#arcee/anode/lug

[pluralsword]

Thank you so much dear friend!! 💜 We're honored that you wanted to do fanart of a story of ours, we really love the illustration, the colors of sunsets are so ❤️🧡🤍💖💜 and the taganite (trans) (polygender) gals look so lovely together! The whales and pier w/ lanterns are so cute. We're also deeply moved that you shared a link for donations when we're at a particularly difficult point in our life. Thank you so much you're the best.

For those curious, this short story is both standalone and a postcanon teaser for the later portion of our idw1 fanfiction novel, Addendum (linked as the bext work in the Addendum Nexuses series) that builds on what turned out to be her beautiful and unique story and journey in canon, filling in for time periods (and our own take on the vastness of cybertronian contexts of gender variation and expansiveness that is in the spirit of transformation inherent to transformers) the comic did not get to address and seeks to make some additional arcs on closure therein in the finale. The short story is also something much lighter and more peaceful than a chapter we had struggled to write for a while, the next installment is in the works and will certainly release in the next few months (finishing our One fanfiction first to release a surprise that wouldn't be possible without having worked on that novel an a completed earthspark fanfiction). For people who want to read about our perspective on idw1 arcee canon specifically including comparison with real trans history of trans people surviving transmedicalism and elucidating that gender expansive understandings and pre-20th centurh terms used by gender expansive people themselves (some still in use today) are in fact a very old part of gender history, you can read our essay at our website (reads better on a computer than mobile rn).

i made this art for @pluralsword (also on Neocities!) of xeir fic Resolving Hope! if you got a little cash to spare, maybe consider throwing a few bones her way at her Kofi! Xey're a talented writer/sword lesbian who focuses on hope and reconciliation and gender expansiveness, and she's also just the loveliest. if you want to support a wonderful trans system in need and xeir work, here you go!

[prince-toffee]

Proud, and Far From Extinct | Synergy: A Hasbro Creators Showcase | Arcee, Velocity, Chromia, Nautica, Windblade, Anode, and Lug | by Sara Pitre-Duocher

[they-hermes]

alright no more boys its time to become a certified transformers himejoshi

heres to the married/canon couples (wow arcee how come you get two wives)

and to the ships we wish to set sail!! girls love 4ever!!!

[elfdragon12]

Transformers yuri

[pluralsword]

You did such an awesome job with this!!! Truly in awe. It's been such a joy to see you bring this to life and talk about it with you, we're deeply honored and happy that you took this commission on. Thank you so much from all of us. :3

For those wondering about the symbols that Arcee, Minerva, and Road Rage are bearing, that is the symbol of the pluralstic anarcho-collectivist democratic (trans) gender/aesthetic liberation (and therein, altmodes) movement, the Delta League, which we set up as the previous name and the founding principles of the Anti-Vocationist League and building on the league being older than the Decepticons. The symbol, designed by Trans-Mutate with input from her fellow resistance members in the League's early days during the reign of Nova Prime, is a reclamation of the pacifist and defensive technology monarch-autocratesque Solus Prime's Forge of Solus Prime hammer: the meaning is the chosen transformations of spark and blood in a reforging/remaking/affirming context, cyan for sparks and later teardrops, pink for blood (a modern version would have the cyan portion double as camien blood since theirs is blue), and done in an infinite loop pattern within the hammer to reflect infinite variation and iteration.

It is, of course, conveniently, also earth-originated trans flag colors. Thank you Transformers for just, providing that opportunity XD

We aim to have about 35-40 chapters of Addendum, chapter 18 has been particularly difficult and most of the chapters near the end are done, we expect to release chapter 18 soonish :3 this writing has long been a deep joy of ours, and part of how we grappled with getting our head around IDW1 Arcee's canonical writing who our eldest headmate resonated with deeply for a number of reasons from her own life prior, and that did eventually lead to wanting to write about canon itself in the essay blurrito kindly mentioned above :3

Arcee's deco here is in part stylized after Prime Arcee, which we thought was fitting for reasons our essay gets into regarding the parallel (and we think entirely unintentional) personality overlaps of IDW and Prime Arcee. The other aspect of the deco is drawing on her stealth armor deco from The Transformers #42, Combiner Hunters, and #44, which we personally think is fun to think of as having anti-thermal / anti-radar etc. qualities the way the stealth camo introduced after Dark Cybertron that some of the Autobots use is (and one of them asks ?why didn't we use this before? minor Addendum spoiler, our fanfic answer for that is Arcee came up with it and, well canonically the Autobots weren't exactly playing ball with her and vice versa for most of the Great War)

And yeah never going to get over how sunrises and sunsets so easily lend themselves to lesbian undertones (for the record the equivalent of sapphic in how we write Cybertron is the term taganite, derived from the industrial region of the Tagan Heights, where the ancient metallurgist gal Rivetsong lived, her abstract art sculptures of her mostly-non men lovers became so famous they would inspire the term taganite. this is of course a homage to Sappho of Lesbos)

finally finished a comic commission WHOOF!! it's a scene from chapter 16 of the fic Addendum by @pluralsword, which i've drawn for before!

the fic is focused on Arcee's gender journey and her conflicts against hierarchy from the era of Nova Prime up through to past the end of IDW1's canonical run. the art depicts Anode and Lug meeting Arcee for the first time, something Pluralsword has dreamed for years of having a visual representation of, ever since xey learned that Arcee and Anode canonically knew each other sometime during the Great War before Anode and Lug's disappearance in 1516 CE on Luna 2. if you want to read about a discussion of specifically canonical IDW1 Arcee's story across the comics of that continuity and the many overlaps with real trans history of dealing with and surviving transmedicalism, gatekeeping, and a violent hierarchic androcentric world, along with finding love and community, and how her personality is a direct successor of G1 Arcee, including a bit on the two's combined legacy of sweetness and ferocity that both have, you can also check out this essay Pluralsword wrote

[sodynell]

Happy women's day!

[chownkiies]

Femme concepts hur

[pluralsword]

It was such an honor to team up for this with you as always!!! :3 We've uploaded a version of the accompanied writing (already in the zine) to Ao3 as well!! As Anode or Lug, you are taking steps in a galaxy following a reconciliatory Autobot victory in Autobot-Decepticon-Unicron wars, to help rebuild and make something new, both for society and yourselves, reconnecting with family and friends you were away from due to the war, transforming the world and each other together, and rekindling love in such reforging of and for peaceful autonomy, addressing old wounds…. We wrote 2 excerpts set at different points in dating sim style for this story, one from Anode's perspective meeting with Windblade and Proxima on Cybertron early in the story to start restoration, and one from Lug's on the Lost Light supporting Rodimus's surgery including by helping her partner Drift with advice on how to support Roddy, This story is very much about finding the Forge of Solus Prime in oneself and the people around you. The Ao3 release has been edited for typos we missed for the zine release.

It'll get added to the collection when there's a chance for the mods to do so, if you want to check out the other stories that are on Ao3 they are here!

You two are looking for the Hammer of Solus Prime: a relic of change and the becoming of transformation! Will you find it?

Posting my piece for @rbzines' Transform and Go Out With Me! My author @pluralsword and I decided to do a whole datting game map centered around polyamory! [click for better quality cause it's so big lol]

You chose to play either Anode or Lug post-IDW where you travel the galaxy or journey to Earth, to help bots recover and rebuild after the War! There are multiple bots that you can seduce and pull into your open marriage. There are even bonus bots you can encounter! Good and bad endings!

It was so fun to make up the story in order to make my map make sense -- and please check out the rest of the works everyone did here

[transformerskaleidoscope]

HELP I WAS SCROLLING AND MISREAD TRANSFORMERS AS TRANSGENDERS

lol! I mean, in a way this franchise has trans characters so…

[crazycolector]

Tomorrow is Pride Month and I couldn't wait any longer to post this so Happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈

[sticostudios]

Transformers Young Botz: Anode and Lug

the power couple and parents to Arcee

Anode, a snarky, enthusiastic Autobot go getter, started life as a blacksmith, but remade herself as a treasure hunting xenoarchaeologist. In this universe she can be excitable and a little bit eccentric and competitive (which is where Arcee got that nature from) but she’s always there to support her Conjunx endura and her daughter.

Lug, a calm and laid back Autobot xenogeologist, mirthfully accompanies her spouse Anode, acting as her toolkit and pack. Really good with machines as well, and while she can be annoyed by her wife’s and daughters eccentric behavior, she’s loves them both and would die for them, plus that joyous crazy behavior is what made lug fall in love with anode

the family

[pyrotechnicdarts]

can we please have a tf continuity with more than 1 or 2 returning female transformers in the main cast again please

[steelthroat]

Me: *looks at Optimus Prime*

Me: Girls should peg you

[pluralsword]

An Essay: Trans History and Retcons Regarding IDW1 Arcee and Her Spotlight

As we've slowly learned more and deeply immersed into IDW1 Arcee's writing over the years, finding much more than just kinship to her, we felt this urge to dig further, to understand, feeling threads that were there regarding trans history, but not having much knowledge regarding historical transmedicalism, so we dug. We dug because we wanted to show that Arcee's writing from 2012-2018 not only is a beautiful trans story unique in science fiction, but that her personality there and in part in her Spotlight (which absolutely did not intend trans stuff and walked into a minefield in that regard that inadvertently opened up the opportunity for the writing and consulting team in Phase 2 and Phase 3 to figure out beautiful character arcs for her) are direct successors of the original personality frameworks for G1 Arcees, and to show the impact and legacy of both Sunbow/Marvel and IDW Arcees along with more Arcees combined on many versions of her thereafter.

Here's the introductory paragraph:

In much of the last decade, a lot of people familiar with Transformers’ trans stories appreciate Arcee being trans and her arcs in that regard from 2012 onwards. But during those six years from 2012-2018 where her narratives that firmly navigated her agency as a trans gal were being established by a number of writers, with consulting help in 2015 for Ask Vector Prime and 2018 for IDW1, there was and remains uncertainty over how exactly that works for her, specifically for her comic iteration where her transness was first hinted and then plainly stated. The variety of understandings in this regard in part originates from her introduction to the IDW1 run, Spotlight Arcee, in 2008, which was received rather turbulently because of how it portrayed her gender and transformer gals at large. Writing years after would navigate resolving this rather beautifully as showing Arcee having struggled with transmedicalism, isolation, abandonment, loneliness, and alienation, the brutality of a violent (and androcentric) world, as many trans people across gender and parallel spectrums or lacks thereof have in real life. Her story is done in a wlw trans gal context in particular. She is shown getting closure on all this, finding her happiness by the end of that continuity that would along with her story at large as a sweet, ferocious, outspoken old warrior sage help set the tone for her portrayals afterwards. Much of this overlaps with how she was described in her The Transformers Universe bio all the way back in 1986. In these regards, we (the writer of this is plural, we'll have a note about that near the end) think it is pertinent to take another look at how her story played out, what was actually written and shown vs. what was intended, to navigate transmedicalist history that overlaps with her story, and to show that Arcee’s trans iterations are directly part of the legacy of G1 Arcee overall

also a brief fact check edit regarding HRT:

we said HRT only effects hormones but realized we should fact check that, and apparently for some people HRT does effect their genes!! (this is separate from the discussion of gender journeys and epigenetics which we personally know next to nothing about) this a deeply understudied topic you can read about it here:

Gender-affirming hormone therapy induces specific DNA methylation changes in blood

[medusamagic]

If I had a nickel for everytime the IDW Transformers comics paired a transgender lesbian with a girl two-thirds her size, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened twice.

[loveofbots]

I think my favorite part about being a writer and just taking canon and going “No.” Ambulon? Alive and worried 24/7 Red and Fort Max and Prowl? Gay and recovering Arcee and Anode and Lug? Happily murdering, thieving, and resurrecting folks in peace. Tarn? Dead as hell. Piece of shit.