Elf

i was standing at my job taking care of the books at the book store after showing some books to a girl when my boss, who was standing behind me, calls me.

“you gotta be careful boy, some times they come with a handle” he whispers

“what?” i asked, completly lost.

“i mean that that was a tranny”

This is september 2018, im a year away from cracking my egg, im working at a stand at the book fair for a book store. My job is to stand around, guard the books, show them to any interested potential buyer, tell them the prices and direct them to the cashier if they want to buy them.

this was a long shift, from 10 am to 9 pm. i would reach the end of it tired beyond belief. and then i would have to walk by foot all the way back to the apartment that i shared with my girl friend. the walk home would be a pretty lonely and exhausting walk. So sometimes my girlfriend at the time, who needless to say is Trans with a capital T, would come pick me up and walk with me back home some times.

so one night she comes a bit earlier, around 30 minutes before the shift ends. its late at night, the book fair is fairly empty, no clients around, and she loves books so she comes to me in the stand and pretends to be a client who doesnt know me, interested in the books. i play along, showing her our books on offer and doing my whole bookseller routine with her. of course we are smiling and being coy and giggling to each other the whole time. eventually she leaves after she whispers that she’s going to be waiting for me outside.

through all this my boss was a few meters away. he would come every now and then for an hour or so to check over everything and just stand there, watching over the stand, making sure we were doing our jobs. so after my gf goes away he walks up to me, and acting all familiar he says to me, with the amused whisper of a mentor: “be careful buddy, some times women come with a handle”

i look back at him and i was more confused than anything else because i genuenly did not understand what the hell he was saying or hat did it mean, so i just ask, confused “what”

and he explained, like a wise man explaining the basic facts to a green gilled rookie “i mean that that was a tranny, boy”

thats when two things dawned on me. He thought i had been actually flirting with a costumer AND he thought i commited the classic blunder of flirting with a trans girl without realizing.

at that point the sheer size of the misunderstanding hit me faster than how gross and innapropiate the comment had been so i do the first thing i do whenever someone makes a mistake in front of me: i instinctively correct it without realizing what i was saying.

“That was my girlfriend, sir”

and that man immediatly collapsed in front of me. he walked back sputtering, red as a tomato, unable to see me in the face, trying to awkwardly laugh it off and explain that he had been joking and that he didnt mean it and so on.

the part of the story that i never told was that the next day one of my coworkers took me aside to speak privately to me. she, with the biggest ammount of grave regret apologized to me formally in the name of the store. that was happened had been extremely innapropiate and that she felt terribly sorry for it having taken place. Now, i want to make it clear. this was purely a personal matter for her. our book store was a small mom and pop store, we didnt have an HR department or anything even close to it. and then she explained to me that the reason why this made her so upset was because she herself had a trans daughter, and she was scanadlized that her boss woul behave like that.

it was one of the most heartwarming moments in my life.

Continue the cycle of get job, get fired for job because his tardiness and random absences make it hard to do his job

Officially become a ghost hunter for a living like his parents

Accept a bribery job from Vlad, who claims he'd be willing to just let Danny do whatever while still getting paid. Which sounds great, but it'd mean having to spend more time with Vlad

See, we hear in Mammon’s Midseason Special that Fizz has won Mammon’s Clown Pageant the last ten years in a row. But nothing about that indicates that ten years ago was the first time Fizz won.

Instead, I think the actual first time Fizz won Mammon’s Clown Pageant was fifteen years ago. As in, shortly before the accident. For one this really adds some additional weight to the flashbacks we get in Oops. The big celebration we see wasn’t just for Fizz’s birthday, it was celebrating Fizz getting his big break. Winning this competition and getting the chance to work with Mammon, the Sin of Greed himself.

As well as adding even greater weight to Blitzo trying to give Fizz a love letter. Blitzo likely thought this would be the last chance he would get.

Additionally, this would also neatly explain Mammon’s involvement in Fizz’s recovery after the accident. It’s clear that Mammon bankrolled Fizzerolli’s recovery and cyberization, so that begs the question of what would prompt Mammon to invest so much time and effort into helping seemingly some random imp circus kid? Well, what if said kid not only just won his Clown Pageant, but did SO good that Mammon decided pretty much immediately that he wanted THIS kid as his new brand mascot? And then just a few weeks or even days later, that kid was horrifically maimed in a terrible accident at his home? Yeah, I think that gives Mammon ALL the reason to stick his neck out for Fizz. And if you’re going to ask ‘Why didn’t Mammon just drop Fizz after he was basically crippled?’ Because Mammon is the embodiment of GREED. He WANTED Fizzerolli and he was going to HAVE him.

Plus, I think we can assume that this is where Asmodeus entered the picture, with Mammon calling him in to do Fizzerolli’s cybernetics. In turn, I think it’s easy to guess that Ozzie being so closely involved in Fizz’s recovery is when the two started falling in love.

In short, Fizzerolli spends the next few years recovering before making his big debut as Mammon’s new hot brand mascot, winning his next Clown Pageant, and goes on to win every pageant for the next ten years up to present.

Now the other angle here is the big ‘Who conspired to keep Blitzo and Fizz apart after the accident?’ And I’m going to be honest; it is DEFINITELY Cash Buckzo. Like I know some people have theorized that it was Mammon, but frankly that theory just doesn’t make sense anymore. Mammon simply doesn’t have much motive or means to have done this, and if nothing else, he straight up doesn’t recognize Blitzo in the newest episode.

Cash on the other has both motive AND means in abundance. He was certainly one of the people most closely looking after Fizzerolli after the fire and he had every reason to want to cut Blitzo out of Fizzerolli’s life. Likely a combination of petty spite against his son for causing the accident which burned down their circus, likely injured dozens and even killed his wife, and also wanting to isolate and ‘protect’ Fizzerolli, his big cash cow. Especially now that he’d gotten the attention of Mammon, with Cash likely hoping to get/mooch as much as he could out of this new arrangement.

Now that last bit in particular get’s interesting because it’s clear that if Cash was hoping to continue profiting off Fizzerolli, it clearly didn’t work. What with how we have seen neither hide nor hair of Cash around Fizz, who in turn has not brought him up once.

So what happened?

TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications.

I often compare disability/class/age-based eugenics to sex-selective abortion. Banning sex-selective abortion does not solve the problem; it just violates people's bodily autonomy, builds parental resentment of their children, and compounds the misogyny that leads to the demand for sex-selective abortion in the first place.

People practice sex-selective abortion because having a child AMAB is more beneficial to the parents' social and economic standing than having a child AFAB. The solution to that problem has to be changing those social and economic conditions so that a child's gender or AGAB has no bearing on their parents' social and economic standing -- so that sex-selective abortion is no longer a rational choice in response to the parents' circumstances.

And the only way to prevent disability-selective abortion is to make disabled people so socially and economically equal to abled people that disability-selective abortion no longer looks like a rational choice.

The only way to prevent economic/class eugenics is economic equality. The only way to prevent age/status-based eugenics is social equality.

This is the main impetus that drove me to socialism. I used to be more of a center-left social democrat; I figured "Complete economic equality would be nice, but it's a pipe dream; the important thing is that everyone. It doesn't really matter if the CEO is richer than everyone else, as long as no one is hungry or homeless. Besides, it's kind of 'fair' in a way for people with more specialized/demanding jobs to be compensated more."

But the thing is, as long as inequality exists, parents will want their children to rise to the top of the hierarchy. As long as inequality exists, parents will want to prevent their children from falling lower in the hierarchy. As long as inequality exists, parents will do anything to coerce and pressure and abuse and modify their children to give them a "competitive edge."

And as long as inequality exists, and certain physical/cognitive traits correlate with "success," choosing children with those "successful" traits will be a rational choice.

Americans in disability liberation discussions tend to blame our country's ableism on our lack of social safety nets and universal healthcare... but countries with robust social safety nets are just as ableist as we are, sometimes more so. The abortion rate for fetuses with Down Syndrome is higher in Iceland than in the U.S., even though an Icelandic child with Down Syndrome would have access to healthcare. Iceland, while deeply flawed, has a decent enough social safety net that someone born with Down Syndrome would probably not starve or be homeless. But they would be at the bottom of the social hierarchy. There is still a social hierarchy. Eugenics is still a rational choice. Changing that behavior requires changing the social hierarchy that values so-called "general intelligence" and devalues disabled people.

The same is true of other kinds of eugenics -- as long as raising children is a net financial loss for families, avoiding having children "you can't afford" will remain a rational choice. As long as having children means a decrease in the birthing parent's educational or professional opportunities, people will avoid giving birth to children they "can't afford."

#if only he would make the voice deepinator... #would definitely steal that.

Oh no no Dr. Doofenshmirtz goes the other route. He makes his dysphoria everyone ELSES problem.

"Voice-Inator", purpose, "makes everyone elses voice higher, making his seem lower by comparison". Honestly incredible. It's trans AND its evil

Then we have the Bread-Inator, which doesn't SEEM trans coded since it just turns whatever it hits into Bread, but.

"He plans to destroy the statue of Rutherford B. Hayes, the U.S. President with the best beard of them all, by turning it into bread, which will then be eaten by a swarm of hungry magpies that Doof has ready to release. The plan arose because Doofenshmirtz was jealous of people who could grow facial hair and he couldn't."

VERY NEXT EPISODE, Ugly-inator, expressly because of self image problems. Which should be noted he later does again with a handsome setting, which makes him typically masculine-handsome temporarily.

Ballgown-inator, EXPRESSLY to make himself "look manlier in comparison". Really can't state enough he is making his dysphoria EVERYONE'S problem, in true mad scientist fashion.

I didn't even remember this one I'm just scrolling trying to find the moustache one.

Also when he gets turned into a were-cow he has udders. I'm not even hitting backstories this is just off the phineas and ferb wiki entry for -inators.

Okay found the moustache-inator, which ironically enough he's just using because he thinks it's funny to put giant mustaches on people, but the "resents not growing facial hair" tells me this is definitely at least PARTIALLY personal use, cmon now.

And that's the one I was finding so I'm not checking the rest of the -inators, and again this isn't even getting into his.

Extensive childhood backstories.

^“At the bottom of the image is the segment of the flag cut for the St. Patrick’s Cathedral protest. Photograph by Mick Hicks”

A whole lot of people really disliked Disney's Wish movie.

OK, so what I've heard from my dubious internet sources is that, in Wish, there's a kingdom where the king is a wizard who can grant wishes. He grants one wish per month to a citizen of the kingdom. To live in his kingdom, you have to give your wish to him, which turns it into a glowing blue ball and makes you forget it. The wizard picks and choses which wishes to grant, and is a bit egotistical. He may possibly eat wishes he doesn't grant in order to fuel his magic? Unclear.

This is apparently turbo evil.

Anyway, the protagonist is a girl living in this kingdom named... Asha? I think? And Asha makes a wish on a star, which makes a marketable plushie star come down to her. She and the plushie have adventures which include making a bunch of animals, trees, and mushrooms join in a musical number with questionable grammar.

Together, they convince the populace (and also the wizard's wife???) to stage a revolution, because the wizard isn't granting their wishes specifically (no one in the kingdom can do math I guess). This makes the wizard go super turbo ultra evil and he uses a spell that makes everyone kneel using vines, but they use the power of friendship to murder him Disney villain death style.

Now, from what I've heard, one of the reasons the plot is so random (according to dubious internet sources, again, I have not actually watched it) and a lot of the songs don't really make sense is that the marketable plushie was supposed to be the protagonist's love interest and those songs were written as duets.

Anyway, I stopped before the whole Revolution plotline got going, but the Wizard was cruelly refusing to grant Protagonist's dying Grandpa's wish of "inspiring people" because of such petty concerns as "That wish is dangerously non-specific" and "what if he Inspires people to Be Evil, Do Crime, and Rebel Against the Government?"

Anyway, the Protagonist didn't have a good counter-argument to the Wizard-King's *"Be careful what you wish for, and be careful which wishes you grant"* policy, other than saying that her Grandpa would OBVIOUSLY never do anything BAD, because he is a Good Person!

In 2021, Swarovski (the company that makes the very sparkly crystals you see in certain jewelry, on figure-skaters' twinkliest outfits, on red carpet dresses), decided they didn't want the grubby fingers of small-time jewelers, clothing designers and costumers and crafters on their shiny beads and rhinestones anymore. They decided to limit their sales to "luxury" and couture creators, not girls who sell stuff on Etsy. The tenor of their press release on the subject was snide and insulting. Resellers (like your favorite bead shop) would no longer be allowed to carry their product; the average Jane on the street would not be able to purchase them. You could only get them if you had an authorized business agreement that bound you to very strict brand behavior. And those of us who still had good stock of the crystals would no longer be "permitted" to use the brand's name in our listings for sale.

Every bead shop and craft supply place and many, many small clothing makers--wedding shops, prom and dancing dress suppliers, the sort of salt of the Earth mom and pop time machines of shops that are the backbone of the field--scrambled to find something that could replace them. The last of the stock dwindled quickly, all of us grabbing what we could get while there was any chance of it, and then it was gone and we no longer had any access.

I was Big Pissed about it at the time. It was just so goddamn stuck-up, when wholesalers and indie jewelers had made them so much money, when some people I knew--when *I!*--had been brand-loyal for decades. But with no recourse, everyone pivoted fairly quickly, most of us to Preciosa Crystals. Those are Czech, quite sparkly, and considerably less expensive than Swarovski. The faceting method they use is different, but not worse; any differences are hardly noticeable when you're seeing them as a hundred pinpoints of light.

Well, out of nowhere, Swarovski just dropped this: https://www.harmanbeads.com/swarovski-brand-policy-update

"Effective June 1, 2026, Swarovski updated the distribution and brand usage policies introduced in 2021. Businesses may now purchase Swarovski Crystals without signing a Brand Control Agreement, and Authorized Distribution Partners may once again sell Swarovski Crystals to resellers, including bead stores and online retailers. Businesses may also use the Swarovski brand name when following Swarovski’s Proper Use Guidelines. Designers, manufacturers, artists, brands, retailers, and resellers are now eligible to purchase Swarovski Crystals through authorized distribution channels."

They want us back. A lot of the companies who could have kept a brand relationship with them also have swapped to Preciosa, over the last half-decade, in solidarity with indie creators and out of a sour awareness that it could be them, next. And it doesn't hurt that Preciosa was able to expand their line quite a bit now that everyone who wanted sparkle had no choice but to go to them.

And I'm not seeing nearly anyone who intends to return. The feeling is, "Y'all told us to fuck off! Off we fucked! And now, that's what you can do, too!" I'm seeing a lot of "How many of us did you stab in the back?" comments from the people whose money they're hoping to attract.