Dungeon Mistress

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

A highspeed railcar, ideally big enough for freight so that you can make "walls" from various crates and scatter interesting/useful stuff around them. At some point either coming across a locked or barricaded door and having to crawl out and deal with the rushing wind and timed hazards like signs and tunnels.

The surface of a dyson sphere, preferably still under construction, so you can have a mixture of purposeful design, open areas exposed to the sun, control rooms to manage energy or maybe even move platforms around for passage.

The interior of a luxury space cruise, with the added benefit of being able to make some wild themed rooms on the justification of "it's rich people being excessive, again".

Future library, with increasingly bizarre security systems for the seemingly endless parade of even more restricted sections.

@five-by-five I'm adding your additions here because I think they are fucking awesome.

Large skyscrapers with dozens, maybe a hundred different floors

Most likely office buildings of mega-corps who can not only afford to build such buildings but also require all that space

Maybe evacuated due to a threat the party is responding to, either externally or even something caused internally, like mega-corps messing with shit they shouldn’t have

Maybe even completely abandoned due to messing with shit they shouldn’t have, and now the threat is getting ready to leave the quarantined building unless the party can stop it

A dam, churning as water passes through and filled with complex machinery to keep things working. With a variant for it being after some environmental change that drained the reservoir and now the dam is the only passage across a chasm, with the party needing to adjust the now-defunt mechanisms so they can pass through.

A hab dome in some extreme environment, an abandoned colony that only just got started. Not unlike some of the other suggestions but a bit more "open" at the costs of the risk of environmental hazards.

Adjacent to the "military tech base" thing is, of course, a spaceship. Presumably with the party launching an attack on it from a boarding vessel at some point. Mix it up by having the ship they're attacking currently docked with another ship, exchanging supplies or personnel, so now you've got two potential dungeons ships to traverse through. Maybe one is transporting cargo and has lesser security, so you board that one so you can cross over to the higher security one.

Fancy space McMansion, with a courtyard (complete with hedge maze), a fancy pool (that's also a weird underwater course or boat racing rally because this is the future wealthy), the mansion interior with Resident Evil style puzzles, and of course the bunker holding all the valuables/target for assassination/hidden intel.

Rich person's menagerie. While I'm not particularly a fan of killing a bunch of endangered space animals, you can have a bit of characterization mixed in where it's not really endangered animals but rather whatever the owner thinks is "cool" which just so happen to be encounter appropriate enemies. Rooms themed around their natural environments (rooms clearly too small and thus adding to the agitation, rooms that are big for the owner's "favorites"), corridors between exhibits with patrolling guard bots, maintenance tunnels. Lends itself to puzzle interactions (don't make eye contact with the space gorilla and you can pass through the room), and environmental interactions (guards in the way? push them into the eel pit). Can be there to rescue one of the animals, or it's a route into one of the other dungeons suggested.

More specifically, a chip fab (future is gonna need a lot of those)

Space Cheesecake Factory

Space Abandoned Disney World

Subway system (whichever Planet of the Apes that was)

Museum

Airport

Shipping terminal

Space container ship

Ferry (water or space)

Racetrack of some kind

Botanical garden (carnivorous plants to taste)

Golf course

Sports stadium

Apartment complex

Parking garage

Space Home Depot

Farming area on a space station

The fox & crow are back! Stargazer pals!

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

And Gandalf just blinks and is like, “You what now?”

“Yeah, killed it. Had to save Frodo”

In lord of the rings lore, there are three tiers of deities. The highest tier and most dangerous includes Morgoth - Sauron’s master, and Ungoliant, Shelob’s master. The middle tier includes Shelob, Sauron. Then there’s the lowest tier, which includes the wizards Gandalf and Saruman as well as the Balrog (this is why Gandalf couldn’t 1v1 the Balrog). It also explains why Gandalf doesn’t take the ring, the magic of a tier 2 deity would absolutely corrupt him. We even see that happen with Saruman and the Palantir.

This leads to the start of the answer to some interesting questions. Why does Sauron tolerate Shelob being in his territory, and why does Sauron tolerate there being a secret back door into Mordor?

On the surface, he does it because he might not be able to beat Shelob in a fight, after all they’re the same tier of deity. And since Shelob’s domain is the secret way into Mordor, he can’t close it off, and he seriously doubts anyone can use it to get in. He doesn’t monitor the path with guards either - Shelob would eat them.

It gets more detailed than that though. Sauron’s boss, Morgoth, and Shelob’s boss, Ungoliant, made a deal. They’d attack the tree of life together. Morgoth would drink the nectar, and Ungoliant would keep all of the jewels and magic they earned along the way. Morgoth broke this deal because there was a particularly powerful gem he wanted (the gem in Sauron’s helmet), and as a result Ungoliant went to war with Morgoth.

Ungoliant won, Morgoth barely escaped with his life.

So not only does Sauron maybe lose if he attacks Shelob. Even if he were to win, it might provoke Ungoliant into attacking Morgoth again, and Ungoliant wins that fight, she’s already done it once.

With all of that established, how the hell does Sam hurt a deity that powerful?

Well, to start, it’s impossible. Shelob’s hide is so tough Sam could never pierce it with all his might. However, Shelob had grown old and arrogant. During the fight, Sam winds up directly underneath Shelob, and Shelob decides to crush Sam with all her strength.

Unfortunately, Sam is pointing sting straight up.

While Sam lacks the strength to hurt Shelob, Shelob herself is plenty strong. She accidentally impales herself on sting, finding herself injured for the first time in thousands of years. Which is the sort of poetry I really appreciate about Tolkien’s writing.

No matter how powerful or evil or ancient or indestructible your foe, if you stand for what is right and hold your sword out, they will impale themselves upon it.

This post is inspired by two things, the first being the announcement by Google that the long delayed Manifest V3 which will kill robust adblocking will finally roll out in June 2024, and the second, a post written by @sexhaver in response to a question as to what adblockers and extensions they use. It's a very good post with some A+ information, worth checking out.

I love Firefox, I love the degree of customization it offers me as a user. I love how it just works. I love the built in security features like DNS over HTTPS, and I love just how many excellent add-ons are available. It is a better browser than Chrome in every respect, and of the many Chromium based browsers out there, only Vivaldi comes close.

There are probably many people out there who are considering switching over to Firefox but are maybe putting it off because they've got Chrome set up the way they like it with the extensions they want, and doing all that again for Firefox seems like a chore. The Firefox Add-on directory is less expansive than the Chrome Web Store (which in recent years has become overrun with garbage extensions that range from useless to active malware), but there is still a lot of stuff to sift through. That's where this short guide comes in.

I'm presently running 33 add-ons for Firefox and have a number of others installed but disabled. I've used many others. These are my picks, the ones that I consider essential, useful, or in some cases just fun.

Adblocking/Privacy/Security:

uBlock Origin: The single best adblocker available. If you're a power user there are custom lists and scripts you can find to augment it.

Privacy Badger: Not strictly necessary if you're also running uBlock, but it does catch a few trackers uBlock doesn't and replaces potentially useful trackers like comment boxes with click-to-activate placeholders.

Decentraleyes: A supplementary tool meant to run alongside uBlock, prevents certain sites from breaking when tracker requests are denied by serving local bundled files as replacement.

NoScript: The nuclear option for blocking trackers, ads, and even individual elements. Operates from a "trust no one" standpoint, you will need to manually enable elements yourself. Not recommended for casual users, but a fantastic tool for the power user.

Webmail Ad Blocker: The first of many webmail related add-ons from Jason Saward I will be recommending. Removes all advertising from webmail services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

Popup Blocker (Strict): Strictly blocks ALL pop up/new tab/new window requests from all website by default unless you manually allow it.

SponsorBlock: Not a fan of listening to your favourite YouTuber read advertisements for shitty products like Raycons or BetterHelp? This skips them automatically.

AdNauseam: I don't use this one but some people prefer it. Rather than straight up blocking ads and trackers, it obfuscates data by injecting noise into the tracker surveillance infrastructure. It clicks EVERY ad, making your data profile incomprehensible.

User-Agent Switcher: Allows you to spoof websites attempting to gather information by altering your browser profile. Want to browse mobile sites on desktop? This allows you to do it.

Bitwarden: Bitwarden has been my choice of password manager since LastPass sold out and made their free tier useless. If you're not using a password manager, why not? All of my passwords look like this: $NHhaduC*q3VhuhD&scICLKjvM4rZK5^c7ID%q5HVJ3@gny I don't know a single one of them and I use a passphrase as a master password supplemented by two-factor-authentication. Everything is filled in automatically. It is the only way to live.

Proton Pass: An open source free password manager from the creators of Proton Mail. I've been considering moving over to it from Bitwarden myself.

Webmail/Google Drive:

Checker Plus for Gmail: Provides desktop notifications for Gmail accounts, supports managing multiple accounts, allows you to check your mail, read, mark as read or delete e-mails at a glance in a pop-up window. An absolutely fabulous add-on from Jason Saward.

Checker Plus for Google Drive: Does for your Google Drive what Checker Plus for Gmail does for your Gmail.

Checker Plus for Google Calendar: The same as the above two only this time for your Google Calendar.

Firefox Relay: An add-on that allows you to generate aliases that forward to your real e-mail address.

Accessibility:

Dark Reader: Gives every page on the internet a customizable Dark Mode for easier reading and eye protection.

Read Aloud: A text to speech add-on that reads pages with the press of a button.

Zoom Page WE: Provides the ability to zoom in on pages in multiple ways: text zoom, full page zoom, auto-fit etc.

Mobile Dyslexic: Not one I use, but I know people who swear by it. Replaces all fonts with a dyslexia friendly type face.

Utility:

ClearURLs: Automatically removes tracking data from URLs.

History Cleaner: Automatically deletes browser history older than a set number of days.

Feedbro RSS Feed Reader: A full standalone reader in your browser, take control of your feed and start using RSS feeds again.

Video Download Helper: A great tool for downloading video files from websites.

Snap Link Plus: Fan of Wikipedia binge holes? Snap Link allows to drag select multiple hyperlink and automatically open all of them in new tabs.

Copy PlainText: Copy any text without formatting.

EPUBReader: Read .epub files from within a browser window.

Tab Stash: A no mess, no fuss way to organize groups of tabs as bookmarks. I use it as a temporary bookmark tool, saving sessions or groups of tabs into "to read" folders.

Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey: Managers for installing and running custom user scripts. Find user scripts on OpenUserJS or Greasy Fork, there's an entire galaxy out there of ingenious and weird custom user scripts out there, go discover it.

Browsing & Searching:

Speed Dial 2: A new tab add-on that gives you easy access to your favourite sites.

Unpaywall: Whenever you come across a scholarly article behind a paywall, this add-on will search through all the free databases for an accessible and non-paywalled version of the text.

Web Archives: Come across a dead page? This add-on gives you a quick way to search for cached versions of the page on the Wayback Machine, Google Cache, Archive.is and others.

Bypass Paywalls: Automatically bypasses the paywalls of major websites like those for the New York Times, New Yorker, the Financial Times, Wired, etc.

Simple Translate: Simple one-click translation of web pages powered by Google Translate.

Search by Image: Reverse search any image via several different search engines: Google Image, TinEye, Yandex, Bing, etc.

Website Specific:

PocketTube: Do you subscribe to too many YouTube channels? Would you like a way to organize them? This is your answer.

Enhancer for Youtube: Provides a suite of options that make using YouTube more pleasant: volume boost, theatre mode, forced quality settings, playback speed and mouse wheel volume control.

Augmented Steam: Improves the experience of using Steam in a browser, see price histories of games, take notes on your wishlist, make wish listed games and new DLC for games you own appear more visible, etc.

Return YouTube Dislikes: Does exactly what it says on the package.

BlueBlocker: Hate seeing the absolute dimmest individuals on the planet have their replies catapulted to the top of the feed because they're desperate to suck off daddy Elon sloppy style? This is for you, it automatically blocks all Blue Checks on Twitter. I've used it to block a cumulative 34,000 Blue Checks.

Batchcamp: Allows for batch downloading on Bandcamp.

XKit Rewritten: If you're on Tumblr and you're not using whichever version of XKit is currently available, I honestly don't know what to say to you. This newest version isn't as fully featured as the old XKit of the golden age, but it's been rewritten from the ground up for speed and utility.

Social Fixer for Facebook: I once accidentally visited Facebook without this add-on enabled and was immediately greeted by the worst, mind annihilating content slop I had ever had the misfortune to come across. Videos titled "he wanted her to get lip fillers and she said no so he had bees sting her lips", and AI photos of broccoli Jesus with 6000 comments all saying "wow". Once I turned it on it was just stuff my dad had posted and updates from the Radio War Nerd group.

BetterTTV: Makes Twitch slightly more bearable.

Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.

Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.

The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.

Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.

So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.

The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.

The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Flowers have a long history of symbolism that you can incorporate into your writing to give subtext.

Symbolism varies between cultures and customs, and these particular examples come from Victorian Era Britain. You'll find examples of this symbolism in many well-known novels of the era!

Amaryllis: Pride

Black-eyed Susan: Justice

Bluebell: Humility

Calla Lily: Beauty

Pink Camellia: Longing

Carnations: Female love

Yellow Carnation: Rejection

Clematis: Mental beauty

Columbine: Foolishness

Cyclamen: Resignation

Daffodil: Unrivalled love

Daisy: Innocence, loyalty

Forget-me-not: True love

Gardenia: Secret love

Geranium: Folly, stupidity

Gladiolus: Integrity, strength

Hibiscus: Delicate beauty

Honeysuckle: Bonds of love

Blue Hyacinth: Constancy

Hydrangea: Frigid, heartless

Iris: Faith, trust, wisdom

White Jasmine: Amiability

Lavender: Distrust

Lilac: Joy of youth

White Lily: Purity

Orange Lily: Hatred

Tiger Lily: Wealth, pride

Lily-of-the-valley: Sweetness, humility

Lotus: Enlightenment, rebirth

Magnolia: Nobility

Marigold: Grief, jealousy

Morning Glory: Affection

Nasturtium: Patriotism, conquest

Pansy: Thoughtfulness

Peony: Bashfulness, shame

Poppy: Consolation

Red Rose: Love

Yellow Rose: Jealously, infidelity

Snapdragon: Deception, grace

Sunflower: Adoration

Sweet Willian: Gallantry

Red Tulip: Passion

Violet: Watchfulness, modesty

Yarrow: Everlasting love

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

[Wrex voice]: Shepard wants to f-ck you so bad it makes her look stupid

Part 2