speaking of branzy having power and control in his relationship with clown, i think where people go wrong with clownzy is they dont know what that looks like, and if you take clownzy in a vacuum you aren't ever going to find the answer, because branzy never abuses the power he has in his relationship with clown.
branzy's power in this relationship is the same as it is in any other relationship: he is observant, calculating, and exploitative. perfect example: trapping rekrap. theres a reason parrot came to branzy with this challenge. despite being a friend and teammate of rek's parrot never came anywhere near as close to succeeding as branzy did. branzy is not just close friends with rek, hes someone who knows how to observe others and note down behaviors, habits, strengths, and weaknesses. you cant brute force rekrap into a generic trap, and branzy knows this, so he uses his observations to tailor traps for rek that exploit his paranoia and work with it rather than against it. his entire video about reconciling with rekrap is a showcase of branzy showing this skill off! every one of the traps he made exploited the habits rek had that kept him safe from falling into other peoples traps. it was branzy spending that whole time ith rek saying "see how easily i can hurt you? arent i such a good guy because i dont?"
to take this back to clownzy, the entire reason clown teamed up with branzy is because he needed branzy to cover his weaknesses regarding redstone. their teamup was the result of clown falling into two other people's traps. hes putting a LOT on the line by letting branzy close to him, because hes basically giving branzy the key to destroying him. branzy is close enough to clown to know exactly how to exploit his nature and his weaknesses to kill him. or worse. hes smart enough to figure out a trap that would work on him. if he really wanted to betray clown he could have at any point, and theres a good chance he could have succeeded, too. the reason clown is constantly purposefully intimidating branzy is beacuse he knows branzy has the power to destroy him now, and he has to remind branzy of why that is a very bad idea. he has to assert his control of the situation. its clown saying you could kill me, but i could kill you worse.
and furthermore its not even the intimidation that keeps branzy from betraying him–well, not in the way youd think, anyway. because branzy is not afraid of risk. he got himself down to four hearts in the cleansing assisting his team even though clown explicitly told him to hide and protect himself. hes clearly not afraid of dying! no, the reason it works is because branzys a freak thats into it. he likes it when clown threatens him. and he GOT OUT. he wasnt teamed with clown in season 4 or 5, but he still gravitated to him anyway, because he missed that dynamic. he likes it when clown threatens him! and he likes it because its proof that clown considers him enough of a threat that he needs to keep him in line. because he doesnt make those kinds of threats with other weak players. he just kills them. and that power trip is a helluva drug.