It took me a while to put my feelings towards ll #25 in to words, I still have a lot of things I wanna say about it, but the thing that stuck with me a lot after I finished reading it was how it just HAD to be Ratchet who died and whose funeral brought everyone back together.
At first when I got to that page where we find out he’s dead I was heartbroken, and to be honest there are other characters I wished were in Ratchet’s place.
But as I continued and when I looked back on it later I realized that it couldn’t be anyone else.
In my opinion, that’s because no one else’s death would strike people as hard.
and by people I don’t mean readers - I would have been as devastated if it was the funeral of whirl or Drift or Tailgate or most of the main cast really.
I’m talking about people in-universe.
You see, i find Ratchet to be kind of a really rare character in the comic - He is a genuinely good person and a well-known one at that, famous across all of Cybertron.
I honestly can’t think of many other characters in the comics like that.
The higher ranking people in these comics are so often selfish or morally grey or borderline (and sometimes completely) irredeemable people that a truly selfless and good character like him is very rare.
Ratchet, in my opinion, became an icon of hope - at the beginning of mtmte him leaving the planet was clearly traumatic to Bumblebee and the remaining Autobots, it is shown again and again that he is trusted unquestionably, be it by giving the honest medical reason for a bot’s death or treating the leader of the Decepticons who’s tried to kill him before
And sure there are characters like Velocity or Nautica or First Aid whom I consider to be “Good People” but they’re pretty unknown all things considered, their death wouldn’t have the same impact on the whole planet.
I mean just look at the way Cybertronians reacted to his death:
Five thousand innermost energon gifts, I frankly can’t think of a better way to show how close Ratchet became to so many people’s sparks before, during and after that war.
That’s especially incredible when you consider how few Cybretronians survived the war.
Ratchet dedicated himself fully to helping those in need, and while 4 million years of war made him jaded and cynical, they didn’t change that in him the way it did to so many others who lived through them, he was still just as willing to put himself in harm’s way and do everything possible to save everyone he could.
It just seems so fitting to me, that Ratchet last action (if you could call it that) even in death, is healing, by donating his components to medical centers.
it just makes sense that he’s the one to bring the crew back together, and maybe, in his death, remind a planet so broken and torn and desensitized to violence and death of the beauty of life and giving just for the sake of giving.
After all, Without Love There Is No Meaning.
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