![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI saw on tumblr someone talking about Owen Harper and how he is a good doctor (yes) and his bedside manner is surprisingly effective (yes) and tuned to specific patients (yep)
and that is a sign he is, deep down, a Good Person.
... no?
I mean, the entire framework of thought that comes up with that conclusion is, from here, big nope.
There are no good people or bad people, only people.
People are free willed and can choose to do anything any time ever.
You cannot see signs of which ones are safe, because they never can be, while free willed.
And Owen Harper specifically? Owen? Who was introduced with the spray of no consent? Who straight up murdered his boss?
Yes his boss is the only guy in his world who can come back and forgive him for that, but, like,
in order to get to 'secretly a Good Person'
how the fuck much do you have to ignore?
Owen is, like all of Torchwood, *messy*.
They have all done some Things in their time.
And yet they dedicate their lives to saving other people.
That's what makes Torchwood compelling, it doesn't collapse down to Good People and Bad People, just... people. Who we care about, empathise with, can see where they're coming from and what pain is driving them... and really need to notice that the shit they do is still in fact shit.
I mean the tumblr post included bits from the audios, and in the audios Owen accidentally kills a little old lady and then uses Torchwood to cover it up. Which he can do. Because the only thing stopping any Torchwood agent from using their Torchwood powers like disappearing corpses and rewriting the evidence and straight up mindwiping people is other Torchwood agents. And they were probably all asleep.
I'm not going to start discourse on tumblr because the format is ill suited to it and I'm not going to go on someone's post about their favourite character to harsh their squee but like...
I believe if you watch Torchwood and believe that the protagonists are the Good Guys?
You are watching an entirely different show than the one I saw.
Torchwood do a lot of bad things on both an official and personal basis,
and that's what makes the story fascinating.
All of that power and they're so bloody human.
and that is a sign he is, deep down, a Good Person.
... no?
I mean, the entire framework of thought that comes up with that conclusion is, from here, big nope.
There are no good people or bad people, only people.
People are free willed and can choose to do anything any time ever.
You cannot see signs of which ones are safe, because they never can be, while free willed.
And Owen Harper specifically? Owen? Who was introduced with the spray of no consent? Who straight up murdered his boss?
Yes his boss is the only guy in his world who can come back and forgive him for that, but, like,
in order to get to 'secretly a Good Person'
how the fuck much do you have to ignore?
Owen is, like all of Torchwood, *messy*.
They have all done some Things in their time.
And yet they dedicate their lives to saving other people.
That's what makes Torchwood compelling, it doesn't collapse down to Good People and Bad People, just... people. Who we care about, empathise with, can see where they're coming from and what pain is driving them... and really need to notice that the shit they do is still in fact shit.
I mean the tumblr post included bits from the audios, and in the audios Owen accidentally kills a little old lady and then uses Torchwood to cover it up. Which he can do. Because the only thing stopping any Torchwood agent from using their Torchwood powers like disappearing corpses and rewriting the evidence and straight up mindwiping people is other Torchwood agents. And they were probably all asleep.
I'm not going to start discourse on tumblr because the format is ill suited to it and I'm not going to go on someone's post about their favourite character to harsh their squee but like...
I believe if you watch Torchwood and believe that the protagonists are the Good Guys?
You are watching an entirely different show than the one I saw.
Torchwood do a lot of bad things on both an official and personal basis,
and that's what makes the story fascinating.
All of that power and they're so bloody human.