Justin/Alex

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Pairing
Pairing: Alex Russo x Justin Russo
Alternative name(s): Jalex, J/A
Gender category: Het, Incest
Fandom: Wizards of Waverly Place
Canonical?: no
Prevalence: popular
Archives:
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Alex/Justin is the popular incest het pairing of Alex Russo and Justin Russo in the Wizards of Waverly Place fandom.

Canon

As the two are siblings from a Disney Channel show, Alex and Justin are not romantically involved in canon. However, as many can attest to, they have a very close relationship. Although it's sometimes antagonistic, they are always there for each other in the end.

In an episode where everyone magically forgets who Justin is, their mother meets him again and (lacking any context) thinks they should date.

Theresa: Justin is a great catch. You should go out with him.

Alex: Gross.

Theresa: That's exactly how I felt about your father when I first met him, and now he's my big cuddly bug.

canon, 1x12 "Justin's Little Sister"

Fandom

The Justin/Alex pairing is by far the largest in the Wizards of Waverly Place fandom. At least 40-60% of the fanworks produced for the series feature the pairing.[1] Some works aren't always shippy, and often just gen works that focus on the two or implied subtext as the show does, while others represent unrequited love of one or the other. On Fanfiction.net, not everyone puts the "pairing" as Justin/Alex. Instead, some writers simply leave them as the "main characters", and may put "JustinAlex" or "Jalex" in the summaries - it's generally taken for granted if Justin & Alex are the main characters in the fic on FFN, it's in a shippy way.[2]

LiveJournal was another popular platform for Justin/Alex. While the LJ presence for the fandom was fairly small, the Justin/Alex fandom was fairly large - focused mainly on justin_alex community after the show had already been airing for over a year[3]. The two other Jalex related communities omgjustinalex and jalexified appeared in 2009 and 2011. YouTube was used for fanvids and "top moments" types of Justin/Alex videos.

In the wake of the LJ purging and the general fandom migration to Tumblr and the ending of the series in 2012, the Livejournal fandom has slowly became inactive with only a few posts here and there. For those that moved to Dreamwidth, only a few fics were posted, but only to a writer's individual blog, and although there is one ship blog, jalex, it is completely dead[4]. The Tumblr fandom for Justin/Alex besides a few posts and the tumblr blog FYeahJustinAlex, is only semi-active. On Tumblr, some fans often compared the relationship between Justin and Alex with those of Oliver and Thea from Arrow. Justin/Alex fans also have to share their "Jalex" tags with several other Jalexes[5] which makes it difficult to find stuff related to WOWP!Justin/Alex.

On Archive of Our Own, the pairing is the largest for the fandom[6], but overall the fandom is still small there, albeit growing every year. Despite that most of the fandom has moved on since the show's ending, even with the reunion TV movie in 2013, fanworks are still being produced as of 2020 on FFN, Tumblr and AO3. It's unknown how the show being fully available on Disney+ will affect the fandom. However, some initial excitement of the announcement of the inclusion of WOWP in Disney+ promotional video along with their use of the clip of Justin & Alex together on the magic carpet appeared[7].

Some of the earlier popular fanworks in the Jalex fandom has since been deleted, for example "Screw It" by ShortLILPunk[8] and "In Fire, In Ice" by moirariordan.

TV Tropes had a particular large page dedicated to Justin/Alex on their "Incest Yay" section before eventually shipping it off to Fetish Fuel Wiki. Despite the axe, the Wizards of Waverly Place and Radar sections still have a lot of Jalex related points.

The Movie

The movie garnered a lot viewers, and a lot of them were convinced of the Alex/Justin ship - so much so that a lot of them, including some who did not know they were siblings, thought they would kiss in the campfire scene. Despite the fact that the film and its events were never mentioned again in the canon, fans often have fanworks such as fanfiction, picspams, icons, or vids focused around it.

The What the Buck? review of the film is the perfect example to showcase how non-fandom people and non-shippers saw the relationship in the movie. This review was so popular in the fandom that it eventually landed in the hands of David Henrie (aka Justin), who watched it and, amused, posted on his Twitter.[9]

Jalex & TPTB

Much like Life With Derek and its Derek/Casey fandom, the popularity of Justin/Alex grew so much that it was found out by TPTB and Disney. However, unlike the creator of LWD, the WOWP creator Todd J. Greenwald seemed more amused by it. For example, in a Twitter live chat with him:

Oh my gosh, we got a Jalex question. Are Justin and Alex going to end up together? (Laugh) They're brother and sister, PEOPLE.

Todd J. Greenwald[10]

Fans of Jalex were very happy with this, despite the denial of them getting together. For one, they appreciate that Greenwald recognized the pairing name. For another, he seemed more amused about it than disgusted or disappointed. In addition, the various quotes, subtext and potential shippy scenes as described by TV Tropes and their ship manifesto led some to believe the perceived subtext was intentional.

Many fans suspected that Disney Channel did not share Greenwald's amusement. They suspected that storylines of seasons three and four resulted from Disney Channel's disapproval of Jalex-- particularly those reuniting Justin and Alex with their "true loves" of Juliet and Mason. This storyline occurred despite the fact that Juliet and Mason had been previously been portrayed as "gone forever". This led someone on the crew[11] to quit the show in Seasons 3/4, over creative differences/tensions. Fans were particularly disappointed with these episodes and seasons for lack of Justin/Alex moments. The second film didn't even have Justin, which disappointed a lot of fans in general, though others believed that David Henrie had valid reasons for not doing it. Instead, the second film had Mason and thus more Alex/Mason scenes, much to the disappointment of Jalex fans.

Common Tropes & Fanon

  • Episode Tags/Season tags are fairly popular in Jalex related fanworks, especially if they focused on the Justin/Alex centric-episodes. While this more often appeared in the early seasons of the series, rewrites/fix-its often appeared for Season 3 and 4, often to fix Disney's influences of the lack of Justin & Alex together moments. (For example Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger starts in S3 canon and then grows from there.)
  • Alternate Universes are very common for fanworks, especially those fans that are/were not okay with incest and thus often create different scenarios where Justin and Alex were no longer siblings. Some consider the degree of canon divergence in Jalex (an incest ship) to make all Jalex fic "AU".
  • Spells/Potions Go Wrong is very popular trope, which due to the amount of canon backs it up (Magic often goes wrong on the series). Often Alex or Max are the reasons the spell/potions go wrong, though Justin is not immune to it. Some examples include: Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered and Tactile Reasoning.
    • Magic in general is popular element to get the two together or admit their feelings for each other.
    • Clonecest since it's canon in the series of Alex making doubles of herself, it's also appeared in a few fics where both she and Justin have some fun with their doubles together. (Compromise at omgjustinalex)
  • Futurefics often appeared as well, usually set in a setting where they are secretly married or are together. Sometimes they even have kids, but this is shown less often. Before the reveal of Alex making a double of Justin and sending him off to college, many used the College as a way to get the two to admit their feelings. Angst is fairly common in these times of fics, however there are some happy endings.
    • Someone Finds Out About Them, while generally it is Harper or Max, Justin and Alex's parents often play a role in these types of works. Depending on the fic, it could be played for angst/drama, but sometimes humor and ended with it being ok. (Example: Eyes Open, They Complete One Another)
    • Family Wizard Competition related type works were also fairly common, most of them dealt with idea of the Family Wizard being either Justin or Alex - others often had Max win (Example: make straight the paths that crooked lie). Since adoption/not related fics often used this as a way to get them both to be full wizards, it's not uncommon to find works were both get to keep their powers. This is later canonized at the end of the series since Alex wins the competition and Justin was given Professor Crumbs' powers.
  • Pre-canon stories were often gen, with little to no shipping side indicated since the works often had to deal with younger versions of Justin and Alex. Other times they appear inside a fic focused on the present time/future (Example: Her Everything).
  • Unrequited Love often appeared, mostly as a form to represent one or both of Justin and Alex's feelings. Often the reasoning was a secret due to fact that its incest, they think the other does not feel the same, and/or how others would react to it. (Example: Principles, although a WIP, it remains a very good example of Justin dealing with his feelings for Alex)
  • Holiday fics where Justin/Alex appear fairly often to get together or spend time together, while it's mostly Christmas, other holidays such as Halloween also happen.

Fanworks

Fanfiction

In Fire, In Ice by moirariordanLength: 25k
Mortals find out about magic, and a witch hunt begins.
Never Kill A Boy On The First Date by amathelaFandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer FusionDate: March 26, 2010Length: 23k
In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer. In this case, she's Alex Russo - one girl in all the world born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil, blah blah blah. She also might be kind of falling in love with her brother. But first, she has an apocalypse to avert.
OTP by Save vs. MagicDate: March 22, 2011–June 21, 2012Length: 66kGenre: Metafic
With Charmed and Dangerousset to become a movie, Alex is shocked to discover the books based on her life are wildly popular. Even more shocking is what some fans are reading between the lines. And most disturbing of all? Justin might be one! (set in Season 3/Post Movie)
Dark Side of Today by lonewondersloveDate: April 25, 2011Length: 26k
A deadly virus outbreak decimates the Wizard World and sweeps through the mortal world, killing those with magic and turning mortals into monsters. Justin and Alex will need to find strength in each other if they and their small band of friends are to survive. “The world might be ending, but all I need is you.”
reach out and touch someone [4] by omensDate: Oct 20, 2009Length: 4k
“Careful, Justin; that almost sounds like ‘what are you wearing territory?’ there.”
Further Adventures At WizTech [5] by amathelaDate: 18 Sep 2009–8 Oct 2009Length: 10k
When Alex becomes suspicious of a new teacher at WizTech, she pulls Justin into trouble right alongside her.

Fanart

Manips

Meta

Archives & Fannish Links

LiveJournal

Tumblr

Resources

References

  1. ^ Crack Van's Small Fandom Overview (2011-12-01) says 60 while the Ship Manifesto stated 40.
  2. ^ Using FFN's fandom search Justin & Alex finds 1.2k, while Justin x Alex finds 32 works. This is largely due to the fact that the "pairing" search feature is still fairly new and thus a lot of the older works do not have it. Before that, the "main characters" features was new and thus not everyone used it.
  3. ^ As of August 24, 2016, the Justin_alex community has 608 posts and over 5.3k comments.
  4. ^ jalex, the DW community was created in July 2009, however as of August 2016, no posts.
  5. ^ Jalex/Justin x Alex/Alex x Justin tags on Tumblr
  6. ^ As of August 24, 2016, there were 100 works on AO3 out of 159 that were Alex/Justin. By January 1, 2020, on AO3 there are 115 Alex/Justin works out of 214 WOWP works
  7. ^ (Screenshot of Justin & Alex riding the magic carpet) Coincidentally it was THIS EPISODE was the first WOWP episode I had ever seen. & Initial Post announcing WOWP will be on Disney+
  8. ^ [1]/[2]/[3] search requests at justin_alex.
  9. ^ "@DavidHenrie". Archived from the original on Jan 24, 2021.
  10. ^ "TODD J GREENWALD LIVE CHAT!! (OMG)". Archived from the original on Jan 24, 2021.
  11. ^ I cannot remember who at this moment.
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