Theon is not a good guy even in a relative sense, he's just been victimized by someone more cruel/cunning.
He is a good guy in a relative sense. He also has the potential for redemption, unlike some of the flatter pure evil characters. Other than that, I agree with you. That's why I put "good guys" in quotes. He is good relative to Ramsay.
What is the good guy part? He betrayed the Starks.
I didn't say he was good - I said he was better than Ramsay. And he's redeemable. His dad shipped him off as a child to become the hostage/ward of his enemy. That's pretty mumped up. Everything he did at Winterfell was an effort to prove himself worthy to his POS dad.
Just because Ramsay is cruel does not make him worse than Theon. Ramsay's treatment of Theon does not change Theon's history, it may make him pitiable, but there is not much evidence that he is better than Ramsay.
In the GOT moral universe he is not better than Ramsay because he is a coward (Greyjoy/Iron Isles paradigm), not loyal (Stark/Greyjoy paradigm), and not tough/resilient (Bolton/GOT in general).
Ramsay has done a lot of evil things, but they have mostly been in service of carving out his slice of life. Even when it was pure cruelty, it served to bolster his house's reputation. (flayed man sigil) He has not betrayed his father. Ramsay is an evil, ruthless sadist but how could you possibly think that Theon betraying both his family's core beliefs and then repeatedly betraying the House that he was fostered with are more excusable than Ramsay's excesses?
Theon is weak and so he suffers. On it goes.
