Pharma is the toxic gay representation MTMTE/LL needed. Dude's so fucking gay for Ratchet that his gayness transcended having his head blown off and having his body be used as a vessel for a god, that's how fucking GAY Pharma is

Ratchet expresses more Functionist beliefs on-screen than Pharma ever does send tweet

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

It's hilarious to me that someone actually asked/JRO actually confirmed via word of god that Tarn tortured Pharma while he was at Delphi bc like. Fucking yeah??? How else do you think Pharma went from "for most of his life, he was a good doctor" to stark raving mad? What else did people think Tarn, fanatical Decepticon who leads a group of professional murderers, would do to Pharma, Autobot stationed on DJD territory, to make him comply with the deal?

I get that sometimes people just want confirmation from the author for them to go "no yeah your theories are right" but on the other hand I don't understand asking for word of god confirmation on things that are obviously canon if you just think about it for a little bit

With all due respect IDW Megatron is the kind of dad that would go out to get cigarettes and then never see his kids again considering that's what he did to all of the Decepticons leaving on the Lost Light + he groomed Tarn into worshipping him as a mentor/authority figure and then basically stopped caring about him.

One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).

And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?

Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.

Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.

And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.

Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP

Could he really?

Are you really, really sure Pharma could have just run away or asked to be transferred?

Is it really that easy to stand up to the DJD?

It's almost as if Delphi being on the same planet as the DJD's base (something that was common knowledge and that Prowl didn't care about when stationing Pharma and an ex-Decepticon ward manager right next to them) means that there was no escape from the DJD.

It's almost as if isolating victims and keeping them from calling them for help is explicitly part of the DJD's modus operandi.

It's almost as if psychological warfare is just as much of a weapon in Tarn's hands as physical torture/killing is.

It's almost as if being a victim of the DJD is considered a fate worse than death.

Kind of weird how it is that in the same issue that the DJD are established as a terrifying threat, the same issue where Drift is compassionately asked if he's scared of being so close to the DJD, is the same issue where Pharma gets framed as a selfish madman for doing what he thought he had to to survive.

Dying of the Light came about 30 issues too late to vindicate Pharma and make it understandable why he did what he did. But even so, it's still really annoying how Pharma is the one and only victim of the DJD who gets called selfish and cowardly for doing what he thought was his only option to escape blackmail or death.

No one on the Lost Light, much less Ratchet himself, had any problem with considering Drift to be "on their side" even after millions of years as a member of the mass murdering Decepticons. And Ratchet had plenty of compassion to spare for Drift to ask him if he was scared of the DJD. Absolutely no sympathy to be had for Pharma, though; he's just a terrible doctor and Autobot who deserved everything that came to him. Murdering patients was just because he was an organ harvester working for the DJD, not because everyone at Delphi (including an ex-Decepticon who would be on the DJD's list) and himself was under threat of death by horrific torture.

Honestly I don't even think the unfortunate implications/unfairness were intended, at this point I just think that Pharma was simply intended to be a "mad doctor" character trope + token evil villain Autobot to add variety to the rogues gallery so like. The fact that the characters treat him like shit was just meant to be a narrative signal "look how much this guy sucks and is just so evil not even the good guy Autobots like him."

When Optimus in Chaos Theory said "Hatred may sustain you, but it diminishes me. I am lessened by it." that was so fucking deep of him

MegOP + StarBee is so fucking funny as a concept of happening in the same universe like. Double date/family dinner night where Optimus is silently sighing wondering where one of his best Autobots picked up STARSCREAM of all people (he may or may not notice the irony of his own choice in mechs), Megatron is clenching his fists under the table and gritting his teeth because he fucking hates Starscream but he respects the hell out of Bumblebee for convincing him to turn good. It’s the most awkwardly cordial dinner ever in which the only person who’s happy (and by happy I mean smug) is Starscream giving the biggest shit-eating grin across the table at both Megatron and Optimus.

The reason this fandom hates IDW Optimus isn't because he's a cop (plenty of people are fine with Prowl) or because he's a bastard (most characters in IDW are) but because he commits the crime of being an actual person who's messy, flawed, and makes a shitload of high stakes mistakes fitting for the intense situations and pressure he's put under constantly.

But we can't have Optimus actually react to his situations by lashing out or being unpleasant, no, he has to have the personality of a cardboard cutout of G1 whose only defining personality traits are "dad, funny, nice," and if he ever vents negative emotions it can only ever be #relatable depression or him being sad on his own without ever letting it show during the important parts of the story. If Optimus dares do things like be angry or frustrated or bitter it's just a sign that he's a bastard and LITERALLY the worst Optimus ever. If Optimus ever makes mistakes or does wrong things in the heat of anger/frustration/stress it's because he's just an evil bastard with no redeeming traits.

God forbid Optimus go through an unending gauntlet of war, politics, atrocities, near-complete loneliness, and a seemingly endless cycle of violence for his entire life and come out of it kind of bitter, angry, and tired of dealing with people's shit. He's not allowed to be a realistic person, context doesn't matter, sympathy doesnt matter. IDW Optimus doesn't fulfill the fandom's fantasies of Father Figure or Perfect Cultural Icon or Twinky Fucktoy and since that's the only reason most people care about Optimus in general, the fandom collectively trashes on IDW OP.

All because he can't fit into the overly simplified and childlike double standard the fandom has where if any other character is messy and flawed, that's good writing and interesting and compelling, but if OPTIMUS is messy and flawed, he's Literally The Worst and he's an asshole for no other reason than He Sucks, context be damned

Chaos Theory is a must-read for megop fans and especially anyone who wants to write IDW MegOP (or IDW Megatron/Optimus separately) because the amount of bitching between these two is so fucking funny

"So. How are we going to play this?"

"What is this, a summit meeting?"

"I know you better than anyone else, and it terrifies you."

"What terrifies me, if you must know, is the sheer monotony of it all."

"But no, that doesn't explain you. Not entirely. Not to my satisfaction."

"Shut up. I don't have time to spar. This is the last time we speak."

"As some sort of palliative for a crippling inferiority complex."

It's mostly with regards to Optimus' dialogue, as I find that most fics of Optimus tend to portray him as "softer" (as in not having this kind of rude banter he has with Megatron).

These old men being bitches to each other is so top tier and I'm not sure I've even captured it in my own fics

Anyone passing by have tips for getting better at art (and importantly, feeling good about making art) that aren't just "keep practicing"? Like idk some sort of actionable exercise I can do and go "oh yeah this helped" or memorable advice quote to motivate me? Just some way to like, measure my progress in drawing to get through the slog of "drawing until you get good"?

Like idk, as a metaphor, if someone said "I want to get fit" then "exercise every day" would be accurate/true advice, but not really helpful? What kind of exercise? Cardio, weight-lifting? High or low impact? Individual sport or team sport? Exercise that requires equipment (a machine, weights, poles, etc) or stuff you can do with just your body?

Basically I need the equivalent of that. Specific, actionable drawing tips that are something I can check off like a list to feel like I achieved something. Instead of a vague "just keep drawing and one day you'll be good/feel like you're good at art"

If Megatron was on Earth in Optimus' team during the Galvatron debacle

Optimus: *rips off Galvatron's head*

Soundwave, Arcee, etc.: *gaping at Optimus committing this act of violence*

Megatron: *breathing heavily* "Oh no Optimus that's horrible you need to uh" *clears throat* "I mean you're not supposed to commit war crimes that's" *bites his lower lip* "I mean it's cool that you killed a fascist but you know, ethics and all" *pressing his legs together*

Lest ye forget that Pharma literally got his head blown off and died, had his body possessed by a god, and was still able to fight said god for control long enough for that god to get distracted enough to be killed (and for Pharma to sadly die alongside him RIP)

Alternate version:

Having late night angst Pharma thoughts and I think besides wanting to write a scene where Pharma lashes out in anger, and scenes where he does his crazy evil doctor persona to keep pretending he doesn't care, I also do want that scenario to eventually include peeling Pharma open emotionally somehow to get him to actually say his real emotions with no pretense

I'm not sure what scenario would lead to that or what would be an in character way for Pharma to express his grievances. Out of all the things he's angry/upset about which one hurts the most? Getting betrayed by Ratchet? None of the other Autobots caring about him either? Being made to murder people and possibly never getting to be a doctor again as a result?

Canon focuses mostly on the thing with Ratchet but I do think a Pharma centric scenario should delve deeper. After all even if Pharma is in love with Ratchet, it's boring and bad writing if EVERYTHING revolves around Ratchet and Pharma doesn't have thoughts/feelings about other things

So again, idk how it would be voiced in character or what scenario could lead to it, but I'd like to somehow see Pharma stripped down to the actual agonizing hurt and grief that you could read into his actions like.....

Ratchet left him alone to go to Delphi, then abandoned him again after Delphi and didn't even bother looking for his body after presuming him dead. If that's how Ratchet treated him after a lifetime of friendship, did he ever actually care about Pharma?

Is it any wonder that all the other Autobots left him for dead and treated him like a monster if not even Pharma's own best friend cared about him or was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt?

If Ratchet tries to patch things up, is he doing it because he actually cares or just to assuage his own guilty conscience? If he said he was sorry, would Pharma believe it/would it make him feel any better, or is it too little too late?

Why is it that Pharma's endless fate is to be left alone, facing down torture and coercion, alone, with no one who's his friend and barely anyone who even thinks he's tolerable/doesn't outright hate him?

(In a post-LL/Pharma doesn't die scenario) What is it about Pharma that makes him so despicable but people (especially Ratchet) are willing to tolerate and even befriend people like Drift or Megatron who did things as bad or worse? (No hate to them this is just a 'what if' angle of Pharma coming into this scenario)

Bc on one hand not giving a shit and being arrogant are valid parts of Pharma's character, but on the other hand there's a good amount of canon evidence implying that Pharma wasn't always Like That and even evidence that his crazy doctor thing was an act he was putting on. So why not write something about Pharma getting to voice insecurity, loneliness, betrayal, etc?

The thing about Prowl is I don't really think canon was ever trying to frame him as a "necessary evil" or anything along the lines of "he's a shitty person but his work was necessary" like mmm.... That feels very much like something Prowl wants to believe about himself, not something that's actually factually true in reality.

I can't really make a good argument about it because I only remember like a handful of standout Prowl Moments in IDW1 but like... Prowl dropping a bomb on a neutral city and blaming it on the Decepticons is not "a necessary evil," that's a war crime. Prowl trying to destroy the space bridge to Caminus to keep Starscream from getting power over it, dooming the entire planet and its inhabitants to extinction by starvation, is not "a necessary evil," it's a fucking war crime. I feel like trying to frame such drastic measures as him "doing the dirty work of the Autobots" feels way too much like an excuse for actions that actually aren't justifiable. Especially since Prowl himself is far from being the 100% rational guy he thinks he is, considering how often he bases his decisions on things like his anti-Decepticon bias and his general refusal to follow any orders that contradict what he thinks is The Right Thing To Do (TM).

But also I think this is kind of the fault of the narrative of IDW1, since very few Autobots besides Prowl are given the chance to actually be morally gray even when the worldbuilding implicates them in some very morally gray things. Like, for example, JRO adding in the existence of MTOs which implies that the normally squeaky-clean leader Optimus was willing to approve the creation of new soldiers just to throw them into combat (and even the attempts to humanize the MTOs by giving them "an education" were eventually cut down to nothing but combat optimizations). And there's also the fact that Optimus knows about the Wreckers and has been known to call them on missions at least once (Stormbringer), meaning he's very much aware of the Wreckers and their tactics and is willing to call them in for fights when it's necessary.

I don't think you need to use Prowl as a crutch to make the Autobots morally gray. I think the Autobot leadership (or at least, Optimus, since few people besides him or Prowl seem to have major tactical command over the army as a whole) is plenty morally gray enough on its own, because the nature of war is inherently morally gray no matter how righteous your cause is. Reducing the lives of your own people into numbers on maps, harvesting resources, bringing MTOs to life just to die in a war they practically have no stake in, those things are enough.

And tbh it kind of bothers me when people try to saddle Prowl with the "dirty work of the Autobots", not just because it frames Prowl's blatantly evil actions as some sort of savior act taking the blame from the rest of the Autobots (which isn't even accurate, because the blame for war crimes falls on the entire army as an institution rather than one person), but because it downplays the moral grayness of the Autobots and pretends that no Autobot BESIDES Prowl ever participated in morally gray actions, which simply isn't true.

TLDR: Prowl isn't as much of a hero as he thinks he is because committing atrocities in the name of your cause doesn't change the fact that they're atrocities (and may not have even been justified). However, painting Prowl as the "token evil teammate" of sorts also places too much blame for the atrocities of war on him in particular, when in reality that's a burden shared by Optimus Prime and any other members of the Autobot military command structure.