GWEN COOPER META PLEEEASE, extra points if you discuss her role as torchwood’s coprotagonist!

burntlikethesun:

well tbh i would argue that gwen is the protagonist, much to the dismay of the anti_gwen_allies

like Rose, we see things very much through her eyes, and we discover the world of torchwood through her. despite us already being familiar with jack from S1 of DW, he is presented as a mystery to us in the first ep because we are going along with gwen and discovering things as she does.

i love gwen cooper so much. i like that she is the heart of the team, but she can still be selfish, manipulative, immature and make mistakes. i’m not a particular fan of the owen/adultery subplot (and because i saw S2 first it didn’t really influence my feelings towards gwen which were already solidly positive by the time i watched S1. and a large percentage of how much i love characters is down to how good their actor is and eve myles is fantastic and has a great range, so even if a character does shitty things i’ll still love them if it’s well played), but even that shows that she is fallible and human. for real, how many people would use a memory erasing pill if their partner found out they cheated on them? quite a lot i would say. you might not like it, but it’s realistic. i like that she’s allowed to be funny, actually properly funny, she cracks jokes and is generally a very positive person and can make light of a bad situation. i like that she’s allowed to be violent, that she can rock a huge bazooka, but still be a loving wife and mother and still care about people. she even has a little pair of protective ear muffs for when she’s shooting near anwen!

i like how she teaches the team, and jack in particular, to be less cold/methodical and think about the people they are affecting with their work. she makes them more human, but ironically as the show goes on she becomes more bitter and detached as the people she cares about are cruelly ripped away from her until it culminates in that scene in Miracle Day: 

_{Because you know what the worst thing is of all? Of all the shit we have seen, all the bloodshed, all the horror- do you know what is worse than all of that? I loved it. I bloody loved it. And I’d keep telling Rhys I was sorry, and I’d say to little Anwen I’m sorry. But I loved it so much.}

_{I knew things no one else knew and, oh, I felt so special. And when we lost people, it was so so big. And I could say it was worth it. ‘Cause the bigger it was, the more important I was. And the more people we lost, the more that meant I was a survivor and I was better than them.}