#i dont think all of his grief over tara that’s shown is fake tho

[lesbiradshaw]

what do you think about the whole “theo was evil before the doctors” theory?

hmmm. i wouldn’t call it a “theory” since the show pretty explicitly states the doctors wanted him because of his muted sense of right and wrong but i think there’s a differentiation to be made between the human concept of evil and the standard of evil that the dread doctors uphold. because if every angry, impulsive child that was eager to please is ‘evil’ or comparable to a monster, what are we supposed to consider the doctors? i don’t agree w the characterization of what was done to theo as anything other than torture tho because even besides the dubiousness that comes with him having been so young when he was taken, the doctors are quite literally inhumane to him— because THEY are at this point inhuman. the morality of brainwashing a child (no matter how easy it was/how willing a participant said child was supposed to have been) doesn’t mean shit to them, so explaining theo’s trauma in those terms is kinda pointless to me. even if we consider child theo “evil”, the evil of the doctors is on another level. not even teenage theo really scratches the surface of that. it’s not just the manipulation or the degradation. it’s the apathy for pain and the dismissal of human life— child or adult. all of their experiments are disposable to them. the tactics used to get theo or their other subjects in their clutches become irrelevant as soon as they have them strapped to that table. the fact we see theo’s body being cut open without any anesthesia and his later rant about physical pain basically meaning nothing to him shows that pretty clearly. theo, even after all of his years with the doctors, still clings to what are really weaknesses in human nature. jealousy, anger, fear, loneliness. those are things the doctors have long since forgotten about as they pursue their goal, but things that theo can’t seem to weed out of himself. he’s called barely human because of the brutal things he’s willing to do and while i think that’s accurate in a sense, i also think that it’s tragic that theo’s main motivators are at the end of the day very human flaws.