ePik Flayl was hungry.
Okay, ePik Flayl was always hungry. Occupational hazard of being a trickster, even if he does hail from a relatively new pantheon of electronic gods. But if he only looked after his hunger, it would leave him no time for adventures that explored other aspects of the nature of existence, and he took his role as educator of the people seriously. Well, as seriously as he took anything. But...you know. So, ePik Flayl only took notice of his hunger when he did not have another story to tell.
Which is a roundabout way of saying: ePik Flayl was hungry.
The obvious thing for him to do would be to call Ubermensch Eats and order some Kentucky fried sushi. However, being the god of the error message and the spinning blue wheel of death (technologically speaking; other gods looked after your physical ill-being), he knew that that would end badly (ie: with him not getting any food and having to explain the dozen dead dragons in the den).
So, ePik Flayl decided to get his food old school. Getting the thermometer and the Groot doll were easy enough. Changing the shape of his body so that he was a she (take a walk on the trickster side), was a little harder, but
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Did you say that this WaterPik Flayall turned into a woman?"
Umm...ePik Flayl, yes. It's an important element of the story.
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That will never do. Children might hear this story!"
Children should hear this story. It's a cautionary tale that warns against the misuse of apostrophes in everyday life.
"But it's about a man who changes into a woman. That's not natural!"
Gender fluidity is a common feature in the mythology of trickster gods. For them, it's perfectly natural.
"Well, harrumph, I don't want my children thinking it's natural! It's perverted and sick and wrong and -"
I'm sorry - who are you?
"My name is Lucille van Pelt-Ghormengast."
May I call you Lucy?
"No. I stopped using that name when I was nine. I do not wish to go back to that time in my life, thank you very much!"
Okay. I'm sorry but
"Umm, is this going to take a long time? I really am most frightfully hungry!"
"It will take as long as it takes to convince you not to have a sex change operation."
"It isn't an operation so much as it is a painful personal morphing. All I have to do is push my penis up into -"
"Eww! Eww eww eww eww eww! Those are exactly the kinds of details I don't want to hear!"
Stories of tricksters who change their sex go back hundreds of years in various religious traditions.
"Not my religious tradition!"
"So, I take it you don't want to hear how I grow breasts?"
"I could burn in hell just thinking about it!"
The point is that these traditions contend with the idea that sex is not a binary based on the genitalia you were born with, that sex is a continuum based on an individual's perception of what body they actually belong in.
"If it makes you feel better, I haven't changed yet. See? There I am - completely unshrunken."
"Eww! Eww! Put that away before somebody gets hurt!"
"I was only trying to help!"
"While I avert my eyes, I want you to know that sex is not a continuum. That's a hoax perpetrated by the liberal media! There are only men and women. Everything else is unnatural! Perverted and -"
Sick and wrong and something else you were interrupted before you were able to say it. Look, if you don't subscribe to these beliefs, that's your business. But why do you think it's okay to interrupt when
"Lucy! I think you got some 'splainin' to do! Haven't you ever wanted to know what it was like to have the body of a man?"
"Absolutely not! No no no no no! Never!"
"Me thinkest the lady doth protesteth too mucheth. Durst protesteth too mucheth? Me thinkest the lady Limp Bizkiteth too mucheth!"
"And don't call me Lucy!"
"Can I eat her?"
Tempting as that is, I would say no.
"I thought you'd never ask!"
As the trickster and the narrator left the room, the fussbudget was left on her own to fulminate about unnatural lifestyles and inveigh against narrators who describe what she's saying without the decency of putting her words in quotation marks.
But the pizza was excellent.