#pluralsword stories

[pluralsword]

And here we have the cover for Chapter 13 of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic): Gender Diaspora. This cover was super fun to work on with @VansZero (discord) love how it turned out and how they depicted the Everbright (that would be that blocky gray and blue ship in the upper right corner), and he made Road Rage's expression so memeable lmao we adore this piece. Here's the same cover in colors without the title, and in black and white:

Also yes, the symbols on the Delta Leaguer's torsos? That's the Delta Forge (not actually named in the fic) symbol, ie the symbol of the Delta League (also known as the Anti-Vocation League), a reclamation of Solus Prime's forge hammer. cyan=tears pink=blood. Here's a zoom in on Arcee's and our rough draft for it that we gave VansZero:

This symbol was first described in Chapter 2:

"Among the wreckage in the maintenance shed, I saw the agreed-on mark for the rendezvous: a cyan-pink infinity loop with two golden cylindrical hammer ends stylized after Solus Prime’s Forge hammer on each side of the loop.

The chosen transformations of spark and blood… Trans-Mutate sure is good with symbology. I rolled up around the tracks on my treads, stopped at the door, and laid out a tide of slow notes from my car horn."

[thenamesblurrito]

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

[spashahoney]

Been in a lot of projects and still going. Transform and Go Out With Me! was a super fun project. I worked with a fellow fan @pluralsword to craft an entire dating game routemap! Hearing your Trans!Rodimus and other ideas were sooo fun! You, the Player, play as Anode or Lug and traverse the universe to find the Forge of Solus Prime, and romance as many Girls Girls Girls as you want to add in your open marriage. There’s many routes and endings, and while you’ll only get a smidge of the many ideas my author wanted to capture, I hope you can get enthralled by the story I managed to draw nonetheless.

Much thanks to @rbzines, my first tf fan project spot, for letting me doodle with them again! Seriously, the work on this zine? Brilliant!

[pluralsword]

Hot take joke bit- Arcee's helm vaguely resembles a transformation cog, which the Functionist Council emulate. The twelve of them arguably overcompensating for not being (trans) women unlike 'Cee, and get angry about the capacity for change. Huh wait- why is this familiar.

Of course Arcee’s helm only takes up this look in EXRID (her helm also looks like this in G1 and Cyberverse), not the look she had from her initial reformatting surgery from Jhiaxus. So we rewrote this joke:

Arcee: hey Jhiaxus do you think you could code in some audial buns with grooves for the CNA surgery? Like a transformation cog, since I'm trans. Doesn't have to be 1 for 1, just reminiscent.

Jhiaxus: of course my lady (proceeds to not do that because it doesn’t fit his idea of a woman)

Arcee, later: Jhiaxus is such a transmedicalist scraphead

Later, the Functionist Council: we are the pinnacle cog of alt mode and police body shape

EXRID Arcee after her surgery from Ratchet: Fragging finally I have my helm-shape that loudly declares my transness. It’s so lovely <3

All we're saying is this is good fanfic material stuff (of something that clearly wasn't intentional) with real parallels of how hateful cis folks will appropriate transformational/realization symbology/aesthetic and deny anyone seeking a better fit for themselves, trans or no. We might throw this into the next chapter of Addendum to have this comment in there when she looks in the mirror

the responses we got from servers we’re on include:

the council making their heads into t-cogs and whatnot is the equivalent of chuds online being like "my gender is stupid asshole and my pronouns are fuck/you" 

Arcee is so cool

[pluralsword]

So honored to have taken part in this zine!! was really fun to write our piece, pulled from a lot of different parts of the fiction including aspects we haven't released fic writing for (yet). Here's a little teaser... : “I know firsthand how awful the Decepticons can be in shaping non-transformers’ daily life and that of transformers themselves. I was made for the wants of one of their client states, the late Intruder Empire, thrust into diplomacy as a colonizing column for..."



Contributor spotlights part two!

[pluralsword]

Upcoming Chapter 18 of Addendum

For everyone waiting on Chapter 18, we made a lot of headway on it recently, it is 2/3rds done currently :3 Hope and plan to release soon. Most of this chapter is a Rampage point of view (who we write as transmasc and his sister Trans-Mutate as transfemme, both part of the Anti-Functionist resistance known as the Delta League or the Anti-Vocationist League, back during the era of the autocracy of Nova Prime. the art we posted here is an edit of a larger piece from chapter 13), it's really amusing to us to write from his perspective how idw1 optimus early in the Great War has no way to conceive of a transmasculine cybertronian because that's the level of conceptual damage and societal harm the legacy of functionism has caused with it's pushing for an androcentric world of only cybertronian maleness as genderlessness assigned guys.

If you haven't heard of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic) and are wondering what we're on about, you can check it out here and read the released chapters here, and here's a blurb over generalities of what the fic is:

It is a fanfic revolving around IDW1 Arcee, that seeks to add to her already detailed and beautiful arc of a trans woman errant warrior sage coming to terms with xemself (we're affirming her/xem in the text here since in this fic unlike canon xey eventually want to use xey pronouns too but face immense challenges to that as the story will show) and deciding to trust people and herself. We love her transformations very dearly, and wanted to further reconcile xeir appearance in Spotlight: Arcee with her later writing (canon did a rather fabulous job in this respect in Phase 2 and 3 that makes rereading her story from first issue in 2008 to last a real joy for us), drawing on wisdom gathered through study and experience, and imagination to connect the dots. As you can tell just from the appearance of Codexa and others in the story, this revisiting of IDW1 Arcee’s tale is in part made possible by later writing of gal transformers who we adore, and we will note we draw from ones from all across the decades of fiction of Transformers. What can we say, we love them, and know so much more about ourselves than we ever would have because of them. There are also a lot of trans / gender expansive headcanons tossed in here for bots across the gender spectrum. They're transformers. Emphasis on trans.

[pluralsword]

(one must be gentle) they can hold hands. Love Flamewar and Shadow Striker together so much. The smaller side of Flamewar's hand, where the thumb is, is what we squeezed through Shadow Striker's hand slowly, be careful

Also spinning wheels image that is either just non-sexual sensuality pg13 or somewhat lewd (imo also in pg13 territory) depending on context. Going by Lost Light where Roller is spinning Nickel's wheel feet in public and commenting that she has very nice wheels while Nickel smiles about it and enjoys it, it isn't necessarily horny enough or intimate enough to avoid doing in public. But on a basis of Devils Due (humor, decidedly, but still) it might be given that in G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers III Arcee flirts with Bumblebee by saying 'forget kissing you if you win our race to the spacebridge, I'll rotate your tires instead,' which while decidedly different than spinning someone's wheels since rotating tires means switching tire positions on a vehicle/bot (which is actually important for maintenance and upkeep which raises more questions), Bumblebee then yelling 'Wahoo!' and racing ahead makes us wonder how he'd feel about wheels getting touched in general.

For the sake of our own writing we share on this account and this image, we write sensory touch of different parts of the body of a transformer in this manner whether wings or wheels or back stacks or doors or tails or what have you as something partnering bots do for aesthetic/gender affirmation and euphoria which does confer a sort of pleasure of 'making real' (if you want to be academic, reification) in particular in part because it helps them connect with their alt mode and the shape they enjoy, rather than er, a sexual drive, though it certainly can be sensual. We suppose that touching one's corresponding arm or thigh parts while they are in alt mode would be similar, though we haven't written that yet. It's not just a multimodal thing though, its also just, sharing one's shapes with each other and making love in that regard. Which is a very trusting intimate thing to do with someone whether or not sex is involved, as many asexual people could tell you. If you want examples of our writing in this sense, you can check out:

-some chromeblade smooching and wing and wheel touching in Chapter 7 of Rekindling Flight, before we figured out how to write the euphoria aspect of this in a lovemaking manner. We might go back and add to this.

-Chapter 3 and Chapter 15 of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic) with Arcee/Codexa and Anode/Lug respectively, amusingly Chapter 3 is before Arcee's surgery and Chapter 15 is before Anode's while she and Lug are still trying to figure out their genders, so they both have a sense of trying to give and/or receiving euphoria to help with dysphoria by reifying parts of the body the two wanted to change

-Trusting Transformations is an Arcee x reader fic that also touches on this (the reader's character is a gender/aesthetically expansive transformer)

We want to talk about casual or reassuring contextually non-sensual public touch of alt mode kibble is commonplace among friends or from aesthetic/gender kinship but don't have the spoons to get into that and real world human bodied parallels rn. And yes that, and intimate affirmation touch are all things we have experienced and that we are deeply glad for

[pluralsword]

Arcee once said that "ferocity without compassion is brutality." We think this is a clear case of Slipstream engaging in brutality, gods. Omega Supreme's poor brain module… ;-;

So we did this video this way with the death included to demonstrate that you can still die to Omega Supreme while playing as a flier in Chapter V on normal (though it is substantially harder to do so than as a grounder) for the dub we might play it on hard or just- use the second half of the video. Honestly a bit terrified (in both a generally sapphic but in this case very concerned in the context of the mod's plot way) of Slipstream's alt-mode guns hereafter.

For those who don't know what this mod is, it's a campaign mod for War for Cybertron that lets you play Slipstream and Arcee in various parts of the campaign! It's subtitles only because we couldn't port in new audio for Slipstream or characters talking to her. You can read more about it here

[pluralsword]

Release of Addendum Chapter 16

Chapter 16 of Addendum (an IDW1 Arcee novel fanfic) is out! Arcee, Anode, and Lug, have finally met, setting the stage for all the good and terrible there is to come for the three of them and their loved ones…

Anode excitedly undergoes her reforging surgery led by Minerva to follow Anode's every want as best she can. Anode with euphoria realized joins Lug, Stratosphere, Minerva, Lifeline, and Road Rage in going to Lithone to meet Arcee, who has tentatively agreed to get to know Anode's family and to live alongside them before deciding whether to allow Anode to use blacksmithing to heal her sensory mayhem from the transmedicalist surgery Arcee went through long ago. In the process of meeting Arcee and talking with her for the first time, Anode and Lug have a new realization about how they feel… much of which we read through Anode's particularly fervent and wanting perspective. You can read it here on Ao3! sleezy Anode hasn't hit public release yet but soonish…

[pluralsword]

Chapter 15 of Addendum is now out, introducing Anode, Lug, and Stratosphere! You can find the summary here:

4 million years ago, Lug and her Conjunx Anode, and Anode's grandfather make their way through space fleeing the Great War of the Autobots and the Decepticons, with the couple navigating their own encounters with gender of others bringing out questions about if they had any of their own- fears on Anode's part facing a reckoning, before their old ship faces challenges that leave them wondering if they'll survive… and if they do, if they'll ever meet the fabled knights known as the Delta League… The beginning of Anode and Lug's arc in Addendum enters full swing.

Our word count has hit 96,305 in terms of stuff released for this fic...

[pluralsword]

Warpath: "Look -- that's the outer shell of Cybertron's Core! Wow…"

Arcee: "The Core remade me when I asked, and now it aches, I- sobs.

Arcee: "You look sad, Optimus."

Optimus: "Sad for Core, you & all trans bots. The Core, the main conduit of energon and reforging to all on Cybertron, to see it defiled…"

Well, you all (at least some of you) knew this was coming! Sword Arcee, trans and all, with her story interwoven with that of many more transformer across generations- making the wounds the Core has suffered all the more bitter, and the fight one for an ecosystem/self that has affirmed transformation (pun intended) from the beginning. We find Core as a character interesting (it/it's pronouns!) because it's not a deity figure but is at the center of cybertronian life, transformer or no. Also there's something very satisfying about writing WFC Arcee as a trans character within the game itself since her bot and alt mode were the basis for IDW1 Arcee's look in 2012-2014 at the beginning of the Robots in Disguise/The Transformers comic…

This portion of the mod needs some editing, spotted a line where Arcee is referred to as Ironhide left over from the base game, and there are some cutscenes to remove Ironhide from (unfortunately Arcee can't be added to them in his place due to coding limitations of the game).

For those who don’t know what this mod is, it’s a campaign mod for War for Cybertron that lets you play Slipstream and Arcee in various parts of the campaign! It’s subtitles only because we couldn’t port in new audio for Slipstream or characters talking to her. You can read more about it here and see Slipstream attempt to yeet delete Omega Supreme here

[pluralsword]

Xenogender and Ao3 and Art

Hi xenogender and xenoaesthetic folks, entities, and realms and all and none,

it has occurred to us that we um, have written the majority of works on Archive of Our Own that have the xenogender tag. And we’re asking ourselves, we can’t be the only [(alien) robot] persons that plays around with this stuff right? (we’re plural btw)

When we talk to trans folks whether plural or nonhuman or no a bunch of folks relate to our terminologies we’ve come up with and sometimes giving people a look at the worldbuilding doc we’re not quite ready to post yet helps especially if they aren’t going to read fics generally, but also we know that our own experience with aesthetics that our oldest headmate struggled with for more than two decades to put words to and we helped her grasp she pronouns for, for herself in non-human history and assemblage terms, is just one small part of the vast xeno aesthetic spectrum. We’re just one system, and we want to know... what stories have you written, or are writing or making? We thought it might be cool if people reblogged around with their own stuff so their could be a post where all our stuff is together. More than anything- we feel a bit lonely sometimes, because being both on a xeno aesthetic spectrum and by and large a bunch of robots- we are beloved by our community and friends and loved ones, for which we are very thankful, and know a folks who can relate, but we wanna know what people are up to, or just thoughts.

So for those unfamiliar with us, our fanfic (we will eventually do original fiction) is about (Trans)formers and navigates hopepunk stuff regarding autonomy and aesthetic iteration with sparring, family, war, subaltern and community, love, diplomacy, gestalt consciousness, and so forth, drawing in part on the beautiful lore from seven different gender expansive canonical transforming robots in particular before Transformers Earthspark hit and introduced Nightshade (aside from how their whole choosing alt mode thing very much feels like choosing aesthetic expression and in Twitch’s case came before her pronouns were used but anyway) but specifically Arcee(s), Anode, and Lug. Our pg-13 or g-rated works thus far are mostly in the Autosignet Cycle aside from a few shipping fics. The Autosignet Cycle, mostly set in an original continuity, is probably going to continue for years with more fics to come, we started planning out very early versions of this in 2020 but tfwiki’s discord is what jumpstarted our first fic for the series, Day of Multiflame:

1. Day of Multiflame (complete)

A day of mirth, of memory, of rejoicing, of flames dancing together. On this ancient Camien holiday, some plucky heroes young and old across assemblage including two organics come together to celebrate, and to face the struggles ahead, of transformer majority worlds approaching outright conflict over rejoining the largest treaty organization of the galaxy… All the while ancient conflicts and motives beyond their current understanding overshadow everything, rolled up in the origins of these transforming robots. Between intergenerational family, swords, gifts, and I love yous and more, the steadying of each other is enough, to have a little bit of joy and wisdom on this Day of Multiflame. 

2. Wheels of Mutuality and Symbiosis (complete)

Glyph tries to lucid dream to solve the puzzle of her sleep issues, not all is as it seems- but her love of Tap-Out and what informs her aesthetic experience runs strong, helping her through to some long awaited elucidations that are big if true.

This has some big zoomdare energy but I think that is what I often will end up writing.

3. Hold on to Your Dancing (complete)

In honor of xenogender visibility day (May 15th)- I resolved to write two poems, one about my own experience remains unfinished, but one in honor of robot aesthetics via fanfiction was something I was able to finish.

Here you'll find some hints about my plot - some of what this story is on about - with a visiting of the past: the beginning of the last territorial campaign of the Anti-Functionist War, from two war veterans you'll meet later.

4. Honey I’m Cheering For You But No (complete)

A blast to the past before the Anti-Functionist War- archivist Prowl is trying to sort out his life, hasn't been so easy for him after an awful job that has left him very sensitive to the disquiet of society as the very subtly not so Golden Age reaches an end. His old friends Arcee and Aileron who unintentionally helped spark his journey are visiting- and he is beside himself. What does it all mean to him, to them, to carry on as they do, to transform?

In short, we the author finally give some answers with words to the slice of life actions you saw play out in Day of Multiflame- answers very much in context with Sparkflung Trust.

5. Rekindling Flight (incomplete, 7/13 chapters)

At long last, The vast majority of transformers, residing in the Planetwell Polity Alliance, are about to rejoin the largest galactic alliance, which the PPA originally helped create and was expelled from after the Unicron invasion and the subsequent thousands year long war with Functionist usurpers. But, all is not well- threats loom from all corners upon the Autobot revolution: Decepticons, Unicronists, Functionists, and deep existential problems with past, present, and future will try people from all walks of life fighting for intergenerational hope and love.

Nonetheless, something new and wonderful yet old and familiar is afoot- efforts by trillions and their many subalterns are not vain: the power and practice of iterative story.

6. Addendum (incomplete, estimated 10/30 chapters)

7 million years ago, the latest blow to gender on Cybertron is dealt by the rising Functionist tide, stirring an Arcee struggling with loneliness and aesthetic dysphoria into enraged action to help bots in the Hadean System across the aesthetic spectrum save their transformative glory and stories… in the process, she finds aid from the scientist Jhiaxus, who also offers her a new reformatting surgery to let her spark do shaping with CNA editing help. Thus begins a new chapter in her life as a founding member of the expansion of what would later be called the Anti-Vocation League alongside her beloved partner and fellow old person Codexa, while grappling with her own growing pile of pains and traumas. As the millennia carry on and she heads to space, she eventually meets Anode and Lug in the stars, and some dear moments near the present all the way through to events after Transformers: Optimus Prime #25: Post… where she helps some gender expansive bots, and with help from Aileron and her pals she finally gets some answers and closure to her own self, and has a reckoning with forces pitted against her for millions of years. The years after are not what she expected during most of her life prior, and she is glad for them…

This is a fanfic revolving around IDW1, that seeks to add to her already detailed and beautiful arc of a trans woman errant warrior sage coming to terms with herself and deciding to trust people and herself. We love her transformations very dearly, and wanted to attempt to reconcile her appearance in Spotlight: Arcee with her later writing, drawing on wisdom gathered through study and experience, and imagination to connect the dots. As you can tell just from the mention of Codexa in the tags above, this revisiting of IDW1 Arcee’s tale is in part made possible by later writing of gal transformers who we adore, and we will note we draw from ones from all across the decades of fiction of Transformers. What can we say, we love them, and know so much more about ourselves than we ever would have because of them.

For this post, we will note: though it is an IDW1 fic with m-spec and f-spec bots, we build quite a bit of gender variety and relation into it that makes it readily apparent that Cybertron of old is even more different from human histories of such in that regard, we will spoil a little and say that we intend to show how of then aesthetics is remembered and remade into something new and old in the years after the end of the official story...

7. Sparkflung Trust (complete)

Written for a Transformers "fanthology" and also is a tie-in to the Autosignet Cycle original continuity we have been writing - along with a bit of IDW1, Cyberverse, and Alternity. A story about transformation in many senses (surprise), including a quest for the Transformation Matrix … inside of one of the most powerful creatures transformers have ever encountered. What will the errant people on the journey realize, and will it be enough to put into practice to succeed?

If you want to see the other standalone fics we’ve done, including ones about beloved Acid Storm and Overlord, go take a look at our Ao3 page! :3

[pluralsword]

IDW1-inspired Arcee smelling a yellow red chrysanthemum in an ikebana pot arrangement with rosemary branches and other flowers, some still budding (chrysanthemums smell nice, and the ikebana pot w/ instructions was a gift to a family member to help with stress, which has helped). In the middle of EXRID on the way to Earth she expressed that she had always wanted to go there. She really accelerated towards her happiest portion of life after taking up an Earth mode that effected her robot mode body shape too (can’t wait to release our chapter about that, how she chose it and so on, but we have thirteen more in Addendum to get through before then). We think she’d love to take in the world around her kind of like Nautica and Hound.

[pluralsword]

Chapter 10 Addendum teaser

Halfway through the next chapter of Addendum, Thermal Whirlwind:

“Okay, here we go, they probably have a base under their artillery position. Switch to explosives.” I holstered my left hand pistol and readied my grenade launcher palm with a growl, loading in an APHE configuration. I’d like to show you Jhiaxus’s idea of being a woman, Functionist scraps. My medicalized suffering blasted into your frames. A little thank you.

Yes, Arcee at some point canonically had a grenade launcher in her left hand in IDW1, you can see this in Spotlight: Arcee. In her later body reformats she never uses this and you see her with a grenade bandolier early in EXRID, so we think she got rid of it. You can can check out the completed chapters 1-9 of Addendum here! Here’s the summary of the story:

7 million years ago, the latest blow to gender on Cybertron is dealt by the rising Functionist tide, stirring an Arcee struggling with loneliness and aesthetic dysphoria into enraged action to help bots in the Hadean System across the aesthetic spectrum save their transformative glory and stories… in the process, she finds aid from the scientist Jhiaxus, who also offers her a new reformatting surgery to let her spark do shaping with CNA editing help. Thus begins a new chapter in her life as a founding member of the expansion of what would later be called the Anti-Vocation League alongside her beloved partner and fellow old person Codexa, while grappling with her own growing pile of pains and traumas. As the millennia carry on and she heads to space, she eventually meets Anode and Lug in the stars, and some dear moments near the present all the way through to events after Transformers: Optimus Prime #25: Post… where she helps some gender expansive bots, and with help from Aileron and her pals she finally gets some answers and closure to her own self, and has a reckoning with forces pitted against her for millions of years. The years after are not what she expected during most of her life prior, and she is glad for them…

[pluralsword]

Addendum’s first seven chapters are now out! you can read them here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42504558/chapters/106756191

Fanart/trade for @pluralsword - pre-reformat Arcee and Codexa having a moment, per her fic Addendum!

[pluralsword]

Addendum Revisions: For the Sake of Love

In light of the copious research we have done regarding IDW1 Arcee (for our own sake and interest, for a love of her story, and because of a thing we're working on that we haven't revealed on social media yet), we realized that there isn't anything in her story that suggests that the side effects of her surgery directly caused homicidal outbursts, and that that is just a fandom perception that we ran into in 2020 and took as fact. So we removed that from her story in Addendum chapter 6 in favor of her instead breaking from mission parameters recklessly or vengefully to take on functionists who weren't the ones targeted and/or going after people who helped jhiaxus. As important as we think it is to navigate the story of someone who has had outbreaks of violence from all the pressure and pain compounded with agency being meddled with to an extreme degree still being worthwhile to love and have alive and to try to help, we realized that is not quite Arcee's story, and it just took us several months to be at a point where we could change that, especially for her, so with her consent we've changed this. We want to say thank you to @quetzalpapalotl for doing a post specifically about Arcee's relationship with violence (which we can't find rn) that both deeply resonated with us from overlapping observations and part of what made us realize that we had missed something, and we knew what she was saying was true because we had recently read EXRID at the time, and so we went and read Spotlight Arcee again and lo and behold the actual words show a very calculated and passionate series of decisions that are not just for vengeance but also to save other people (she warns Ultra Magnus that a change is coming that will effect everything) and her rampage against the bots allied with Jhiaxus (which the Autobots didn't know) makes sense. As usual, Arcee was ahead of the game compared to the Autobots lmao and they because of their biases and lack of information were scared of her. (note we aren't excusing when she tortures people but like. Autobot guys get free passes on this apparently and she doesn't because of how they see her).

We are going to keep the idea of the original writing we did for the fanfic though for a future work though because we think the concept is very useful for subverting a stereotype around transfemmes