Doing some exploratory sketches of Anne and her ex husband Damien. I’m thinking of making these two my own ocs tbh, since Anne’s grown on me a lot from initially making her.
I’m mostly trying to get a feel for Damien and Anna together as a unit, before things fell apart between them. That, and clothing design is my nemesis.
hancock’s in the mood for a petty chat, so he asks anna her thoughts on The Great Gatsby. nick eavesdrops.
this is dialogue practice that I really liked writing so I’m putting it up here. Anna has a Transatlantic accent which takes a little wrestling for me. XD
Anna took a drag from her cigarette as she looked out over the balcony of The Old Statehouse, Hancock looming besides her.
“And not so simply put?” Hancock asked.
His grin invited Anna to be petty. The buzz of Mentats made him alert and eager to hear some conversation. Otherwise, he’d probably get to thinking about himself too much.
“The Great Gatsby is a badly written, poorly characterized, and overrated work of a narcissistic hack. You’d hate it if you read it.”
Nick’s audio processing heightened across the hall. Instinctually, he turned his head their way a couple degrees.
“That’s still comprehensible, Anne,” John let out a raspy chuckle. “Come on. Foam at the mouth a little.”
“Should I be worried a ghoul is asking me to do that?” Anna asked.
“You should be more worried throwing a comment like that outside my place,” Hancock replied, though good natured.
“My apologies,” Anna said. She dipped her head a little, taking another drag.
“Still, though, it’s quite a bloated read, even for its time. Prose was simplifying then from the Victorian era, with the loosening up of social norms.”
“Uh huh,” Hancock replied, somewhat listening. Anna rolled her eyes.
“Do you want to know how far Fitzgerald went out of his way to make himself sound poetic?” Anna asked.
“How far?” Hancock challenged.
“Have you ever heard of a seismometer?”
Nick’s head turned a little more. His thoughts pulled away from the next case he had planned and more with the current conversation.
“No,” Hancock said with a shrug. “But that’s Latin, right?
“Close,” Anna agreed. “It’s Greek. Seismo-, from seismos, ‘earthquake’, and meter, from metron, meaning ‘measure.’ Such a device was also known as a seismograph.”
“And it’s some kind of... Counter, right?” Hancock guessed. “But for earthquakes.”
“Right you are,” she nodded. “The device had existed for hundreds of years, but the word seismometer was coined in 1841. I’m afraid I can’t remember by who, though.”
“So what’s this got to do with Scotty Fitzgerald and his shit book?” Hancock snickered.
“The Great Gatsby was published in 1925,” she explained. “And he mentions a seismometer in the introduction of the book... In the most abysmal way I’ve ever heard.”
Nick felt a flash coming on. He can’t remember where he is, but he knew he was a younger man and he had Gatsby in his human grip. Past feelings of rapt interest bubbled among present day surprise and suspicion. He squinted at the wall, across the spiral staircase, trying to pick out the words he surely read then.
“So The Great Gatsby is told by another character, Nick Carraway, to us,” Anna explained.
”Nick is what we used to call a framing device. He sets the story as it’s meant for the reader to see.”
“Uh huh,” Hancock nodded.
Valentine’s brows furrowed.
“Nick was friends with Gatsby,” she continued, snuffing her cigarette. She left a black mark on the white paint of the balcony.
“But Gatsby died, and his aim in this first chapter is explaining the profoundness of Gatsby’s existence.”
“This already sounds wordy an’ you haven’t even gotten to the quake counter,” Hancock grinned.
”God, it really is,” Anna laughed. “We were forced to read it, when I was a younger girl in the Vault. I hated every page.”
Nick’s fingers drummed on his own knee. Human impulses creeped through a steel and wire skeleton as he listened.
“You were sayin’?” Hancock said, now turned fully her way. He flicked his cigarette off the balcony and onto the ground below, nearly landing it in someone’s hair.
“So Nick uses the seismometer in a metaphor, to try and explain the effects of Gatsby’s death. And get this.”
Anna turned Hancock’s way, but her eyes didn’t hold his. Such was her way, when she got passionate.
“This is how he uses it.”
She put her hands out in front of her, gesticulating as she spoke, like a silent movie star on talkie film for the first time.
“Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book,” she quoted. “Was exempt from my reaction.”
“Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.”
Hancock raised his eyebrows, or lack there of. Nick turned Anna’s way more, out of his trance and in the now. The synth’s expression disguised the intensity of his thoughts and internal calculations with this new information.
“How on Earth can you write a novel, for anyone,” Anna asked. “And think that’s the least bit legible?”
Hancock barked out a laugh, the chems accenting his reaction.
“And you said that word, seismometer, was around... What? 84 years before he sat down and wrote that?”
“Yes!!!” Anna said, throwing her hands in the air. “That had to be in the public lexicon! You can’t tell me people of the 1920s were so booze blinded and sex addled, they didn’t know the word seismometer!”
“God, that is fuckin’ stupid when you put it like that,” Hancock wheezed. “Was the guy bein’ paid by the word or some shit?”
“Probably!” Anna agreed exasperatedly, earning another snicker from the ghoul besides her. “Knowing how pulp fiction was published, then.”
She lowered her hands and sighed, labored by her experience of reading the book. Hancock looked across the room to Nick, grinning and eager to sip more of the metaphoric tea the two served.
“Would you happen to know anything about that, Nick?”
Valentine blinked and looked his way. He chose to play dumb, still getting his thoughts together.
“About what?” the synth asked.
“About... Y’know, what she said,” Hancock said. “Pulp fiction and quake counters and stuff.”
Nick looked to Anna. Anna seemed a bit sheepish now, realizing she’d gone on a rant, but... The way her lips pursed made Nick feel things, good and bad. It reminded him of interrogations with faceless people, beyond his time.
“Can’t say I heard,” Nick replied. “I was running a diagnostic while you two were talkin’.”
Anna breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It was mostly invisible, save for her nostrils. Nick noticed, but made no comment.
“Aw, forget it,” Hancock said, grinning and waving his hand dismissively. “It’s nothing.”
“You should probably get goin’, huh, Anne? I’ve been shooting the shit so long, it’s a case of the runs.”
Anna rolled her eyes with the comment.
“Did you come up with that one yourself or is that the Mentats talking?” Anna quipped with a motherly tone.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Hancock asked.
Nick shook his head with a grin and stood up, crossing the divide between the three of them to stand by Anna’s side.
“Alright, alright,” he said. “We’re burning daylight with your banter. You still open to making that terminal sing, Lovett?”
“Depends,” Anna replied. “What does it hold?”
“I’ll tell you on the way over,” Nick said. “Not exactly keen on admitting that sort of thing here.”
Hancock smiled knowingly.
“That’s a good call,” Hancock agreed. “You two have fun.”
Nick gave John a little nod, then headed for the stairs. Anna followed after him, though she looked over her shoulder to wave to Hancock. Hancock reciprocated, letting them go.
Nick kept himself quiet until they’d gotten out of the Old Statehouse, halfway between the colonial building and the door to the Commonwealth. Once there, he couldn’t help himself.
“Gatsby‘s a favorite of mine, you know.”
He shot Anna a playful smile. Anna gasped in mock offense.
“And The Shadow dresses in all black. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
