#thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk at length. about. moral orel. i love you anon.

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i’ve been following you for a while and i love your blog! got a question however: i see you blogging moral orel and i’ve never seen it but from what i’ve read on wikipedia, how would you compare the bad dad to bnha’s bad dads. is he fit to join the club. looking at him gives me afo vibes somehow.

eyyyyy thanks for following and keeping up !! you're a trooper. anyways clay puppington is way way worse than the bnha bad dads. like easy clear. one of the best characters! but definitely the worst dad.

moral orel primer

The thing about Moral Orel is that it's an edgy-ish mid 2000s satire about hypocritical fundamentalist Protestant environments and how badly one eager and god-loving kid can be lead to misinterpret the bible. It's got that irreverent humour. Skip the episode "God's Xhef" if you ever watch it. To set up my point, one of the running gags for the series is that at the result of Orel's shenanigans is Clay taking Orel to his study to belt him. And then his pants fall down! haha.

The series then takes a swerve, starting from the first season Christmas episode and leading into the third season, for a darker, more character-driven narrative. It delves more into the citizens of Moralton, the impact that their Christian environment has on them and their relationships with each other, and bits of history to understand how they turned out the way they did, etc

One of the characters most impacted here is Clay. While he's always been the second-most prominent character after Orel himself, and their relationship is central to the story, it's with this new take on the story that Clay really becomes the deuteragonist of the series. He becomes that much more fascinating a character, and his treatment of Orel and his family becomes that much more vile. Sadly the third season is cut short, reportedly after execs saw a particularly dark episode (not Orel or Clay related!) and thought. hm. that wasn't funny.

I lay that all out to explain that while Moral Orel starts off as a pretty silly, shock-value cartoon about how weird Christians are, it also depicts a lot of serious subject matters, and the treatment of that is much more frank and realistic and difficult as the series progresses.

So while he becomes a much more developed character that the audience can understand, Clay's abusive behaviour loses a lot of that wink-wink satirical irony. He's also CRAZY pathetic.

also it's got the mountain goats! that's how i first found moral orel!

how comparable is it to bnha?

First things first, I do think there are largely interesting things to say about how BNHA depicts abuse, despite the downhill trend of writing in the third act that I complain about all the time. I don't think every aspect is perfect, but it's like. I do think there's more positive to say there than how other stories depict abuse. There's actually lots that I love about what the series does, or think that it could do were it not hobbled by things and stuff.

Ultimately, there isn't really a bulletproof way of comparing fictional abusive situations to another, because respective to real life you can't compare one abusive situation against the other.

But one can compare things like the genre and structure of a story, who the intended audience is, what the production of the story is like, how much time and focus can be devoted to certain subjects and what the actual focus is meant to be, etc etc.

Moral Orel can pull together different elements of abuse, like the suffocating environment of Christian fundamentalism, the abuse of a self-destructive alcoholic, the neglect that comes from mutually disaffected and inept parents, the generational nature of abuse, so on and so forth in a sincere way. Meanwhile BNHA, as a weekly serialized shonen battle manga whose creator has become increasingly rundown, has Things To Say, but doesn't necessarily have the same capacity to devote its power to those things. Abuse is vital to the themes of BNHA, but it's not the center of it the way it is for Moral Orel.

So when Clay does his thing, stripped of the fantastical couching of BNHA's bad dads, it just feels more real and it feels worse as a result.

anyways.

clay SMASH bnha's bad dad club

Never a question that Clay is a worse dad than Enji lmao. However one feels about Endeavour's arc, or how well-written or 'deserved' it is, or how successful and genuine Enji is in his efforts, at the very least he's realised that he's done wrong and wants to atone for it, while also grappling with the fact that there may be no way for him to do that. spoilers but clay shan't do this. you get flickers that he has regrets, but he'll NEVER change baby.

I guess Clay gets a one-up where his marriage with Bloberta is mutually destructive, harmful, and toxic in comparison to Enji unambiguously abusing Rei though. so failmarriage win.

Kotarou is actually similar to Clay though! Lots to say, to compare and contrast. I'm actually kind of obsessed, especially because what I said about Clay being more realistic also applies to Kotarou - Kotarou just gets less screentime. They're both deeply affected by their childhood and relationships with their own parents in ways they take it out on their children (the "explained but not excused" idea behind fictional depictions of generational abuse). They also project an image of the upper(?)-middle class family man and Patriarch of the household, either to make up for the failings of their childhood or because it's what expected of them as a man in their world. (Wee bit of conjecture on Kotarou's part but I think it has solid grounding.)

But there's also significant differences. Physical abuse is normalized as corporal between Clay and Orel, on top of the emotional abuse, manipulation, and neglect. Kotarou's abuse of Tenko is largely emotional, with the big slap implied to be the first time that abuse manifested as physical and a line crossed for the rest of the family. And while I'm sure some people would debate this, the idea that Kotarou promised Nao a home full of joy feels genuine. He did want that, the happy family full of smiles he lost as a kid, only for his own resentment to poison everything when Tenko can't obey the rules Kotarou created and enforced to achieve it. Clay, on the other hand, like. There's bits of him implying he loves his family but doesn't have the means to show or act on it, but when he has a whole speech about the sacrifices he makes for his family, family never rings as more than an obligation that he has to put up with for the appearance of manhood.

And Shigaraki can have xyz feelings about his dad forever, but he accepts and espouses the one true lesson Kotarou taught him, that heroes can't do shit all. His father was always a scary and domineering figure, but it feels like while he will never forgive him, Shigaraki does understand him more as an adult. Meanwhile, Orel tries as hard as he can to honour thy father until he can't anymore.

Again, I think that Clay and Kotarou are probably most comparable in terms of being the Bad Dad with some similar hang-ups and relationships to their kids, but part of what makes Kotarou interesting is that we don't know what he would have done had Tenko's quirk not triggered how and when it did. With his family finally willing to push back against him and himself feeling regret for hitting Tenko, could he have changed? We don't know! But much like I said when talking about Enji, Clay's never going to change.

All For One has become more of a cartoon villain that I am determined to turn into a dress up doll for my own amusement than a bad dad and is more evil guardian or whatever. BUT there's one thing that I almost forgot about when I was first writing this up, but realised is actually soooo interesting.

There's a lot to say about AFO and Clay being the primary "teacher" to Shigaraki and Orel! I that while AFO does influence Shigaraki's villainous ideals, he also lets society and Shigaraki's experiences speak for themselves. And frankly, Shigaraki has a lot of leeway and agency in evolving his ideals through his own experiences, particularly after AFO's incarceration. He sees AFO for what he is, probably has for a long time, and is determined to establish his own identity outside of AFO regardless of what Shigaraki has learned from him. Clay is much more strict and obvious about imposing his worldview on his son, but while Orel is desperate for his dad's approval and love and can be led to do things that feel wrong for that love, Orel never absorbs those lessons the way that Clay wants him to, and separating himself from his father and come to terms with what Clay has done is a much more difficult process.

but mostly i just think that clay could do this

and afo could do this

beautiful world.