#ratchet fucking leaves pharma dropped in a pit but did take the liberty of taking his hands to replace his own

[lord-squiggletits]

Hostage not in the sense that he/Delphi were physically captured or held under duress, but more accurately described as blackmail: the deal with Tarn, according to Pharma, was explicitly that Pharma would deliver t-cogs and in return the DJD would allow Delphi and everyone in it to continue standing. So it was a literal "do it or we'll kill you" kind of danger that was even worse because Delphi is described as a 'small, obscure little facility on the edge of DJD territory.' So even if they attempted to weather a full on attack, it's unlikely that they would be able to hold off the DJD simply because Delphi is that small, under-supported, and forgotten. I mean, the entire medical staff is literally just three people to support a mine that supposedly has soldiers constantly fighting over it in a stalemate.

We can easily assume Pharma didn't want to do it given that the entire premise of the deal was "t-cogs or we kill all of you," and up until that point (only shown in flashbacks in later issues) Pharma was by all reasonable standards an ethical doctor, and an exceptionally genius one as well, AND was friends with Ratchet and next in line to be CMO. So in terms of personality, behavior, work ethic, skill, and connections, every single sign points to the fact that Pharma was a perfectly normal, non-violent and non-malpracticing doctor.

Canon doesn't really say that Pharma developed a mad doctor personality to cope with the trauma, but everyone in fandom takes that as canon pretty much because nothing else makes sense. Normal doctor -> T-cog deal happens -> Crazy doctor = We can assume that the blackmail deal of being forced to let patients die and then outright kill them probably had something to do with Pharma going fucking nuts. (Plus in fanon a lot of people point out that Pharma looks like he's displaying signs of mental illness, YMMV which one depending on the person.)

And yeah, Pharma does get labeled as a bad person for being a victim of blackmail and torture. It's not like the narrative doesn't establish how horrible the DJD are until later issues; literally in the same issues (4-5) that the Delphi arc happens, we hear gossip from the Autobots that say 1. Apparently just seeing the DJD kill someone can be incredibly traumatizing in the long-term 2. Decepticons would rather die of their wounds than be treated by an Autobot doctor out of fear of being labeled a traitor by the DJD and 3. After Pharma has his freak out moment and shoots/runs, Drift literally tells Ratchet that if Pharma is working with the DJD and they're coming, he wants Ratchet to kill him before they can get to him.

Not even getting into all the issues AFTER the Delphi arc where the DJD only get more and more obscene, overpowered, and terrifying, and every single other time the handiwork of the DJD attacking Autobots is shown, it's stuff like alt-Rewind being a whimpering mess and people going "shhh it's okay" to him or Skids going "the DJD are so powerful and sadistic, can you imagine what it would've been like to be here when this happened?"

But Pharma? No, he's just a mad doctor who made the t-cog deal because he's selfish and only wanted to spare his reputation 🙄 clearly the reason he got trapped in a do-or-die blackmail deal is because he was always secretly a bad person or had something mentally wrong with him (fanon). Or, in terms of canon, "Welp it sucks that Pharma went crazy and started killing patients, he used to be such a good doctor it's such a shame" (never once acknowledges that Pharma didn't just "go insane" randomly and what he did was a direct result of threats of torture/probably actually being tortured).

Unfriendly reminder that out of all the victims of the DJD Pharma is literally the only one who's victim-blamed for not fighting back/calling for help/running when it was obviously impossible for him to do so + is the only one whose traumatic behavior/symptoms are framed as a reason why he's evil and deserves abandonment/death. Because he's also the ONLY victim of the DJD whose trauma manifests as lashing out and behaving erratically/aggressively, because there's no easier way to victim-blame than to pick a victim whose trauma response is ugly and scary and creepy and not uwu tragic sad traumatized