melannen | (no subject)

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There's a post going around tumblr from

prokopetz about the three types of protagonists, as follows:

1. Pursues reasonable goals with unreasonable methods

2. Has sensible plans, but tremendously fucks up the execution

3. Relentlessly competent in pursuit of goals that are objectively deranged

and every time it goes by I want to do it as "Tag your OT3". So, here (feel free to fight me on these):

Eliot is 1. Hardison is 2. Parker is 3.

Luke is 1. Han is 2. Leia is 3.
Rey is 1. Finn is 2. Poe is 3.

McCoy is 1. Kirk is 2. Spock is 3.

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

Sybil is 1. Vimes is 2. Vetinari is 3.

Cable is 1. Vanessa is 2. Deadpool is 3.

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

Ray is 1. Ray is 2. Ben is 3.

Thomas is 1. Peter is 2. Bev is 3.

Harrow is 1. Gideon is 2. Ianthe is 3.

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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...

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