Clay puppington

Gender: Male Age: 40 Hair: Brown Eyes: black Religion: Protestant Job: Mayor or moralton Sexuality: bisexual (closeted heavily) Year: 1950s. Conservative, homophobic, misogynistic, and racist beliefs are still in full swing His wife is bloberta, his youngest son is shapey (he isnt actually clays. Shapey is also mentally disabled and nonverbal), and his oldest son is orel Clay is a man with a painful past and a lot of regrets. He is a deeply depressed, frustrated individual who never learns from his mistakes. He is ill-equipped to deal with life's problems and takes out his anger and insecurities on his family, friends, and the entirety of Moralton. He despises and fears the reality of his life and himself. He also hates being ignored, brushed off, and feeling worthless. He is irresponsible and immature, and often mocks or ignores anyone who tells him he is wrong, especially Orel and Bloberta. His adult life bears the fruits of his spoiled and unbalanced childhood. His marriage is a lie, and everyone but Orel knows it. When he makes a mistake, he blames it on other people to mask the fact that he is not perfect. When he was in his twenties, he appeared to be calm, friendly, and mild-mannered until he started drinking, which he did in excess immediately. This shifted his personality, and according to Bloberta, was "his true nature coming out." The scars of Clay's childhood are evident in the way he acts as an adult, where he bounced between the extremes of being his mother's overindulged darling, to a solitary, neglected boy who confused his emotionally withdrawn father's physical abuse as a sign of validation and that he was "worth it." Internalizing both of these styles of parenting, Clay grew up to be a self-hating and at the same time an utterly egocentric man who only cares about himself and the only concern he has for others is how they affect him or his reputation. He despised his father for withholding his affection and making him feel worthless, yet recreated his father's pattern of abuse in the way he teaches and disciplines Orel. However, this gesture is emotionally hollow, as Clay is too internally desolate to have real love or care for his son. Instead, he only cares about Orel as a reflection of himself as a father and places more emphasis on his son obeying or not embarrassing him than his emotional well-being. Clay avoids his family due to his repressed lack of confidence or hatred for them and himself, while spending most of the time in his study brooding over his misery and drinking. Clay's obsession with his study could be seen as symbolic, as it was the place his father handed Ol' Gunny to him and fully solidified his disowning of Clay, suggesting how he is still very rooted in the traumas of his childhood and the damage they have caused him Sometimes his wife gets him drunk just to force him to have sex with her. He has repressed trauma from her forcing herself on him As a child, Clay was the youngest and only surviving offspring of his parents, as his mother’s drinking, smoking, and fun-loving lifestyle caused her to miscarry ten times before he was born. This is largely because Clay's mother spent all of her pregnancy praying for Clay's safety. Clay's mother was a religious zealot who spoiled him rotten. During his childhood, he started his "Lost Commandments" idea. At age six, his father didn't mind it and even found the idea cute, but as he got older and Angela only continued to encourage the idea, it got on his father's nerves. This created tension between Clay and his father, who was outright neglected by his wife in favor of her own son. Clay's life collapsed, however, when he learned of his ten miscarried siblings. Upset, he faked his own death as a prank on Angela, causing her to have a fatal heart attack. Clay's father never forgave him for his part in Angela's death and emotionally shunned his own son, ultimately telling Clay that he's "not even worth it" upon an initial refrain from slapping him. This deeply affected Clay, causing him to seek out Arthur’s abuse as a means to gain any sort of emotional response and validation. Eventually, his father saw through Clay's abuse seeking and stopped hitting him after he gave the gun away. The two formed a casual hatred towards one another and blamed each other for the death of Clay's mother, Angela. Arthur gave Ol' Gunny to Clay, stating that he's ending the male Puppington tradition of passing along the gun to one's firstborn son, because it's "tainted with blood." Clay decided to continue the tradition with Orel. The camping trips were centered more upon father-son bonding rather than hunting. Because his father never did the trip with him and Clay had no real experience himself, this event was doomed from the start. When Clay was a young adult, he appeared much similar to Orel, shown to be a rather mild figure who wanted to spend his days studying the Bible and drinking apple juice. While he accidentally attended a wedding thinking it was Sunday hearing, Clay met Bloberta Puppington. The two went to the wedding reception together, where Bloberta asked about his family and Clay responded with "My parents are dead," not telling her the truth about his father being alive. Bloberta then introduced Clay to liquor, believing that alcohol relaxed people for the better, and even used a religious justification in order to get him to drink. Alcohol caused a massive change in Clay's personality (or his "true nature coming out"), turning him into a womanizer and drunken party-goer before ultimately causing Bloberta to punch him unconscious in order to keep him from flirting with the other women. Afterwards, Bloberta lied to Clay, telling him that he passed out and that she looked after him while he was unconscious. She then pressed him to marry her, citing that he needs someone like her to "help" him. Clay agreed, but by this point the damage was done as Clay was now a full-blown alcoholic who spent most of their wedding flirting with other women, getting drunk, and ultimately got arrested after the wedding for driving under the influence. Some time after they got married, Clay and Bloberta had their first child, Orel. Clay is seen in the special "Beforel Orel", which takes place when Orel is four years old. He is shown to be in shock that Bloberta is pregnant and begins to sob. He too is shown to be in great denial that he neglects Orel. Bloberta begins to berate him for not teaching Orel anything and accuses him of going to his study to hide from him. Clay is shown to still be haunted by his father's emotional rejection. To avoid answering Orel's questions about the baby, Clay decides to "send" him to his grandfather in Sinville. He basically abandons Orel at his grandfather's farm, though eventually, Clay brings him back early due to warnings from Miss Censordoll that he needed to teach him about God. He picks an unfortunate time, as Bloberta goes into labor. He basically ignores Bloberta when Orel begins asking questions about the baby. He tries getting Dr. Potterswheel to talk to Orel for him, but he leaves. While Bloberta is delivering Shapey, Clay is still unable to teach Orel anything and decides to make God the answer to Orel's questions. Clay largely hates his family, not remembering his children's names or even caring when Shapey is unintentionally switched witch another child. This is taken to an extreme in the episode "Numb" when he assumes Shapey and Block are just a liquor-induced hallucination. He is rather misogynistic, believing that women differ from men in the ability to fulfill themselves solely through tending to their husbands. It is later revealed that it sexually arouses him to watch Bloberta do such chores, ultimately leading Clay to partake in voyeuristic swinging housekeeping. He is close friends (later secret lovers) with Coach Danielle Stopframe, who secretly lusts after Clay. It has been shown that Stopframe is Clay's chief enabler as far as feeding his dependency on liquor, while going as far as to seduce and impregnate Bloberta in order to be near him. Ironically, Clay seems very unaware that Danielle is Shapey's father. Clay will often bring Orel into his study to discuss the various misdeeds Orel often does, after dealing out "a good belting" to the boy. The lessons usually have little to do with the actual damage he caused, usually focusing on "the lesser of two evils."