Would he have been a good dad if he had never started drinking

Bloberta ruined him. He wanted to be a pastor.

>>86548480

Ding ding ding.

If she never entered his life he may have grown up to be, if not happy, then at least successful and well off.

>>86548469
He was pretty ok until that bitch Bloberta.

>>86548469
No. He killed his mom when he was a kid with a ketchup bottle and a gun. He was always a bad person.

>>86548518
Fuck you dad!

>>86548493
His relationship with his father didn't help. It reinforced his fucked up association between love and abuse.

Bloberta totally ruined him, though.

>>86548480
Shit opinion. If you want evidence, boco agrees with him, which is never a good sign.

>>86548531

True, but at least his dad eventually realized his mistake and felt remorse. Doubt you can say the same for Bloberta.

>>86548544
I don't recall him ever expressing that remorse to Clay, though. He mainly expressed his remorse through his positive relationship with Orel. It puts him in a better light but that still doesn't absolve him of responsibility for what Clay became.

>>86548518
I don't think he ever intended to kill her, he was pretty mad yes but he did love her.

That said it was a malicious prank and definitely hinted at what he could've (did) become if nothing changed.

>>86548616
>I don't think he ever intended to kill her
Well, obviously.

I think his skewed moral upbringing is what led him to his becoming a bad dad. I remember his mom always having an excuse and making it a commandment as if God himself as saying it to him. He took that made it his own and practiced it with his own kids. He was and tried to be a good person but his God complex and alcoholism just kept bringing him down.

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Just for the Clay sympathizers, I compiled a list of his good deeds throughout the series:

>Gave his mom a heart attack
>Beat his son on a regular basis, gave him a backwards moral guide and worldview for the early parts of the series
>Shoots him in the leg in season 2, lets him bleed out for a solid day then lies about it to his friends
>Killed a guy's dog
>Ran over and presumably killed an old lady in the Halloween episode
>Cheated on his wife on several occasions, proceeds to complain about bastard child
>Overally just a horrible person that drinks, acts apathetically and/or abusive to his family, and has caused several major catastrophes throughout the series

The guy's straight-up Dracula and yet you guys will defend him, anyways. /co/ has become the new /tv/.

>>86548784
No one here is saying anything he did was ok faggot. We're looking at the circumstances that lead him to be the shitty person that he is. Quit being a retard.

>>86548817
The circumstances didn't do shit. He was a bad person because he did bad things, not because of his upbringing or failed marriage or whatever.

Take responsibility for once in your life.

>>86548784
Nobody here is a Clay apologist. The discussion is just about what was the key factor in his life that turned him into such a horrible person.

>>86548827
Him cheating was something based on his upbringing, his mother smothered him and then his father disowned him causing him to be desperate for attention and seeking it out in any way possible. A lot of the other stuff like shooting Oral was just him though.

>>86548827
Quit being an obtuse idiot. People don't live and grow up in vacuums. We're all products of our environment. Does that mean he's not a bad person? No. Does that mean he does that mean he doesn't hold responsibility for the bad shit he does? No.

>>86548851
How is him cheating in any way linked to his upbringing? You aren't Freud, anon, the dots don't always connect.

>>86548827
That's an incredibly limited interpretation of the character, especially one who's had his backstory as extensively explained as Clay. It's obvious that, while he's been a shit since childhood, he wasn't born a terrible person. His mom spoiled him, his father abused him due to his causing her death and he married a woman who facilitated his shitty behavior through alcoholism. Clay is a fucking monster and his actions are his responsibility that no amount of trauma can justify but those traumas need to be taken into account when analyzing the motivation behind his behavior.

>>86548867
He was pampered by his mom and acted like a little dick to his dad, at one point even WANTING him to hit him. His childhood was far from a factor.

>>86548874
>he wasn't born a terrible person

I never claimed that. I said he was the outcome of his choices.

>>86548915
>His childhood was far from a factor.
>spoiled by mother
>abuse by father
>doesn't affect how children turn out.
So, yes, you are an idiot.

>>86548915
He acted like a little dick to his dad because that was the only way his dad would pay attention to him, which he was desperate for because his mom pampered him and so he was used to getting lots of attention.

>>86548949
It affects, but it doesn't determine the outcome.

I don't even get the point of this thread. If it's just to analyze the psyche of a character without justifying their actions, then why even talk about it?

>>86548915
I agree but you're weighing his choices as a child the same as those he made as an adult which is just ridiculous. The behavior and interpersonal relationships he had as a child directly affected how he interacted with people as an adult. Every terrible reaches a point where they are directly responsible for their actions, regardless of motivation, but a lot of the shitty things Clay did were when he was a child and incapable of properly understanding concepts like empathy and consequence. To ignore this fact is just absurd.

Pinning the person he became on Bloberta is pretty horrid. Bloberta wanted a husband, and tried to turn him into her father with horrible results, but at the end of it all Clay chose to walk down the aisle with her despite not loving her. Bloberta, meanwhile, was who she was because of the way her family treated her and the associations she made as a result of it--part of what she becomes is equally a result of the way Clay acts and behaves.

They were both damaged people who had a number done on them by their parents, who then went on to further ruin each other. At the end of the day though, nobody forced Clay to be terrible to his son, and nobody made Bloberta simply not care about her children to the point of not even noticing when one of them gets switched.

You can know where people come from, have sympathy or empathy for that, but still recognize that they're responsible for their own actions.

Clay's drinking wasn't his problem--Clay himself was. The second he began drinking and gained the confidence that comes from alcohol, the second he began neglecting and snubbing the one person who'd attempted to reach out to him.

It's sad, but it's sort of the point. He's human, and a lot of things happened over the course of his life to make him into what he is.

>>86548982
Because it's enjoyable to analyze the motivations of well written characters, you autist.

>>86548982
>It affects, but it doesn't determine the outcome.
Nigga I didn't say anything determined anything but how his upbringing and people around him 'affected' him is worth looking at.

>If it's just to analyze the psyche of a character without justifying their actions, then why even talk about it?
Sense when has analysis been solely about justification? The fuck are you on?

>>86548982
I don't think anyone is trying to justify his behaviour but it is fun to try and understand it.

For me Clay is one of the most down to earth, human antagonists I can recall in recent memory, especially when you look at the villains coming from some of the big studios and notice how shallow their character is in relation.

Even though in the end I think most of us ended up despising Clay for who he was I still felt bad for him. While, yes a lot of his choices were his own he was shaped by his upbringing and the people in his life. Those who served as a gateway to his poor behaviour like his dad or Bloberta as well as those who encouraged him to continue like Stopframe encouraging his alcoholism long past he realized it was adding to his misery.

Not everything has to be justified but sometimes it helps simply to understand.

>>86549280
Plus, he serves as a really fantastic contrast to Orel and really highlights the fact that Orel is, by nature, an incredibly kind person. The fact that, after all of that, he still maintains a relationship with Clay as an adult is amazing.

>>86548982
>>86548982

I think what this anon means is that Orel experienced much of the same trauma that Clay did but his strong moral fiber allowed him to power through it and grow up into a mostly good person.

Even if it was his shitty upbringin that destroyed Clay's life, its still part of his personal blame how he reacted to it and allowed it to shape his life.

>>86548480
This.

No clue why people blame just Clay for how he turned out. By all rights he was a normal and decent young man until he met Bloberta.
She never loved him, and started him down his path of addiction.

>>86549873
He had his grandfather's love and he tried to look out for him. Probably something he wanted to do with clay.

>>86550205
>tfw we'll never get the season where Clay's dad comes back to town and he tries to mend bridges with his son
>tfw we won't get the episodes that show Blocky and Shapey becoming better because of each other
>tfw we will never get Moralton series
>tfw it ended too soon

>>86548544
She's just as messed up as Clay though.

>>86548870
Him cheating with the librarian is literally him looking for a motherly relationship.

>>86550627
Oh man I remember that he was looking for attention anywhere what an episode I think it's why he had those gay feelings for the coach guy too.

>>86548992
Don't forget that Clay is aware of what a good father is, he just refuses to be it. He admits such in the bar

Bloberta has no positive female role model and never has, she literally sees Clay as the problem because she did everything her society says a wife should do.

>>86548493
>well off
>pastor
No

>>86550672
I think he meant well off like better off than he was now just hating his own life. Not financially

>>86550644
With either of the people he cheated with, he was looking for parental affection.

That's part of why he rejects the coach at a certain point. His relationship with his father was horrible, so it was far easier to leave him. By contrast, with the librarian he had 0 responsibilities and all the positives just like with his mother.

Just like with his father, once he lost his motherly affection he went back to the father figure for love, and was similarly rejected.

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I think the alcoholism may be what ultimately makes him a bad person, but his upbringing isn't what makes him a bad person and I think that's the point of the Morel/Clay relationship. Clay raises Orel in the same fucked up way he was raised because he wants to prove that his own upbringing is what made him such a piece of shit. He begins to resent Orel by the end of the series because he realizes it's not working, Orel is just a good kid while Clay is just a piece of shit.