http://dear-mun.livejournal.com/40931800.html


Dear old girl,

All right, mun, if you must insist.

I appreciate you using my medical abilities in glaxcinprison and guardian_rpg. I know my skills are needed in both comms and we both like me to be useful. It does make a nice change to be mostly working on humans. I'll pretend I didn't hear that line you just thought about sailors.

I wish to draw your attention to the fact that I am not just a doctor. I can be involved in situations that do not involve my medical abilities. I do do other things, you know, and I'm not indispensable. I'd just like a little more variety in my life, please.

Thanks in advance,
Surgeon-Commodore Harry Sullivan.

PS getting me injured doesn't count.

I might as well post this here, since Harry's journal's bit emptier these days.

guardian_rpg is a community-based, plot-based game that allows your characters to go anywhere and any time.

You receive an intriguing message with a map and key that purport to be from either the Black or White Guardian. When you check it out you find it leads to an advanced TARDIS. Once there, the Guardians often give you missions to other planets or times (and occasionally alternate universes).

More about the premise

Main comm | OOC comm
Rules | FAQ | Application | Current state of the TARDIS | Plot ideas

Current characters
Doctor Who: Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, Third Doctor, Jo Jones, Harry Sullivan, the (Ainley) Master, Turlough, Seventh Doctor, Charley Pollard, Rose Tyler, Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond
Naruto: Haku
Sarah Jane Adventures: Sarah Jane Smith
Star Trek: Data, Lore
Star Wars: Kir Kanos
Torchwood: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones

Wanted characters
Everyone else. And since this is on Harry's LJ, I can be selfish on his part and say that I really want another doctor or a nurse because people keep getting themselves injured and Harry needs some rest. And I want a Fourth Doctor.

Announcing the relaunch of Guardian RPG, now a proper RPG. It's a pan-fandom RPG set on a TARDIS. The Black and White Guardians will send you off on missions, but you can come and go as you like and go wherever and whenever you like.

Full name: Harry Sullivan
Aliases: N/A
Canon from: Doctor Who
Canon type (movies/books, etc): TV, but also books and audio
Age (approx if not sure): Late 50s
Gender: Male
Link to picture of character (if possible):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_Sullivan.jpg although he's aged 30 years since then - I can't provide a picture of Harry in his 50s because the actor died when he was 42.

Point in time when character has been taken from canon: Just as he goes off on a hush-hush mission and disappears with no word, as mentioned in the second series of the Sarah Jane Smith audios.

Character History: Harry's mother died when he was a child and when his father re-married, Harry gained a much younger step-brother, Will. Will looked up to Harry, to the extent where he followed his older brother into the medical profession.

After doing a medical degree at university (where he also rowed), Harry joined the Navy. His reasoning for this was partly adventure, along with the idea that shared friendships were based on hardship, which he'd learnt on the rugby field in school.

He didn't have quite so much of the adventure part as he spent his first years in the Navy based at Dartmouth Training College, Portsmouth and on the Ark Royal. He wasn't quite so happy at being posted to Faslane Naval Base in Scotland, because he'd far rather be out at sea. However, he did manage to get himself a girlfriend (Esther), who is the sister of his best friend. Not long after he met her he got entangled with a UNIT investigation. He impressed the
Brigadier enough for the latter to offer him a transfer to UNIT as the Medical Officer (MO) after his tour of duty ended.

However, even then there wasn't that much adventure until the Doctor regenerated and Harry was called in. After a failed attempt to go undercover 'like James Bond' he was invited onto the TARDIS along with Sarah Jane Smith. Harry and Esther had already drifted apart by this point and the further distance between them caused by the TARDIS finally ends it.

His experiences with Sarah and the Doctor were more than enough adventure for him and he left the TARDIS at the first opportunity. However, he was still in UNIT, so his life wasn't quiet even then. When Sarah was left on Earth the two of them had a short, but doomed relationship, because although he loved her, she could never love him and he knew it.

After this he left UNIT and was later assigned to work on Weapons Research in Yarra, near where Esther lived and the two of them briefly got back together. Although Harry had changed in the ten years since they last saw each other, Esther hadn't, and she was no longer what he wanted.

After doing some consulting for MI-5 he ended up joining them and working his way up to Deputy Director (a more common job title than it sounds), but it wasn't not all plain sailing. He ended up dealing with the same alien invaders twice with the help of the Doctor and Sarah in the first instance. The second incident led to his cleaning lady getting killed, which Harry felt responsible for.

He then moved to NATO and now works on some hush-hush research involving aliens and often finds himself working with UNIT in an unofficial capacity. He has dinner with Sarah every year and it's at one of those he tells her that he's leaving on a hush-hush mission, but doesn't give any more details than that.

Character Personality (please also include how the stress of incarceration and the Warden's interference may affect your character. We realize that character interaction may influence and change this, however, certain aspects of your character's personality may be considered constant):
Harry's a perfect gentleman who wouldn't be out of place in the 1930s. As far as he's concerned, women should be put on a pedestal and treated properly, which includes things like opening doors for them and pulling out their chair at dinner. That most women he comes across don't agree with him on those points never changes his beliefs on that front.

Everything with Harry is proper. When he meets the Doctor it takes him a while to get to grips with the idea that when he steps out of the TARDIS they're many thousands of years in the future. It helps, though, that he's called upon in his medical capacity and is nearly killed, so that is more important to think about at the time. However, he does leave the TARDIS at the first opportunity and stays on Earth in his own time after that.

Despite wanting adventure, he initially finds travelling with the Doctor is a bit too much adventure and what he really wants is to leave the Navy and have a practice in the country. Probably with a wife and children too. But it doesn't happen like that. What he sees with UNIT and the Doctor changes him and Harry spends the rest of his life saving the world and questioning a lot of the things he's come to believe. He can't walk away from any of it long enough to have that boring life.

He also likes to tell stories. He told them to his step-brother and he later tells them to his friends in the pub. Of course, no one believes them, but it doesn't help that he changes the adventures he has slightly to make himself sound more heroic (however reluctantly heroic it is) and in some cases makes them up completely. The irony is that he is a hero, he just doesn't see himself that way. As far as he's concerned, he's just doing what's right and that's all there is to it.

Despite being passionate about what he does, sometimes at the expense of his personal life, he's a very private person, so it's not that easy to tell how passionate he is. His work is secret so he doesn't talk about that, but he doesn't talk about his private life either. To the extent that one of his best friends, who he's known for thirty years, doesn't know he has a step-brother.

He's quite a laid-back person, so being incarcerated won't bother him at first (he has been locked up before). He won't be that happy about it, but he won't be jumping at the bit to escape. He'll also feel that he needs to stay, regardless of what he wants, because the people there need another doctor. The slightly odd effects in the prison are more likely to make him think "here we go again" than bother him, because he's seen similar and got used to them over time.

What will annoy him is not being able to get any answers as to what he's done to be locked up in such a place - as far as he's concerned he hasn't done anything wrong, although he might have skirted the edges of the line from time to time. He will be persistent in trying to find out what's going on - both inside the prison and out of it.

Physical Description: He's about 6 foot tall with curly dark hair, which is greying, especially at the temples. He's average build and not too fat or too thin.

Magical powers or special skills: (Please indicate which powers/skills are natural/born with talent and which are learned. If the powers are a mixture of both, please indicate and explain. IE: Harry Potter has natural magical powers, but cannot control/use spells without being taught). None

Any crimes committed in canon: N/A

Crime incarcerated into Glaxcin for: (this can be any crime(s) of your choosing, especially if the character is not a criminal in their canon): Violation of the Official Secrets Act

Is there any particular direction you would like to see your character go? Anything you would like to explore?: Harry's such a cool, calm and collected person that I'd like to see what he does after being locked up and messed about with over a longer period of time. He's not the sort of person to throw a massive wobbler, but something will have to give sometime. I'd also like to see him use his medical skills on patients because in recent canon, he's mostly just used them for research.

To actually write more than one a month for a start.

It was easier when there were more prompt comms that had rules that you had to post every month because then I actually sat down and did them. Although theatrical_muse does, they have their RSS Feeds set to subject/title only. Because I have various RP/prompt related comms and people friended on different journals, I read all of them via RSS Feed. And I have one set up specially to just show me prompt posts, so I don't miss them. All of which means theatrical_muse is just too much of a pain to read and I'm not that desperate yet.

I have discovered a prompt comm on Dreamwidth where you have to post every month, so I may set Harry up with an account over there and join that one.

I also joined Fan Bingo, over on Dreamwidth. You can fill the card with RP-related posts, so my challenge to myself for the year is to fill it both with ordinary fic and with prompt responses.

And also to do more charloft prompts. I love quite a lot of their prompts, it's just getting round to them that's a problem sometimes.

I have a whole load to do on Harry's future that I have plotted out in my head that I need to write. And I need to do more with his childhood too. And more plotty stuff with aliens because that's always fun to write.

4 people you see every day

Elaine - since she's my wife
Martha Jones - she was my deputy at UNIT Medical HQ, but since she's just left I won't see her much from now on, I imagine
Pierre Russot - Martha's replacement
André Martin - I only see him at weekends when we go sailing, but since I just listed two people I see at work and that's only one weekdays, I think that's fair

3 people you only see rarely

The Brigadier - he calls me up for favours from time to time, and I do the same
The Doctor - I've seen him a few times since I left the TARDIS, but very sporadically
Sarah Jane Smith - I generally see her once a year for dinner

2 people you would never like to see again

I can't say I've ever met anyone particularly horrible. But if you're talking aliens I'd be quite happy never to see Daleks or Zygons ever again.

and 1 person you wish was with you right now

Will

1. Which character have you played / written for the longest? It's a Harry. I started off with an AU Harry before I went onto canon Harry. In between the two I started playing Jo, so it depends on how you count it, really.

2. Who is your newest character? Elrond.

3. About how long do most of your characters tend to last? I do have some I've created on a whim and then never done anything with, and the rest have lasted years (with the exception of Elrond)

4. What has been the longest time you've played / written for a character? What helped it last so long? Harry and Jo have been just over three and a half years. In Harry's case it's because I decided to write about him in the present, as there's no canon for that. In Jo's case, it helped that she got canon in the present.

5. What keeps you interested in a character's story? I suppose the idea that there's more to come and I haven't explored it all yet.

6. What makes you likely to drop a character or stop writing for them? Lack of confidence in writing them. Some of which comes from not having reviewed their canon for a while, some of which comes from a lack of desire to review their canon.

7. Have you ever revived a character you used to play / write for? How did it happen? Did you bring them back the same, or in another form? No

8. When you retire a character, do you tend to write them out of story / play, or drop them suddenly? I retired AU Harry, I suppose. But it coincided with Relative Space having a relaunch and the person who played canon Harry dropping him. I also dropped Teal'c from the RP he was in, and then gradually stopped playing him elsewhere too because I just wasn't confident about the character.

9. When you have a new character, does that tend to affect how much you write / play with your older ones? A little, because I only have so much time and so it has to be split between all the characters, no matter how many there are. But since the older ones are easier to write than the newer ones, I tend to play the newer ones less.

10. About how many characters do you currently write for / play? How many can you juggle at a time? I can only really juggle three at a time. Well, three plus the odd bit of throw-away RP if I have the time.

Who are you? Nic aka Paranoidangel

Who do you play / write for? What are they like? Harry Sullivan from Doctor Who (shot_my_shoes) is my main one. He's an old fashioned Navy doctor. He's spent a lot of time working in alien-related things, so he's fine with aliens, but still shocked at more ordinary things (like one night stands and vampires).

Then there's Jo Grant from Doctor Who (unit_girl). Although now we have three bits of canon for her in the present, I've started playing her older (as Jo Jones). She's a happy optimist who talks a lot and is trying to save the planet.

I also have Harry Pearce from Spooks (sir_spook) and Elrond from LOTR (as_summer) and I'm trying to do a bit more with both of them.

I do seem to have a thing about heroes, which makes my characters a bit samey sometimes.

What fandoms / interests do you have? All sorts. It tends to change based on what I've watched/read recently. My biggest fandoms at the moment are Doctor Who, Sarah Jane Adventures and Lord of the Rings.

What are your current projects? Trying to get back into doing more prompt writing. Half the trouble is that there's always something else more important and the other half is that there aren't many comms that make you write them any more. Without being forced to I have a tendency not to get round to it, even though there's all sorts of things I want to write with Harry.

Are you looking for anyone to play with? How should a prospective player contact you? I left a big RP comm a few months ago and am now only in small ones. Which is nice, but leaves me with a bit more time and I'd love to do some private storylines. You can PM any of my characters. If they're friends with you then you should be able to see my email address on their profile.

Do you have something you want to pimp? (your rp community / a meme / a piece of writing you've done?) guardian_rpg which is my musebox/invite RP type thing. If anyone wants to join, just ask and I'll invite you - it’s only invite only because I can't be doing with apps.

Tell us something you're proud of? (did you finish nano? overcome an rp roadblock?) I finished the 100 drabbles of summer!

• Aliens


• Time travel


• Spaceships


• What my job really involves


• Where I've really been


• UNIT


• How much of my stories are actually true


• My mother


• My step-brother


• Most of my family, really


• The Doctor


• What I did when I was in MI5


• Any previous girlfriends


• School


• Most things from my childhood really

...It might have been simpler to ask what I do talk about. It probably would have been a shorter list.

For this Munday, we invite you to examine point of view in your writing for your character.

Do you primarily answer prompts in first person, or do you mix it up with some third person every now and then (or maybe you write the majority of your prompts in third)?

Do you ever write prompts from the first person POV of a supporting character, instead of your protagonist?

What do you feel are the benefits or drawbacks of writing in your favored point of view?

Bonus points if you've ever answered a prompt in the tricky second person!



When I started writing prompts for Harry I got it into my head that I always had to write from his point of view. So I wrote everything from his point of view. Until there was a prompt, I forget which comm it was on now, that was basically to write something from someone else's point of view. So I wrote it from the point of view of an OC.

I'd like to write more from other people's point of view. For all the characters in Harry's life I think about why they do what they do. So I know that, but their motivations might not be obvious to anyone reading. In some cases that's the whole point - the characters keep their motivations hidden and if Harry doesn't know why they're doing what they're doing, no one reading is going to. It's just a case of getting out of the habit, I think.

The stories I've written for Harry have all been in third person. He just doesn't seem to lend himself to first person for some reason. Maybe because he's just so hard to write. And get right. I'm not confident I get it right in third person and first would be harder.

This is an invitation/advert/announcement about guardian_rpg. It's a cross between a musebox, dressing room and an RPG and I'd love to have more characters there.

It's set on an unknown TARDIS - which means that you can go anywhere and anywhen. I like plotty things so there are plotty things to do if you want. The last plot, with people imprisoned in cells in pairs, is just finishing, and the new plot, with people discovering the TARDIS functions and rooms is just starting.

Any characters are allowed, including AUs, OCs and duplicates. Here's the current character list, although the active ones so far are the Third Doctor, Fifth Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Ainley!Master Barbara, Ian, Liz, Jo, Sarah, Harry, Turlough all from Doctor Who. And Dayna from Blake's 7, Data from Star Trek and Harry from Spooks.

To join you just have to know someone in the comm and ask me and I'll send you an invite (or you can press the join button, whichever you prefer).

The first time I remember feeling absolutely terrified was when I ran away from my father's wedding. It was bad enough that he was getting married, but then, at the wedding, I was presented with a step-brother. No one had mentioned him before that day. He was just a baby and all the women there were cooing over him. I'd had enough. I just wanted to get out of there. In hindsight I should have just hidden in the toilets - my stepmother couldn't have gone in there to find me. But instead I ran out.

So there I was, on the streets of London, dressed in my Sunday best. It was all right at first, but then I realised I was hungry and had nowhere to go. I did have places I could go, of course, but they would all just send me home. And I hadn't eaten much at the wedding, but I knew where all the food was in our kitchen. So I went home.

I had hoped to sneak in, but it was winter and there weren't any windows open. It meant my only way in was to ring the doorbell or freeze on the doorstep. I knew what would happen if I rang the doorbell, but I did it anyway.

Fortunately, it was my new stepmother who answered the door. She gave me a hug and said how worried they were about me. Which I doubted, but I let her hug me anyway. She didn't give me any choice in the matter. Behind her, though, was my father. He looked more angry than I'd ever seen him before. Upon seeing him all I wanted to do was run upstairs and shut myself in my bedroom. Except I knew that if I tried that I'd be in even bigger trouble.

I stood and waited for ages before he finally spoke. And then all he said was, "Go to bed. I'll speak to you in the morning." Which wasn't what I wanted at all. I wanted to speak but there wasn't anything I could think of to say. Besides, he had an expression that suggested that anything I said would be the wrong thing and would just make whatever punishment he had in mind for me worse.

Apparently he could only take my hesitation for so long, because he said, "Go!" and I went. I went to my bedroom and stayed there for as long as I could, but I didn't sleep long and when I did I had nightmares. There was no punishment that could possibly be as bad as the ones I imagined that night.

I was usually too scared of my father to do anything wrong, so now that I had, I was more scared of him than ever.

"I shouldn't even be here," Martha said, from her position beside Harry. "I'm not a member of UNIT any more."

Harry winced as he shifted position to stretch his aching legs a bit and the shot from a ray gun whooshed past his foot. He was perfectly able to crouch under desks once. Now he just felt old. "You're still in the building," he pointed out

"Only because we were attacked by those alien robot things before we could leave your office." Martha didn't sound happy about it - but then there was never anything happy about being shot at.

"Why do aliens always invade Britain and my office?" Harry complained. "What's wrong with the rest of the world?"

"Would you prefer them to invade the pub?"

"Maybe a few drinks would calm them down," he mused, forgetting that it had a tendency to rouse tempers on Friday and Saturday nights.

Martha gave him a look.

"Alright, I'm glad they're not in the same place as the civilians are," he conceded. "But the building's big enough that they could beam into any part of it they like, as long as it's not my office." At a lull in the gunfire he risked peering round his desk, which prompted another wave of shooting. He sighed. "They're getting closer." There was only so long they could crouch down here before either his legs gave out or the aliens shot them. At the moment either outcome was equally likely.

Martha looked around the room, holding on to the edge of the desk as she leaned out and nearly had her hand shot off for her trouble. "Cover me," she said.

Harry didn't ask, just did as he was told. The gun he had didn't do a thing to the robot aliens except slow them down, but at least it didn't shoot bullets, which would probably have just ricocheted off them and ended up hitting him or Martha.

Although he concentrated on shooting the aliens, out the corner of his eye he could see Martha was getting the laptop off his desk. Quite what she was going to do with that, he wasn't sure. She could call for help, of course, but he couldn't believe anyone needed to be notified, what with all the shooting going on. He was surprised no one had come in to save them yet, but supposed they were coming up with a plan to get them out without anyone getting shot.

He stopped once Martha was settled under the desk again and he sat back down with a groan. She passed the laptop to him. "Log me in," she said, so he typed his password in.

After she took it back he watched her without understanding what she was doing or what she hoped to achieve. A few mouse clicks later, the shooting stopped. Suspicious, Harry stayed where he was, but Martha was less cautious.

"Look at this!" she said, and so he did.

The robots were all just stood there, looking like they'd had all the life sucked out of them.

"What did you do?" Harry asked, standing up properly now.

"Disrupted their wireless," she said. "Now they're not getting any signals from the parent ship, so they don't know what to do."

"Oh," he said, understanding about half of that, but knowing that any no other explanation was likely to help either. As long as it worked and Martha was confident, it didn't matter. "Now we need to find the parent ship and stop them from doing it again."

Martha nodded. "Except I don't work here any more," she pointed out, putting Harry's laptop back on his desk.

They were already late for her leaving do and this could take all night. "I'm the Director of UNIT Medical," Harry said. "And I think this would be a good thing to delegate."

Martha smiled at him, Harry smiled back and they went to the pub to toast her future.

And now this is the last of them written and posted.

( 68. Picture of silhouettes jumping off pier )

( 22. Storm )

( 66. Red balloon picture )

( 97. Author's choice )

( 99. Author's choice )