#while hes driven by desire to outdo ratchet i dont think it was his primary concern on delphi or even luna 1

[elfelt-valentine]

you will regret this /j

generally my attitude has changed a lot for the way fandom goes about characters i care about (i just don't engage and stay in my lane), but even then i still want to see others create and fill in the gaps in the story, especially of a character like Pharma and hellhole like Delphi, and what still disappoints me is that many people see his manic state and just......... start applying it to him as his personality as-is. i cannot stand his portrayal as being willing partner of tarn, i cannot stand him being portrayed as a self-assured villain when even in text it gets pretty obvious that he really, really wasn't.

the thing with mtmte as a story is that it is interested in telling the reader that nothing is black and white (even though it still fails sometimes imo- including the case with Pharma), and extremes to which the characters personalities are warped by fandom is not Pharma-only issue. It's not even a tf fandom specific issue.

Pharma in no way is a good person. Not in a "evil" way, but in a way that he's not perfect by large margin, and the entire story with Pharma and Delphi was more of a mild horror story to me than anything else. Because we see not just the villain reveal and hint at the actual evil behind it, we see characters we're supposed to like act inappropriately (How Ratchet Got His Hands Back)

Pharma was a victim. Does it make what he did right or excusable? Of course not. But it is a clear decline in his character where he just gets worse as he gets less and less freedom in actions and agency. He's a "control freak". Of course he was going to go nuts.

We have no reason to believe he would've acted any way discriminatory (something i see very often.... take is not as offensive considering ratchets internalized functionistic views but it gets kind of ridiculous sometimes), offensive or somehow belittling people around him. For all we know he was not that different from Ratchet - just more uptight and controlling. There's so much more to be said about what their friendship was. But i swear it was not worth it if Pharma was always an ignorant, insufferable cunt.

Its not even that i dont enjoy jokes and lighthearted treatment of characters wrongs but not when its their entire portrayal and personality.

I'm not going to ask or force people to view him the exact same way i do (it is also pretty much a headcanon! we dont know enough about him prior to the events at delphi or luna 1! im just making my own conclusions!), but i also wish his character was taken more seriously. he's not a murderer for sake of murder, he's a professional who was forced into the lose-lose situation where he made wrong choices. he's not a soldier, or a strategist, he's not particularly smart, he just wanted survival and be able to continue doing his job after having done something so horrible. and after it didnt work out? what else did he have to lose? he continued falling and ratchet didnt help it at all.

genuinely cannot talk about the way pharma is treated by fandom without coming off as fun hating loser but its boiling. its boiling so hard