Personal Notes
Jay is an interesting character because he is arguably the character with the most control over how he is portrayed on screen, and it's interesting to see the ways this is and isn't utilized by the creators / acknowledged by the characters.
Like, the Marble Hornets channel is diagetically not really about telling a story; as time goes on it becomes rather apparent that Jay's use of the channel is less of a way to spread information and more of a way to archive his own memories. The events that took place at the beginning of the Season Two uploads -- Jay abruptly losing seven months worth of memory -- very clearly had an impact on Jay and the way he interacts with the world. In Season One, Jay did not really post footage of himself, it was almost entirely an archive dedicated to Alex's tapes from college, and nothing else. If Jay wanted to comment on things in his own life, for the most part, he would use the Twitter as opposed to the YouTube (there are, of course, exceptions to this, such as the Entry #24 footage where Jay vanishes from his apartment) even though he was recording himself full time, just like Alex used to. Even though he was recording things almost 24/7, we never saw the majority of that footage.
And that kind of, changes during Season Two. After Jay lost those memories, he spent almost two full months in that motel before he was finally able to gain access to the motel Safe that held the tapes from those missing months, and I don't think Jay ever managed to forget the anxiety those months caused him. The channel as we see it in Season Three becomes a lot more about Jay archiving his own movements and memories, just in case something happens to make him lose touch with them all over again.
So, it's not as if Jay is consciously attempting to disguise his motivations or the impact of his actions, and honestly, I think that makes it more interesting. Jay doesn't necessarily seem aware of the impact he has on the narrative -- Jay is so convinced that he's nothing but an Outside Observer that I don't think it ever really occurs to him to stop and consider the impact his actions might have on the others or on the narrative as a whole, because he doesn't even think he has any.
For example, Jay does a lot to undersell the amount of time he spends stalking other characters. Weeks and Months of stalking is usually cut down to a black title card or a series of short clips, and it's interesting that Jay doesn't seem to notice the double standard he holds for himself VS the other characters. When Brian stalks Jay, when he films him and then posts that footage online, Jay is uncomfortable and frightened -- he comments on Twitter that it worsens his already bad paranoia; and yet, it never seems to occur to Jay that he is behaving exactly like totheark is. Jay stalks Alex for months during the Season Two tapes (and I do often wonder how much that contributed to the Tunnel Incident. Not that it would give Alex a pass for what happened, but Jay spent likely every day, given how fixated/paranoid he is, following Alex around for months, filming everything he did, breaking into Alex's house, stealing a key for Alex's doors to make it easier to break back in whenever he wanted to. Stalking is definitive in how much stress and trauma it can cause -- dealing with a human stalker on top of lingering psychosis and a supernatural stalker capable of exacerbating all these issues, I no longer find it surprising that Alex was so on edge that he broke like that -- especially because he Did, at least at first, fully believe that stranger was Jay); he spends days stalking Tim -- waiting outside of his doctor's office and asking around to gather information on him.
And when totheark gives Jay a copy of Tim's medical records, the first thing Jay does is post them. I don't believe that Jay had bad intentions when he did this -- by this point in the series, I fully believe that Jay was so paranoid that the records would be stolen from him like previous evidence had been or that his memories could disappear at any moment that the only thing he was thinking about was preserving the information where it was least likely to vanish (totheark would occasionally break into the Marble Hornets YouTube channel to post videos, but diagetically, nothing was ever deleted by any characters) -- but he doesn't seem to hesitate at all or give any thought to the negative repercussions this could have on Tim's life, especially given how irritated Jay was that the records came to him censored, I don't think Jay would have even thought about hiding Tim's last name or other personal information that could have led to further doxxing.
(Remember that this series is Unfiction -- the characters are aware of the audience and interact with viewers; in a Watsonian sense, there's no differentiation between the people who show up on camera and the ones commenting on Jay's Twitter account -- they all 'exist' in the same plane of existence. Meaning that under those conditions, Jay is actively doxxing the others every time he posts footage of Alex's house or Tim's medical records.)
And while Jay doesn't seem surprised by the way Tim reacts when he finds out about the channel, he doesn't seem to feel guilty about it either. He's able to acknowledge why Tim would react so angrily, but can't seem to bring himself to care enough to stop doing it. Jay uploads the footage of that fight before Tim eventually agrees to work with him, and it's After that fight when Jay obtains and publically shares the copy of Tim's Medical Records. Jay is at a point where he's either completely oblivious to the consequences, or simply believes that his search for knowledge outweighs the consequences of publically searching. It's little wonder that Tim refused to let Jay see that tape with Jessica on it -- if he had known about it, Jay absolutely would have gone out of his way to find and start following her as well. Why would he hesitate? Why would he stop to think about the repercussions? He Just Needs To Know.
Still, on the other hand, it's interesting how Jay's certainty that he's just an outside observer affects the way he Does interact with other characters. Specifically, in the Entry #59 confrontation, Tim angrily yells at Jay "Imagine waking up one morning in the back seat of your car, miles away from home with blood in your hair, and you have no idea how that happened..." -- Jay doesn't say anything in his defense, but this is not a hypothetical Jay has to imagine happening, it's something he has direct experience with. During Season One there was more than one occasion when Jay would wake up in his car with no knowledge of where he was or how he'd gotten there (to say nothing of the amount of time he lost in Season Two); Jay has very intimate experience with losing time like that, and yet he doesn't share this with Tim. Whether this is because despite everything that Jay does share publically, there are still details of his life he's deeply paranoid/guarded over that he refuses to acknowledge publically, or because Jay is so convinced that he's Behind the camera instead of On it that it doesn't even occur to him to attempt to relate to Tim or meet him on a level playing field -- it doesn't "matter" that they have these things in common - Jay is just an observer even to himself.
To that end, it's actually kind of fascinating to think about how Jay is arguably the only character in Marble Hornets that does not seem to have an end goal. We know exactly what every single other character wanted and how they wanted their stories to End -- Alex wanted to Save everyone by killing them before the Operator could, and if he had succeeded at this he would have gone on to kill himself as well. Brian wanted to Stop Alex by any means necessary, and he explicitly wanted those means to wind up killing himself alongside Alex. Tim just wanted the whole situation to come to some kind of Close so that he could go back to his regular life without being stalked or hunted in it, and that's seemingly exactly what he chooses to do in that final Entry.
Jay, though, just wants to Know. But knowing isn't an end goal, it's Just the ground work. What would Jay have done if he'd gotten the answers he was looking for? Where would he go from there? It's not actually something we have to wonder about, because we know exactly how that would play out, because we've already seen it happen. The series shows us over and over again that there was no amount of answers Jay would have ever been satisfied with. No matter how much he uncovered, Jay was always going to keep pressing until he found out more, further and further with no end in sight.
The only time Jay really claims to have a Goal is right at the end of Season Two where he says he doesn't think Alex should get away with anything he's done. But it's so obvious that Jay doesn't actually care about revenge or justice, because he jumps Straight into proving that at the beginning of Season Three. Jay doesn't go looking for Alex, he doesn't try to turn to the authorities or go looking for more evidence or anything that could have actually led to him stopping Alex or bringing Alex to justice. Instead, Jay runs into Tim and focuses that hunger for More straight onto him instead. Early Season Three Jay forgets all about Alex in favor of stalking Tim, finding out more about what happened back in college, finding out more about Tim. Amy and Jessica are all but forgotten until practically the end of the season when Jay's starvation for Answers leads him to turn on Tim, and the tape he wins in that scuffle seems to remind him of them.
But we as the audience know that Tim was right for hiding that tape from Jay. It wasn't done for Tim's self-interest, it was done to protect Jessica, because even though Tim seems to care about Jay, he's also deeply aware of Jay's fatal flaw. Jay doesn't want anything to end, he doesn't want to go back to his old life, he doesn't really want to stop Alex, he doesn't really want to help. We know exactly what Jay would have done if he'd thought he could find Jessica again and that she might know something Jay didn't yet. He would have dragged her right back into the middle of everything dangerous without a single thought to the consequences -- we know that because that's exactly what Jay did to Tim.
It's interesting that every other character ultimately reaches their desired End without ever actually reaching their Goal (Brian dies but fails at killing Alex; Alex dies but fails at killing the others; Tim goes back to his old life without really getting comfortable closure with what happened), but there are other versions of their stories where maybe they Could have successfully gotten both. But not Jay. Jay's story was never going to end any other way, no matter how long it lasted. No matter what happened, Jay was always going to wind up dead and unsatisfied. Sisyphus and the rock; Erysichthon and his never sated hunger; there was never going to be answers enough for Jay. He was always going to die alone, holding that camera, wanting more. There was never going to be another end to his story; not one that Jay would have wanted, anyway.
Archived Material
jay merrick will break into someone else’s house and start acting scared (X)
yall make fun of jay's tiny knife but completely gloss over the fact he grabs an even tinier x-acto knife in entry 79 (X)
i see the camera close to tims jaw in a way that would imply jay is that close to him as well and i lose it bc homosexuals b touch starved (X)
jay wakes up and says to himself ‘oh ive GOT to find amswers-’ and then he grabs a camera and runs into the woods that have never given him answers because he cracked a STUPID HARD code that told him to go back to the woods (X)
The thing I love most about Jay’s character is his almost comical lack of forethought. Like he was the most impulsive bastard I’ve ever seen. Before ANY paranormal shit was even confirmed, before he knew sketchy shit was happening or anything, his first response to not being met with anyone upon visiting Brian’s house was to fucking break in. Like that wasn’t even an informed decision, he had no idea spooky shit was going down that was just his immediate reaction. He saw a choice and he made it in 0 seconds. And like!!! He isn’t dumb!!! Like it’s well established that Jay is an Intelligent Man. Which means that my mans Chose to let his feral instincts control every choice he made throughout the entire series. He had the opportunity to put even a moment of forethought into every decision he’s faced with and each time he said “no thanks”. What a disaster I love him (X)
In Entry #38, Jay gives Alex shit for telling him a crummy ghost story, when his entire life is a Cosmic Horror Story by the time we see the video. (X)
Bad Liar: Jay seems to be one. While trying to get info from Jessica, he gets his cover stories mixed up and she easily sees right through him. (X)
Clueless Detective: Jay is the embodiment of this trope.(X)
Jay seems to not understand the potential dangers of breaking into a deserted house at night, alone in the woods. He's done this more than once. He acts even dumber in Entry #40, apparently deciding that it's a good idea to take a walk in the creepy haunted woods. (X)
Unreliable Narrator: Jay's typo-laden, cryptic tweets, erratic posting patterns and blackouts have not done his credibility any good (X)
jay seems to consider himself a passive observer and documentor as opposed to someone who’s actively engaged in the narrative. he gathers clues years after the fact. he assembles the pieces of what he initially presumes is an old mystery, and probably long over. so not only is jay merrick an amateur detective, he’s also in the wrong genre. he thinks this is some sort of old mystery puzzle, when it’s actually a horror-revenge narrative. jay doesn’t always realize that his actions hold narrative weight because he assumes that it’s no longer an ongoing story... jay is our narrator. jay is also a participant in the story. jay’s main flaw, i’d argue, is that he thinks he’s JUST the narrator and not a participant. he works to be as distant from the narrative as possible, even if he’s not all that good at it (see jessica, see alex, etc.), probably as a means to cope with everything he’s been through. (X)