#does she even realize people can DO that? I don't think she'd ever misgender spike but I also think she'd be like. whaaaat

[tenderjock]

hey @camellcat i'm gonna add to some of your tags because i love trans lady spike soso sooo much!!! #dru using spike as a doll eheheh she would. spike puts up with it cause it's dru but yeah not loving it for herself#dru so totally saw before spike did. in fact I think she'd use she/her pronouns for spike before she even transitions#might be the thing that pushes her over the edge of realization truly

dru never saw spike as a man, even when she was human, before she transitioned, she never saw that old name as being her name, none of it. spike didnt have the words for it at the time and dru was like silly! you dont need WORDS for it, you just need to be.

anyway, spike plays around a lot with makeup and different hairstyles and different modes of dress and stuff throughout the centuries, but she falls back on like. tomboyish, vaguely masculine looks. nothing that screams I'M A MAN, and she's never gonna read cishet, but she's also not like dru or darla or buffy, altho her type is definintely very femme girls. she likes being the snarling dobermann gf on the arm of the prettiest barbiedoll.

#I still think knowing a trans person would cause buffy to break for a bit. never got over her reaction to willow coming out#does she even realize people can DO that? I don't think she'd ever misgender spike but I also think she'd be like. whaaaat#but then y'know they try n kill each other again and really she's got bigger things to worry about here

the interesting thing about trans lesbian spike and buffy to me is that i think buffy Would Not Get It but she would think like. okay, this is transphobic af, but maybe she would think it was a vampire thing at first? like, that spike was ~this way because she was a ~vampire. but i dont think that would make her misgender spike or call her the wrong name. and then, after being informed (possibly by giles? or oz, idk hmm) and fighting spike and hating her and trucing with her, it would just be like, yeah, this is a weird fact of spike. she can eat her weight in blooming onions despite the fact that they have garlic powder on them, thats objectively weirder in buffy's mind.

and i think buffy would get so used to spike being a trans lesbian that she would genuinely forget about it and be surprised when other people brought it up as an unusual or abnormal thing, like what? is he a man? no, that's spike. she's a demon. shut up, what are you talking about?

(sidenote buffy's reaction to willow coming out is so. '90s tv. lmao. not to say that it wouldnt happen irl NOW, but to have that portrayed as the way a progressive, supportive character would necessarily react to her best friend coming out is so. '90s tv.)

#!!! angelussss. nodding yupp yeah she doesn't care on way or the other she just wants to hurt spike#not that angel would give a single fuck either but she's like not evil anymore so

its important to me that this is like. angelus DOESNT think that spike is a man. angelus DOESNT think that spike/helen is not her name. angelus DOES deadname her and misgender her ON PURPOSE, to be a prick, to hurt her, because angelus is a manipulative, nasty, merciless piece of shit.

angel doesnt really ... care, necessarily, that spike feels bad about being deadnamed, but she wouldnt do it, either. again, angel is aware that spike is really a woman and that spike is really her name, so she's gonna call her the correct name and the correct pronouns, but she doesnt particularly feel bad for calling her the wrong ones when she didnt have a soul, because she figured soulless spike deserved it, anyway.

JUST GENERALLY, i think trans lesbian spike would be so. SOOOOOO in your face, so LOUD and UNAPOLOGETIC and beautiful askljdfkjs i love her, i love her truly !!!

random trans lesbian spike headcanons

she doesnt even realize she's a woman until after she's a vampire. she just knows something's wrong with her for her whole life. she's never been right, you know? she's been too soft, too poetic, head lost in the clouds, too emotional. never had many friends. too much of a mummy's boy. and under it, she's been so fucking angry all the time, in ways she's never been able to express. until now.

she hates the name william.

the bloody's not too bad, though.

spike's better. angelus (who is a cis woman in this au - the whole scourge are women, okay?) tells her she needs a real name, a proper name, the kind of name a person has. spike scoffs - because angelus is such a proper name, huh? - but chooses "helen" to go by when she needs to.

(its a threefold choice. first: "was this the face that launched a thousand ships / and burnt the topless towers of illium / sweet helen, make me immortal with a kiss ..." yeah. so she's a romantic, what of it.)

(second: she's a bit of a fan of acton bell and she appreciates a woman who had the nerve to leave a bad situation. she wouldntve gone back to the bastard, though. lmao tell yourself that spike)

(third: ... third, is that helen, from the greek, means "shining light." means "something gleaming." it means - yeah. it doesnt rhyme, but maybe it doesnt have to, see?)

dru loooooooooooooooves her. dru loves her growing her hair out and trying on dresses and putting on makeup for the first time - its like having her own vampire-sized doll to play with! spike ends up not really liking any of that stuff overmuch, but it was fun to play around with, anyway.

she's pretty butch, honestly. shortish hair - i'm kinda feeling the lesbian mullet for spike. overall, a similar look to canon.

soulless unchipped spike takes a lot of pleasure in killing people that misgender her. she usually doesnt even eat them, she just beats them to death with her bare hands.

semi-relatedly, angelus (not soulled angel) deadnames her on purpose. its not even because she doesnt consider spike to be "really" her name or that spike is "really" a man or anything like that, its to be deliberately cruel.

buffy DOESNT misgender her, like, ever. this is very important to me. even when they hate each other, even when spike is being godawful to her. buffy doesnt misgender her. i think if buffy ever did hear her deadname, she would be genuinely confused as to who people were talking about because she thinks of spike as [spike] or mayyyybe [helen the bloody].