#oooooh boy theo raeken u live rent free in my cranium

[theroyalsavage]

heyoo!! sorry this is kind of an annoying ask so feel free to ignore but I loved all your thiam fics and they characterizations you have for everyone especially theo is so spot on and perfect so I was wondering if you could do a character analysis on any of them?

hi anon!! thanks so much for your kind words! i’m 99% sure this unhinged rant is not what you were hoping for but bestie my professors chose violence this week and my brain is made of soup so please. bon appetit

i really think the thing that's so compelling to me about theo is how fundamentally his character arc captures the themes of change and redemption that are at the center of teen wolf's dna as a show.

pretty much as soon as his betrayal is revealed in 5a, theo's framed as a figure whose very survival has itself become a selfish act. tara's heart is an obvious and visceral symbol of what he's taken from others in order to survive, but her death is also a direct parallel to what he does to tracy and josh, and what he tries to do with scott. like corey and mason and the rest of the chimeras, theo is a victim of the dread doctors - perhaps even more so. he was a child, taken from his family, raised in an unloving and unsympathetic environment for almost ten full years. as a result, his primary defense mechanism has become a twisted sort of ambition. gain more power, and no one can hurt me. gain a pack, and i won't be alone anymore. become an alpha, and i’ll never feel helpless again.

in 6a, after he's brought back from superhell (rip), theo immediately declares himself to be the same person he was before he was sent away. joke’s on him, though, because within three episodes he’s actively sacrificing his life for someone for the first time that we're aware of. when he throws liam into the elevator and stays to hold off the wild hunt, there is absolutely no reason to believe he’s getting out of there alive. nobody else has up to this point. s5 theo wanted liam to kill scott - kill his alpha and his friend, scarring himself permanently in the process - so that theo could kill liam and gain both of their power. s6 theo, unprompted, makes the choice to put his own self-preservation on the backburner in order to give liam the chance to survive another day. setup, meet payoff.

i really think a lesser show might've killed him there - redemption complete, a selfish existence thrown on its head and then ended. when it’s not doing the Absolute Most, though, teen wolf actually kind of slaps really hard. so instead, we get s6e10 the wolves of war (complimentary). this episode is a mess and i understand why people have issues with it, but i'm a wolves of war apologist just because of theo's final scene in the hospital. that shit is such immaculate character work. i cannot shut up about it. s6e10 tells us that what theo needed to be redeemed was never to die for someone - it's to fight with someone, to live with someone, to reframe existence and life and growth in terms of support and mutual benefit instead of selfishness. theo’s able to take gabe's pain, in the end, because he's no longer putting his own self-preservation first. but he doesn't need to die to prove that - instead, he fights at liam's side, and eases gabe's pain as he dies, and proves his survival does not have to be a selfish act.

theo proves the point scott’s been making for the whole fuckin show. he's not only capable of change, but he does it - and he does it because he decides to. because he finds something - someone - worth fighting for. it doesn't erase the things he's done, but it does recontextualize them. i believe that in life we do the best we can with what we're given. theo was given tara's heart and a chimera's body and then - finally - liam's outstretched hand. good is a verb, not an adjective. theo is redeemed because he's given the opportunity to, and because he actively seizes that opportunity.

theo raeken is when dove cameron said “so you wanna talk about power? / well, let me show you power.” and when mitski said “open up your heart like the gates of hell / you stay soft, get beaten. / only natural to harden up.” and when khalid said “sister, sister, please know that i’m sorry; / i wish you could’ve stopped me.” and when mary oliver said “you do not have to be good... / you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” and when rina sawayama said “i’m trying to be normal / but trauma is immortal... / i don’t wanna be a monster anymore.” and when silas denver melvin said “you are not as damned as you think you are.”

#anons #oooooh boy theo raeken u live rent free in my cranium #he's like a marble inside the pringles can that is my skull and the universe is shaking it vigorously #i didn't even mention this but cody christian is fuckin phenomenal in this role. he did what he had to do he gave what he had to give. #i got a lot of shit to say about liam too but like. i've subjected you to enough here #sorry this is absolutely unhinged and also if this isn't want you had in mind anon dsfjghgk i have 400 pages of reading for this week #if i see another acronym my brain is going to implode on itself