MuonNeutrino wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 6:20 am
Honestly, I've never quite understood a lot of the more sympathetic takes Clovis gets. I can't say I anticipated this
exact action of his, but I definitely didn't expect him to let Roan's words go unpunished, and this is exactly the
sort of thing I would have expected of him all along.
He's a villain, and a vile one. He always has been. In his very first appearance back in TDM he first threatens to throw Natani to his guild to be gang-raped if they don't get the mask, and then outright admits to the viewers that he still fully intends to do so even after they succeed - unless he decides to take 'her' as a sex slave himself. And remember, he
created the link and knows what it did to Natani's mind, and still has zero hesitation about doing those things. It never even crosses his mind to care. As far as he's concerned, once Natani completes the mission for him, he's nothing more than a convenient hole to fill. He even muses about how he
enjoys breaking victims that try to fight back. Other people aren't
people to him, they're things, whose only value is to be used for his profit or enjoyment. And having spent the last 5 years stewing in his malice, fuming and blaming Natani, Zen, and Nora in particular and the entire female half of Mekkan in general for his problems, is not going to have made him any
less hateful and self-centered (as
his refsheet notes). He starts his current run in the comic by sending Carver after Zen, and through Carver explicitly threatens Zen in a way that makes it very clear that he's still out to 'get' Natani in some way that involves his sexuality - and given that the *last* thing he had planned for Natani was to have him gang-raped or become a sex slave (after Natani had completed the mission for him!) I very highly doubt that after 5 years of blaming Natani for his fall he's got anything *more* merciful planned. And Carver -- who's shown he knows at least some of what Clovis wants and has in mind -- is quick to jump on the chance to also grab Raine for his boss's use, and given what we know of Clovis' plans for Natani I don't think we could expect Raine to have a nice time in his hands either. And then he shows himself to be perfectly willing to sell his services
to the kill-them-all-let-the-masks-sort-them-out Templar to exacerbate a bloody war and has no qualms about doing so involving the personal, hands-on massacre of hundreds of innocent people. He's a misogynistic, self-centered, cruel, greedy, sadistic, abusive, and amoral slaver, rapist, and murderer who enjoys inflicting pain and suffering and lives in a fantasy world of cardboard cutout people that exist only to serve his needs. He's not a nice person, nor a remotely sympathetic one.
The only even remotely positive qualities he's shown have been a modest degree of physical courage and concern of some sort for Brutus, and those are a pretty thin reed to set against all the rest of his vile characterization. And the way that all of the other members of his guild that we've actually seen on screen have, in their brief moments in the spotlight, made a point of narrating for us that they don't think Clovis cares about anyone but himself (and maybe Brutus), isn't exactly subtle. I think it's been too easy to forget that the sketches are a) non-canon, and b) dictated by the viewers, and that the portrayal of Clovis in those sketches has very little bearing on his actual character. And I think this might be at least in part Tom's way of reminding us of that. Clovis is not a good person, he's not supposed to be sympathetic, and we probably shouldn't be looking for those qualities in him. Not every villain needs to have a good side. Not every villain needs to have a tragic backstory, redeeming qualities, or the potential for redemption. There are some people who really are just like that. Not all, certainly, and it definitely would be a mistake to have *all* the villains in one's story be like that, but they are out there, and sometimes they should show up. Sometimes a story just needs a unsympathetic hateful villain for the audience to cheer when he gets a knife in the back.