Hi! I reading your es au concept so far and I heavily fw them!! I wish hasbro l hired you— /j all joke aside I really want know your take on ratchet and sparkplug’s relationship more cause I never thought or seen of this couple before until now👀
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Omg hi! Thank you! For the record it's an au I am working on with my sibling @thatonefunanon and a lot of the ideas for it come from them as well it's just that I'm the one posting. As for Ratchet and Sparkplug, we decided on it since we love the G1 cartoon so much and Earthspark is very Legacy of G1, what with many of the transformer cast's designs, alt modes, and the show's humour. Most of all it's because of the G1-style segment in the premiere when Alex is explaining the transformers war-- there are a couple shots where you can see Spike and Sparkplug, Spike especially gets a much more obvious camo vvv
So since the Witwickys (and by extension Carly and Chip) are implied to exist in the Earthspark timeline, we decided to incorporate them into our ideas for the pre-s1 events timeline and lore for our au. Which pretty much immediately resulted in Sparkplug and Ratchet old man yaoi. We figure since the Witwicky's ARE mechanics in G1 and we actually do specifically see Sparkplug helping Ratchet and Wheeljack in a mechanic-medic capacity, we figured for our AU it would make sense for them to bond and grow closer. Their relationship evolved into a deep romantic one pretty quickly and it was mainly Ratchet and Sparkplug who built their new repair bay in the town in '93-4, where they then lived together. They considered themselves basically informally married by that point and Ratchet was pretty firmly part of the family.
I imagine their romance was very tender and wholesome, and they shared a deep emotional bond. As the Autobot CMO during a war Ratchet was deeply affected by the constant deaths of his fellow autobots and carried a really heavy burden, one which Sparkplug helped take on and they were a major source of comfort and support for each other during the final years of the war. They were both also huge role models for Daniel growing up and both were very involved in helping to raise him since the whole family lived together at the repair bay. Every memory Ratchet has of these years is a precious one.
I AM sorry to say though that as of the show's Present Day, Sparkplug did pass away a few years ago :( Heart failure. If Spike was 14 when the Autobots arrived on Earth in 1984 as in G1, then he was born in 1970, and if Sparkplug was around 30 when Spike was born (which is what we believe) then he would have been in his 70's when he died in 2017, which IS a good, long time to live esp for a working class man who spent many decades of his life doing hard, manual labour. And he and Ratchet were together for like 30 years, which is really nothing to sneeze at, and all in all he lived a very fulfilling and amazing life. He is dearly loved and missed by his family. Ratchet has been kind of struggling, though, but he still has the rest of the family there to support him. The reminder that, barring some kind of giant awful tragedy, he's pretty much guaranteed to outlive all of them, esp his beloved grandson Daniel, is a hard pill to swallow.
Gah sorry for the bummer turn that took. Either way they shared a beautiful love story and I care about them so much bro damn I'm tearing up just typing this what the hell 😭