#dog!Connie

[screwpinecaprice]

Haha she a Border Connie.

Even before Cat Steven (the cat) I imagined a cat Steven to be a calico with a stubby tail.

[gyroshrike]

I just like them sitting together ;w;

[sci-firenegade]

*pets dog*

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #35 – To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willis

This was my second shot on reading something of Willis’, and I found it far more enjoyable than the first. Which is something of a feat, honestly – it’s a rare book that you can more-or-less accurately describe s a ‘cozy romcom’ that doesn’t make me recoil. But it was charming! And dated, but mostly only charmingly as well.

The story is the second in a series, which no one ever told me when recommending it because it does not matter in the slightest (at least, I had no issues at all following along with the story) – though it does mean that it hits the ground running and requires you to pick up quite a bit from context for the first while. It follows Ned Henry, a historian at the University of Oxford in the mid-21st century – a field that has been changed dramatically by the invention of time travel. For example, it’s suddenly in desperate need of particle-accelerator money, which is why and the entire rest of the department have been conscripted by an incredibly generous donor to help her reconstruct Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before being destroyed in the Blitz. Exactly. ‘God is in the details’, and Henry has spent subjective weeks running himself ragged attending wartime rummage sales and sifting through bombed out ruins to try and verify the fate of a glorified flower pot mainly notable for being overdone and ugly even by Victorian standards.

After going through so many rapid-fire temporal shifts that the jump sickness leaves him waxing rhapsodic about the highway and falling in love with every woman he sees, he’s sent to Victorian Oxford to lay low and recuperate, and deliver a vitally important package to a contact already in situ. Unfourtunately that jump sickness means that he’s pretty unclear on the particular what and who. Really it’s remarkable that things don’t spin even more wildly out of control than they do (and there’s a period where he might have accidentally made the nazis win WW2).

So yeah, not what you’d call a serious novel. Most of the plot is sneaking around trying to make sure various members of the Victorian gentry fall in love in the right pattern to make sure someone’s grandson can fly in the RAF down the line and someone else elopes off to America on schedule (with drastically limited details and new information from back home changing things ever so often). Also sneaking a pampered rare-fish-hunting pet cat and slothful bulldog around before they arouse the wrath of their hosts. The apocalyptic threat that’s theoretically hanging over everyone never really feels real, and it’s all just pleasently absurd and enjoyable to read.

The comedy reminds me of early Prachett, in a way? Which like, a light comedy from the ‘90s in large part poking fun at English academia, of course there are similarities, but still. Not that that’s n insult. There’s plenty of absurd situations caused by miscommunication or desperately trying to work around absurd social conventions or personal foibles. Almost the entire Victorian cast (and a decent number of the present-day characters as well) are objectively ridiculous people, and the book has a lot of fun making do the literary equivalent of chewing scenery for the camera.

I call this a romcom, but I’m not ever sure that fits, honestly. It is a comedy with romance, between the two lead characters, whose dynamic with each other is the main throughline of the book. But it’s never really a source of drama? Or a motor of the plot. They are coworkers who end up working in close confines and get alone fine, who both awkwardly admit they find each other very attractive and start flirting and at the end they kiss and adopt a cat together. Least miscommunication- or conflict-ridden central romance in fiction you’ve ever seen. I don’t know enough about the genre constraints to determine whether it counts or not.

Part of the appeal of this was honestly the odd ways it came across as a bit dated? Not at all in a bad way but just, like – the fixation on the Blitz as the sine qua non of English history feels very 20th century? The references to the Charge of the Light Brigade and Schrodinger’s Box and Three Men in a Boat, combined with the felt obligation to step back from the narrative and explain what they were in case the reader wasn’t aware – just the idea that someone reading a time travel story won’t already be familiar with the concept of temporal paradoxes, really. It all added up to a reading experience that felt a bit off-kilter in a pleasing way.

This is obviously a story very fascinated by Victoriana – both the time period and the popular memory. Its perspective on the period is – I guess ‘affectionate contempt’ might be the best way to put it? It clearly doesn’t think much of the Oxfordshire gentry, the women shallow as a puddle and obsessed with marriage gossip and spiritualism, the men with their heads stuffed with some academic fixation and utterly divorced from all practical affairs, both obsessed with petty one-up-man-ship of their peers and casually abusive and callous towards the servants who run and organize their lives for them. But it all feels rather good-natured; not a trace of righteous fury or real class hatred is on display, the fact of the empire and the source of their fortunes is I think not even mentioned. One more way it feels a bit dated, I suppose, or maybe just a way my usual reading’s much more explicitly political about these things.

I’m also not sure if this is a matter of tastes or popular memory changing or just my impression of what the received common wisdom is being parochial or inaccurate, but – given the association of ‘Victorian’ with imperial grandeur, aesthetic superiority, eye-wateringly expensive historical real estate, etc, it is quite funny how the book takes for granted that to be ‘victorian’ means to be horrifically gaudy and over-designed, devoid of elegance or restraint, and to have probably ruined some real medieval beauty in its creation.

Anyway yes, you absolutely could dig into this book and write some meaty essays out of it, but I simply was not reading it closely enough to do so. It’s probably overlong and definitely meandering and unhurried, but I did find it a really enjoyable read.

[aurorangen]

Connie and Renee are nice people so they did give Marco the directions he needed and yeah that was the end of their meeting!!

Transcript:

Marco: [yelling at his manager] Harry mate, why the hell did you hire that old geezer as my driver? He fucking drove off without me! We stopped cuz Armani needed a massive shit and now I'm gonna be late. I've got no clue where my gig is and if anyone here knows who I am or even sees me arghhhHHH-

Renee: He looks lost, should we help him? Connie: Nah, he looks like he's arguing with someone. I'd stay out of it.

Renee: He's screaming at his phone. He's picking up his dog. And now he's coming over. Marco: Sorry to bother you guys [takes off sunglasses] P-Petrah? Is that you?

Connie: I'm not Petrah! She's my twi- Marco: Petrahhh! Hey what's with the disguise? Are you wearing a wig and contacts? I should do that too. Connie: This guy, ugh of course Petrah knows someone like him [sighs] Petrah's my twin.

[all have different reactions to this even Armani] Renee: Oh my god you have a twin! Are you identical? Marco: Huh? Petrah has a twin?

[chibifox2002]

A self indulgent pet au Meta Knight thing because I finally figured out what dog to make him! Featuring Momo and Connie

(He's a Xoloitzcuintli/Mexican Hairless Dog)

[vampuplove]

connverse as doggies

[thatwasntverycashmoneyofme]

aggy ass boys who fell in love with you ever since you ‘beat his ass’ for touching your hair.

We know as young black girls raised by our mothers they always tell us to never let anybody touch our hair—never🙅🏾‍♀️.

So fast forward to you telling him to stop twice after tugging on your hair, who doesn’t take heed to your warning tugs on it again extra hard, harder than the other times, your arm comes barreling forward, palm connecting with his face.

“I told you to stop so many times just leave me alone.” You scurry off not wanting to be caught and punished leaving him behind, who’s face turned red for two reasons that day.

After that he never touched your hair and followed behind you quietly wherever he could, face turning a peach shade whenever you side eyed him. That was the day he knew he fell in love.

Bakugo, Inasa, Sanemi, Inosuke, Eren, Connie, Reiner, Hanma, Sanzu, Arthur Boyle, Aoi, Gojo

𝗌𝗉𝖺𝗆 𝗅𝗂𝗄𝖾𝗌, 𝗋𝖾𝖻𝗅𝗈𝗀𝗌 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝖼𝗈𝗆𝗆𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗌. 𝖣𝖮𝖭𝖳 𝗌𝗍𝖾𝖺𝗅, 𝖼𝗈𝗉𝗒 𝗈𝗋 𝗉𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝖺𝗇𝗒𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝖾𝗅𝗌𝖾. ©𝖼𝗂𝗍𝗒𝗉𝗋𝖾𝗌𝗂𝖽𝖾𝗇𝗍𝗂𝖺𝗅

[lovenpeace-pkmn]

Sweet fire and thunder Rotomblr is advertising ethically questionable Pokémon breeders to me now... Go away? I'm not going to support you in backyard-breeding your designer miniature froucanines or whatever??

[imapigtoo]

2 connies, or rather the only two things ive drawn since my last post

[ozomatli]

can i get. connie sketch ideas

[screwpinecaprice]

Another random pencil sketchdump while I wait for my laptop to charge.

Oval-shaped faces are personally tricky to do digitally compared on paper. And guess who has an oval-shaped face??

On the third pic's bottom left, I tested giving Connie a little heart-shape to see how it looks because heart-shapes are relatively the easiest to me digitally; maybe I can cheat a bit there, you know? (And it works great for others.) And to be honest.. I'm really not sure about it. :/ I definitely like the one on the right more. But how the heck is it so hard to do on the tabbbbb?

Oh! Also skitched @pogostikk's short-haired Connie and clown boi Steven. I love them. 🥺💕

[starlitcorgi]

Them Boys With The Soulful Brown Eyes.

From Liquid Gold to Red Flecked Rust to the Darkest of Chocolate, don't tell me brown eyes are dull.

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

Look I'mma be honest every time twd kills off a long-beloved character at this point I'm just

[literary-illuminati]

To Say Nothing Of The Dog so far agreeing with me much more than the other stuff of Willis' I've read did.

(I am perfectly aware it's because she and Prachett were writing at about the same time and poking fun at the same institutions, but so far kind of reminiscent of some of the Unseen University stuff in discworld?)

[ghost-qwq]

Oh yeah... btw here are their current voice claims 👍