Anode

Anode is an Autobot from the Generation 1 continuity family.

This snowflake becomes her dead girlfriend and that's hardly the weirdest thing on this wiki.

Anode gets into trouble. Originally a blacksmith, Anode was a specialist who is able to—with training—sculpt a malfunctioning protoform into its intended working order. However, for reasons she long refused to disclose, the sharp-tongued and irreverent Anode fled this life and declared herself instead an archaeologist, treasure-hunter, and adventurer. From Cybertron to Caminus and beyond, there's no large, menacing creature she's not willing to tick off (either on purpose or by accident) and no artifact too risky for her to retrieve. Her partner and spouse Lug can be a calming influence, but, when push inevitably comes to shove, she loves every obnoxious circuit in Anode's body.

Fiction

2005 IDW continuity

First appearance: Lost Light #1

Anode was born assigned male on Cybertron. While certain members of the Primal Vanguard began identifying as "she" after off-world missions and encounters with organic races, Anode became bemused by the very concept of gender, and did not understand the significance of the pronouns until she left Cybertron when the Great War broke out. After meeting several organic races, Anode decided she felt more comfortable as a "she" and had her chassis rebuilt into a more feminine form. An Axe to Break the Ice

Some time in the past, Anode made her way to Caminus, over five hundred years before Thunderclash reestablished regular interplanetary ties among Cybertronian worlds. A daring risk-taker from an early age, she began honing her natural skills as a blacksmith in the Lighthouse, helping newborn protoforms by sculpting their sentio metallico. Unfortunately, Anode's brash nature led her into performing a live sculpting on a struggling protoform before she was truly ready, and the protoform subsequently died. Though the other members of the Lighthouse were understanding and forgiving, Anode couldn't bring herself to quit, so instead she fudged the facility's records to make it look like she'd stolen the facility's supplies of sentio metallico, then fled Caminus forever. Bad Moon Rising

You shall not pass!

Anode once encountered Arcee, a fellow transgender Cybertronian and offered to help the ancient warrior with the adverse effects from the CNA reformatting surgery she had undergone to affirm her gender, but Anode tragically disappeared... Post Five hundred years ago, Anode and Lug travelled to Luna 2 at the behest of the mysterious Grand Architect (who she called "Techy") in search of a piece of rare widowed metal. They found themselves on the wrong side of a Decepticon Cybernought; although Anode deployed a forcefield, Lug was convinced that they were going to die. Anode was spared by the machinations of the time travelling Necrobot; as part of his efforts to rescue the "Disappeared", he took Anode to the future and stored her in a stasis pod until she could recover from the disorienting effects of the time-skip.

In the present day, Anode woke up on the Necroworld along with the dozens of other refugees the Necrobot had collected. Some Other Cybertron However, her senses were still scrambled by the effects of the time jump, and as a result she began hallucinating that Lug had arrived with her, holding regular conversations between herself and "Lug." Modes of Production

Anode attended a debriefing held by Ultra Magnus to help bring the disoriented time-travelers up to speed on recent events. Anode was less than impressed by the Autobot's boring delivery. The two then were accosted by Swerve, who annoyed them with some nonsensical questions under the pretense of conducting "background checks." When she told Swerve to leave, the red Autobot sarcastically mentioned that she should see Velocity for "timesickness"—remembering Velocity from their time together on Caminus, Anode tried to leave the Necroworld via teleporter before Velocity could track her down. Rodimus and Drift caught her before they could escape; although she received a reprimand for almost wasting the one-use teleporter, Anode was fascinated to see Drift's Great Sword. Rodimus and his allies decided to use the teleporter to head back to Cybertron to pick up another ship, and Anode stayed behind with the other time-displaced Cybertronians. Some Other Cybertron

I see dead people.

Anode and "Lug" later reconvened by the Necrobot's monument to the disappeared, where they discussed recent events and what the future held for them. Though Anode professed an aloofness regarding her new friends, she eventually confessed that she was interested in their quest for Cyberutopia, though "Lug" joked that she would be more interested in plundering its treasures than starting a new life there. Her one-sided conversation was interrupted by Tailgate's fight with Fangry, and over the course of the battle she was sent flying and impaled on a piece of debris. Kaput tended to her wounds before Velocity arrived to discuss what had transpired when Anode fled Caminus. Anomie Anode explained that she'd falsified her records before fleeing; realizing that she'd never heard the story, "Lug" was unable to conceal her sense of betrayal and fled back to the memorial. A World Misplaced Anode caught up with her, where "Lug" revealed that she'd always thought that she was the reason why Anode had fled her homeworld. Anode revealed her history as a blacksmith and noted that she needed a reason for her coworkers to hate her, unable to live with the guilt. Anode apologized, but realized that her friend had vanished...Bad Moon Rising

Anode returned to the medibay to search for Lug, only to realize that nobody had any idea who she was talking about. Anode's explanation prompted the staff to reveal security tapes of her emerging alone from her stasis pod; after scanning the list of names on the Necrobot's monument, she realized that Lug hadn't travelled to the future with her, and was merely a timesickness-induced hallucination. Modes of Production Kaput then took her, Nautica, and Velocity to Lug's flower where he explained how Lug had died. Realizing that the Necrobot had preserved some of Lug's Spark energy inside the flower, Anode had a brainwave and rushed back to the fortress. She explained her plan to resurrect Lug by using the snowflake as a receptacle for Lug's Spark. It was touch and go for a second there but the new protoform stabilized and Anode showed off her "new" backpack to Roller when the group returned to their own universe. This Machine Kills Fascists After Lug had fully grown, Anode confessed the truth behind the Lighthouse. The two snuggled up afterwards. As Lug played with Roller, Anode questioned Nautica (since they were now besties!) on her eye-patch. Anode boarded the ship when the group left Necroworld. After Megatron

Might as well face it/You're addicted to Lug

When the ladies stopped off at Troja Major's Howling Town, Anode asked to borrow money from Nautica only to learn ten thousand shanix was still considered a lot of money so she decided to steal the mood pipes she wanted instead. After fleeing from a displeased (and quite scary looking) Rust Giant, Anode began smelling sentio metallico and followed it to a warehouse where she flung open a coffin to try and find the new body. As it turned out, the coffin was a mech. The mech tried to attack Anode and Lug only for Anode to realize he was a newborn and reacting on instinct. The three were then ambushed by the Black Block Consortia who demanded Anode and Lug step aside and hand over the mech. Unwilling to do so, the organics opened fire only for Lug to tackle Anode to safety but allowing the newborn to die. As Anode grieved, Wipe-Out suddenly made himself known and motioned for the two to follow him. As the three escaped, Wipe-Out revealed that the blacksmiths were under threat and being targeted. At a bar, the three compared notes (namely who the Black Block Consortia was and Anode and Lug's genders) before Techy's troops, led by Flame teleported into the bar and cornered them. An Axe to Break the Ice

Anode took this in stride and happily greeted Flame...only for Wipe-Out to inform her that Flame wasn't the Grand Architect. After enduring Flame's annoyingly euphemistic phrases, Anode attempted a heroic punch but soon decided to flee, turning to jet mode while having Lug and Wipe-Out grab her. She flew back to the funeral compound where they'd fist found the coffin mech and procured a leftover sample of his sentio metallico for Wipe-Out to analyze who found the metal held the blueprints for millions of alternate modes. Suddenly getting a call from Velocity, the trio walked to Mengel's compound where Nautica's super-sized alternate mode burst out before the group made a brisk getaway. After said getaway, Anode offered Wipe-Out a place in their adventures but he turned it down. Chasing the Infinite

Back on Skip, Anode engaged a prank war with Swerve by having Lug repaint herself and pretend to be Swerve's biggest fan. In retaliation, Swerve had Velocity call in Anode for a medical exam and inform her that she had a "second head" in her rear armature. An enraged Anode decided to take things further by getting Whirl to plant a fake bomb in Swerve's head before waking him up to make it seem like she was using magnetizing spray to fuse him to his recharge slab. However, this only succeeded in causing a fire and triggering the ship's sprinklers, which Swerve had already filled with the magnetizing spray so he could trick her into getting stuck onto Ultra Magnus. While Lug succeeded in pulling Anode off of Magnus, she was thrown into an emotionally devastated Cyclonus. Anode was able to avoid the irate Cyclonus' sword thanks to a warning from Swerve, though the blade cut through Rewind instead. As the ship erupted into chaos, Anode revealed her full scheme to Swerve just before Ten interrupted the squabbling by unexpectedly speaking. Sardines

On Ten's instructions, the crew modified the ship so they could jump through "compressed space" and get to a Mederi center so they could save the ailing Ratchet. However, as Skip was contracting in on them as his body returned to regular size, Anode and the others were forced to abandon ship and were subsequently exposed to compressed space, seemingly killing them and bringing them to the Afterspark. Metastasis Not entirely concerned or convinced that they were dead, Anode and Lug went straight to stealing soft ununtrium from a temple, which earned them a scolding from Nautica. The couple then went for the giant Matrix floating in the Afterspark's sky to see what they could pillage from it. The God War What they didn't realize however was that the "Afterspark" was in fact the original Mederi center, designed by the Omega Guardians to euthanize its patients by generating illusions that made them happy and ready to "ascend". As Anode and Lug gathered under the Matrix so they could "ascend", Rodimus and his group destroyed Mederi's power source, shattering the illusion. Before the team could figure out where to go from there, they were approached by an army of Sparkeaters created from the crews of the Lost Light. You Are Here

After Rodimus recognized the Sparkeaters as Lost Light crew, Anode questioned whether they were actually a threat. Discussion ensued as to what to do until Brainstorm was attacked by Sparkeater-Perceptor. When Grimlock was dropped from high altitude into the attackers to cut them down, Lug exclaimed to Anode that "this isn't normal!" After the group's subsequent retreat from the Sparkeaters and team-up with allies aboard Wipe-Out's Q-class ship, Anode and her Conjunx joined the armed boarding team, using said vessel to land on the Lost Light, and followed Rodimus off the ship into the Lost Light's shuttle bay. Almost immediately all the doors began shutting around them, cutting off Rodimus and Cyclonus from the others. Then the ship's oil reservoir poured on top of them, the ship's oil reservoir filled entirely with scraplets, causing Anode to have a panic attack. Lug tried reassuring her as those same Scraplets, merged into one, showed themselves. A Dance Before Dying

Anode feared that the scraplets were going to eat the team, but Ultra Magnus tried to reassure them by pointing out scraplets didn't actually have a digestive system. After Grimlock's attempt to slay the creatures didn't succeed, Anode, Lug, and Drift were grabbed by the scraplets, before they turned their attention on Whirl. As the scraplets turned out to be the adoptees of Whirl, they all survived and reunited with Rodimus and Cyclonus, just in time for space to tear itself a new one. Lūstrāre The rift sucked in the Lost Light, depositing it in what was supposedly the Benzene Cluster, now filled with duplicate Cybertrons. With the engines drained, the crew disembarked, and Anode used her metallurgical skills to analyse the planet, finding it "tasted" new. Almost immediately, several Black Block Consortia ships showed up, and the troops held everyone at gunpoint, ready to shoot them dead before some quick talking on Nautica's part got them transported to a cell instead. Their host insisted on Rodimus taking a small delegation, but Rodimus counter-insisted on taking everyone, Anode included. From their cell, they witnessed the result of the Grand Architect's plan, which was to use five copies of Cybertron as a "God Gun" to drill through into another universe in order to fight an other-dimensional intruder. As everyone watched, a fleet of ships poured through from the Functionist universe, led by Megatron. Farsickness

As it quickly transpired, Megatron was not the enemy the Grand Architect had been preparing for. Rather, it was Functionist Cybertron, engineered into a representation of Primus himself. As the alternate Cybertron destroyed the God Gun, Rodimus and Megatron bickered, until the Grand Architect revealed himself. Megatron had his ship shoot out the Worldsweeper's windows, sucking several of Team Rodimus, Anode among them, out into space, where Megatron had them pulled in. As Megatron expositied on what he'd been up to, the Magnificence chimed in with its proposal, that they destroy the Functionist Primus, prompting Anode to point out how selective it was being with its interjections. However, Megatron revealed a complication: They couldn't destroy the alternate Cybertron, since it was still populated. The Return of the King

As everyone rejoined on board the Lost Light, the Magnificence spoke up again, revealing there was a way to defeat the Functionists; have Rung create three Matrixes and unleash them inside the fake Primus' brain, cog and spark chamber. Cyclonus, not willing to sacrifice Tailgate to this plan, vetoed it, so an alternative plan was suggested, of using more Matrixes to overload Vector Sigma, purging the Council entirely. It was Anode who suggested using Cybertron's Hot Spots as the attack sites. However, the Magnificence objected to this plan, revealing itself to be the voice of the Omega Guardians, wishing to use the false Primus's destruction to return to the corporeal universe and devour it. Then Nickel crushed the Magnificence, shutting them up, and leaving the Lost Light crew to save the universe themselves. The Unremembering

Part one of that involved finding a way to get the fake Primus to turn back into a planet so they could access the Hot Spots, a problem fortunately solved by the timely arrival of Luna-1 hitting it in the back of the head. With one of the twelve Matrixes provided by Rung in his last act, Anode and Lug (and Wipe-Out) went to Sansaw Sanserre, where the Functionist Council's goons were waiting for them. Facing them down, the two exchanged a kiss and a mutual declaration of love. However, a new problem presented itself, as the Matrixes refused to open. Rodimus gave the teams a pep talk as they were besieged from all sides, which proved enough to get Lug to open her Matrix as Anode watched. With that, the Council were annihilated and the universe saved. A Spark Among Embers

We don't know who their kids are for sure by name, but we do know an Arcee has one who still wants her summer!

In the aftermath, Anode and Lug joined the Lost Light crew on their "victory lap", before the ship was to be decommissioned. On the way, Brainstorm, Nautica and Perceptor conducted an experiment to duplicate the ship in another universe, where they would be free to explore forever. In "Swerve's", the two sat at the bar and talked with Bluestreak, before Anode suggested what to do next: Settle down on Luna 1 and raise some kids, to which Lug clinked her glass with Anode's. As everyone departed, Lug called out to everyone to keep in touch, before she and Anode made their own way.

Despite Lug's promise, however, neither she or Anode attended Ratchet's funeral in the far future, after he died of age-related burnout.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the multiverse, the experiment produced a duplicate Lost Light, with its own version of Anode and Lug, ready to set off into the unknown. How To Say Goodbye And Mean It: Part 2

The Functionist Universe

In an alternate timeline where the Great War never occurred, Anode was a qualified blacksmith who had abandoned her comfortable life in favor of joining the Anti-Vocationist League in fighting the totalitarian Functionist Council. In this capacity she worked alongside rogue Council member Nine-of-Twelve. Through circumstances untold, she had adopted a feminine identity and chassis like her main timeline counterpart.

When a group of castaways from an alternate universe arrived and immediately ran afoul of the local Functionaries, Anode watched as the group returned to their headquarters in Adaptica, and later observed a live feed of the Functionist Council revealing the "true purpose" of Rung. The group's musings were interrupted by the sudden return of Luna 2. A World Misplaced Anode and Nine-of-Twelve watched in abject horror as the now-weaponized moon began laying waste to their city using tractor beams. Bad Moon Rising

2019 IDW continuity

Anode was one of many Transformers who watched an illegal skitter race at Swindle's. Rise of the Decepticons: Swindle's

Games

Transformers Roleplaying Game

Anode was originally coded male and assigned to become a blacksmith. However, her rash nature caused a tragedy on the job; after fleeing Cybertron, she eventually became a treasure-hunting archeologist. Contact with organic races eventually caused Anode to feel more comfortable as a "she", which led her to rebuild her chassis into a feminine shape. As an Autobot scout and scientist, Anode and her spouse Lug spent their time exploring dangerous territory, chasing mysteries, and searching for ancient relics. Transformers Roleplaying Game Starter Bundle

Notes

• An anode is a polarized electrical device.
• Anode was originally going to appear by running into Getaway's Lost Light crew. When More than Meets the Eye became Lost Light, Roberts changed that to the Necrobot taking her to Necroworld so any new readers could meet the characters and concepts alongside Anode.^[1]
• Jack Lawrence designed Anode's Cybertronian biplane mode after James Roberts was inspired by the opening sequence of the 1981 Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark.^[2] Her transformation scheme is patterned on Titans Return Mindwipe.^[3]
• Lug and Anode in Lost Light, as trans lesbians, were developed with the consultation of Rachel Stevens.^[4]

References