Hello tumblr user Dratchma what are your thoughts on Dratchma
i think there's a lot to say about drift and ratchet's difference in morality first—drift is someone who is now fixated on pursuing ideals and wanting to develop himself, and ratchet is someone who hasn't been afforded the means to do much moral reflection beyond his innate compassion until pretty recently. the war was transformative for drift and yet it made ratchet a bit stagnant
(that is to say, i don't believe idw ratchet is someone who gets himself hung up over whether he did the right thing, so much as he's deeply compassionate and constantly worried if he did Enough. he is a very talented mildly egocentric selfless person, as oxymoronic as that sounds, and it's hard for him to not blame himself for everything. he wants to help and save lives, but he struggles with letting others take responsibility)
inserting pharma into this dynamic, especially post-canon, is really fun imo because pharma's entire story throughout mtmte is marked by an absence of the autonomy drift and ratchet both possess. whether he's moralistic like drift or pragmatic and decisive like ratchet, we might not have a full grasp on, because he seldom makes decisions in his right mind/without duress in mtmte
but we do know he's arrogant and ambitious and (by word of mouth in a JRO q&a) much less skeptical than ratchet. i think a lot of the interest there then comes from the fact that he and ratchet have a very complicated, multifaceted relationship (they both care about each other in some way. is it rivalry? friendship? romantic? something else? has it changed? what did it used to be?) that has lasted for millions of years before the war
and likewise he and drift have an interesting dynamic, because drift is where pharma is not. drift (despite how unhealthy his guilt is) is someone who understands why he did what he did as a decepticon and is actively working to better himself. he's a little better regulated now (mind you he isn't Completely, but he's good at faking it) and pharma could use the perspective of someone who's admitted to having done wrong
ratchma is a ship i LOVE but dratchma is appealing because drift really feels like the bridge between ratchet (a skeptic who pharma hurt personally via torture on luna-1) and pharma (a mentally ill, arrogant person struggling to move on from "yes i did those things lol anyway")
i don't think drift would ever initially be kind to pharma in a post-canon setting, but i do think some part of him would Get it, even if he didn't start off thinking pharma wanted to change. drift and pharma's dynamic would end up being a lot steadier than the crests/troughs of ratchet and pharma's, because they don't have much history beyond "you're not a good person, but someone cares about you, and now that you're in a safer place, maybe i'd better myself by helping someone else"
pharma's dynamic with ratchet will also always be a little catty and competitive, so having someone they both don't fight with nearly as much (like drift) around is good for both of them. drift and ratchet can playfully argue and it's a good reminder that pharma and ratchet may fight now, but it's not meant to be vitriolic
and ratchet may never feel exactly the same way for pharma that pharma feels for him, and ratchet may also never be able to erase the fact that pharma took advantage of his capture to torture him and kill the people he cared about, but ratchet himself isn't without flaws and i think a lot of his relationship with drift has been a movement away from "instinctual reaction to someone who was dangerous" towards "what do i want this to be?"
it's a little bittersweet that pharma and ratchet will always have struggles there (ratchet and his regrets and his trauma, pharma and his resentment) but the overarching message of dratchet is that you have to Try, and in a post-canon setting where he survives i think pharma would fit in very nicely
