Goltbrook

covered in cobwebs, confusing the birds and one flick away from total darkness.

I think in this case it works well enough.

Most comedy works by subverting expectations. And sometimes you can shift the burden of establishing these expectations to the audience by offering an unclear and vague statement, that later is revealed to be the punchline to the joke.

There is a certain risk involved because how well the joke works on an individual basis is a question of how imaginative or unimaginative the audience is (depending on how the joke is constructed).

A joke that relies on lack of imagination basically turns the audience into their own straight man. While the joke that relies on imagination banks on you being the straight man to the flights of fancy of your audience.

Where else do you get mortgages?

I mean, technically you can contract a mortgage between any two legally able persons.

But I'd say a mortgage between private individuals is a rare exception.

Usually it is bank/credit unions, or corporations specializing in mortgages as their primary business. But I think you can lump most of those under the umbrella term. At least as far as their employees being able to just approve or deny you for personal reasons.

Maybe the mortgage application was just not within approval guidelines. It is not like a bank clerk gets to arbitrarily decide by personal sympathy.

Maybe there is another side to this toxic macho "manosphere" you mention.

After all, as a baseline men are by nature predisposed and culturally conditioned to protect and be considerate to women.

Despite all lamentation, Chivalry is not dead for some.

So obviously the sanctity of a woman's restroom is more highly valued than that of a men's bathroom. After all, women are more vulnerable and more often targeted in that way.

So the debate tends to skew towards women spaces, as those are more likely to cause public discord if disturbed.

Rarely are men stepping up on the soap crate to defend their own spaces. Because after all, they are strong enough to take any number of "inconveniences" and disadvantages because to admit to struggling with them would be weakness.

I'm not saying it's fair, or right, or how it should be. But maybe that bias isn’t always driven by hostility. Maybe it’s just that society still places more weight on protecting women, while expecting men to grit their teeth and deal with it. Even when those same men help reinforce that standard among themselves.

It doesn’t make the imbalance okay, and it doesn’t mean the outrage is consistent. But it might explain why all the noise gets focused on trans women. It’s not just transphobia, it’s the scaffolding of gender roles, still quietly deciding who gets defended, and who’s expected to tough it out.

It seems absurd to conceptualize a "chivalrous transphobe". But we are all more than just one label.

Just reached for the fan remote while seeing this.

I just like to feel the wind in my hair.

uubuwbubhufufubuwbufubub

is also what Wolverine sounds like suffering a stroke.

I want a place that makes tiny burgers

Forget the premium burger places where burgers are held together by whaling harpoons and you need to eat them deconstructed. Instead of one giant undesirable burger give me a plate with 4 regular sized burgers in exciting variations.

Give me a chicken chili burger, a double irish beef patty blue cheese burger, an italian herb lamb patty and as a chaser a smoked bison brisket with bourbon sauce.

All on one plate. I would be happy

4 burgers. 1 plate. 0 regrets.

And if you don't like one, you have 3 more chances to forgive the cook.

Alternatively, it turns out the noblewoman who has hired the adventuring party for a string of missions is effectively destitute and extremely in debt.

Neither able to pay the adventurers nor pay her outstanding credit debt toward several influential and unscrupulous banking houses who have thrown some gold together to pay a mercenary troop to collect the gold from her or alternatively take natural goods (speak plundering her holdings).

Now, with a small mercenary army bearing down on the pastoral villages and crumbling castle, what will the party do?

A former foot soldier in the crusades who had a panicked war horse fall on his legs in a skirmish somewhere on the way to Antioch and was left behind in Bulgaria by a retreating supply train on his way back.

His shattered leg never healed well and he is in constant pain he has mostly learned to live with, does not speak the language and is edging out a small existence as a gravedigger in a bigger city, dragging his twisted limb through rain-soaked earth, muttering prayers in a foreign dialect to saints no one there worships.

Somewhere between Neutral Good and Neutral Bitter, depending on the day.

I know it is a bit hammy.

Opening a tavern after retiring from adventuring is so out of fashion.

I'd open a prank/novelty/gag store and sell little wooden thumbs to the unthumbed.

I'd also sell middle fingers but only to bards.

The local library is a disposable commodity; easily replaceable.