metaphasia | Justin and Alex: ALL THE THOUGHTS

So, I've promised to talk about my ~feelings for Justin and Alex, and I HAVE ALL OF THEM, so this post ~~might~~ will turn out really long.

I started watching Wizards because I had heard that Justin and Alex was an actual viable ship, and I just had to watch to see if it was true, and after watching a few episodes, I fell in love with the two of them. There is one icon that noor-us-sabah made that I think sums up their relationship so well:

If you're not familiar with The Thin Man, it's a mystery movie set in the mid thirties. The two main characters are a married couple named Nick and Nora Charles, who are extremely affectionate towards each other, but also banter incessantly. And if that doesn't describe Justin and Alex Russo, I don't know what does. There's a lot of reasons that I ship them so crazy, but I think that is the perfect way to describe them briefly.

Chemistry

Usher: Maybe it's a director's cut. Those characters of Alex and Justin have such chemistry. I think they grew up together.

Alex: Let's just face it. We're a family full of liars who don't know how to hug.

For me, "chemistry" is all about body language. Any actors can read lines, but what makes two people look interested in each other is how they act around each other. Two characters can say all the romantic things to each other they want, but if the actors act stiff and formal, then no one will believe that they're actually interested in each other. And two characters who were never intended to be seen as a romantic couple can be seen that way, if they act it.

Physical contact (not like, hugging someone hello or goodbye) is generally reserved for family and friends, and indicates emotional closeness. So the near incessant at times physical contact between Justin and Alex could be explained by their being related. However, while Justin and Alex hug and remain in each others' personal space very frequently, they do not act as similarly with Max or the rest of their family, which shows that they are closer to each other than the rest of their family.

The two of them also often stand shoulder to shoulder, duplicating or mirroring each others' behavior, showing that they are in agreement, presenting a united front. And while Justin and Alex fight with each other internally a lot, whenever they are confronted with an external problem, they start working together to solve it. Another obvious body language cue for the two of them is eye contact. They are constantly looking at each other and watching where the other one is and what they are doing.

Basically, all of this is text flail for my poor ability to screencap and complete inability to make gifs, but David and Selena don't play Justin and Alex as if they were the normal, Disney, sort of brother and sister; they get too close, watch each other too much, and act (intentionally or unintentionally) like they are possible romantic interests for each other.

Subtext

Alex: Justin, I'm so sorry! I never should've created that duplicate in the first place. I guess I was just scared that I wouldn't really have anyone to fight with when you went off to college.

Justin: We've had a lot of pretty good fights, huh? I think we've still got a few good ones left in us. What do you think?

Alex: I hope so.

Theresa: You guys are hilarious. Just say you love each other!

UMM, YEAH, SHOW. When you have characters say things like how it doesn't matter that they can't remember each other, they still love each other forever, or have an invisible character strip down naked and the other one feel around for them sitting down on a couch with their hands first, or have people think that they make a cute couple when unaware of the fact that they are brother and sister (and the fact that this last one has happened MULTIPLE TIMES is what Giles would say is RAPIDLY BECOMING TEXT), or have two characters end up crying on each others' shoulders when their ~true love is lost forever (again, repeatedly). It sends messages, and not of the "hey these people are just friends" variety, but of the sort where you have to specify "no, when we say 'just friends' we don't mean '~just friends' and please ignore their constant bickering and statements that they are not now, never have been friends".

After the sixth Harry Potter book came out, JK Rowling did this interview where she basically said, "no, no, Dumbledore is really dead, all you people who think otherwise need to stop living in denial", which made me really mad. Because our culture has reached the point where when you give an audience a wise old wizard, with a huge grey beard and wizard hat and robes, and kill him off by having him fall off a cliff and we never see a body, and there is a giant WHITE PHOENIX FLAME when they bury him, expecting him to come back is not denial. It is being genre savvy.

And when you throw ALL THE ROMANTIC CLICHE tropes at two people, thinking that they would make a cute couple, despite being brother and sister? That is not crazy, that is just seeing the subtext that you put in.

Relationship Benefits

Alex: What if we don't get to the stone in time and we can't save everyone?

Justin: Don't worry about it. We will.

Alex: How do you know that?

Justin: Because it's you and I. How can we not?

I think of good relationships as like partnerships, in that a good relationship is one where both parties can bring something to the table. Where one person is weak, the other person can use their strengths. Which is why Justin and Alex are such a good match. Justin acts from his head. He plans ahead, studies hard and is intellectual. Alex acts from her heart. She is good with socializing, improvising and thinking on her feet.

Or, to put it another way, Justin worries primarily about the long term, while Alex worries primarily about the short term. If something goes wrong, Alex bluffs her way through complications and buys Justin time to research a solution. Their personalities are very complementary, and when they work together, they are stronger than when they work separately. This make for a relationship that not only works, but is interesting to watch, since both characters can get their own moments in any given story.

This is why I don't think Alex and Mason is such a great couple. Mason and Alex are both similarly impulsive, and while he is a werewolf, which gives him some advantages over being a wizard... actually, being a wizard in this universe is vastly superior to being a werewolf. He doesn't contribute anything positive.

A large storytelling concern is that when unresolved tension finally gets resolved, there is no longer a source of tension to create plots around, which is why most couples don't get together until the end of a story. But, since Justin and Alex have to still deal with the fact that their relationship is incest, and with the wizard competition, there is still plenty to explore in their relationship even after all of the external enemies, and hiding magic from the world, and dealing with school and being teenagers.

Attachment Styles

Jerry: Yeah, about that. Why didn't you want to go on the vacation? You really like Juliet.

Justin: I know. It's just, I don't know, I've never been in a relationship this long, and going away on vacation with a girl and her family, it's, I mean, it's serious and it just feels like it's happening fast.

Let's talk about attachment theory for a minute here. If you're not familiar with it, a great primer can be found here. The short version is, attachment theory states that there are three main kinds of behavior people have with regards to relationships: secure, anxious, and avoidant. People with secure attachment styles are able to form relationships easily, and are comfortable with intimacy. Anxious people get worried that others don't value them, and therefore seek to be close to their partner; when in a relationship, they act clingy. People with avoidant attachment styles avoid intimacy, because they want to be independent and self-sufficient, or they are afraid others won't love them back or trust them.

Attachment styles don't dictate how good a relationship will be so much as how long it will last. When two people with anxious attachment styles get together, they tend to stay together even if they are unhappy with each other, since neither wants to be single. Eventually though, even unhappy couples of this type will split up, and the break ups are usually explosive. Two people with avoidant styles will just never get together in the first place, since they will both start looking to break up when things get serious. An anxious and avoidant couple will have a chase mechanic where one person keeps trying to make things serious, while the other runs away. And when someone is secure in the relationship, it will tend to last as long as it is healthy.

If you look at the four main Wizards characters for the romance plot (Justin, Alex, Juliet, and Mason), it explains their relationships really well, and makes things make a lot of sense.

Justin is avoidant; although he's seen dating a lot of different people, most of them only last for an episode, and the only relationship that he gets serious in is with Juliet. Also, even when he was with Juliet, he was worried that they were getting too serious too fast, which fits with fear of trusting new people.

Juliet is secure; she's been there, done that, got the t-shirt, only t-shirts hadn't been invented then, so it's more of a formal dress (though she got the t-shirt when she did it again in the seventies). She's not worried about how to act in a relationship, because she has so much life experience, that she's very comfortable with who she is.

Mason is anxious; he's very possessive, possibly because of the wolf part of him. He gets clingy and refuses to accept that he and Alex are broken up. He eats Dean when Dean threatens his (non-)relationship with Alex, he waits for her in the elevator, and shows up uninvited throughout the whole Apartment 13B saga.

Alex is also anxious; she has only two serious relationships in the show, and starts focusing more solely on her boyfriend, and less on the rest of her life when she is in a relationship. She gives up on the competition to focus on Mason, and then gets back in the competition when she finds out that she couldn't be with him if she lost.

And knowing this about the characters helps explain why Alex and Mason stay together despite having really good reasons to break up, since I don't think they work really well as a couple. Mason keeps doing horrible things, as if he has no self-control. He eats Dean when he thinks Dean might be interested in Alex, despite the fact that neither of them is dating Alex. He confesses his love for Juliet, who he had not seen for hundreds of years, upon first seeing her, while he was with Alex. But Alex is very forgiving of Mason; since she has an anxious attachment type, even if she is unhappy with their relationship, she would naturally gravitate back into it, since she would rather be in an unhappy relationship compared to being alone.

But attachment theory also helps explain why Justin and Alex work so well as a couple. Since Justin needs someone that he can trust, but is afraid to let anyone get too close, Alex is perfect for him. And since Alex needs someone that she trusts not to abandon her, which Justin has proved he won't do, he's perfect for her.

Options

Justin: You saved the world today.

Alex: You gave up a girl to protect it. Why do we have to keep dealing with stuff like this?

Justin: We're wizards. I don't think we have a choice.

Both Justin and Alex have dated several other people on the show. But Justin and Alex makes the most sense to me as a couple, not only because they just work together, for all the reasons stated above, but because none of the other people they try to pair them off with work anywhere near as well.

Most of the people they have been shown to be interested in are minor characters, girl/boyfriends of the week, who only show up for one or two episodes (There was Riley, Ronald Longcape Jr., Miranda, Kari, the centaur girl, and Isabella, for example; there may have been a few others, but you get the idea).

The only serious love interests they have had so far have been Juliet and Rosie for Justin, and Dean and Mason for Alex. However, Dean and Rosie were written more as temporary interests, than as endgame partners. Which leaves only Juliet and Mason.

Juliet actually worked really well as a love interest; she was competent and capable of handling herself, she complemented Justin really well, and she was aware of the wizarding world. But they wrote her out of the show, and, unlike Mason, she didn't come back until the very end of the series. Which means that she was only present in a small number of episodes, and only around for a relatively short time, which makes her relationship with Justin not as serious.

Mason and Alex just don't work really well as a couple though, for all the reasons I talked about before; he doesn't contribute anything to the relationship, and he reads as creepy and stalkery to me. And although he got back into the series much sooner than Juliet and was present in more episodes, he didn't show up until after Juliet in the beginning.

Actually, I would be okay with a Justin and Juliet endgame, but I still prefer Justin and Alex. And especially not if it meant a Mason and Alex endgame. And if Mason and Juliet are ruled out, that leaves only Justin and Alex as major canon characters who are interested in each other. Well, depending on your definition of interest. And my definition is pretty obvious.

Reasons Against

Justin: Are you alright?

Alex: No. He loved me.

Justin: And I found her. Only to lose her again.

Alex: Promise me we'll find normal people.

Justin: We're not normal people.

As many reasons as there are for Justin and Alex to be together, I have only seen two reasons against them as a couple. The first is that they are siblings, and therefore a relationship between them would be incest. And the second is that there is no direct canon evidence to support them as a couple.

As far as the second reason goes, there are two things to consider. First, there is an incest taboo and this is a Disney show, which is ~~unlikely~~ never going to air anything that could be controversial. So the second reason really is just a repeat of the first, and an ignoring of all the circumstantial evidence in the show. But, also, when have fans ever let something like not having canon evidence stop us from shipping a couple?

The concern about incestuous relationships is a little more serious. The incest taboo is near universal, and the primary, and most likely only, reason for it is because certain congenital defects are more likely to occur in children from couples that are closely related. Because of the high infant mortality rate and the prevalence of disease and war, in the past it was crucial to produce lots of children. However, those problems are a lot less important in today's society, which means that married couples have much less pressure to have children. Many couples choose to adopt instead of give birth, or not to have children at all, which are both acceptable now. Also? MAHJEEK. Everything else in this show has been handwaved away by the simple explanation of "oh, it's magic", why can them having kids not be handwaved away the same way?

And that's why I ship Justin and Alex. Because they have great chemistry, and that they work together really well as a couple in solving problems, and because the competing relationships just aren't as likely to work well, and because the only real reason not to ship them is that incest is taboo.

And the incest taboo loses a lot of its meaning when magic is loose in the world. Instead of being dangerous for future generations, Justin and Alex as a couple? Is just weird. Abnormal.

But then, some people just aren't normal.