car for the umpteenth time and a mysterious tallish figure -- not the Operator, not really built like Tim -- peeks in through the rear window. Alex? Hoodie?
The next day: Jay goes to Rosswood Park, gets bored of waiting for Alex and goes into the unfamiliar forest and gets lost because he is an enormous derp. He makes sure to leave Alex a voicemail saying as much so that Alex has something to facepalm over. SHOCKINGLY, the Operator is there in the forest and he drops his camera and runs away. The helpful hooded guy helpfully picks it up and plays with it a bit and then puts it lovingly in Jay's car.
Alex gets to Rosswood Park at the same time as getting Jay's voicemail. He enjoys a well-earned facepalm. Jay isn't answering his phone, so Alex goes into the forest to see if he can find the guy. He does: Jay is running like hell in the other direction. Jay informs Alex that "that thing" is in the forest, and says he's done for the day, for all that Alex tries to get him to help look for Amy. They drive away and they stay in a hotel.
This is the earliest video on Alex's hard drive. There are two possibilities: either Alex only started filming himself on this day, or his older tapes are stored somewhere else. I think the second explanation is more likely, since it's barely a month ago that his girlfriend's been kidnapped by the goddamn Slenderman.
Presumably the next day: Alex and Jay drive to Amy's house. It's raining. Alex goes and knocks on the door just in case, but nobody answers. Alex phones Jessica, Amy's housemate, who is presumably on holiday somewhere or something maybe because if she was at the house how even would she not have realised Amy had been missing for a month. He leaves a message asking if she's heard from Amy.
Alex says that it's best Jay doesn't know where he lives for now. We later learn that this is because he's afraid Jay will lead the Operator to the house. Which turns out to be a useless precaution, because now Alex does a great job of leading himself to the Operator.
We see him standing outside the forest, possibly for a pretty long time. He's just staring into it. Eventually he can't wait around any more (maybe he's frustrated with the lack of progress) and does a stupid thing. He walks into the forest with his camera, whereupon the Operator turns up to greet him with collapsing, coughing fits, tremors and a dramatic cliff-hanger as the camera warps and cuts out.
Much later, at night, he arrives home and phones Jessica, leaving her another message: he's found Amy, she doesn't have to worry. He's getting her out. Then he stands and sits around his house, not talking, staring into space. Draws crazy scribbles as a light static hiss mutes out the camera's audio. Coughs up blood into the sink. A shadow moves across him and he closes his eyes. He sits cross-legged in front of his bedroom door, staring at it. He finally goes to bed, and the picture warps; the Operator appears, and then both it and Alex vanish. The bed remains empty until the camera's batteries run out.
A later evening: Alex is fiddling with his tapes and hears a noise outside. He goes to see what it is, then runs back inside and grabs his camera, and pelts after that bloody hooded guy who is stalking around his house AGAIN OH MY GOD WHY. He chases the guy a fair distance, into the forest, whereupon he's ambushed by Masky. Masky threatens him with a rock and tries to strangle him while Hoodie looks on. Then they both look up like startled rabbits and run. Something's scared them away. Something which warps and distorts the camera's picture and sound. Cut to black.
Then Alex is on his feet again, threatening to kill the pair if they ever come snooping round his house again. The sound warps with his voice.
Yet another evening (three months after Jay arrived, so late July): Jay is also frustrated with the lack of progress, and his own solution is to track down Alex's house and break in to search while Alex is taking out the trash. FLAWLESS PLAN. He takes a tape that was lying on the desk and then hides in the airing closet. Alex comes back inside and leaves a message on Jay's answering machine that suggests he's been trying to contact Jay for a while. Then he finds Jay's flashlight, which Jay left behind. Jay tries to make a run for it, but doubles back when he sees the Operator outside the window. Alex catches him and takes the tape back, and then the Operator comes inside the house, much to Jay's horror and Alex's lack of reaction. Jay runs the hell away, taking the spare front door key as he does. Alex just kind of chills.
About an hour later, Alex goes out and finds Jay in his car in the parking lot. He rages at Jay for breaking into his apartment and acts weirdly about the tape he was trying to steal. He walks off, and Jay follows him, but Alex ignores Jay's question of how he got out of the house. "I brought you out here to help me, but you've done nothing but make everything worse." Jay reveals that he's had his own project going on: "I've done so much more than you." Alex says he's done helping Jay.
Jay demands Jessica's phone number, and when Alex refuses to hand it over, Jay steals Alex's keys and locks them in his own car. Alex gives up the phone number surprisingly easily after that, considering he wanted to keep Jessica out of harm's way before. Maybe he just doesn't care any more. He does sound like he'd like to throttle Jay, though.
Alex and Jay have a very unfriendly parting of the ways.
Jay phones up Jessica and finds out that Alex lied to her about finding Amy. As a result, he starts hardcore stalking Alex.
The next four months: Alex starts carrying around his little camera bag / satchel of stuff. He also starts going into the forest trails at Rosswood Park on a regular basis, wearing his tit camera. Jay doesn't dare follow him in for a long time, presumably because of seeing the Operator in there before. Perhaps this is him still looking for any sign of Amy -- heck, if she's been taken by the Operator, then the Operator's apparent new home seems a good place to look.
Jay followed Alex like this for a "few months", but this was the only suspicious thing Alex did. Four months would bring us up to the end of November and the seven months that Jay lost from his memory, so let's say that, since stuff starts moving quickly now.
November 22nd: Jay finally decides to follow Alex into the forest. He is the worst stalker and makes all of the noise. Alex knows he's there, and spends some of his time muttering "don't follow me". Jay follows Alex past the spot where Alex was Slendered a while ago. He loses Alex almost immediately because he is the worst stalker, but follows the trail and eventually finds him again in the mouth of a corrugated iron tunnel. He's checking the contents of his camera bag. Alex looks around and sees him and Jay scrams.
Alex just sits in the tunnel mouth. About fifteen minutes later, some randomer comes and tries to talk to him and gets his head bashed in with a rock while the camera's sound (cricket-like ringing) and picture (all sorts of fancy crap) warp. Alex picks up his glasses, walks away from an explosion without blinking and has sex with an entire class of Catholic cheerleaders. Then the Operator turns up and wigs the sound and picture out completely, vanishing with the body.
If Alex has been umming and ahhing over whether placating the Operator is worth betraying Jay, then this decides him. He phones Jay up and tells him to meet him at Rosswood Park the next day. Says he's found something important, something to do with Amy.
November 23rd: Jay meets Alex at the park. Jay is the only one with a camera, which they take turns carrying. They walk into the forest for a long time, until it starts getting dark. Alex asks whether Jay stole a key, which Jay denies. Alex does not buy it, and presses Jay on what's going on between him and Jessica. Jay says there's nothing to tell. They barely speak to each other for the rest of the walk.
They reach their destination as Alex tells a spooky ghost story about criminals being strung up and executed in that area in the 1800s. That may just be Alex bullshitting and trying to make Jay think he really has found something.
Jay stops to change the tape, which has almost run out. Then he backs out of actually seeing the thing, since it's getting dark and he's a bit weirded out by Alex's behaviour. Alex tells him sure, and next time to bring Jessica. The picture is starting to flicker at the top, and the sound's getting tinny. Alex stays in the forest without a camera. Maybe he's looking for an audience with the mob boss. Maybe he's realised that the Operator wants him alive for some reason, despite the innate unpleasant effects of being around the creature. It's a threat to his well-being but not to his life.
Jay takes the opportunity to break into Alex's house again and steal the mysterious tape, which turns out to be the Brian tape.
November 24th: Alex finds out that the Brian tape is missing. It's probably the worst thing that could've happened, because he just knows that Jay is going to put the thing up on his damn youtube channel for the world to see. So that brings his anger about Jay putting the tapes on youtube back to the fore. And the Operator wants Jay, but what if the Operator fails to turn up again? There's too much at risk. Alex has to end this himself.
He leads both Jay and Jessica to an abandoned building in the forest and pulls a gun on them, complete with a little bit of warping sound that might just be because Alex started yelling, but Tim attacks him and the to men tumble down a staircase. Jay and Jessica run away and hear the gun go off behind them, but don't see what's happened. They arrange to meet at a hotel and Jay steals Alex's camera satchel and tit camera from out of his car. The satchel contains the hard drive holding Alex's memories.
Alex is probably still alive, because otherwise the third season will be really short. No word on his status, though.
Old Conjecture
Starting point?
Alex began trying to find Amy, who's been missing since the Operator's attack.
He enlisted the help of Jessica, Amy's housemate? Or did she get involved on her own? Double check this. Either way, later on he lied to her to keep her away from the whole horrible business, telling her that he'd found Amy and everything was fine. Maybe because she wasn't a part of the original Marble Hornets project and therefore wasn't required by the Operator? Or maybe because he considered her innocent of the whole mess, unlike Jay? Maybe because she would've been one too many dead bodies?
He's either enlisted Jay's help and then turned on him, or been planning to betray him from the season's start. I'm thinking maybe he handed most of the Marble Hornets crew over to the Operator way back during that summer when things had gotten too much, but he balked before handing Jay over for whatever reason -- might even have been that they were too close as friends for him to go through with it, or Jay was just one body too many. Or, if he was acting under some kind of control, he recovered himself enough to fight it and run away.
Who did he kill (i.e. hand over for slender-breakfast)? Definitely Brian. Evidently Seth. Probably Sarah. He seems to have attempted it with Tim, though it looks like Tim escaped and worked out a way to keep the Operator from flooding his brains or whatever it is he does.
You know what, thinking about it, I think Alex has started off looking for Amy in good faith and ended up succumbing to the same Slendercommands he did that summer. It's also possible that he's just absolutely batshit crazy and acting 100% under his own steam, for all that he's being a good little slenderminion. But the truth is unrevealed as of yet, so I'm going to have to choose one way or another for rp, and the second Alex wouldn't stay Mark's bro for very long.
Evidence for the first Alex:
- He statics up cameras, which suggests he's very heavily involved with the Operator - and perhaps not in a prey way any more, not directly, since I don't remember him doing that last season.
- He keeps running into the Operator and passing out in a burst of static, and/or being slendernapped in his sleep. That stuff must have some motive behind it, and it doesn't look like that motive is 'vanishing forever' as it was with Brian and Seth and Beardy.
Evidence for the second Alex:
- His rant to Jay and Jessica (though mostly Jay, let's be honest) is less "binary static thoughtless attacking bzzzz" and more like a real, lucid person desperately trying to justify an act of violence.
Even if we go with the first Alex, he's not "pure and innocent sane guy" + "slender-mind-control". Not even slightly. He certainly had some drive behind killing Jay either way. Pulling a gun on him in the whatever the hell that building was, and that speech, were screaming "I have a personal grudge and I'm trying to justify this to both of us" rather than "I am floodled into feeding you to my slenderbro over here".
Maybe the gun escapade, part 1 without and part 2 with Jessica, were fuelled by his discovering the Marble Hornets channel on youtube. That's a pretty big blow right there: proof that Jay hasn't kept this under wraps, he's gone and shared it with the whole damn world. The opposite of what Alex wanted. Potentially giving the Operator more power or loosing him on more people. Probably the thing that brought the Operator back after all this time. This, on top of Jay stalking him, Jay stealing the Brian tape, and general stress and crazy, could've pushed him over the edge into "you know what fuck this Operator thing I want you dead for its own sake". Jessica was a regrettable loose end. Alex hasn't been firing on all cylinders for a few years now and that was an especially low point in his humanity.
Roleplay stuff:
So what do we have here? Partly core personality difference that works as a shift over time and doesn't void out who he's been at Entranceway so far. He is a head-case and an asshole, after all, despite the good things you can also say about him. Partly Operator influence, which could work as a gradual recuperation thing. Maybe he should come back noticeably different, causing subtle static when he tries to video chat, going a bit mad in a Markus sort of way because Jay is there and he is here and how does he kill him when he's here. (Hahahahahaha the scribbles in his room could take a turn for the even more sinister.) Not a melodramatic thing, maybe even stuff (besides the static) that could be passed off as ordinary changes. Then he could gradually recover, since Wonderland has no Operator and therefore he's sort of away from the infection. The same sort of recovery he might have gone through after leaving Helena and hiding from the Operator the first time.
Back to general canon stuff:
The Alex-Operator relationship has certainly become something more complex than predator and prey. The Operator was RIGHT THERE in his apartment and, as far as we can see from aftereffects, didn't lay a noodly finger on him. We've seen encounters between them during season 1, and barring entries where Alex didn't yet know what the fuck, they always resulted in Alex either getting injured or running like a little bitch. Here, he doesn't react, and the Operator's as chill as if he just dropped in to chat. Alex doesn't emerge with blood running down his face. Maybe the Operator doesn't have to beat him into submission any more.
So how does he feel about the Operator this time around? Honestly, probably more chill (not that that's saying a lot). Not because the Operator is any less dangerous, but because Alex has this situation under control now. Kind of. Relatively speaking. And the static is just so reassuring.
Conjecture:
He evidently had that tape of Brian's betrayal. Maybe he found it and watched it and worked out some of the things he'd forgotten about circa his confession in Entry 22. (Maybe he lost his memory then because he just got too close to the Operator when Seth was floodled.) He was trying to rationalise some reason for leading his friends right to the Operator, and thought that perhaps it was an exchange. Their lives for his. For fuck's sake this is literally the plot of Amnesia. >:I So anyway, this was not an attractive prospect but because he's just that scared of the Operator it, well, was a potential way out (who knows if it was really what was going on, the boy only has the same tapes to work off that we do) and made him inclined to give in to slender-influence in a way that Jay isn't.
(Which is one reason why they've both been slender-haunted but only one of them has gone axe crazy that we know of. The other reason is that Alex is the Operator's main target and has been since his fifth birthday, whoops.)
You know, even though this would make him a bit less responsible for his actions than Daniel is, he'd still be a lot more willing to own them. And it's these little details that reassure me when I start feeling like I'm writing a couple of clones.
Timeline: conjecture until stated otherwise:
Alex initially wanted Jay's help for real. Jay took the tapes way back when, so there was a chance he'd know what they were dealing with -- a slim chance, and one which would bring its own problems, but a chance nonetheless. Also, Jay was a friend from the old days who was already kind of involved, and while Alex didn't feel up to facing the Operator alone he also didn't want to involve anyone who wasn't already caught up in it. He left the return address on that package for the specific purpose of leading Jay to that abandoned building.
But then Alex found out about the Marble Hornets channel on youtube, and that turned him against Jay in a big way, especially in terms of doubting his trustworthiness. Goddamnit, Alex told him to burn those tapes; he thought that implied not sharing them with the world. With that hope extinguished, he was desperate for another way out. The tapes online prompted him to look through the few tapes he hadn't given away, trawling them for clues. That was how he found the Brian tape.
Well, shit.
[Insert here previous pondering about him trying to justify his actions and getting the idea that it protected him from the Operator, thereby falling back under the Operator's influence.] So he decides and/or is informed that Jay and Tim, as the final surviving WAIT WAIT WAIT
Holy shit. He clearly knew where Tim was, and the whole thing seems like a bit of a set-up on Alex's part.
Alternative conjecture: Maybe Alex found the MH channel before season 1 even ended. Maybe he found the Brian tape, fell back to the Operator, plotted to sacrifice Jay, all before Entry 26. There was time enough to do so -- and Jay started recovering from his illness and paranoia in the lead-up to 26, almost as if the Operator's attention was pointed somewhere else.
Maybe he found out where Tim was hiding, knew Tim would be against him, lured Jay there to (a) solidify Tim as the enemy in Jay's eyes and (b) get Tim out of the way. Did he stage the HELP video? It does seem really weird that his camera ended up in his girlfriend's closet. Not an obvious hiding place at all. Was Amy a sacrifice as well?
It might not make sense for her to be a sacrifice, from a logic or a morals standpoint. She had nothing, but nothing, to do with the filming of Marble Hornets, so potentially the Operator has less reason to be interested in her. And if Alex thinks of Marble Hornets crew members as fair game, he has every reason to think of her as off limits -- especially since she's a central part of his new, Operator-less life. Maybe she was never supposed to disappear. Maybe he thought he was protecting her, even: getting rid of the Operator by getting rid of Jay. He must've been doing something when he wasn't luring Jay into suspicious forested areas; maybe he was genuinely looking for her.
"Amy?" A pause. A weird, tight sort of smile. "I found her. She's fine."
He's never going to find her. He's accepted that now.
Still conjecture: Entry 26 was a set-up. He gambled Amy and lost. He's been living with that and searching for her, though it's increasingly clear that the search is going to fail. He lied to Jessica to keep her out of it because he didn't want any more innocent people involved. Jay brought her back into it, though. He's furious with Jay and blames him for a lot. Some of the stuff he blames Jay for out loud is stuff he blames himself for silently.
After Jay has failed to be eaten by the Operator about a million times -- he can't even do that right -- he's started stalking Alex around in a way that's entirely too reminiscent of Tim. And then he steals the Brian tape. That's the last straw. Alex can't let that tape go up on Jay's goddamn channel in front of the whole world. He lures Jay out into the forest again, not to sacrifice him, but to straight out kill him.
But what if he's shown the Brian tape to Jessica? She's involved again. She knows he lied about Amy (I think there was an entry where Jay told her about that? Maybe? If not on camera then it makes sense that he would have). She has to go too. This whole thing has to be over.
And then, Entry 52.
OR: All of the above, minus the set-up part. Alex had the videocamera because he was making the HELP tape, planning to lure Jay back into the situation, but Amy was never meant to find it. Alex may have been living with her by that point, or just there a hell of a lot - either way, it made sense to work on the tape at that house, and that's why the camera was in her closet.
I am more inclined to go with this idea, considering my Alex/Amy headcanon and how it would be soured more than I want it to be by the previous conjecture (shut up I'm a shipper). It also offers an explanation for the TTA-ish stuff on the tape: since Alex had found the channels, he was imitating TTA's style, because his original intention was not to out himself as the video's maker.
So Alex found the Marble Hornets and TTA channels. He began to be slender-haunted again. ...No. No, I'm rethinking this even as I type it.
If he knew that the Operator was hanging around again, if he knew that it had come back in response to his watching the tapes, Alex would not have been so blase about Amy finding the camera. It was fake calm, sure, but it was a level of fake calm that I don't think even Alex would have managed if he was blindsided by a potentially slender-summoning development.
So we're back to two possibilities:
(a) 26 was a set-up to bring Jay back into the game; Alex meant Amy to find the camera.
(b) The camera really was just left over from the old days; he had no idea the Operator was still hanging around, and therefore no reason except lingering paranoia to think it dangerous.
What does (a) imply? Well, I'm pretty sure that when Alex leads the Marble Hornets crew to their slenderdooms, he's doing it under eldritch influence to some degree. This is a direct thing: he is influenced to deliver them. But Amy is incidental to that: while it would be a similar sort of betrayal, the motive would be different. Amy wouldn't be the prize the Operator's after. I might be making too many assumptions about how this would work, but I picture the Operator providing the what and Alex figuring out the how, which would mean he chose to risk Amy more or less of his own accord. I'm leery of this idea. He clearly does pre-meditated murder, but maybe only when he feels his hand is forced (by the Operator's influence or by Jay stealing incriminating tapes).
Part of me wants to say that the influence was strong enough, made him obsessed enough with luring in Jay, that he did think it was worth gambling Amy to get him. But part of me thinks that's a bit too strong given his later actions, and a bit too close to being irredeemable. And also it contradicts stuff I've established for him at Entranceway, which there is a loophole for, sure, but I'd prefer not to have to use it.
Also, let's compare and contrast what would be the two non-Operator-mandated betrayals: gambling Amy and pulling a gun on J2. Not identical, but I think it's a doable comparison. Both betrayed people close to him; both were pre-meditated; both would've ended up with the victim dead or probably worse. In the latter scenario Alex was rambling and desperate and pretty much as emotional as we've ever seen him. In the former, he was calm. Sure, it was false calm, and he would've needed to act for the camera; but you need a certain amount of composure to fake calmness, and that's composure he clearly didn't have when he pulled the gun. So even if he had motive to set up the HELP video, would he have been able to play his part?
And if his motivation in betraying Amy was to make a compelling "gdi Jay I need you" tape, was her betrayal even necessary? Jay didn't know her. Alex could just as easily have filmed himself describing some horrible mishap. Hell, the whole scheme would've hinged on her finding the camera, watching the tape, and then having it rolling when the Operator maybe turned up. In hindsight it would've worked, but as an actual plan for something to do in the future, there are far too many ways it might go wrong, and in the end it's an unnecessary sacrifice.
So yeah, I'm going to discard (a).
That leaves (b). And now I have a lot of suspicions, but I'm going to have to do some hardcore entry re-watching in order to get my timeline straight and see how well things fit.
But first, let me transcribe some of those suspicions real quick:
- Entry 26 is filmed
- presence of camera just kind of a plot hole??
- fear, search for Amy
- searching remaining tapes for answers
- find Brian tape
- shaken, goes against what he thought he knew
- get idea of exchange
- fall under Operator's sway
- Tim finds out somehow? starts hounding him??
- Alex sends out 26 tape to lure back Jay
- finds out Tim is lying in wait at the place
- prepared for him, breaks his leg
- would kill him but Jay intervenes
- keeps trying to lead Jay to Operator
- moments of lucidity; gets Jess out; doesn't want any more innocents involved
- Jay gets Jess back in, derp
- finds out about stalking and stolen Brian tape
- finds Marble Hornets channel
- flips out, GUN
Loose ends:
Fact-check against the entries, especially re: Jessica's role.
I still need to work out the pattern for his wearing a camera. Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. It's probably not an obvious 'camera when there's slenderman about' thing, since he wore a camera when he beat that guy's head in in the tunnel, but he didn't when he stood suspiciously around in the forest in the dead of night. Must think more on this. Rewatch entries. Work out pattern.
52 rant transcript:
JAY: Alex, just tell us what it is.
[He turns around and the camera picks up ALEX, pointing a gun at JAY and JESSICA.]
ALEX: I know you stole a tape from me. The one with Brian on it.
JESSICA: Oh my god oh my god, it's a gun!
JAY: That's a gun.
ALEX: And I know you've been following me too.
JAY: What?
ALEX: I've had plenty of chances to do this.
JESSICA: So you're going to kill us?!
ALEX: I didn't want to get Jessica involved!
JAY: Just - just listen to me -
ALEX: That's why I told her I found Amy. That's your fault!
JESSICA: Alex, please!
ALEX: I told you to burn those tapes!
JAY: Don't do this, Alex.
ALEX: And never to mention them again! I thought that implied not sharing them with the world.
JESSICA: [unintelligible]
JAY: I didn't know! I didn't know that any of this would happen!
ALEX: I should've burned those tapes in the first place. I should've burned them when I -
[TIM arrives to kick ass and take names.]