okay well ACTUALLY i will elaborate on my Whirl feelings. fandom tends to parse 'I want my hands back' as Whirl very specifically being upset he has claws, because they are assumed to be less functional, and broadly that he wants a body which is not empurata'd again. but as I said in this post, we know people who underwent empurata can get new hands and faces- perfectly good ones. tarn used to be damus and damus was an victim of it too, and they got the guy a whole new body! there's no way that with ratchet as autobot CMO, he would not be insistent that they make time and find resources for any empuratee who wants new hands or a new face at SOME point throughout the war. let alone now it's over.
but they would be new ones. the point is that when whirl says 'i want my hands back' he doesn't (just) literally mean 'i want hands again instead of claws', or even 'i want the original hands i was forged with back'. i would argue he means he wants to go back to the person he used to be before the shit he went through beat him into a new shape he hates. (because whirl reeeeally hates himself. we are literally introduced to him during a suicide attempt as his defining character moment, i mean…) but he can't, because that's not possible, and getting new hands won't magically make him the person he was when he was a watchmaker even if it'd make it easier to make watches again.
and that's why whirl doesn't get new hands or a new face! because it's scary to admit that doing so doesn't make him the person he once was again, and if he did it and was still the same damn person, it would be that ultimate proof that nothing he does will ever acheive this. it's safer to remain as he is in a body he hates than to change it and not actually have solved the underlying issue.
it's also why he rejects the offer of ratchet's hands in LL #25. at that point, he has been able to accept the person he now is and will always be going forward, so they no longer carry the same symbolism. sure, that means he could choose to take them without fear, but it also means he can reject them as not really necessary anymore, and i think it makes the most sense for whirl's arc that he chooses the latter, tbh.
(sidenote: especially worth noting we never actually see if whirl can't make watches with his claws. he can at least make clocks! i've seen people suggest you can interpret it as him actually being perfectly capable with his current frame and he doesn't want to admit it and learn a new way because *points at above*, and honestly, intentional reading or not, i fully buy this. i like to imagine post-canon, he's perfectly good at making them with his current hands, because now he's not so hung up on all that baggage that teaching himself the necessary new techniques is unbearable to consider like it was before. this also has the bonus of mitigating some of the comic's uhhh. confusing? messaging around forged/constructed stuff and disability, so i'll take it.)
