-0- Application for lastvoyages
User Name/Nick: Rei
User LJ: magdaleina
AIM/IM: SchmooeyFoo
E-mail: weirdophreak17@yahoo.com
Other Characters: The Marquis de Sade, Mozenrath, Rose Tyler, Reaver, Frances Owens
Character Name: Harold Emory Lauder
Series: The Stand (novel)
Age: 17
From When?: The accident preceding his death toward the end of the novel. After exploding the meeting place of the Free Zone Committee and successfully killing several people, Harold struck out from Boulder, Colorado to join Flagg's forces in Vegas. On the way there in the mountains, Flagg placed an oil slick on the road to make him lose control of his motorcycle. He struck a guard rail and was thrown over the side, breaking several ribs and his leg. His companion, Nadine Cross, left him for dead (after he attempted to shoot her) and he eventually placed a note on himself, concluding "I'm sorry I was misled" and committed suicide. I would like to bring him to the Barge pretty much at the time of the crash, as opposed to the many days (possibly week) later when lying in the Colorado sun with a gangrenous leg and watching the buzzards start to circle kind of started to make him think this was probably not the best way to go.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate - Harold's high-school driven view of "me versus the rest of the world" did not wane even as he joined the Boulder Free Zone, became an instrument for change, lost all the weight and started to become someone respected. He was too poisoned by his own hate and his refusal to let go of his grudges, and he eventually succumbed to Flagg's call, believing the Las Vegas settlement to be one made up of outsiders like him, and that he would be well rewarded for betraying the Free Zone.
He most definitely damned himself and even explicitly states this at one point.
Abilities/Powers: Harold has no powers; he's just exceptionally intelligent. In his travels across the country, his directions and his ideas for finding fuel, food, and other things are considered inspirational to other main characters, and even people that knew him, when confronted with the facts of his efforts, were in awe of how surprisingly resourceful he was at surviving. As a teenager, he was well on his way to a socially awkward but academically rewarding time at college; intellectually he was already on the same level as an undergrad, in some ways beyond. He's very resourceful and technically savvy, and was able to build complex electronics and bombs from blueprints.
Personality: Harold is what can happen when teenagers fail to really come into their own, or regress to an accepted "outcast" state. In the past seven or eight months, Harold has transformed. Initially, his intelligence was overshadowed by painful awkwardness, his weight, and his poor hygiene. He didn't bathe often. He had terrible acne and a love of Payday candy bars. He was socially not well developed, in that he had some weird tics in his language that showed the awkwardness, like thinking it appropriate to refer to Frannie as "my child" when she's older than him and he has a crush on her. It's an issue that's nearly completely resolved by the end. Midway through the book, he outwardly develops into an intelligent, thin, hygenically balanced, and charismatic contributing member of society. The conditions of the plague aftermath caused him to lose a lot of weight, and he gave up Paydays believing that chocolate was bad for his skin -- it did clear up, but that's more to do with his bathing habits changing. He worked hard, often volunteering for the toughest jobs, and came into his own. Inwardly, though, he remained the same acne ridden, fat, misunderstood outcast geek who not only believes everyone is against him, but also believes he should make them pay for all his years of suffering. His self-esteem is something of a paradox in that he has this immense, over-inflated sense of self-worth when it comes to how much smarter he thinks he is than everyone else, but no matter how much he changes he still thinks himself ugly, unapproachable, and a target for dumb-jock hatred -- and everyone, including you, may be a dumb jock.
First and foremost, Harold is very intelligent, and well above most of his former peers, academically. He's so intelligent, in fact, that Flagg ultimately decided to have him killed because he was "too full of thoughts" and too difficult for him to control -- shown in the fact that Flagg's power couldn't stop him from trying to kill his bride-to-be, Nadine. He does not have the world experience or the social graces to understand that High Schoolers are literally the bottom of the intellectual barrel, though, so he has on more than one occassion embarrassed himself in front of older, wiser individuals. He is smart, but he is most definitely not mature, especially not at the start of the book. An aspiring but unpopular writer, he is at that age, a little early, where he feels that his work simply is not read by those that can appreciate it, rather than the thought that he is simply young and needs to improve with further experience. When he and Fran, one of the few people who knew each other before the plague, set out from Maine to look for survivors, he left signs showing where they were going, found ways to access fuel even when most gas stations ran on power, and overcame many, many typical obstacles. So impressive where his efforts and his feats that other survivors who found his signs in his wake, began to see him as a good person even before they met him. Larry Underwood, in particular, kept hopes up by asking "What Would Harold Do?" whenever his group ran into a problem.
Harold's low self-esteem does not keep him quiet and introverted, as one might assume. He feels the need to be heard, as though he will be ignored or cast aside if he does not speak. His ego is very easily bruised, and he is given to argument just so that he can stand out and assert himself. In the aftermath of the plague, this didn't really start to show until more men joined the group, and Harold gives the impression when he argues that he feels threatened in some way. The people with whom he traveled after the plague, namely his rival Stu, learned that the best way to keep him satisfied and from refusing to help out on all fronts (even when their chosen path is the only path or the most thought-out), was to ask for his ideas first. And make no mistake, he had many good ones.
Harold spent much of the book fixated on Frances Goldsmith, whom he has had a crush on since he was six years old and who also was once the best friend of his now deceased older sister, Amy. This developed into full-on love to something of an obsession in the next ten years. Of course, Frannie was never interested, because he was her best friend's baby brother, and largely because he was both strange and kind of gross. This was something Harold perhaps knew deep down but quietly ignored. When they escaped Maine together he felt there was some ghost of a chance that they would finally be together, since there was simply no one else. His love for Frannie turned to hate when he stole her diary and read it one night on the road. He discovered that she had fallen in love with someone they had been travelling with and that she thought very little of him as a person. He had somehow convinced himself that she had deeply wronged him by not choosing him, as well as the man she'd chosen for her lover, Stu Redman, who had all but promised Harold he wasn't going to take Frannie from him.
After this discovery, when Harold decided he would at some point take vengeance on them, he learned he could put on a smile and pretend to be happy and more productive. This is the most dangerous thing about him. He's disarmingly nice, but sterile, politician-like when he's holding something down. It makes him seem completely open but it's a friendliness that comes completely detached from his actual thoughts and feelings. It puts up a wall, a mask, that people are allowed to see while concealing everything that's festering underneath. He is even aware at one point that, after becoming involved in the Boulder community and respected among his peers, that he has a chance to move on from his past and his grudges, and he simply chooses not to. His secretiveness is further recognized in that his home is the only one in Boulder where all the doors are kept locked and the curtains and blinds drawn. He doesn't let people see inside. He even keeps his journal, the Ledger, a diary filled with all his darkest ideas (begun after reading Fran's diary), hidden under a stone in the fireplace. These bad feelings only seem to intensify when Nadine Cross, sent by Randall Flagg, approaches him and reveals she knows a lot about the thoughts and insecurities he keeps hidden. She seduces him and in their private interludes allows him to act out every sick, angry, demeaning fantasy he's ever envisioned -- usually directed toward the sort of women that he's come to hate for, in his mind, rejecting him. Every terrible, vengeful thought he ever had as a misunderstood teenager has been fed and turned into something even worse in this time. The sexual issues, though, suggest he could have been damaged -- he was barely past the age of consent as it is, and with his issues of maturity, it could be said that no matter how horrible his fantasies he was most definitely taken advantage of and could lead him to having a universally demeaning view of women if not properly handled, if he doesn't have one already.
On the Barge, Harold will first be completely blown away by the technology. Coming from the year 1990, there is just simply nothing that's going to compare. He'll be completely distrusting of the people around him and will probably feel convinced that he's dreaming, having lost consciousness after...something. He can sort of remember the wreck, the same way that a person concussed in a car accident can sort of remember going off the road. He can remember trying to kill Nadine when she tried to leave him for dead, but he won't mention that part. He'll be hesitant to talk about his past at all even when confronted with a Warden who clearly knows his past and knows it in detail.
Path to Redemption: Harold needs to basically climb the Hell off of this high horse he's got himself on. He needs to come to accept that not every girl is just a pretty, stuck up bitch, and not every guy is just another jock asshole. These seem like very normal things to teach a teenager to overcome -- the sort of thing that shouldn't require Inmate status, but for the fact that his view has been so built up and overfed in his mind that he's to the point where he has killed people over it. And not just any people, but people he professes to love and be friends with, who really would not have had any idea he was kind of an evil bastard if there were not one or two premonitions involved. In Colorado he started to develop another self, a self that was intelligent and respected by others, who was a gifted member of the community and bound to go places as the settlement grew, and it would serve him to be useful and respected in another place too. Getting him involved would help, but his Warden needs to know there are telltale signs of him regressing. Mainly when he puts on that politician, hard-not-to-return smile and says everything is all right. Don't let him stew, and try not to let him keep too many secrets. He needs to think somebody is on his side and somebody understands him. He also needs to express regret for what he's done and get over Frannie -- past the point that he hangs on once being in love with her and well past the point where he feels she has wronged him personally and deserves to be punished.
History: Little is known about the early history. Harold Emory Lauder was born in Ogunquit, Maine, and has always been considered an especially intelligent child. He developed a crush on his sister's best friend at the age of roughly six. He had an early love of writing that did not go away even as he grew. It was not until his preteen and teenaged years that he seemed to move away from other people's definition of "normal". He didn't socialize well. His weight and skin problems, compounded by poor hygiene, made him unattractive to interact with in general. Though very intelligent, he turned introverted, the constant victim of bullying. In these trying and awkward years, he also began to be near-universally ignored by his parents in favor of his prettier, more normal and successful sister, Amy. It is described that Harold believes his mother still loved him but just didn't know what to do with him as time went on. His father, however, made his distaste of him clear when as a teenager, he humiliated him by point blank asking him if he was a homosexual. This is something Harold has never gotten over.
The plague hit late mid-to-late in Harold's sixteenth year, and in Ogunquit, he and the object of his affections, Frances Goldsmith, were the only two survivors. He found her safe and tried to be as normal as possible -- meaning that nothing had happened, so he was still the same, hard-to-talk-to Harold. She rather brusquely asked him to leave, as she was burying her father at the time, and he decided to leave her to her grieving and hoped she wouldn't be so mad she'd never speak to him again. They were alone now, after all. He spent some time initially enjoying the lack of other people, taking an old classic car from a neighbor and driving around town to see what he could take/see what was still there. Fran describes in the book the town being so quiet and empty that she can hear him driving around even from a mile or two away. Fran traveled to his home to find him unable to handle the solitude any longer. When he got to missing his family, even his father, but especially his mother, he tried to chase off their memories and his bad feelings with work, in true Hemingway fashion. She came up to the house to see him, in little else but his boxers, mowing the lawn with a forceful and frantic speed about him. This would be an image that stayed with her forever -- Harold, breaking emotionally, trying to chase away his saddness and confusion.
From there, they agreed they would travel together. Harold knew about a plague research center in Stovington, Vermont, and they agreed that if there were any government people still alive, it would be there, with them still searching for a cure. He arranged their vehicles, coming to decide motorcycles would be the safest and easiest mode for travel, as they could get around roadblocks and pileups a lot easier than any other vehicle. He finds fuel for them and bypasses the gas station pumps requiring power. Finally, he paints an immense sign on the side of the barn at his home, to give people some indication of where they were headed, and on their journeys he would leave several more, adding names to his list of companions as they picked up more stragglers. He came to believe in the initial part, that with him and Fran together, with him protecting her, then surely she would see past all the things she didn't like about him and fall in love with him.
Around this time Harold and Fran began having dreams. More detail is given of the dreams Fran had, of nightmares about the Dark Man and better dreams about Mother Abagail, summoning them to her in Nebraska. Harold claimed the dreams an aberration and a coincidence and therefore rarely, if ever, went into detail about them.
They soon met an old sociology professor, Glen Bateman, and Texan Stuart Redman -- by whom Harold particularly felt threatened. He was handsome, athletic and imposing, and in his mind he immediately equated to every jock that had ever given him trouble in school, only an adult. He felt certain he'd force his way into the group and steal Fran from Harold. Fran, with a better example of male ability to distract her, would forget about Harold. He only agreed to have the two along with them when Stu took him aside and insisted he wasn't there to move in on Fran. He promised this, spoke plainly to him that he's not the sort to force himself on a lady either, so he doesn't have to be afraid he'll hurt either of them. Harold grudgingly accepted their company, but was further threatened when Stu suggested they would find nothing in Stovington, because he'd been held prisoner at the Plague Center, where now no one was left alive.
Both Harold and Fran needed to see for themselves, so they traveled there anyway, where they found that everyone in the center was, indeed, completely dead. Fran, Harold and Glen all also found inside a Doctor who had clearly attempted to kill Stu before Stu escaped with his life. They agreed not to talk anymore about what they saw inside and returned to Stu, Harold and Fran having to quietly grieve that their one hope for a return to civilization and normalcy was shot. They continued to travel, agreeing despite Harold's insistence that the dreams, all similar among them, were just dreams, that they would go to Hemingford Home, Nebraska. They started to take pills to stop themselves from dreaming too heavily but eventually they stopped this entirely.
Their travels were not without their setbacks. Whenever a decision had to be made, Stu tended to ask Harold for his opinion first -- he often had good ideas, but this was purely to spare his ego, as Harold had a tendancy to be a bit obnoxious when he felt he was being ignored, and it could set them back immensely if not kept in check. They picked up a couple along the way, lovers, and the trip took a turn for the worse when one of them came down appendicitus and no on in the group was equipped to help him. Stu and Glen went looking for medical books and supplies and eventually tried to operate on him, but the operation failed and he died under the knife. Further along, they came upon a group of traveling marauders who had set a trap at a road block. Over time they had collected a harem of women and were making their way west, with designs to add Frannie to their group. The ensuing fire fight left many killed, including their attackers and at least two of the women they were keeping prisoner. Several of their prisoners turned on them, taking revenge on them for the horrors that had been inflicted since the end of the plague. Harold was involved with the firefight but was proven to be as young an inept with a weapon as one would expect a teenager to be when they've never handled a gun before then: He wet himself out of sheer terror at some point and may or may not have managed to land a single shot.
Somewhere along the way, Harold stole a diary from Frances and beneath the safety of his sleeping bag he read every page, particularly recent ones, and came to realize that not only had she been in love with Stu Redman from the beginning, but that they were secretly a couple now. He also saw every mean thing she ever said about him out of hand and how much she really begrudged his company even when they were alone, but with increasing rapidity once there were other people around. He decided then and there that Fran and Stu had betrayed him, and he would get back at them. He started his own journal, called the Ledger, and in order to seem more normal just started to work harder and put on a happier face. Fran even remarked that he was more productive and optimistic than she'd ever seen him, to which he replied easily with "Every dog has his day."
They made it to Nebraska and moved on to Boulder, Colorado, where Mother Abagail and many others had already migrated, and it was there that survivors like them began to form something of a settlement. Harold by this point had already decided that he was going to kill Stu, possibly (probably) Fran, and go West to Flagg where he would be appreciated. He felt confident that because of his hard work and dedication (and intelligence) he would be voted onto the Boulder Free Zone Committee -- a group of people who would be selected as the ruling government while society was rebuilt. His intention was to take every secret he could learn and bring them to the enemy, knowing he would be rewarded. He was kept off the Committee, much to his anger, but he did not hide his public appearance of being helpful. He took on many of the harder jobs in town, including the cleanup crew responsible for disposing of the remaining bodies. The house he moved into spoke a different story about his character though, as it was the only one in town that was kept locked, shades drawn. His knack for disarming people with his smile and political demeanor kept guesses from being made, however. He even met another survivor, Larry Underwood, who had gotten his group from New York all the way to Colorado because they followed the signs he left behind, and that he'd become kind of a symbol for them, the ideal survivor in this world. Others were not quick to trust him, however, such as the traumatized but mildly psychic child, Leo, from Larry's group, who refused always to enter Harold's house and later described to Larry that he had worms crawling around under his skin -- the boy's way of suggesting he knows there's something wrong with him.
With the working crews, and the general hard work that had gone into just getting to Colorado, Harold's skin cleared up and he lost a ton of weight. He was respected for his intelligence in spite of his youth, and for his sterling work ethic. People felt certain that while he was not on the Committee right now he was definitely going to be someday. His fellow workers even nicknamed him "Hawk" for his speed and cunning out in the field. He briefly entertained the idea of embracing his new life and letting go of his grudges, knowing with surprising clarity that if he continued down the path he was on he would be damned, and he sadly chose to keep his hatred out of a misguided belief that Flagg would reward him greatly and the Vegas settlement was made up of people just like him finally getting their due.
Harold discovered at some point, through footprints in the basement, that a girl had broken into his house. He became increasingly paranoid after this. His plans to kill Stu were intensified, and during a search for the now-missing Mother Abagail he very nearly shot him dead while they were alone but hesitated. Later he met older woman Nadine Cross, who claimed to know much of his intimate miseries, as well as his intentions to get back at the Free Committee. She joined him in his plans, eventually revealing that Flagg had told her to go to him. She also contributed to his first real sexual awakening, seducing him and basically playing out every horrible fantasy he ever had, doing essentially everything but actual full-on intercourse, as she claimed that Flagg had commanded her to save herself for him, that she had been chosen specifically for him. In spite of this warning of Nadine's importance to the Dark Man, Harold treated her with increasing disdain and disrespect over time, partially fueled by his still-inflating sense of self-importance and perhaps even by the demented playtime that they had enjoyed together.
Aided by visions from Flagg, Harold eventually set to work on a bomb. He wired it to a device he had learned to build that originally was made to unlock doors or ring doorbells with a voice activated command. This would allow him to set it off via walkie-talkie from a distance, and when finished the weapon was planted in the meeting house for the Free Zone Committee. Harold learned that Frances and someone else had broken into his house shortly after this and read the Ledger, and he and Nadine packed up and fled before they could be found.
Harold exploded the bomb that night, killing a couple committee members and many civilians that had attended the meeting to discuss different policies. Fran and Stu were among the survivors, though Harold would not know this. He and Nadine headed West toward the Rockies, Las Vegas, and their new life. On the way, Harold's bike struck an inexplicable oil slick, and he was thrown over the guard rail and down into the forest below. He broke a leg, possibly some ribs, and sustained other injuries. He dragged himself up the kill toward the road as best he could, finding Nadine had been watching him the whole time. Harold begged her to help him, and she patiently refused. She had arranged for him to get hurt, knowing Flagg intended to kill him once he reached Vegas, since he had outlived what he saw as his usefulness, and because he was too "full of thoughts" to control. Harold found his gun and attempted to shoot Nadine and she, too far gone and perhaps hoping for an out, nearly let him do it, not trying to flee even after the first shot. Finally, much later, she left him there to his fate.
For the game's purposes, he passed out here, and would wake up on the Barge.
Sample Journal Entry: [Apologies for how this looks and how it will look in subsequent entries. Harold writes without line breaks or paragraph breaks. He seems to think it looks edgy.]
Common sense and experience dictates certainties in one's life. Unusual things exist because the idea of them exists. The second they come to mind, they're there and they always will be. The idea of Santa Claus is real, but the actual man is not. You learn growing up the difference between "fiction" and "reality", and the only people that survive in fiction are the persons that contribute to it. The actors, the artists, but perhaps more importantly the writers, who through the written word can exist elsewhere and at will. I propose that this place is not the same. This is an impossible place, but it's real, more real than an idea, more real than a dream, and I know that this is not a dream. I can't read or write in dreams. Nobody can, not really. But I've read the words I have written here, more than once. They are real. My eyes can see them. I can read them aloud. I must be awake. Or perhaps it's the unjuries. Perhaps there's something wrong with my head, that makes the dreaming different, but why then did the injuries come inside with me? Normally, I'm definitely sure I could tell myself to wake up, but then you don't command yourself out of a coma, do you? --Harold Emory Lauder
Sample RP: Harold's fingers, bloody and peppered with bits of broken glass and pebbles from the road, fumbled with the snapping buttons and the zipper of his leather jacket. His chest felt like it was being crushed, and he sucked in shaky, bubbly breaths that intensified the pressure his lungs, but as he opened the garment the shock of fresh air seeping through the sweat of his shirt was cold and comforting, like a raw steak against a black eye. A twitch of his lower body, and he felt something in his leg move under his skin, and it was a painful, grating feeling, like chalk dragging against more chalk, and he hissed.
The series of small actions, little comforts, finally were accompanied by memories, and his hand groped for a weapon. There were none to be found. It was night and the stars above were brilliant. Now that the wind had settled onto his body, he realized the air was warmer than he thought it should have been. He sighed and shut his eyes, his breath heavy and his brow glistening with pain-induced perspiration.
It did not take him long to realize he was not on the hill next to the road anymore. He wasn't even in the rockies. The first indication had been the stars, which appeared to move around him. The second was realizing he was no longer lying on sharp, prickly gravel, but rather a solid wooden floor, like the deck of a ship.
Finally, the sound of voices, the appearance of hands to bear him away.
He was too tired to panic. Too confused to argue with his own mind. He was not on the road anymore. That was all he knew for certain.
Special Notes: First, I'd like to bring Harold in by dropping him on the main deck with most, if not all of his injuries. Before infection set in on his leg, I should think. Second, I chose Richard Kahan as Harold's PB because the guy who played him in the miniseries was completely wrong for him. He looked too old to play a teenager, was the wrong body type -- overall just a bad fit for Harold. I picked this guy because you could at least say he could have been heavier once. He's not a teenager but he could play younger, and he dresses the way I could see Harold dressing once he got to Boulder and could take his pick. So yes :|
User LJ: magdaleina
AIM/IM: SchmooeyFoo
E-mail: weirdophreak17@yahoo.com
Other Characters: The Marquis de Sade, Mozenrath, Rose Tyler, Reaver, Frances Owens
Character Name: Harold Emory Lauder
Series: The Stand (novel)
Age: 17
From When?: The accident preceding his death toward the end of the novel. After exploding the meeting place of the Free Zone Committee and successfully killing several people, Harold struck out from Boulder, Colorado to join Flagg's forces in Vegas. On the way there in the mountains, Flagg placed an oil slick on the road to make him lose control of his motorcycle. He struck a guard rail and was thrown over the side, breaking several ribs and his leg. His companion, Nadine Cross, left him for dead (after he attempted to shoot her) and he eventually placed a note on himself, concluding "I'm sorry I was misled" and committed suicide. I would like to bring him to the Barge pretty much at the time of the crash, as opposed to the many days (possibly week) later when lying in the Colorado sun with a gangrenous leg and watching the buzzards start to circle kind of started to make him think this was probably not the best way to go.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate - Harold's high-school driven view of "me versus the rest of the world" did not wane even as he joined the Boulder Free Zone, became an instrument for change, lost all the weight and started to become someone respected. He was too poisoned by his own hate and his refusal to let go of his grudges, and he eventually succumbed to Flagg's call, believing the Las Vegas settlement to be one made up of outsiders like him, and that he would be well rewarded for betraying the Free Zone.
He most definitely damned himself and even explicitly states this at one point.
Abilities/Powers: Harold has no powers; he's just exceptionally intelligent. In his travels across the country, his directions and his ideas for finding fuel, food, and other things are considered inspirational to other main characters, and even people that knew him, when confronted with the facts of his efforts, were in awe of how surprisingly resourceful he was at surviving. As a teenager, he was well on his way to a socially awkward but academically rewarding time at college; intellectually he was already on the same level as an undergrad, in some ways beyond. He's very resourceful and technically savvy, and was able to build complex electronics and bombs from blueprints.
Personality: Harold is what can happen when teenagers fail to really come into their own, or regress to an accepted "outcast" state. In the past seven or eight months, Harold has transformed. Initially, his intelligence was overshadowed by painful awkwardness, his weight, and his poor hygiene. He didn't bathe often. He had terrible acne and a love of Payday candy bars. He was socially not well developed, in that he had some weird tics in his language that showed the awkwardness, like thinking it appropriate to refer to Frannie as "my child" when she's older than him and he has a crush on her. It's an issue that's nearly completely resolved by the end. Midway through the book, he outwardly develops into an intelligent, thin, hygenically balanced, and charismatic contributing member of society. The conditions of the plague aftermath caused him to lose a lot of weight, and he gave up Paydays believing that chocolate was bad for his skin -- it did clear up, but that's more to do with his bathing habits changing. He worked hard, often volunteering for the toughest jobs, and came into his own. Inwardly, though, he remained the same acne ridden, fat, misunderstood outcast geek who not only believes everyone is against him, but also believes he should make them pay for all his years of suffering. His self-esteem is something of a paradox in that he has this immense, over-inflated sense of self-worth when it comes to how much smarter he thinks he is than everyone else, but no matter how much he changes he still thinks himself ugly, unapproachable, and a target for dumb-jock hatred -- and everyone, including you, may be a dumb jock.
First and foremost, Harold is very intelligent, and well above most of his former peers, academically. He's so intelligent, in fact, that Flagg ultimately decided to have him killed because he was "too full of thoughts" and too difficult for him to control -- shown in the fact that Flagg's power couldn't stop him from trying to kill his bride-to-be, Nadine. He does not have the world experience or the social graces to understand that High Schoolers are literally the bottom of the intellectual barrel, though, so he has on more than one occassion embarrassed himself in front of older, wiser individuals. He is smart, but he is most definitely not mature, especially not at the start of the book. An aspiring but unpopular writer, he is at that age, a little early, where he feels that his work simply is not read by those that can appreciate it, rather than the thought that he is simply young and needs to improve with further experience. When he and Fran, one of the few people who knew each other before the plague, set out from Maine to look for survivors, he left signs showing where they were going, found ways to access fuel even when most gas stations ran on power, and overcame many, many typical obstacles. So impressive where his efforts and his feats that other survivors who found his signs in his wake, began to see him as a good person even before they met him. Larry Underwood, in particular, kept hopes up by asking "What Would Harold Do?" whenever his group ran into a problem.
Harold's low self-esteem does not keep him quiet and introverted, as one might assume. He feels the need to be heard, as though he will be ignored or cast aside if he does not speak. His ego is very easily bruised, and he is given to argument just so that he can stand out and assert himself. In the aftermath of the plague, this didn't really start to show until more men joined the group, and Harold gives the impression when he argues that he feels threatened in some way. The people with whom he traveled after the plague, namely his rival Stu, learned that the best way to keep him satisfied and from refusing to help out on all fronts (even when their chosen path is the only path or the most thought-out), was to ask for his ideas first. And make no mistake, he had many good ones.
Harold spent much of the book fixated on Frances Goldsmith, whom he has had a crush on since he was six years old and who also was once the best friend of his now deceased older sister, Amy. This developed into full-on love to something of an obsession in the next ten years. Of course, Frannie was never interested, because he was her best friend's baby brother, and largely because he was both strange and kind of gross. This was something Harold perhaps knew deep down but quietly ignored. When they escaped Maine together he felt there was some ghost of a chance that they would finally be together, since there was simply no one else. His love for Frannie turned to hate when he stole her diary and read it one night on the road. He discovered that she had fallen in love with someone they had been travelling with and that she thought very little of him as a person. He had somehow convinced himself that she had deeply wronged him by not choosing him, as well as the man she'd chosen for her lover, Stu Redman, who had all but promised Harold he wasn't going to take Frannie from him.
After this discovery, when Harold decided he would at some point take vengeance on them, he learned he could put on a smile and pretend to be happy and more productive. This is the most dangerous thing about him. He's disarmingly nice, but sterile, politician-like when he's holding something down. It makes him seem completely open but it's a friendliness that comes completely detached from his actual thoughts and feelings. It puts up a wall, a mask, that people are allowed to see while concealing everything that's festering underneath. He is even aware at one point that, after becoming involved in the Boulder community and respected among his peers, that he has a chance to move on from his past and his grudges, and he simply chooses not to. His secretiveness is further recognized in that his home is the only one in Boulder where all the doors are kept locked and the curtains and blinds drawn. He doesn't let people see inside. He even keeps his journal, the Ledger, a diary filled with all his darkest ideas (begun after reading Fran's diary), hidden under a stone in the fireplace. These bad feelings only seem to intensify when Nadine Cross, sent by Randall Flagg, approaches him and reveals she knows a lot about the thoughts and insecurities he keeps hidden. She seduces him and in their private interludes allows him to act out every sick, angry, demeaning fantasy he's ever envisioned -- usually directed toward the sort of women that he's come to hate for, in his mind, rejecting him. Every terrible, vengeful thought he ever had as a misunderstood teenager has been fed and turned into something even worse in this time. The sexual issues, though, suggest he could have been damaged -- he was barely past the age of consent as it is, and with his issues of maturity, it could be said that no matter how horrible his fantasies he was most definitely taken advantage of and could lead him to having a universally demeaning view of women if not properly handled, if he doesn't have one already.
On the Barge, Harold will first be completely blown away by the technology. Coming from the year 1990, there is just simply nothing that's going to compare. He'll be completely distrusting of the people around him and will probably feel convinced that he's dreaming, having lost consciousness after...something. He can sort of remember the wreck, the same way that a person concussed in a car accident can sort of remember going off the road. He can remember trying to kill Nadine when she tried to leave him for dead, but he won't mention that part. He'll be hesitant to talk about his past at all even when confronted with a Warden who clearly knows his past and knows it in detail.
Path to Redemption: Harold needs to basically climb the Hell off of this high horse he's got himself on. He needs to come to accept that not every girl is just a pretty, stuck up bitch, and not every guy is just another jock asshole. These seem like very normal things to teach a teenager to overcome -- the sort of thing that shouldn't require Inmate status, but for the fact that his view has been so built up and overfed in his mind that he's to the point where he has killed people over it. And not just any people, but people he professes to love and be friends with, who really would not have had any idea he was kind of an evil bastard if there were not one or two premonitions involved. In Colorado he started to develop another self, a self that was intelligent and respected by others, who was a gifted member of the community and bound to go places as the settlement grew, and it would serve him to be useful and respected in another place too. Getting him involved would help, but his Warden needs to know there are telltale signs of him regressing. Mainly when he puts on that politician, hard-not-to-return smile and says everything is all right. Don't let him stew, and try not to let him keep too many secrets. He needs to think somebody is on his side and somebody understands him. He also needs to express regret for what he's done and get over Frannie -- past the point that he hangs on once being in love with her and well past the point where he feels she has wronged him personally and deserves to be punished.
History: Little is known about the early history. Harold Emory Lauder was born in Ogunquit, Maine, and has always been considered an especially intelligent child. He developed a crush on his sister's best friend at the age of roughly six. He had an early love of writing that did not go away even as he grew. It was not until his preteen and teenaged years that he seemed to move away from other people's definition of "normal". He didn't socialize well. His weight and skin problems, compounded by poor hygiene, made him unattractive to interact with in general. Though very intelligent, he turned introverted, the constant victim of bullying. In these trying and awkward years, he also began to be near-universally ignored by his parents in favor of his prettier, more normal and successful sister, Amy. It is described that Harold believes his mother still loved him but just didn't know what to do with him as time went on. His father, however, made his distaste of him clear when as a teenager, he humiliated him by point blank asking him if he was a homosexual. This is something Harold has never gotten over.
The plague hit late mid-to-late in Harold's sixteenth year, and in Ogunquit, he and the object of his affections, Frances Goldsmith, were the only two survivors. He found her safe and tried to be as normal as possible -- meaning that nothing had happened, so he was still the same, hard-to-talk-to Harold. She rather brusquely asked him to leave, as she was burying her father at the time, and he decided to leave her to her grieving and hoped she wouldn't be so mad she'd never speak to him again. They were alone now, after all. He spent some time initially enjoying the lack of other people, taking an old classic car from a neighbor and driving around town to see what he could take/see what was still there. Fran describes in the book the town being so quiet and empty that she can hear him driving around even from a mile or two away. Fran traveled to his home to find him unable to handle the solitude any longer. When he got to missing his family, even his father, but especially his mother, he tried to chase off their memories and his bad feelings with work, in true Hemingway fashion. She came up to the house to see him, in little else but his boxers, mowing the lawn with a forceful and frantic speed about him. This would be an image that stayed with her forever -- Harold, breaking emotionally, trying to chase away his saddness and confusion.
From there, they agreed they would travel together. Harold knew about a plague research center in Stovington, Vermont, and they agreed that if there were any government people still alive, it would be there, with them still searching for a cure. He arranged their vehicles, coming to decide motorcycles would be the safest and easiest mode for travel, as they could get around roadblocks and pileups a lot easier than any other vehicle. He finds fuel for them and bypasses the gas station pumps requiring power. Finally, he paints an immense sign on the side of the barn at his home, to give people some indication of where they were headed, and on their journeys he would leave several more, adding names to his list of companions as they picked up more stragglers. He came to believe in the initial part, that with him and Fran together, with him protecting her, then surely she would see past all the things she didn't like about him and fall in love with him.
Around this time Harold and Fran began having dreams. More detail is given of the dreams Fran had, of nightmares about the Dark Man and better dreams about Mother Abagail, summoning them to her in Nebraska. Harold claimed the dreams an aberration and a coincidence and therefore rarely, if ever, went into detail about them.
They soon met an old sociology professor, Glen Bateman, and Texan Stuart Redman -- by whom Harold particularly felt threatened. He was handsome, athletic and imposing, and in his mind he immediately equated to every jock that had ever given him trouble in school, only an adult. He felt certain he'd force his way into the group and steal Fran from Harold. Fran, with a better example of male ability to distract her, would forget about Harold. He only agreed to have the two along with them when Stu took him aside and insisted he wasn't there to move in on Fran. He promised this, spoke plainly to him that he's not the sort to force himself on a lady either, so he doesn't have to be afraid he'll hurt either of them. Harold grudgingly accepted their company, but was further threatened when Stu suggested they would find nothing in Stovington, because he'd been held prisoner at the Plague Center, where now no one was left alive.
Both Harold and Fran needed to see for themselves, so they traveled there anyway, where they found that everyone in the center was, indeed, completely dead. Fran, Harold and Glen all also found inside a Doctor who had clearly attempted to kill Stu before Stu escaped with his life. They agreed not to talk anymore about what they saw inside and returned to Stu, Harold and Fran having to quietly grieve that their one hope for a return to civilization and normalcy was shot. They continued to travel, agreeing despite Harold's insistence that the dreams, all similar among them, were just dreams, that they would go to Hemingford Home, Nebraska. They started to take pills to stop themselves from dreaming too heavily but eventually they stopped this entirely.
Their travels were not without their setbacks. Whenever a decision had to be made, Stu tended to ask Harold for his opinion first -- he often had good ideas, but this was purely to spare his ego, as Harold had a tendancy to be a bit obnoxious when he felt he was being ignored, and it could set them back immensely if not kept in check. They picked up a couple along the way, lovers, and the trip took a turn for the worse when one of them came down appendicitus and no on in the group was equipped to help him. Stu and Glen went looking for medical books and supplies and eventually tried to operate on him, but the operation failed and he died under the knife. Further along, they came upon a group of traveling marauders who had set a trap at a road block. Over time they had collected a harem of women and were making their way west, with designs to add Frannie to their group. The ensuing fire fight left many killed, including their attackers and at least two of the women they were keeping prisoner. Several of their prisoners turned on them, taking revenge on them for the horrors that had been inflicted since the end of the plague. Harold was involved with the firefight but was proven to be as young an inept with a weapon as one would expect a teenager to be when they've never handled a gun before then: He wet himself out of sheer terror at some point and may or may not have managed to land a single shot.
Somewhere along the way, Harold stole a diary from Frances and beneath the safety of his sleeping bag he read every page, particularly recent ones, and came to realize that not only had she been in love with Stu Redman from the beginning, but that they were secretly a couple now. He also saw every mean thing she ever said about him out of hand and how much she really begrudged his company even when they were alone, but with increasing rapidity once there were other people around. He decided then and there that Fran and Stu had betrayed him, and he would get back at them. He started his own journal, called the Ledger, and in order to seem more normal just started to work harder and put on a happier face. Fran even remarked that he was more productive and optimistic than she'd ever seen him, to which he replied easily with "Every dog has his day."
They made it to Nebraska and moved on to Boulder, Colorado, where Mother Abagail and many others had already migrated, and it was there that survivors like them began to form something of a settlement. Harold by this point had already decided that he was going to kill Stu, possibly (probably) Fran, and go West to Flagg where he would be appreciated. He felt confident that because of his hard work and dedication (and intelligence) he would be voted onto the Boulder Free Zone Committee -- a group of people who would be selected as the ruling government while society was rebuilt. His intention was to take every secret he could learn and bring them to the enemy, knowing he would be rewarded. He was kept off the Committee, much to his anger, but he did not hide his public appearance of being helpful. He took on many of the harder jobs in town, including the cleanup crew responsible for disposing of the remaining bodies. The house he moved into spoke a different story about his character though, as it was the only one in town that was kept locked, shades drawn. His knack for disarming people with his smile and political demeanor kept guesses from being made, however. He even met another survivor, Larry Underwood, who had gotten his group from New York all the way to Colorado because they followed the signs he left behind, and that he'd become kind of a symbol for them, the ideal survivor in this world. Others were not quick to trust him, however, such as the traumatized but mildly psychic child, Leo, from Larry's group, who refused always to enter Harold's house and later described to Larry that he had worms crawling around under his skin -- the boy's way of suggesting he knows there's something wrong with him.
With the working crews, and the general hard work that had gone into just getting to Colorado, Harold's skin cleared up and he lost a ton of weight. He was respected for his intelligence in spite of his youth, and for his sterling work ethic. People felt certain that while he was not on the Committee right now he was definitely going to be someday. His fellow workers even nicknamed him "Hawk" for his speed and cunning out in the field. He briefly entertained the idea of embracing his new life and letting go of his grudges, knowing with surprising clarity that if he continued down the path he was on he would be damned, and he sadly chose to keep his hatred out of a misguided belief that Flagg would reward him greatly and the Vegas settlement was made up of people just like him finally getting their due.
Harold discovered at some point, through footprints in the basement, that a girl had broken into his house. He became increasingly paranoid after this. His plans to kill Stu were intensified, and during a search for the now-missing Mother Abagail he very nearly shot him dead while they were alone but hesitated. Later he met older woman Nadine Cross, who claimed to know much of his intimate miseries, as well as his intentions to get back at the Free Committee. She joined him in his plans, eventually revealing that Flagg had told her to go to him. She also contributed to his first real sexual awakening, seducing him and basically playing out every horrible fantasy he ever had, doing essentially everything but actual full-on intercourse, as she claimed that Flagg had commanded her to save herself for him, that she had been chosen specifically for him. In spite of this warning of Nadine's importance to the Dark Man, Harold treated her with increasing disdain and disrespect over time, partially fueled by his still-inflating sense of self-importance and perhaps even by the demented playtime that they had enjoyed together.
Aided by visions from Flagg, Harold eventually set to work on a bomb. He wired it to a device he had learned to build that originally was made to unlock doors or ring doorbells with a voice activated command. This would allow him to set it off via walkie-talkie from a distance, and when finished the weapon was planted in the meeting house for the Free Zone Committee. Harold learned that Frances and someone else had broken into his house shortly after this and read the Ledger, and he and Nadine packed up and fled before they could be found.
Harold exploded the bomb that night, killing a couple committee members and many civilians that had attended the meeting to discuss different policies. Fran and Stu were among the survivors, though Harold would not know this. He and Nadine headed West toward the Rockies, Las Vegas, and their new life. On the way, Harold's bike struck an inexplicable oil slick, and he was thrown over the guard rail and down into the forest below. He broke a leg, possibly some ribs, and sustained other injuries. He dragged himself up the kill toward the road as best he could, finding Nadine had been watching him the whole time. Harold begged her to help him, and she patiently refused. She had arranged for him to get hurt, knowing Flagg intended to kill him once he reached Vegas, since he had outlived what he saw as his usefulness, and because he was too "full of thoughts" to control. Harold found his gun and attempted to shoot Nadine and she, too far gone and perhaps hoping for an out, nearly let him do it, not trying to flee even after the first shot. Finally, much later, she left him there to his fate.
For the game's purposes, he passed out here, and would wake up on the Barge.
Sample Journal Entry: [Apologies for how this looks and how it will look in subsequent entries. Harold writes without line breaks or paragraph breaks. He seems to think it looks edgy.]
Common sense and experience dictates certainties in one's life. Unusual things exist because the idea of them exists. The second they come to mind, they're there and they always will be. The idea of Santa Claus is real, but the actual man is not. You learn growing up the difference between "fiction" and "reality", and the only people that survive in fiction are the persons that contribute to it. The actors, the artists, but perhaps more importantly the writers, who through the written word can exist elsewhere and at will. I propose that this place is not the same. This is an impossible place, but it's real, more real than an idea, more real than a dream, and I know that this is not a dream. I can't read or write in dreams. Nobody can, not really. But I've read the words I have written here, more than once. They are real. My eyes can see them. I can read them aloud. I must be awake. Or perhaps it's the unjuries. Perhaps there's something wrong with my head, that makes the dreaming different, but why then did the injuries come inside with me? Normally, I'm definitely sure I could tell myself to wake up, but then you don't command yourself out of a coma, do you? --Harold Emory Lauder
Sample RP: Harold's fingers, bloody and peppered with bits of broken glass and pebbles from the road, fumbled with the snapping buttons and the zipper of his leather jacket. His chest felt like it was being crushed, and he sucked in shaky, bubbly breaths that intensified the pressure his lungs, but as he opened the garment the shock of fresh air seeping through the sweat of his shirt was cold and comforting, like a raw steak against a black eye. A twitch of his lower body, and he felt something in his leg move under his skin, and it was a painful, grating feeling, like chalk dragging against more chalk, and he hissed.
The series of small actions, little comforts, finally were accompanied by memories, and his hand groped for a weapon. There were none to be found. It was night and the stars above were brilliant. Now that the wind had settled onto his body, he realized the air was warmer than he thought it should have been. He sighed and shut his eyes, his breath heavy and his brow glistening with pain-induced perspiration.
It did not take him long to realize he was not on the hill next to the road anymore. He wasn't even in the rockies. The first indication had been the stars, which appeared to move around him. The second was realizing he was no longer lying on sharp, prickly gravel, but rather a solid wooden floor, like the deck of a ship.
Finally, the sound of voices, the appearance of hands to bear him away.
He was too tired to panic. Too confused to argue with his own mind. He was not on the road anymore. That was all he knew for certain.
Special Notes: First, I'd like to bring Harold in by dropping him on the main deck with most, if not all of his injuries. Before infection set in on his leg, I should think. Second, I chose Richard Kahan as Harold's PB because the guy who played him in the miniseries was completely wrong for him. He looked too old to play a teenager, was the wrong body type -- overall just a bad fit for Harold. I picked this guy because you could at least say he could have been heavier once. He's not a teenager but he could play younger, and he dresses the way I could see Harold dressing once he got to Boulder and could take his pick. So yes :|