misericordiae

Oh absolutely. Adore was actually the album that got me into them.

I agree with both of you. I’m very fond of everything by them up through the American Gothic EP, but Mellon Collie is still kinda the peak.

Link works for me, but here’s the original article. Movie is called The Day the Crown Cried.

I saw the movie first, then read the book after hearing it was different/maybe better, since aside from the bear, I found the movie fairly whelming. I ended up really enjoying the book, particularly the dream-like style. Authority, however, I found… really slow. I was intrigued by the premise, and the reveals were interesting, but the pacing was just glacial, imo, and it did away with what I’d liked about Annihilation. I did start Acceptance afterward, but was sort of over it at that point, and never finished it.

Despite the first book winning the 2021 SPSFC (admittedly, a much less well-known competition than the SPFBO), I almost never see the Primaterre series by S.A. Tholin mentioned. They are doorstoppers, but very well paced, imo: I inhaled the first two books. If you like space opera that manages to avoid a lot of plot tropes, give the series a try!

(Sidenote: if you’re put off by the “cosmic horror” label on the first book, I recall there being a couple of mildly gory scenes, but it’s mostly in the realm of “unfathomably alien” rather than trying to scare.)

Definitely sounds like Mirrormask to me.

This looks great!

[…] There are also instances with varying levels of moderation, which may be encompassed in this.

I know you didn’t really touch on what the moderation aspect might involve (and maybe you have provisions for this in a section I skimmed), but ideally I would want defederation lists to be included somehow, at least as an advanced option. Does the user want/not want an instance federated with [other instance]? And then, before final instance selection, present the full list just for verification.