I watched two movies on the plane on the way back from Scotland. Men In Black: International was fun; Tessa Thompson plays a brilliant ultra-competent hero and Chris Hemsworth plays an idiot who's been getting by on his Charisma and Constitution scores, which seemed about right, except for some pathetic attempts to "balance" this equation with some pretty bad "but Thompson's character has never known luuuv" dialogue, which, ugh. Still a fine fun thing to watch on an airplane.

Aquaman on the other hand was not even redeemed by being watching it on an airplane, being an incoherent mess possibly assembled by one of those machine learning algorithms that watched a bunch of other movies and knew which parts were audience favorites, or a writers room without any actual story in mind to tell, same difference. Maybe the worst bit was where we were supposed to enjoy the destruction and slaughter of the army of the people he was trying to become king of, like, those are *your people*, jackass, maybe don't murder quite so many of em? I guess I shouldn't be surprised it was that bad given how bad Justice League was, but Wonder Woman was so good! Bah.

Read Becky Chambers' new standalone novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate, which was fantastic, possibly my favorite thing she's written, although it also couldn't have been targeted more precisely at me if she'd tried. Hard SF about the missions of a four-person interstellar exploration crew (ok, I usually try not to say "hard" sf, but I mean it's more focused on science and technology than her Wayfarers books, and also more limitedly extrapolated from present-day science) and what they find, and what it's like. Spoilers: Space exploration is basically my religion (I'm not kidding, it's a source of a lot of spiritualish meaning and consolation for me), and I cried when I got to the epigraph at the end and realized where the title came from. Also, on a lighter note, did anyone else suspect this cast of originating as serial-number-fileoffs of the four main humans from The Good Place? Like, obviously the personalities and backstories have all been developed in ways that make sense for being elite astronauts and that fit the story Chambers is telling, but can't you see them starting as Eleanor, Tahani, Jason, and Chidi? And then back on a heavier note, I thought Chambers did a fantastic job interweaving the environments and the emotions. The misery on the rat planet, and Ariadne's almost-suicide that you don't even realize at first, when it finally gets enough better that she can, like, take an action... powerful stuff. Will get one of my novella slots when Hugo nominations come around again. [Have realized very belatedly (29Sept) that this should have had a content note on it for suicidality and animal harm, sorry to anyone who got ambushed by that.]

Also read Vonda McIntyre's Starfarers, which is also about interstellar explorers (and poly, and genetic engineering to adapt to an environment, and science as a priority competing with other personal, political, and humanitarian goals - did not plan this, but it was a very thematic pairing of books to read back to back), but also more of a television pilot for a series with a big cast and a lot of built-in conflict. I definitely plan to read the other three since stuff gets set up in this one that hasn't played out by the end of it.

Henry Lien's Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword was not an easy read for me, although I do recommend it. My social anxiety/embarrassment squick has a hard time with overconfident-but-naive characters, and I was so busy being braced for comeuppance and humiliation that I missed a lot of what was actually going on in the novel. Which, I mean, was fun, in a way - sometimes it's fun to get to be surprised instead of spotting things - but getting there was kind of grueling, because I had no idea what Lien's emotional agenda was here. And so I want to say, not behind a spoiler cut, that I think you can trust Lien to *not* be doing a shitty "girls with egos need to be taken down a peg" plot, and you'll enjoy the book more. (I seem to have a vague memory of not liking the emotional dynamics but thinking the kung fu ice skating premise was neat in "Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters", a story set in the same world from a few years ago, and I wonder if that added to my nervousness.) Anyways, I may reread this one, if I have time before it's due back at the library, to see how it reads with less anxiety, and I do plan to read the sequel. I think these are marketing as middlegrade but I would call this one YA.

Aaand Chronin! I got my copy of Volume 2: The Sword In Your Hand the afternoon that I was packing for my flight to Scotland that night, and first I was like "I'm not going to read this until I get back!" which was bullshit, and then I was like "I'm just going to read *part* of this now" which was even more bullshit, and then obviously I read the whole thing immediately and was still ridiculously early to my flight but have not been able to squee about it until now. So! Chronin! I loved the first one and this is such a good conclusion and everything else goes behind the spoiler cuts. Oh, except that I've heard that since they both came out in the same year we can just nominate the whole thing for the graphic Hugo and don't have to have which-volume angst. I would love to see this be this year's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters/On A Sunbeam, like, the indie not-a-serial comic I love that gets on the ballot and loses to Monstress. Anyways, spoilers:

Ok, I want to talk about temporal mechanics, and shipping, and the end. Which, I will actually start with the end: I love so much that the climactic deciding moment comes down to an argument, and changing someone's mind. THAT'S THE GOOD SHIT, right there. No villains, just people with good intentions, in conflict because they disagree about means and methods, able to be convinced they're wrong.

Shipping. Eeee! I have to admit, I had been reading Mirai and Hatsu as more of a deep friendship than a romance - I *know*, I *know*, "gals being pals", but I just wasn't getting that vibe, compared with Gilbert's more outright flirting and interest - but eeee! What a great ending! (And I totally choose to believe they end up in a happy V or whatever in 2050, and also that silver fox Kuji has something going on with Hatsu's mom.) God, there's some great character stuff in these. The scene when Mirai is ready to give up, and Hatsu is like "no I believe in you", and then is comforting her... so good.

And then, temporal mechanics. I really liked the explanations about the parallel roads and the beacons and how time travel works in this universe - I always appreciate when a time travel story has some sort of coherent take on that, and I thought it was handled well. And the whole revelation about Gilbert and Azai, dang! But then, like, a week later, it hit me: isn't there a paradox here, where Azai only knew where to send the group that killed the students and took the beacons because younger him had taken the beacon and then gone back to 20 years earlier? When Gilbert is like "I don't want to coexist with myself for five years, I don't want to be the test case", isn't that ignoring that Azai must have coexisted with himself for 20 years? Or am I confused about something here? I don't think it's necessarily bad, if a paradox snuck in there - this is time travel, that's legit - but I guess I wanted it to be a little clearer, or for Mirai to say something about it, or something.