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These are all accurate

It was suprisingly easy.

I think maybe in order to have an OT3 work with three protagonist types, you *have* to have a 2 (to get them into that situation in the first place), a 1 (to be willing to propose that they make it work) and a 3 (to actually be able to make it work.)

Edited 2021-03-24 17:32 (UTC)

Joe is 1. Methos is 2. MacLeod is 3.

This is so accurate, it hurts.

I will Fight You (tm) about Luke being 1. I don't feel like his goals are reasonable. Perhaps the twins share this characteristic. I'd suggest substiting with Lando, except I feel like his methods are reasonable. Hmm.

~~Miles Vorkosigan is unfortunately all three of them.~~

Edited 2021-03-24 16:51 (UTC)

Obi-Wan, maybe? Goal: Defeat the Empire! Method: Become ghost!

I support this.

I feel like Obi-Wan is a 3 if you team him up with Qui-Gon, a 2 if you team him up with Anakin, and a 1 if you team him up with Luke, because he has something of the mirror to him.

You think Anakin Skywalker is "2. Has sensible plans, but tremendously fucks up the execution"?!

...okay fair, he's more "Has objectively deranged plans AND ALSO tremendously fucks up the execution."

extremely accurate

I mean, both the Star Wars ones should really be OT4s, but this game doesn't work as well for OT4s.

I think if you swap out for the most canon-doable/least incesty version as an OT3, it becomes Lando is 1, Han is 2, Leia is 3.

It depends on how you define unreasonable, but I feel like "Make a deal with Darth Vader, and then welch on it", "Fly a rickety old freighter literally into the Death Star", and "Cheat at Sabaac" are all objectively not very reasonable, but his goals tend to be things like "maintain continuity of city administration" and "make a living", which only become unreasonable in context.

I mean, in general all of these depend on whether you consider 'defeat the all-powerful Evil Empire' a reasonable or unreasonable goal. But especially if you count sequel-trilogy as canon, Leia tends to have goals like "create an alliance out of squabbling rebel groups and use it to bring down the all-powerful empire, while a teenager" or "resign from a high political position in order to start another underground rebel group in order to fight an enemy most people don't think exists", and she someone manages to succeed at those.

Whereas Luke has goals like "Get off this boring planet", "rescue my friends", "prevent the bad guy from finding my friends", "start a school", and "stop getting other people killed". It's just that the strategies he chooses to accomplish these things are so batshit they obscure the modesty of the original goals.

It depends on how you define unreasonable, but I feel like "Make a deal with Darth Vader, and then welch on it", "Fly a rickety old freighter literally into the Death Star", and "Cheat at Sabaac" are all objectively not very reasonable, but his goals tend to be things like "maintain continuity of city administration" and "make a living", which only become unreasonable in context.

Lando looks so much better by contrast compared to everyone he's standing next to XD

I consider Luke's most unreasonable goal and unreasonable method to both converge on Operation Save Darth Vader's Soul.

I honestly think it is debatable whether Operation Save Darth Vader's Soul rises to the level of a "goal" as opposed to a dream. Like, it's easy to read what he did in RotJ as making mad choices in order to achieve that, but actually what he did was a) volunteer to help his friends destroy the shield bunker; b) realize he shouldn't have done that, because Darth Vader will be able to sense him there, and that will blow the operation; c) use the most expedient method possible to prevent Vader from realizing there is a Rebel commando team on Endor and acting on that knowledge.

Like, if you don't believe Vader can sense him in the Force (like everybody else on Endor) it looks like he's just throwing himself at Vader for no reason, and it was all irrelevant anyway because the whole thing was a trap, and his *method* for distracting Vader was in fact "attempt to turn him to the light" (which was objectively unreasonable) but at no point did he wake up in the morning and say "Today is the day I attempt to turn Vader back to the light," and I think if the mission had gone as planned, he had never left Endor and Lando had blown the Death Star with both Vader and Palpatine on in, Luke would have been a bit said but still considered all goals accomplished.

It has been a while but I feel like Yoda and Obi-Wan were really priming him to go fight Darth Vader, talking about he won't be a Jedi until he confronts him. It seemed like they were pointing him at the target in hopes that he'd kill him, and Luke was like "naw."

But I always come back to "I have no idea what the light side of the Force is", so that complicates matters.

Oh, that is obviously true. And I would say 'Don't let Yoda and Obi-Wan manipulate you into doing stuff you don't want to do' is definitely a goal of his by at least the start of ROTJ. But I would argue that is an eminently reasonable goal. :P

And I think he was definitely ready to go for pushing Vader toward the light every chance he got. But I just don't know that I'd consider a major goal of his, in the sense of something he was shaping all his choices around. He ever really seeks out Vader, or does anything in that direction, unless it's specifically toward an immediate goal of protecting Han and Leia. I kind of feel like he *knows* it's an objectively deranged goal, so he's still just sort of dancing around it and waiting for the universe to push him in its direction if it wants to.

But yeah. The Force complicates the question of Luke's choices a lot.

Ooooooh, good point

This is an amzing comment, and I love all of it. This is why I love both Luke and Lando.

I will point out, however, that LANDO was not the one who welched on the deal. That was Vader; Lando's reaction to being welched on, however, may be taken as extreme. Depending on how you interpret things.

I mean, sure, that justifies it from an ethical POV, but from a pragmatic POV the evil sorcerer warlord who helps rule the galaxy is still expecting him to hold to his side of it under modified terms and also has him surrounded by stormtroopers, so by way of assessing the reasonableness of methods I think defying him as blatantly as possible counts.

Also, MacLeod would say he is 2 and Methos is 3, but he would be wrong.

Methos would loudly proclaim he is 2 but leave out the fact that it's only because half the time he fucks up his own plans, on purpose.

...I was actually considering including my Vorkosigan OT3 of Lord Miles Vorkosigan/Ekaterin Vorsoisson/Admiral Miles Naismith (who fit the pattern in that order) but unfortunately nobody has yet written me the fic where Ekaterin gets to have a wild fling with Naismith.

Edited 2021-03-24 18:06 (UTC)

Methos talks himself into fucking up the execution into unreasonable goals while steadfastly denying that that's what he's doing. He also denies he's in denial. He hasn't felt guilt since a previous millennia, and these boots are made for walking, so long and thanks for all the fish. Please ignore the man behind the curtain.

but unfortunately nobody has yet written me the fic where Ekaterin gets to have a wild fling with Naismith.

I would never be the one to write it, but if I weren't writing it, Ekaterin is doing work for her PhD on some space station somewhere (because it's a lot easier to keep plants from infecting other plants with their wily pollen if you can just open an airlock if you need to), and the Dendarii come through, and Miles is wandering the halls and has a mild allergic reaction to alert him that there's Barrayaran botany nearby. And there's a woman there, dressesd like someone from home, but she's berating him like she's one of his officers because he's messing up her project.

I don't know how Lord Vorkosigan gets into this, maybe Ekaterin goes home and looks up Cordelia at Admiral Naismith's suggestion.

I mean, in my version it is post-wedding and Miles attempts to explain the whole Naismith thing to Ekaterin via demonstration and things get a bit out of hand and then becomes an ongoing thing that also includes attempting to convince the Barrayaran tabloids Ekaterin is having an extramarital affair with her husband's clone.

But your version is excellent and brilliant and I also support it a lot. I suspect Miles comes in when it goes AU mid-Komarr as they both suddenly recognize each other. :D (Would Miles then decide the most expedient way to separate her from Tien/court her is to show back up as Naismith? Difficult to say.)

All of Miles's romantic success has been as Naismith and, by god, he's not gonna change that now.

It wouldn't be *that* much more screwy than how he actually did court her in canon...

Also I have embarked on a Sayers re-read recently, so am of course thinking of the parallels between Miles/Ekaterin and Peter/Harriet, and now I am wishing there was a post-Have His Carcase story where one of Harriet's school friends is like 'What you want right now is someone normal and boring to take your mind off of Lords and murders and all that, there's a nice man about your age named Bredon who just started at my office and he seems a bit lonely, let me set you up on a dinner-date with him'.

OH OH OH oh dear now I very want this

Having returned from her walking tour, and submitted her manuscript shortly thereafter, Harriet Vane found herself back in London and feeling rather dreary.

"What you need," said her friend Dot, sagely, over lunch at the Corner House, "Is to put yourself back out there."

"I don't suppose there would be a lot of demand for the favors of a woman who was tried for the murder of her last gentleman friend," Harriet said dismally. "And Lord Peter--"

"Oh, tosh and pish to all your Lords and murders," Dot said. "What you need is somebody ordinary and boring for a change. Lighten things up." Dot was one of her friends from the margins of her artistic circles - she had gone to school as a painter, but wound up drawing pictures for advertisements, and had a tendency sometimes to overcompensate for this by extolling the dubious virtues of a steady job at an office. "There's a nice, ordinary man just started at my office. Mr. Bredon. He seems a bit lonely and in need of a cheering-up. Possibly recently crossed in love, though he won't talk about it. Let me set you up on a dinner-date or something. I think you'd be good for each other, even if nothing else comes of it in the end."

Harriet, much against her better wisdom, let herself be convinced to one dinner-date, if the man could be induced in his turn, with the creeping suspicion that this had been the entire goal of Dot's inviting her to lunch in the first place. But the idea of a nice, normal dinner with an ordinary stranger who worked an office-job and had nothing to do with Lords or murders, did, in that moment, seem wildly appealing.

***

Mr. Bredon, perhaps inevitably, was in fact Lord Peter Wimsey in disguise.

Harriet watched him cross the restaurant toward her table with a sinking feeling like a tanker meeting an iceberg, as she remembered a note she'd received a few weeks back to the effect that the man was going to be under cover for a case, and would be out of contact for some time. Undercover - that was clear; all of the things that made up the performance of Lord Peter Wimsey were missing in the man approaching her table, and she didn't think that any of Sal's friends would be able to tell, to make hay of it the way they would Harriet and Peter dining out - but all the same it was unmistakeable.

"Did Dot not tell you who I was?" Harriet said, with resignation.

"No, no, you're Miss Vane! At least, I hope you are, or I've got quite the wrong restaurant." He sat down a bit fussily in the chair across from her. "But I suppose I have to admit that I've followed your career - I'm a fan, you might say, so I don't think I'm mistaken in who I've sat down with."

"Lord Peter--" Harriet started.

"Oh, well, I know what's been in the papers about you and him," he said, with a deprecating laugh, "and I suppose I don't much measure up to a Lord, do I? Or perhaps you think I might be intimidated by the comparison? But I know better than to trust the papers, and besides, I can't imagine you've succumbed to his charms too thoroughly, or you would never have agreed to a dinner out with someone like me." He glanced across the table at her. "And I imagine it has to be deuced awkward, doesn't it, being courted by the son of a Duke, and one you owe your life to, at that. Gratitude and insecurity being both largely incompatible with romance. When Dot brought up the idea I thought you might be willing to give a fair shake to someone who shares many of his good qualities but lacks the obvious disadvantages, doncha know."

"That's how you're going to play this?" Harriet asked him, amused, offended and disbelieving in equal parts.

"Not," said Peter, "If you tell me no," and that was definitely Peter, not the office worker or the dilettante detective, but the Peter she'd met a few times at odd moments, the man who was always so unreasonably reasonable that she found it impossible to be reasonable to him in return.

"And you're not going to ask me to marry you?" she said, just in case.

"Before we've even had a first date? What kind of unbearable, arrogant cad would do that? Let me know who it is, and I will punch him directly on the nose for you, if you wish. Not," he added sharply, "that I would be entirely averse if someone else raised the topic."

"By all means let's avoid that, then," Harriet said. "But I suppose it can't hurt to finish out our dinner. After all, I wouldn't want to make things awkward for you with Dot in the office, come Monday."

Edited 2021-03-24 20:45 (UTC)

YESSSSSSSS BEAUTIFUL THANK YOU

This is amazing, and I love it, and I would love to see more--not just the date itself, but what case is Peter working? and does Harriet get drawn into it somehow? (Of course she does.)

The idea is that it's set during the beginning of Murder Must Advertise, but I will confess I skipped that one last reread so I'm not entirely sure how well this actually fits as-is.

I think Lord Peter has a dinner-date at some point...

There's definitely a point in Murder Must Advertise where Lord Peter goes and has dinner with Harriet, and it's covered in a sentence or two without any details of the dinner itself because the narrator says it's not relevant to the story at hand.

However, I think -- I can't be bothered to actually get up and find my copy and find the reference -- I think it's at least strongly implied that Peter goes to the dinner as Peter, specifically because it's fairly late in the book and he wants to be himself for a bit.

I am so totally in love with this idea that I started typing with my fingers on the wrong keys twice and had to rewrite to make it readable.

Love this :D

:D :D :D

Oh, yes to the Vorkosigan one, and Ivan in the background pointing out "Miles, you're BOTH those people!" rather unhappily and desperate for someone to stop his cousin who isn't HIMSELF.

Edited 2021-03-24 20:15 (UTC)

"Miles," Ivan said, "The news from home is reporting that your wife is having an affair with your clone."

"I'd heard," said Miles.

"Not Mark, mind you. That might almost make a tiny bit of sense. The other clone. The one who is, actually, you. Not a clone of you, just the real you without any of the safeguards that normally keep you from going entirely of the rails."

"They do say it's important to keep variety in one's marriage," Miles told him.

"Yes, SPEAKING of that," said Ivan, "The next batch of news had the interview where you said you knew your wife was stepping out on you, and you didn't mind."

"Well, I could hardly object, could I?" Miles asked. "After all, I've been using my old ImpSec cover idea to go about with a married woman, myself."

"Miles," Ivan said.

"Yes?"

"Miles. Miles. What is going on back home that you needed to create a distraction this badly?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Miles said.

What IS going on back home that needs this level of distraction? I suspect it has something to do with the Imperial Succession, which is enough to get all of Gregor's cousins to sensibly run away off-planet and out of the Barrayaran sphere of influence.

It's either something to do with Gregor, or it's whatever Cordelia and Jole are up to on Sergyar, or it's Ivan's imminent younger half-siblings by Simon that his mother hasn't been brave enough to tell him about yet, or it's the teenaged minor Cetagandan Imperial Heir who ran away from home and claimed legal sanctuary with Mark because, as a quick test determined, his genes are nearly a half-match to Mark's (via Miles) and therefore by certain caselaw he's legally Mark's son - or it really is just that things were quiet enough that Miles and Ekaterin let Naismith talk them into things, and all of the others above deciding to independently use the existing distraction for their own purposes...

I think it would have started as things being quiet enough...

Admiral Naismith is 1.
Lt. Vorkosigan is 2.
Auditor Vorkosigan is 3.

Lt. Vorkosigan's sensible plan in Cetaganda was so sensible, he told no commanding officers about it XD

XD

That's really fun!

I guess with Harry Potter, Harry is 1, Ron 2 and Hermione 3? It doesn't quite fit though. Maybe all three fall under 1.

I'd reverse it -- so Hermione "if you betray us you will be DISFIGURED FOR LIFE" is 1, and Harry "DRACO MALFOY IS UP TO SOMETHING" is 3. But it's doesn't fit really will with them, no. Harry's main goal is just sort of, try not to die, and his method is basically stumble around until something works by accident (which it always does, so I've put him at 3 mostly out of pity).

I think this is tough partly because the fact that Harry Potter is a deliberate uneasy mix of high fantasy and school story means it's often quite confused about the various levels of stakes, and also because Ron and Hermione never quite reach the level of protagonist in their own right, which is what these descriptions are really meant for. They spend most of their onscreen time helping Harry with his goals, not pursuing their own, so defining them based on their own goals means extrapolating a ways out from canon.

But I would probably say Harry is 2 (he goes into most of the books with a plan of keep his head down, learn magic, spend time with his friends and win the Quidditch Cup, and fails miserably every time), Hermione is 3 (well often more like "relentlessly competent at using objectively deranged methods", the relentlessly competent and the objectively deranged are more relevant than the goals, but her personal goals tend to be things like "Take every single class that is offered even if that is more hours than there are in the day" or "teach Rita Skeeter a lesson"), and Ron is a tolerable 1, in that he does things like achieve "make friends at school" by befriending the Savior of the entire Wizarding World, etc.

I wonder if there’s something about the (magical) school story that needs a fourth kind of protagonist, because I can’t really make Buffy fit any of these, either.

I think it might be the broader category of Coming of Age stories. Coming of Age protagonists, I think, are sort of all inherently 2, because the metanarrative there is generally "I just want to be a normal kid and grow up but all of this plot is getting in the way!" But also a lot of the story tends to be about how they don't really get to make all of their own choices in a broader sense, so a lot of the time they are just dealing with stuff in their lives that other people have fucked up, and experimenting with what kind of protagonist they want to be.

(I mean, you can have kid characters who are other ones - literally everyone in Calvin & Hobbes is a 3 - but that's not a coming of age narrative.)

The first OT3 that came to mind was Jack/Will/Elizabeth, and I guess Will is 1 and Elizabeth is 3, but unfortunately it breaks down there because Jack pursues objectively deranged goals, with unreasonable methods, AND tremendously fucks up the execution.

The original thread points out that if all three apply to the same person, they are probably not actually a protagonist, and I think that may apply here.

Norrington makes a perfect 2, though.

Accepted!

Also Arnie is 1, Usidore is 2, Chunt is 3.

Nie Mingjue is 1. Lan Xichen is 2. Jin Guangyao is 3.

...yup.

I'd put JGY at 1.

I think this is where it becomes relevant that these are types of *protagonist* and I don't really think canon!JGY counts as that. :P

Also, sometimes the difference between 1 and 3 is just your private opinion of the goals, but I would also put him at 3 if I had to, though, if only because "relentlessly competent" is kind of overriding. Also he is deliberately set up as a foil/counterpart of NHS in the book, and NHS is definitely the embodiment of 3.

(I might actually swap Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen, too, but again I think it's tougher when they aren't actually protagonists in canon - we don't really see them in the roles that define these well.)

Edited 2021-03-24 23:42 (UTC)

Mercy of Kalr is 1. Seivarden is 2. Breq is 3.

oh, absolutely

I don't think any of them would even argue with it! Well, maybe Mercy of Kalr. But I maintain that making Justice of Toren One Esk your captain is not a reasonable solution to any problem.

This list is hilarious and also is highlighting for me how much I love type 3.

There's something so compelling about a really intense, highly skilled person who makes you want to beat them over the head with the "pick your battles. pick… pick fewer battles than that. put some battles back. that’s too many" tumblr post.

Has Girl Genius been done yet? I think I'd put Gil as 1, Tarvek as 2, and Agatha as 3, but I'm open to arguments.

LOL LOL LOL

Harry Dresden is p much all 3 at least twice per book.

MCU - Peter Parker is 2; Tony is 3; not sure who is 1... Cap?

Yeah, it's tougher if you aren't working with a premade set of three you can compare against each other - I didn't list either of those fandoms because I don't have OT3s for them, just pairings + giant polycule.

But I would probably put Harry in 1? I'm a few books behind at this point, and also that's one where the scale changes so much over the series that what would be a reasonable goal to current Harry would've seemed objectively deranged to Book 1 Harry.

But if I was coming up with a plot for him, the initial goals would be things like "keep my family safe", "mildly annoy my favorite frenemy", "pay my rent". The methods he uses to achieve those things are so objectively deranged - "destroy an entire race of ancient immortal evil", "put an ordinary human on a level of power alongside the Queen of Winter", "fight God" - that it kind of obscures that those aren't, generally, his goals; those are ridiculous strategies for *achieving* goals like "get a good night's sleep."

Even when he's not being epic, he has goals like "get better at finding lost object for clients" that he solves not by, idk, learning psychometry, or making some street-level connections, no, he is going to hand-build an exact scale model of Chicago out of the original materials in his basement.

Yeah, Harry's got some very concrete goals, but his methods include "zombify famous T. rex skeleton and ride into battle", "befriend ancient locus genii", and "snark at archdemon".

and he'll do things like decide he's gotta stop the BigBad - which is usually a deranged undertaking if you are a demigod, but Harry manages to be pretty competent at doing it. usually via #2 on the list up there. he does the combo plate a lot of times.

these are the 2 fandoms currently eating all of my brain, so they're all i've got.

i guess in the MCU, Strange might be 1... since he's kinda 'imma magic this problem away', which is a little odd for most things. Parker jacks up plans all the time, but somehow manages to pull shit off that shouldn't work. and Tony is epic'ly on the 'deranged idea' train, pulling things out of his ass that work.

i mean - there's Suits, but they don't really fit all that much. they've got 1 & 2 covered, but they don't usually hit #3. (Louis is the embodiment of 2 half the time, but in a stupidly annoying way that makes you wanna punch the showrunner in the teeth)