what made u ship jaydante?
oh god where do i even begin?
well the short and simple is that i tend to gravitate towards rarepairs/crackpairs in general for maximum shitpost potential. jay and dante have very few interactions but they were enough to grab my attention. their dynamic is "complete dumbass" and "guy who is also a dumbass but pretends to be above it."
dante in the series tends to have to be the one who deals with everyone's bullshit. not to say he isn't capable of causing some of this shit himself but he usually has to play the voice of reason. which would definitely contrast with jay's irrationality and openly impulsive behaviour. the idea of jay causing so much chaos and dante trying to get him to stop is really funny and cute to me.
but to get into the thick of it i think jay and dante have some personality traits and character arcs (more apparent for dante) where i think they mirror/clash with one another in interesting ways. like so much so i wish it was explored a little bit.
(clarification that the next section is purely my own perception and opinion do not take this as gospel or extremely canon-adjacent. i also know that i may be wrong on some of the information provided so PLEASE CORRECT ME!)
when it comes to wanting intimacy and relationships, i think the both of them struggle immensely with surface level attraction. the difference being that dante pretends to be above this impulsive want. compared to jay who is pretty honest about this to himself and it's pretty clear that he operates on his own terms openly.
dante is always desperately chasing for women who are unavailable and abandons the relationships that seem the more stable in favour of trying to chase the unattainable. in the first clerks movie, his relationship conflicts with caitlin bree and veronica lougrahn. veronica is his more stable relationship at the beginning of the film and pushes him to try and go to college with her, inciting change in his life. but dante can't help but be hung up on caitlin and still cling onto the past through his infatuation with her and also shows how he yearns for what he can't have. especially with the knowledge of her getting married. he's like pathetically desperate for her despite, again, having a stable-ish relationship currently.
in the second movie it covers a similar plot where this time he’s the one stuck in a marriage with emma when he’s got his sights on another woman, becky, who is unavailable in the sense of her not believing in marriage. and views relationships superficially. yet he still pursues becky anyway.
i admittedly haven't watched every movie that jay and silent bob have featured in during the time i am writing this but my general understanding of jay is that he veerryyy open about what he wants, which is sexual gratification from various women. though unlike dante, he does not hide this fact about himself. in fact he proclaims shit like he'll "fuck anything that moves." he never hides his shallowness, or at least doesn't seem ashamed of it.
i recap on all of this to show the contrast between jay and dante and to propose my more serious interpretation of their relationship:
dante being stuck in a repressed slump with both having to grapple with his hypothetical homosexuality and having to deal with the fact that jay just isn't THAT emotionally available. not in the sense that jay is cold and unemotional (quite the opposite) but rather he can't take their relationship seriously in a mature matter. which should be idle for a serial cheater like dante (shots fiirredd) but again, dante still wants that serious intimate emotional connection. (shown with his desire to actually get married and settle with becky.) but that would be something very difficult with jay. especially since jay just tends to do whatever he wants whenever he wants, including people.
so tldr; dante would be fixated on jay in the sense that he's something he can't have. both because of their shared gender (it's own can of worms) but because he could never really have a relationship with jay in an emotionally mature way. just like how he couldn't have one with caitlin and becky.
